tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3540924320969916382024-03-13T09:29:22.019-07:00Luban meets KunkelThis is a blog dedicated to my family history. I started it largely as a place to put old photos I have on a dying computer. The families included are Lubans, Kunkels, Wasems, Dannings, and others.mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-19015002933149743892012-10-28T15:31:00.003-07:002012-10-28T15:31:51.207-07:00Outline of Wasem Family LineageWASEM:<br />
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The Wasems who moved to Iowa from Germany included Mary Wasem, daughter of Adam Wasem, who married Martin Kunkel in Davenport, Iowa. These were my great-grandparents through my father Peter Kunkel, who was born in Davenport, IA. Martin and Mary's son and my grandfather, Ed Kunkel, was co-founder of the Kunkel Sporting Goods store in Davenport, which only closed sometime around 2006 or so.<br />
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This is a record of the earliest origins of the Wasem family from the Ingelheim region of Germany. This record is drawn from discussions I have had with various branches of the family including those who still live in Ingelheim and the nearby Wasem ancestral farm of Autishof.<br /><br />
Jakob Wasem is the semi-legendary ancestor of the Wasem family from around 1508 in Dorrebach. I am not sure what other than family legend supports his existence or his connection to the verified lineages outlined below. He worked for the lord in charge of Dorrebach possibly as a tax assessor. His home still exists (assuming this is all factual) in Dorrebach.<br /><br />The first confirmed Wasem ancestors were Johannes Heinrich Wasem (Sr.) (b. June 28, 1682 in Autishof, Germany…died Feb. 14, 1758) and his wife Maria Margarete Wasem (b. 1694 Hesse-Darmstadt, d. Dec. 24, 1758). It is interesting that both died in the same year…coincidence or perhaps a bad winter? It is also interesting that Autishof is already part of the family. They must have either already been renting or have purchased the land from the lord in charge of Ingelheim before Johannes Heinrich Wasem, Sr. was born. Either way, Autishof was an ancestral farm for the Wasems which as of 2010 was still in the family. Interestingly, and unnoticed by the Wasem family living there and in Ingelheim at the time, I noticed in 2010 an old boundary marker on the property that indicated the land was originally the property of the Archbishop of Mainz.<br />
<br />Johannes Heinrich Wasem (Sr.) and his wife Maria Margarete Wasem had the following children:<br /><br />1. Johannes Peter Wasem (b. 1710 in Dorrebach, died Feb 16, 1782 in Dorrebach). He married Anna Katharine Bedeer. Their line seems to die out in the 19th century…at least the records I see don’t carry the line beyond that. However names with no death dates may indicate emigration in the 19th century. Also female lines could have been lost.<br />2. Johannes Heinrich Wasem (jr.) (b 1725, Dorrebach, died Aug. 18, 1728 in Ober-Ingelheim). Married Maria Clara (Klara) Dhein (b. Aug 5, 1728 in Dorrebach). This is the guy most lines of the family can trace to. Their children include:<br />
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2a. Johann Valentin Wasem (b. Mar. 29, 1751 in Autishof, d. 1806). Married Margratite Elisabeth Eberhard von Oberdiebach (d. Feb. 1, 1806). This marriage seems like a marriage up for Johann Valentin since his wife sounds like nobility of some sort. Oberdiebach is in the same Mainz-Bingen area of Germany that the Wasem family was active. This possible connection with nobility further emphasizes the connections the Wasems had in the area. Interesting that both Johann Valantin and his wife die in 1806. Coincidence? A bad winter? Disease? The Johann Valentin line is the one from which the modern Autishof branch of the Wasem family is descended. From what I can tell, this branch ends with Katharina Wasem, who married Friedrich Riedel, and their two unmarried, children still live at Autishof as of 2010. These are Isolde Riedel (b. 1930) and Wilfried Riedel (b. 1936). Though all branches of the family were associated with the Autishof Wasems, at some point this branch became isolated from the Ingelheim branch until a chance meeting at an inn reunited the two branches (according to family legend).<br />2b. Johann Peter Wasem (b 1753 Autishof, d. June 1 1809). Married Anna Margaretha Speth (b. Nov. 18, 1763 Zu, Nieder-Ingelheim, d. Feb 18, 1814). Most of this line seems to disappear in the 19th Century, but Johann Peter’s daughter, Margaretha Elizabeth Wasem (b. 1795), married Benedict Nathan Nichtern which leads to the Nichtern family now in Iowa. Their son, Benedict John Nichtern, married another Wasem, Elisabetha Sadie Wasem (b. 1840, father: Johann Ludwig Wasem from the Ingelheim branch of the family, who was also the ancestor of the Idaho branch of the family.)<br />2c. Johann Philip Wasem: b. Apr. 27, 1804(??). Probably died very young since no further records of him were found and a later brother was also named Johann Philip.<br />2d. Johann Georg Wasem: (b. Jan 14, 1760 Autishof, d. Nov. 26, 1827 Ober-Ingelheim). Married Katharina Elizabetha Strasburger (b. Sept 29, 1756, Autishof, d. Dec. 2, 1813, Ober-Ingelheim). In this case Ober-Ingelheim probably means the town of Bingen at the bend of the Rhine turning East where the later Adam Wasem was a bigwig and his sons joined the revolution of 1848. It is from Johann Georg and Katharina Elizabetha that the Adam Wasem lines come from that moved to Ft. Dodge, Iowa. This includes the connection through Adam's daughter Carolina Wasem’s marriage to the Laufesweilers to the Hilton line, the connection through through Adam's daughter Mary Wasem's marriage to Martin Kunkel to the Kunkels, and to the Adam E. Wasem line of gypsum fame (Wasem Plaster Company).<br />e. Johann Heinrich Wasem: (b. Apr. 7, 1762, Autishof, d. Apr. 30, 1816). Married Anna Christina Kloss (be. June 8, 1769, Hesse-Darmstadt). This line disappears, probably merging through Wasem women into the Vogel (Magdeberg and Ingolstadt areas?) family.<br />f. Philip Jacob Wasem: (b. Dec. 17, 1763) probably died young. No further records.<br />g. Juliana Katharina Wasem: (b. approx 1765, Autishof). Married into the Schmidt (Ober-Ingelheim) family.<br />h. Johann Philip Wasem: (b. Sept. 6, 1766, Autishof, d. Dec. 14, 1813). Married Katharina Elzabetha Rossbach (b. May 1, 1764, d. Jan 5, 1837). This is the origin, through their son Johann Ludwig Wasem, of the Ingelheim vintner branch (through Johann Ludwig’s son Johann Wasem, b. 1833) and to the Idaho Wasem branch (through Johann Ludwig’s son Georg Friedrich Wasem).</blockquote>
3. Given the size of families at the time I suspect there were more children of Johannes Heinrich Wasem (Sr.)…but I have no record of them.<br />
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Thus all Wasem families I know of come from the marriage of Johannes Heinrich Wasem (Sr.) (b. June 28, 1682 in Autishof,
Germany…died Feb. 14, 1758) and Maria Margarete Wasem (b. 1694
Hesse-Darmstadt, d. Dec. 24, 1758). I was not able to trace any further links of the lineage back from there except for the story of the ancestor Jakob Wasem from around 1508.mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-75640626603624537892012-02-19T15:57:00.001-08:002012-02-19T15:57:50.218-08:00Forced Mormon Conversion of Catholic and Jewish DeadThe Mormons have this little habit of baptizing dead Jews and Catholics, among others. Without ANYONE'S consent. This is considered a HUGE presumption and HUGELY insulting by most Jews. But now we learn that they went so far as to baptize Simon Wiesenthal's parents as well as Elie Wiesel and members of his family. Of course they are apologizing now and claiming it was the work of one rogue individual, but given that this was a deliberate policy such apologies and claims strike me as complete bullshit.<br /><br />From <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-17036046">BBC news</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Jews Asher and Rosa Rapp Wiesenthal were baptised in proxy ceremonies in the US states of Arizona and Utah in January, records show.<br /><br />Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints spokesman Michael Purdy said the Church' s leaders "sincerely regret" the actions of "an individual member".<br /><br />The Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center denounced the news.<br /><br />"We are outraged that such insensitive actions continue in the Mormon temples," said Rabbi Abraham Cooper, a spokesman at the centre...<br /><br />Evidence that Wiesenthal's parents had been baptised was found by Helen Radkey, a researcher and former Mormon, AP reported.<br /><br />She regularly checks the Church' s database, and also recently found the names of Nobel laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel and several family members on the Mormon list...<br /><br />"The only way such insensitive practices would finally stop is if church leaders finally decided to change their practices and policies on posthumous baptisms, a move which this latest outrage proves that they are unwilling to do," he said.<br /><br />The Catholic Church has also objected to posthumous baptisms of its members.</blockquote><br /><br />[NOTE: I am not sure if the inclusion of Elie Wiesel on the list is a mistake on the part of reporters or on the part of the Mormons...Elie Wiesel isn't dead yet!]<br /><br />For the Mormon church to claim that it is just the error or misbehavior of one member ignores the fact that this kind of posthumous baptism is CHURCH POLICY. Given that it has been Mormon church policy, it is something that Romney should be challenged on and <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/02/14/elie-wiesel-mitt-romney-mormon-church_n_1276148.html?ref=politics">Elie Wiesel has called on Romney to speak on the issue</a>:<br /><br /><blockquote><br /><br />Wiesel said that the situation has gotten so out of hand that the most prominent Mormon in the country should speak out about it.<br /><br />"I wonder if as a candidate for the presidency Mitt Romney is aware of what his church is doing. I hope that if he hears about this that he will speak up," Wiesel said, noting that a presidential candidate "should comment on everything."<br /><br />Supporters of Romney have accused the media of linking him to controversial church practices even as they give other Mormons, such as Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid of Nevada, a pass. The Republican frontrunner has said that he has personally performed proxy baptisms as part of the Mormon Church.<br /><br />HuffPost reached out via email to the Romney campaign for comment. In an email accidentally sent to the reporter, spokeswoman Gail Gitcho suggested that the campaign ignore the request.</blockquote><br /><br />Yes...Romney has performed such disgusting "conversions" HIMSELF and his campaign is trying to ignore the issue. And his campaign is STUPID enough to accidently send that info to the press (I assume pressing "reply" instead of "forward," something I have done but not with sensitive info!!!).<br /><br />Contact the Mitt Romney campaign and challenge them on this issue. The Komen Foundation couldn't ignore us, let's see if we can force Romney into a corner as well:<br /><br />For press inquiries, please contact press@mittromney.com.<br /><br />For all other inquiries, please contact info@mittromney.com.<br /><br />Mitt Romney for President<br />P.O. Box 149756<br />Boston, MA 02114-9756<br />857-288-3500<br /><br />For more on this issue <a href="http://www.jewishgen.org/infofiles/ldsagree.html">read this article from Jewishgen.org</a><br /><br />And <a href="http://www.catholic.org/national/national_story.php?id=27825">here is a statement from the Vatican on this issue</a>.<br /><br /><br /><a href="http://thinkingmole.blogspot.com/">Return to I Had a Thought</a><br /><br /><a href="http://lubankunkel.blogspot.com/">Return to my Genealogy Page</a>mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-78052389619128708212011-10-06T19:41:00.001-07:002011-10-06T20:42:31.067-07:00Diverse Jewish Heritage in MusicThe Jewish experience is amazingly diverse. Even though a large part of Judaism share genetic links to an ancient tribal culture in the Middle East, Judaism has always been more open to converts than has generally been recognized. Though the tribal/genetic aspect of Judaism is important to Jews, it is by no means a requirement and once someone converts they are recognized as FULLY Jewish, whatever their heritage. Judaism has grown in diversity both through the diaspora (perhaps a form of divergent evolution), and through conversion (more of a convergent evolution, perhaps), more often than not encouraged by the Hasidic Jews more than the more reform side of Judaism.<br /><br />Ashkenazi heritage, from the movie "Train de vie": (one of my favorites)<br /><br /><iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/k4bI8U9SxHc" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />An unusual version of an Ashkenazi satire on the Tsar (sung by Paul Robeson in near perfect Yiddish)<br /><br /><iframe width="640" height="360" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yGgFqq1yVe0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />And what Ashkenazi music mix would be complete without the Hora...this one with Itzhak Perlman!<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CMIEr4COomE" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />A Yemenite Jewish song, "Gul Lilhbib" by Gila Beshari:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/JC-foUOrLN4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />More Yemenite Jewish music:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/TyHx6pKrWY4" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Turning to Sephardic Jewish music: (with LOVELY Arabic influences!)<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Jnq4rLlzg9w" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />The Israel Andalusian Orchestra:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/UGfXqjDxIag" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Moroccan Jewish wedding song:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/1tLwuFFMIgg" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />A Sephardic Shema Israel: (almost Celtic in nature)<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/K-MYAbGWLVs" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Which leads to what to me is one of the more amazing Jewish communities, the Ugandan Abayudaya, singing Shema Israel: (who converted to Judaism on their own and only later came into contact with the wider Jewish world)<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/CDfTN57R7ws" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />More from the Abayudaya Jews: (L'cha Dodi)<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/uKFGk2XNWME" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Turning to the Bene Israel of India, The Hora at an Indian wedding:<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/yGC1A98-7Bo" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Ger Tzadik (a black Hasid originally from Ohio):<br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/Fjklxit_d5U" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />And what survey of Jewish music would be complete without Matisyahu, the Lubavicher Hasidic Reggae/Rapper:<br /><br /><iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/12qtTuvWQSI" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/QLvt_MNAb0g" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br /><iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/w8L7JpDS9NU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe><br /><br />Judaism is among the more diverse religions, though most people are only familiar with the Ashkenazi branch. But the skin color of Jews around the world is as diverse as in any religion and though Hebrew is a common religious language, Jews around the world speak a huge diversity of languages. And when it comes to music, I think we hold our own.mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-80026183159528367682010-05-24T05:20:00.000-07:002011-09-05T15:17:59.270-07:00In Search of Franconia: Wherein I Begin Looking at my German Roots<iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=moleshomepage&o=1&p=48&l=ur1&category=books&banner=1WV938XZP3V21MG4E2R2&f=ifr" width="728" height="90" scrolling="no" border="0" marginwidth="0" style="border:none;" frameborder="0"></iframe><br /><br />I have spent a large amount of time researching, thinking about and <a href="http://www.culturekitchen.com/mole333/blog/passover">writing at length about Jewish origins</a>, from the Hill Country of Israel, to the Nile Delta to my own Ashkenazi roots in what is now Latvia near the shores of Lake Lubanas, where one of my ancestors took the name "Luban" when Jews in the Russian Empire took last names.<br /><br />But more recently I have turned to my German, non-Jewish roots, a subject just as fascinating, though to me somewhat less approachable. Since I was raised by my mother and her mother (whose maiden name was Luban), not my father, Peter Kunkel, it has always been the shores of lake Lubanas, and the very circuitous connection through it to Israel, that has fascinated me.<br /><br />But in reality I am able to trace my father's German roots back further than I can my Jewish roots. In fact, I have grown amazed at the care with which Lutherans keep their church records, keeping track of every Johann Georg and Johann Phillip back to whenever the village became Lutheran. It has just taken longer for me to feel a connection to the Balthazars, Maries, Marys and Adams of Darmstadt-Hesse than it took for me to feel a connection to the Dwieras, Jankels, Sawels and Enochs of Latvia. Of course it helped that in 2003 I was able to visit Dvinsk and Rezekne in Latvia and see the towns where my family came from.<br /><br />Now I have the chance to see the small villages in Germany where all those Johanns come from.<br /><br />Let's face one fact: It remains even today, difficult to view German history without one's view being distorted by what happened in the 1930's and 1940's. Ironically I have found (with some exceptions like Chinese-Americans and Korean-Americans and WW II Veterans) when Americans hear "Japan" they don't automatically think Pearl Harbor, Rape of Nanjing, Bataan Death March...they think sushi, sake, Karaoke...and if they are in more of an historical mood, the samurai. However, when Americans hear "Germany" they don't think Bach, Beethoven, the diesel engine or sulfonamides, they think Hitler, Nazis and WW II. They don't even think of Teutonic Knights, perhaps the German equivalent of the Japanese samurai and the origins of the Hohenzollern dynasty that brought us the Kaisers so unfairly singled out for blame for the First World War.<br /><br />This barrier that WW II throws across German history is both fair and unfair. As someone who has frequently written about Nazis, Nazi treatment of Jews and Jewish resistance to Nazis, I, too, fall too often into the same trap.<br /><br />And yet Germany was not alone in its march to fascism in the 1930's. The impact of the First World War, influenza epidemic, nationalist movements, and the Great Depression brought about a sense of chaos and despair that drove many nations to look either to communism or fascism. In fact most of Europe had BOTH movements fighting it out for their soul. Even in the United States both movements had some power and it was really, contrary to right wing propaganda, FDR's New Deal that convinced many Americans to stick it out with democracy rather than the right or left extreme. In fact people like Herbert Hoover, Charles Lindbergh and General MacArthur were sympathetic to Nazi Germany and (prior to Pearl Harbor) favored America siding with the Axis powers.<br /><br />The situation in the lead up to WW II is summed up in Steven Ozment's <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060934832/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=moleshomepage&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0060934832">A Mighty Fortress</a></span>:<br /><br /><blockquote>That fourteen of the twenty-five European democracies existing in 1919 had fallen by 1938 makes it clear that Germany was not the only nation to falter along the road to demcoracy.</blockquote><br /><br />Spain, Greece, France, Belgium, Hungary, Italy and Romania all had their fascists and toyed with or even accepted fascist rule. (Of these the existence of only the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Far_right_leagues">French fascists is controversial</a>, but I think a strong argument can be made that France did toy with fascism, though did not completely succumb.) And Soviets were set up in many parts of Europe...even in Munich in the aftermath of the First World War and the Russian Revolution.<br /><br />Throughout the world in the 1920's and 1930's democracy was seen as failing and the alternatives of fascism and communism were viewed my many as worth considering. I think the only reason why it became so much more the fate of Germany to be stuck with the blame for fascism (even though Mussolini came first by quite a bit) is because of the success they had with it, becoming the most powerful nation on earth through fascism, and because of Hitler's personality, a much more striking and powerful figure than almost any other leader of the time.<br /><br />I had the chance to travel to Germany to go to a conference in Heidelberg. Nearby there are two seemingly unremarkable, beautiful-looking regions where few tourists ever go where my distant relatives still live. To the east, just in Bavaria, are the towns of Neuhutten and Rothenbuch where there are still many Kunkels living and from where my great-grandfather, Martin Kunkel (after whom my brother is named) left to find his way in America. To the west, in the Rhineland but also once in Darmstadt-Hesse, are the small villages called Dorrebach and Seibersbach (which includes a farm known as Autishof) from where my great great-grandfather Adam Wasem (sometimes mis-spelled Wassem) left to find his way in America. Both Martin Kunkel and Adam Wasem settled in Iowa and it was there that Martin met Adam's daughter, Mary Wasem. Martin and Mary were two of my great-grandparents. (It was one of Adam's granddaughters through Mary's sister Caroline, who married August Hilton...but that way lies madness).<br /><br />From what I can tell, if you go far enough back, the ancestors of the Kunkels and Wasems both lived in what was called Franconia in the 11th and 12th centuries, long before I can actually trace my ancestors.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?t=moleshomepage&o=1&p=8&l=as1&asins=0312680686&ref=tf_til&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe><br /><br /><blockquote>There can be few stronger arguments for the damage that can be done by paying too much attention to history than how Germany has understood and taught its ancient past, however aesthetically pleasurable it can be in operas<br />--Simon Winder in the excellent <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312680686/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=moleshomepage&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0312680686">Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=moleshomepage&l=as2&o=1&a=0312680686&camp=217145&creative=399369" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /></blockquote><br /><br />Jews have a hard time defining their recent history, strangers in strange lands sometimes accepted, often not, moving from nation to nation always hopefully ahead of the worst of the latest anti-Semitism. Nationalities, last names and first names change, sometimes more than once per generation. But despite, or perhaps because of, this problem with recent history, Jews have a deep sense of their origins, which are mentioned in ancient writings in Egyptian, Edomite, Assyrian and Babylonian even before being enshrined the bible and in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0140444203/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=moleshomepage&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0140444203">Flavius Josephus' Judean War</a>. Jews are overwhelmed by their ancient history. They consciously define themselves in relation to that ancient history.<br /><br />Germans in some ways have the opposite problem. They are overwhelmed by an ancient history that is virtually unknown except in myth or in mythical histories written by their enemies, the Romans. Whether you rely on Wagner or Tacitus, the result is the same: myth packaged as a national identity. In many ways German history begins when Jewish history becomes subsumed into a subset of the history of their places of exile. The Romans ended the independent history of the Jews, but they began the very concept of German history, the very notion of a "German" identity...and they did so at roughly the same time.<br /><br />Whatever you might read in either early German myths or Roman histories (the two share much in common, and that is to the detriment of the history), we know almost nothing about the origins of the Germans. According to one line of thinking, the Gauls (Celts), Germans and Slavs were one shifting mass of tribal affiliations that were divided by Roman ideas of geography rather than any real differences. Gauls were barbarians on one side of the Rhine, Germans were barbarians on the other side of the Rhine and Slavs were barbarians even further east. In reality a person, family or clan might shift from one tribal identity to another with relative ease. Even languages were mixed and shifted. Groups like the Huns and Goths were in reality multi-ethnic, multi-lingual entities with relatively short histories, but which, in comparison to the Romans, had their histories projected back into myth.<br /><br />From <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060934832/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=moleshomepage&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0060934832">A Mighty Fortress</a></span> by Steven Ozment:<br /><br /><blockquote>Germanic Tribes established themselves in the eastern Rhine valley by the mid-first century B.C., by which time the term "German" (<span style="font-style:italic;">Germani, Germania</span>) was used by the Romans. At this time the tribes were neither racially uniform nor transregionally united...Quickly settling, they lived within, or along the borders of, the Roman Empire by agreement with the Romans, swapping their services as soldiers, farmers, and tax collectors for land and security. Of these tribes, the Fanks, Goths and Lombards developed historical identities by allying themselves with leading, or royal, families and embracing their genealogical myths.</blockquote><br /><br />Real tribal groups are very fluid. This is the case when looking at Native American tribes, African tribes before colonialism, steppe nomads like the Huns or Scythians or Mongols, or the Gauls, Germans and Slavs. Most of the Germanic tribes the Romans fought were actually tribal groupings around one warlord or, in many cases, a particular noble clan and the strength of that tribal grouping was determined by the interaction it had with Rome. Roman trade routes, Roman money, Roman military and diplomatic training, Roman weapons and Roman politics did more to shape the Goths (whether Tervingi or Greuthungi, whether Balthi or Amali led, whether Ostrogoth or Visigoth), the Franks, the Burgandians, the Belgicae, etc. than did any native German forces. Almost everything we know about early German history is really just part of Roman history. Almost all the Germanic "tribes" we know of were formed in one way or another around Roman influences, usually based on trade, war, or both. The history of colonial Africa has many parallels where the fluidity between !Xosha and Zulu, Bantu and Kikuyu, Tutsi and Hutu far outweighed any rivalry until colonial policies ossified these tribal distinctions, creating the sometimes genocidal rivalries we recognize today. Now we project the colonial-imposed situation back in time to pre-colonial days...but that is not accurate. The tribal distinctions among Germans and Celts was much the same in ancient times. They were vague and fluid, largely overshadowed by family and clan affiliations, until interaction with Rome ossified those tribal distinctions. Rome, and through them modern Germans themselves, tend to project the post-Roman situation back into pre-Roman days.<br /><br />The Germans, whatever anyone might think based on reading Tacitus, have no real independent ancient history. This is not a bad thing. What it really means is that most of them stayed at home raising fat cattle and nice crops, drinking beer at night and singing bawdy songs rather than rampage over Europe as the Romans pictured them doing. Trouble really only came when the Romans came around. Okay, sometimes a push from the other way came from steppe tribes on their horses, but those steppe tribes were really only an extension of ancient Chinese history until a man named Temujin turned the world upside down...but that is the story of ANOTHER people on the fringes of so-called "civilization."<br /><br />Bottom line is that most "primitive" agricultural societies don't do much in the way of killing, conquering or otherwise making history until trade and military intervention from neighboring "civilizations" comes by. Personally I like the complexity and fast-paced action of that civilization better than the quiet pastoral or agricultural life of the more "primitive" societies, but archaeology tends to support the notion that fewer people get violently killed when there is no nearby civilization to impress or luxury trade goods to buy. Of course there are exceptions, but not that many of them if you look at archaeology rather than listen to the histories which were mostly written from the civilized point of view.<br /><br />Even such quintessential "German" tribes as the Goths, Vandals and Lombards spent very little time in what is now modern Germany. They originated to the East, spent a great deal of time in the Ukraine, moved into the Balkans, and then swept across Europe in an odd collaboration/competition with the faltering Roman Empire, to occupy places in Spain, France, North Africa and Italy. But they had very little impact on Germany itself. The Germanic tribes who did have an impact on Germany can be seen in some of the state names within Germany through history (Swabia for the Seubi, Franconia for the Franks, Burgundy for the Burgandians...) and in the names for Germany (Allemagne in French from the Allemanni, Deutch from the regional dialect Theodisk...).<br /><br />The Germans started coming into their own, history and culture wise, when the Romans lost their edge. But the road even from there, was an extremely difficult one. Germany has seldom been unified during its entire history. Until very modern times it has always been a shifting jigsaw puzzle of transient alliances (whether tribal or among rival barons) over which an occasional warlord, noble family or dictator has been able to impose an ill-fitting unity. Look to the Thirty Years War, which absolutely devastated the German states. Look at what Napoleon Bonaparte did to the German states. Germany was a major force from the collapse of Rome on, but it was seldom a superpower until almost the 20th century. More often it was where other nations fought each other, similar to the later history of Poland, ironically enough. And yet Germany's influence on European thought and culture has, since the collapse of Rome, been enormous.<br /><br />Jews are overwhelmed by their ancient history. Germans have often been overwhelmed by their need for an ancient history to match their modern accomplishments. Interestingly this would have been a familiar obsession to Romans who lived under Ostrogothic rule right after the Western Roman Empire whimpered itself out of existence with the abdication of poor little Romulus Augustulus. So, from Roman times on, Jews have looked back to and tried to recreate an ancient past. And from Roman times on, Germans have tried to create out of myth an ancient past that appears more glorious than simply raising fat cattle and good crops, drinking beer and singing songs at night and trying not to run afoul of Roman "civilization."<br /><br />German history after the fall of the Roman Empire parallels that of Poland in many ways that probably would make both Germans and Poles uncomfortable. Both had few natural boundaries defining a clear territory, both were regions fought over by all their neighbors at one time or another, and both faced disunity and the threat of extinction from time to time. I think the key differences are simple luck (Germany tended to fare better than Poland) and the fact that Germany started with more structure since it was, contrary to common perception, a fairly Romanized region that had long ago lost most of its "barbarian" characteristics while Poland was more outside the Roman influence.<br /><br />The rise of Western Europe in the Middle Ages is the story of Germanic tribes absorbing Greco-Roman "civilization" and creating a new society that became modern Europe. From <span style="font-style:italic;"><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060934832/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=moleshomepage&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399373&creativeASIN=0060934832">A Mighty Fortress</a></span>:<br /><br /><blockquote>Between the rule of the Merovingian Frank Clovis in the late fifth and early sixth centuries and that of the Saxon Conrad in the early tenth, Germanic cultures melded with Greco-Roman, Roman Christian and Byzantine to create the Western Europe we know today.</blockquote><br /><br />Sometimes this is overstated, like the often repeated claim that the map of modern Europe dates to the three-fold division of the Frankish lands among the grandsons of Charlemagne. The lands of Charles the Bald are seen as the precursor of France, the lands of Lothar are seen as the precursor of the frequently fought over Netherlands, Belgium, Burgundy, Alsace and Lorraine, and the lands of Louis the German are seen as the precursor of Germany. I'd say, however, that this is oversimplification since between the division of Frankish land and the modern map are centuries of of dynastic conflicts that redrew the map over and over, attached much of France to Britain, parts of Germany to Austria and Scandinavia, and otherwise redrew the maps in ways unrecognizable to us today. However, there is a grain of truth to the fact that the division between Chrales the Bald and Louis the German (who was more of a conqueror and abuser of Germany than a partisan of Germany) did create two centers of power that roughly presage France and Germany, with an in-between land that spans modern Netherlands, Belgium, Switzerland, Alsace and Lorraine and which switched sides over and over.<br /><br />But really after the division of the Frankish realm, much of the structure of that division was disrupted by the Viking, Magyar and Muslim invasions. From this collapse five duchies formed that are reflected in modern German states: Franconia, Saxony, Thuringia, Swabia and Bavaria (all named for much, much older Germanic tribes loosely affiliated with those regions). It is from these duchies that "Germany" began to be unified under a succession of royal dynasties. The entities "King of Germany" and "Holy Roman Emperor" were sometimes combined, sometimes separate entities but both theoretically had authority.<br /><br />The Thirty Years War (1618–1648) cuts across German history with such trauma that it took something like WW II to dim its significance. The Thirty Years War involved almost every nation and power structure in Europe...and was mostly fought on German soil. It was a confusing mixture of religious war (Protestant and Catholic Talibans fighting over which version of the Christian faith would dominate Germany and get to oppress the other) and intricate political conflict, largely involving a rivalry between the Bourbon and Hapsburg royal families.<br /><br />Lutheranism and Catholicism were fighting it out in Germany even before 1618. The absolutely insane level of disunity in Germany (with over 200 individual states) made conflict inevitable. Religious leaders, local barons, regional powers (including the regional state of Hesse, where my humble origins are rooted), foreign nations and trans-national royal families like the Hapsburgs and Bourbons, constantly fought over control over the various German states. Even the Ottomans got involved from time to time. It was, in many ways, the first world war because it was fought by European powers as far afield as Brazil, Africa and Asia.<br /><br />The political consequences of the Thirty Years War were far reaching. The independence of the Dutch was assured and the decline of Spain accelerated. This allowed the rise of France and England as the next superpowers. Protestantism was unquestionably here to stay after the war, particularly in Germany. But somehow, Germany wound up even MORE divided after the war even than it was before the war.<br /><br />The Kunkels were already living in Neuhutten before the Thirty Years War. And through thick and thin they remained Catholic to this day. For decades the earliest Kunkels all seemed to be born, married and died in "The Glasshouse" in Neuhutten. I assume they were ones not to throw many stones, living where they did, but the earliest Kunkel I know of, Hans Kunkel, born around 1530, had the nickname "Schwarzkoph" according to local records. He was my greatx10-grandfather. Neuhutten and neighboring Rothenbuch are in the Spessart Mountain region, which was very thinly settled until the 13th century. The wider region was once part of Roman Germany, and then was fought over by the Alemanni and Frankish tribal alliances. Rothenbuch was first mentioned in records back in 1318 in an agreement made between the Archbishop of Mainz, Peter of Aspelt, and the Bishop of Würzburg, Gottfried III of Hohenlohe. In 1342 a castle was built in Rothenbuch at the source of the Hafenlohr river.<br /><br />Neuhutten was known for its glassmaking as far back as 1349. The name Neuhutten, which in itself refers to glass making, is only first recorded in 1513. Shortly before Hans Kunkel was born, in 1525, the Peasant's War damaged Rothenbuch castle, suggesting that this region felt some of that unrest. These mountains were best known for hunting (and the associated "poaching") and glass making and otherwise was fairly under inhabited.<br /><br />While the forces of Europe were getting together to fight it out in Germany during the Thirty Years War, Hans Kunkel was almost certainly a glass maker in a family of glassmakers from a region famous for its glass making and not that much else. The kind of glass making done was not large-scale, factory operations, but small scale, setting up small dome-shaped glass works where sand and wood could be found and moving on when resources ran thin.<br /><br />Hans Kunkel and Anna Catharina Wolfgang (also born in "the Glasshouse"...which probably just refers to the general area since the glasshouses were not really structures people lived in) were married and they begat Johannes Jurg Kunkel. Then came the begetting of a whole series of Johanns who are my ancestors--Johann Michael, Johannes, Johann Balthasar, Johann Christian, another Johannes, and Johann Kunkel, all born in Neuhutten. It should be noted that the exact records may not be as clear as this suggests. This is the genealogy that has been reconstructed mainly by Americans searching for their roots, but it has not always been confirmed by the records in Germany. But most Kunkels stayed put from before Hans Kunkel even until today where Kunkel is still one of the three most common last names in Neuhutten and Rothenbuch.<br /><br />Okay, look, my Kunkel ancestors were a quiet lot! They stayed at home and made glass and whatever else the had to do to get by in what really was a long German tradition of quietly living their lives in small villages far from the more disruptive and noisy thing called civilization. I kind of get the feeling that my Kunkel ancestors may have lived there quietly for many generations before Hans Kunkel, possibly being nearby when the Romans passed on the skills of glass making. "Kunkel" is actually a word related to wool making. So perhaps we quietly raised sheep and made wool in the area near the Spessart Hills before and we decided glass making was the thing to do once civilization came near.<br /><br />That last Johann Kunkel broke the long tradition of naming all their sons "Johann." Their son, my great-great grandfather, was named Bernard Kunkel and, according to one distant relative, is the fist Kunkel I know of in my lineage to be born outside of Neuhutten. However, another distant relative who actually has access to the Neuhutten church records says Bernard was indeed born in Neuhutten (he has shown me the entry in the church record and this seems confirmed).<br /><br />Bernard Kunkel has a story as well. Bernard seems to be the first Kunkel in my family lineage to leave Neuhutten since at least Hans Kunkel. He also married a woman who had earlier been widowed. Elizabeth Englert married a Schulzler before marrying into the Kunkel family. Bernard and Elizabeth's first son, Killian Kunkel, was born before they were married...Hmmmm, this has made some people wonder about Killian's true parentage. From what I have heard this is a touchy subject among some Kunkels even today. I think Bernard and/or Elizabeth were somewhat wild folks, at least for the area, and clearly were breaking out of the stay-at-home Kunkel mold. I should note that Englert (Elizabeth's maiden name) is also one of the three most common names in the area.<br /><br />Bernard and Elizabeth's second son was my great-grandfather, Martin Kunkel. Born in Rothenbuch, he went further than his father, Bernard. Bernard moved about 5 km over a hill to Rothenbuch. Martin moved across the Atlantic to America, settling in Davenport, Iowa. It was there that he met a woman from a very different German background named Mary Wasem.<br /><br />My mother remembers some of Mary's relatives. There were two eccentric and very modern sisters, Ella and Lena Wasem, and their brother, who was a bit more stodgy. In one generation, Mary Wasem's generation, dozens of Wasems up and moved from Ober-Ingelheim in Darmstadt-Hesse, to Iowa, where they got married and had children, struck it rich selling their farm to the American Gypsum company after they found gypsum there, and retired to Long Beach California. Quite a life it seems!<br /><br />The solid Wasem records I have don't go back before the Thirty Years War, though I have seen the house where a distant ancestor, Jakob Wasem, was supposed to have lived as assessor for the local lord. Unlike the Spessart Hills where the Kunkels had been for a long time already, the Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt where the Wasems first show up was very much at the center of conflicts in the Holy Roman Empire. The Landgraviate of Hesse-Darmstadt was formed in 1567, as the inheritance of the youngest son of Philip I, Landgrave of Hesse. Before that, the area was part of the Landgraviate of Hesse and before that the Landgraviate of Thuringia. A Landgrave was basically the Holy Roman Empire's equivalent of a Medieval Count. Various succession disputes and a rivalry between Calvinism and Lutheranism led to a conflict that was part of the wider Thirty Years War. I should note, though, that when I visited the Wasem ancestral farm of Autishof, I noticed a stone with the symbol of the Archbishop of Mainz, suggesting that, just like Neuhutten where I first saw such stones, the area was under the control of the Archbishop more than the Landgrave. Yes...German history really is that confusing, and finding such stones, still on farms centuries later, can tell you a lot about what happened there.<br /><br />Frankfurt and Mainz, both near the area the Wasems later emerge into the records, were at the center of the Thirty Years War...and of a huge path of devastation. Mainz, Worms, and Speyer each were major Catholic centers with famous cathedrals. At one point in the war, Mainz lost, according to some records, 40% of its population. Many villages and towns simple vanished, its inhabitants either killed or forced to move or both. I suspect the Wasems may well have experienced some of that devastation given the absence of clear records (from what I have been able to find) even though legend has that Jakob Wasem had been there earlier (around 1508).<br /><br />Johann Heinrich Wasem, my greatx5-grandfather, was born 1682 in Autishof, Hessen Darmstadt, Germany. Having roots that only go back to after the Thirty Years War implies that Johann Heinrich's parents had had a tough life. Where they settled, though, is now some of the best wine making area in Germany. The Wasem family today has largely moved away from the small villages and moved to Brazil, America or to the nearby town of Ingelheim where they make <a href="http://www.weingut-wasem.de/">what I can attest is great wine</a> (unusually for Germany, they are known for great red wine!). But there is at least still one Wasem family that lives on the old homestead of Autishof. The Wasems may not have been from the Autishof area originally, though I can't know that for sure, but they seem to have had considerable continuity after that. However, there seems to be considerable local mobility between Autishof and nearby Dorrebach (where Jakob Wasem had his home in 1508). Today both are considered "Dorrebach" though Autishof seems across some woods from the main part of Dorrebach. Johann Heinrich was born in Autishof, but he moved to nearby Dorrebach where he married Maria Margaretha. Their son was also named Johann Heinrich Wasem. He moved back to Autishof. His son, Johann Georg Wasem, then broke the tradition of naming all their sons Johann and named one of his sons, my great-great grandfather, Adam Wasem. It was he, after marrying his second wife, Anne Maria Hirschman, who moved his whole family, including Mary Wasem, to Iowa. He died in Iowa, but most of his kids died in California. All in all, the Wasems seem less sedentary and tied to the region than the Kunkels, though by all evidence they were farmers. My mother remembers that even in California many of the Germans who had moved from Germany to Iowa to Long Beach grew grain in their California gardens to remember their distant farms.<br /><br />Why did the Kunkels and Wasems move all about the same time?<br /><br />There were many reasons. Other branches of the Wasem family started moving from Germany as early as the 1820's. The first migration seems to be to Brazil where there are still many Wasems today. As pointed out by another Wasem descendant, in 1822 Brazil declared independence and started offering Europeans free land, seed and livestock. It was soon after that that Wasems started moving to Brazil. Wasems started moving to Iowa soon after Iowa passed its Homestead Law in 1862. So the incentive to move was partly good offers from New World governments. However, people don't move if they are comfortable where they are.<br /><br />The Napoleonic Wars came soon before the 1820's. This destroyed the Holy Roman Empire as an entity and much of Germany was devastated. However, one of the German states that fared well during and after the Napoleonic wars was Hesse-Darmstadt. So economic devastation was not a reason for the Wasem migration to Brazil. This was later considered a rather complacent, quiet period by comparison to what was coming. Perhaps the Wasems that left for Brazil left for their own reasons, maybe being on the wrong side of someone during the Napoleonic era and its aftermath.<br /><br />But the wave of Wasem migration and the Kunkel move to America came at a very different time when the complacent German society was breaking down. In 1830 came the July Revolution in Paris which sparked similar uprisings in Germany. Liberal protest, often led by the younger generation, met reactionary repression. There was not massive disruptions as there were during the Thirty Years War, Napoleonic Wars and, later, in the Revolution of 1848, but there were rising tensions. At the same time the first railroads were being laid and the first steamships crossing the Atlantic. Agrarian and economic crises began hitting in 1846 (when the first Wasems I know of started moving to America) and highly optimistic guidebooks began to come back from America to Germany promising a more open society that many younger Germans were agitating for in Germany. This seemed the combination of events that started the Wasem move to America (when Iowa started offering free land). But my branch of the Wasems, and my branch of the Kunkels seemed to wait until things really broke down in the Revolution of 1848.<br /><br />From <a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0312680686/ref=as_li_tf_tl?ie=UTF8&tag=moleshomepage&linkCode=as2&camp=217145&creative=399369&creativeASIN=0312680686">Germania: In Wayward Pursuit of the Germans and Their History</a><img src="http://www.assoc-amazon.com/e/ir?t=moleshomepage&l=as2&o=1&a=0312680686&camp=217145&creative=399369" width="1" height="1" border="0" alt="" style="border:none !important; margin:0px !important;" /> by Simon Winder:<br /><br /><blockquote>The vast scope of the Revolutions of 1848 encompassed in one form or another everywhere from Ireland to Sweden...Beyond a revulsion at the cold grind of repression instituted by regimes such as Metternich's in the Austrian Empire after 1815, there was no real agreement as to what should come next. This was allied to a middle-class timorousness that wanted political representation but was acutely anxious, on the whole, to exclude the working class.<br /><br />All sides in 1848 felt an often crippling self-consciousness. Few events have occurred with more of a sense of acting out a historical script, of making gestures all waiting to be immortalized in the period's innumerable cheap prints.</blockquote><br /><br />In 1848, in Frankfurt, within 50 miles of both Rothenbuch and Dorrebach, the March Revolution began. In Frankfurt, a new constitution was written. The revolution pushed for a united Germany and a more democratic system, essentially rejecting the disunited, outdated system Germany was ruled under. This revolution was unsuccessful and was of course ruthlessly crushed by the autocratic rulers. Otto van Bismark's political career took off the next year in 1849 in the aftermath of the revolution. <br /><br />The revolution and its failure led to many Germans fleeing to America. <br />From Steven Ozment's <span style="font-style:italic;">A Mighty Fortress</span>:<br /><br /><blockquote>...Between 1850 and 1870, after half a century of reactionary politics and the failure of a native democracy movement, 1,700,000 Germans emigrated to the United States amid growing fears of social discrimination and religious persecution by their government...</blockquote><br /><br />This was also a period where Austria and Prussia became rivals for who would dominate German society. The Wasems and Kunkels were in the Austrian sphere of influence and were not directly affected by the rivalry (which was focused more on what is now Poland), it is hard to imagine that there wasn't a sense of Austria fading and Prussia becoming an oppressive force.<br /><br />Clearly the Kunkels, who had by then broken out of their Neuhutten shell but still seemed mostly homebodies), and the Wasems, were affected by all of this. The Kunkels seem to have merely been affected by the economic results, having too many kids to support in the devastated Germany that followed. But the Wasems, who had always had more of a connection to the nobility, had taken a direct role in the revolution. My great-great grandfather, Adam Wasem, was police commissioner and burgomeister in Bingen (part of Ober-Ingelheim I believe, and located right where the Rhine turns North not too far from Autishof, where he was born). While he was at his peak of influence, two of his sons, John and Jacob (yep...another Jacob) joined in the revolution of 1848, centered at Frankfurt. Well, in the end they moved to America. I suspect it got too politically difficult for the family as Otto von Bismark crushed the revolution. So it may well be we wound up in America thanks to Bismark! Jacob Wasem, the rebel of 1848, wandered from New York to Ohio to Missouri, becoming a hatter. Not sure if that means what it sounds like or more of a furrier. I'd like to envision him as a mountain man getting furs to make into hats. Either way, he disappeared in Missouri, never to be heard from again.<br /><br />Ultimately, the result was that the Wasems and Kunkels who are my direct ancestors moved to America. Martin Kunkel briefly joined the Union Army in the Civil War before marrying Mary Wasem. Mary's siblings and cousins struck it rich with gypsum. Martin and Mary's son, Edward Kunkel, founded a sporting goods store in Davenport that survived until near the end of the Bush years, when the Bush recession drove it under. Edward's son, Peter Kunkel, was, as far as I know, the first Kunkel or Wasem to become an intellectual: he got his Ph.D. in Anthropology and met my mother on a dig in Mexico...which led to my brother and me. It was in Mexico where my Latvian Jewish and Lutheran/Catholic German lines came together. (For those who might be confused by last names here, Michaelson was my step-father's last name...Kunkel my original last name).<br /><br />Back in Germany, the Wasems have successful wineries and hotels in Ingelheim. If you are going to Germany, I strongly suggest staying at the <a href="http://www.wasem-weinhotel.de/index.php">Wasem Wine Hotel</a>. They speak good English and are very hospitable and their wine is really excellent. The Kunkels remain quietly in Neuhutten and Rothenbach and surrounding areas. The Spessart mountains are harder to visit because places to stay are hard to find and English is not as widely spoken, but it is a beautiful and friendly area, so if you are more adventurous, make an effort to visit. Despite its rural and out of the way location, I noticed more solar panels in Neuhutten than I see even in California towns! And BMW's are a common car to see. Many of the buildings are the same construction as when my ancestors lived there, <a href="http://books.google.com/books/about/Bilder_im_Zeitwandel_von_Neuh%C3%BCtten.html?id=puTycQAACAAJ">as carefully documented by my distance relative and Neuhutten's unofficial historian, Linus Kunkel</a>.<br /><br />A couple of final little quirks. My Jewish side may also have German roots. My maternal grandfather was German Jewish, but I have been unable to trace that lineage at all...try tracing Jacobsons in New York! So from somewhere in the same disunited mess that was Germany between the Thirty Years War and the March Revolution, I had some Jewish ancestors. Even my Latvian Jewish roots may originally come from Germany. One family that married into the Luban family were the Latvian Galbraichs. One generation before they were Halbraichs, a German name. A generation or two later they were Goldbergs in America. German Jews were moving to Latvia at that time. The Lubans seem to have been fairly settled in Latvia (the name Luban comes from Lake Lubanas in Latvia), but my great-grandmother's family, the Misrochs and/or Diamondsteins, seemed more cosmopolitan, educated and may well have had the same German origin as the Galbraichs. Though Misroch is a name that looks to the East, and I have imagined it was a link to the Caucasus kingdom of the Khazars, in reality it could just as easily be a family that came from Germany. I will probably never know.<br /><br />Finally, my wife's mother's maiden name was Rothenberg. This was not their original last name but was taken by an earlier ancestor from the family who helped them escape from the Russian pogroms. It is possible, though unlikely, that that Rothenberg family came from Rothenbach, where the Kunkels still live. Probably not a real link, merely one of the many coincidences that history is full of. But sometimes those little coincidences turn out to be meaningful.<br /><br /><a href="http://thinkingmole.blogspot.com/p/family-genealogy-and-parenting.html">Return to Mole's Family, Genealogy and Parenting Page</a><br /><br /><a href="http://thinkingmole.blogspot.com/">Return to I Had a Thought</a>mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-52514799661640628892010-05-06T18:09:00.000-07:002010-07-13T12:58:40.143-07:00Record of Adam Wasem's Death February 12, 1922This is <a href="http://iagenweb.org/boards/wright/obituaries/index.cgi?read=203723">the obituary of</a> the brother of my great grandmother, Mary Kunkel (nee Wasem). Interestingly, his death occurred precisely 43 before my birth, to the day.<br /><br /><blockquote> May 10, 1838 -- February 12, 1922<br /><br />Fort Dodge Messenger, Iowa<br />February 13, 1922<br /><br />Adam Wasem, Pioneer of Webster County, Dies in California - Death occurred on Sunday afternoon<br /><br />Adam Wasem, prominent pioneer of Webster county, died at his home in Long Beach, CA., Sunday afternoon at 2:30. Death came after a lingering illness brought on by the infirmities of old age. Mr. Wasem would have celebrated his eighty-fourth birthday May 10. Until a year ago he enjoyed splendid health, but has failed since that time and his death was not unexpected. Mr. Wasem was closely associated with the early life of Webster county. Coming to this country at the age of 18 from his home in Oberingleheim, Germany, he settled with his parents near Eagle Grove. He underwent all the hardships of early pioneer days, prairie fires, poor crops and low prices, but he lived to enjoy the fruits of his labors and the prosperity which resulted from hard work, saving and wise investments. In August 1862, he enlisted as a private in Company A., 32nd Iowa Infantry. He was discharged from service in August 1865, having served three years and nine days or till the close of the war. He joined Fort Donnelson Post number 236 and retained membership in that until his death. Mr. Wasem was a great admirer of Lincoln and the fact that his death should occur on his birthday is a peculiar coincidence. At the conclusion of the war Mr. Wasem moved to Fort Dodge and for a number of years he teamed freight to Boone, Iowa Falls, Webster City and other railroad termination points.<br /><br />He was married in November 1866, to Miss Henrietta Wiese of Manson, who survives him. They settled on a half section of land in Cooper township, which place the family still retains. Later he bought land adjoining underlaid with gypsum deposits. Fourteen children were born to them, all of whom with the exception of the oldest boy, who died when he was 10 years of age, survive. His children are Willia, Charles, John, Ella, Otto, Mrs. Roy Scheerer, Henry and Walter of this city, Etta, Adam, Mrs. Bertha Meigs, Carrie and Lena, of Long Beach, CA. With the exception of Henry, Water, Mrs. Scheerer and Miss Ella Wasem, they were all with their father at the time of his death. One sister, Mrs. Mary Kunkel and a brother, Fred Wasem, are also living in Long Beach. Two other sisters, Mrs. C. Laufersweiler of Fort Dodge, and Miss Sophia Wasem passed away several years ago. Mr. Wasem had six grand children. They are Richar, Robert and Jean Wasem, children of Mr. and Mrs. Henry Wasem, Mary Louise, daughter of Mrs and Mrs. Otto Wasem, Mary Henrietta Scheerer, daughter of Mrs. and Mrs. Ray Scheerer and Betty Lyle Meigs, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Meigs of Long Beach, CA.<br /><br />Moved to California in 1904 - Mr. Wasem went to California where he invested in property in Long Beach, and later built a home there. He enjoyed the milder climate and while he never relinquished his loyalty to Iowa was very happy in his life there. He made many trips back and forth to Iowa until five years ago last summer when he made his last visit here. The summer will be remembered as one of intense heat and Mr. Wasem suffered greatly from it. At that time he said he would never return. In October, 1916, Mr. and Mrs. Wasem celebrated their fiftieth wedding anniversary with a family reunion at Long Beach. Mr. Wasem was a faithful attendant at all the Iowa picnics in Los Angeles and he always had a warm welcome for all Fort Dodgers who visited California. Family Company - In October, 1909, Mr. Wasem deeded over his gypsum land to his 13 children who organized a stock company known as the Wasem Plaster Co. of Fort Dodge. This company which operates a large mill east of the city is unique in that all the stock is owned equally by the 13 children and the officers are also members of the family. The message that brought the news of their father's death said nothing about funeral arrangements but the funeral will probably be in Long Beach as the long trip back here would be hard for Mrs. Wasem. Knowing their father's failing health all the members of the family have visited him during the past year. </blockquote>mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-81876015068691620192010-04-23T12:14:00.000-07:002023-05-21T20:50:46.744-07:00My search for my Jewish familyMISROCH/DIMENSTEIN/COHN<br />LUBANS DANNINGS SPEROS<br /><br />A family history compiled by David Michaelson. <br /><br />What follows is a history based around three people: Dora, David and Ida. These three are thought to be siblings, though there some inconsistencies regarding that. They seem to form the coming together of three families based in and around the city of Daugavpils, then Russia, now Latvia: the Misrochs, Dimensteins and Cohns, though there is almost no evidence for the last of these. For nice symmetry, these three individuals are also the origins of three family branches: Dora married into the Luban family (from Rezekne, near Daugavpils) to form the Luban branch; David changed his name to Danning, forming a new family branch, and Ida married into the Spero family. <br /><br />What follows starts with a narrative, but mostly it is a collection of information, gathered mostly from the internet, drawing from Russian and US census data, ships manifests, death indices and from the memories of the children and grandchildren of Dora and David. Since I have been unable as yet to contact the Speros, I sadly cannot draw from their memories. Added mainly at the end are partly or completely hand drawn family tree diagrams which I hope will be clear.<br /><br /> <br />MY SEARCH FOR ORIGINS: (narrative introduction)<br /> <br /><br />I guess the first thing I should cover is where we came from. Living memory seemed contradictory at first. Harry and Ben Danning remembered references to “Poland.” I am assuming that these references were made in the 1920’s and 1930’s, which will be relevant in a moment. Evalyn Michaelson remembered references to “Rezitska, Latvia” from Dora Luban, her grandmother (spelling of “Rezitska” is a guess on Eve’s part). For my part, I remember my grandmother, Celia Jacobson, saying our family came from “somewhere near ‘Minsk’ or ‘Pinsk’ or something like that.” So it seemed like we had Poland, Latvia and Belarus as possible places of origin, all of which were simply “Russia” at the time our ancestors left. At first I thought it would be impossible to sort this out, but I have found the solution that brings them all together. In fact the solution is kind of obvious since it is where these three places (as well as Lithuania) come together, focusing on what was the Vitebsk and Livland districts of Russia back then. <br /><br />My first clue came courtesy of a Patricia Liebham who I found on the Rootsweb.com website. She has provided me with two 1920 US census records (see below) of Lubans from Milwaukee, WI. My grandmother, Celia, had lived in Milwaukee before the Danning family convinced some of the Lubans to migrate to Los Angeles. Celia’s father was Solomon (sometimes called Samuel) Luban and her mother Dora Luban. One of the two 1920 Census records Patricia gave me was for Solomon Luban, his wife Dora and their children Simon, Sarah, Celia, Jacob and Norma. This, obviously, was Dora and Solomon’s family. In this record, Solomon, Dora, Simon, Sarah and Celia were all born in Russia, while Jacob (remembered as Jack) and Norma were born in Milwaukee. The place of birth within Russia is hard to read but looks something like “Lit..sk,” maybe “Litovsk” or “Litevsk.” There is another 1920 Census record of a Henry and Esther Luban, living on the same street as Solomon’s family (11th Street in what seems to be a primarily German, Christian neighborhood). Henry and Esther had 6 children: Belle, Sarah, Minnie, Sophia, Helen and John (also remembered as Jack). Henry, Esther, Belle and Sarah are listed as having been born in Russia in a place that looks like “Wit..sk,” maybe “Witebsk.” I figured it is likely that two Luban families living on the same street in Milwaukee in 1920 are probably related and this has been borne out. If Henry and Solomon were related, then “Lit..sk” and “Wit..sk” probably refer to the same place. I took a guess and found the city of Vitebsk (also spelled Witebsk) which is now in Belarus but once was the capital of a district (Vitebsk district) that included part of what is now Latvia and which was part of Poland in the 1920’s and 1930’s. This, based on the 1920 census record and the memories of Poland, Latvia and Minsk/Pinsk (Belarus), seemed a likely place for us to come from. <br /><br />I then turned to the Jewishgen.org website. Searching for “Lubans” I hit the jackpot. I found am 1897 “All Russia” Census record for a Sawel and Dweira Luban of exactly the correct ages living in a town called “Rezekne” in the Vitebsk district of Russia. Today Vitebsk is in Belarus and Rezekne is in Latvia. Solomon was a carpenter according to the 1920 census record, and the Sawel in the 1897 Russian census record is listed as a joiner, which is essentially the same profession. So based on profession and age as well as similarity of names, Sawel and Dweira of Rezekne Russia of 1897 are almost certainly Solomon and Dora of Milwaukee, WI of 1920. Furthermore, Dweira is listed as having been born in a town called “Daugavpils” which is near Rezekne and today is near the border of Latvia and Lithuania. Daugavpils is also called Dvinsk. Daugavpils is a city where there are a lot of Misrochs and Dimensteins, names that are associated in both memory and death records with Ida and Dora, while Rezekne (and nearby Jekapils) have many Lubans. I think Dora, Ida and David would have been born in Dvinsk. Their parents may have had hit hard times, so, maybe at about the same time, David was sent off to Argentina and Dora was sent to live with an uncle who owned an inn. My guess is that the uncle lived in Rezekne and that is where her marriage to Solomon was arranged. I do find a record of one family of Misrochs living in Rezekne, but the husband’s occupation is “Coopersmith,” and there is no mention of an inn (see Misroch family tree starting with Moisey). Interestingly, family memory among Henry Luban’s family suggests that the Lubans of Rezekne were innkeepers. Was Dora’s “uncle” a Luban?? <br /><br />I find no record of David’s trip from Russia. Family memory indicates that the family could no longer support him, so he was sent to Buenos Aires where he worked for the postal service until he could make his way up to America. When he did, he first moved to Philadelphia where he met Jennie Goldburg, whose family included one of the first Jewish cops in Philadelphia. Somewhere along the way he met a woman who taught him English and he took this woman’s name, Denning. Not wanting to sound too Irish, according to Harry Danning, he changed it to Danning. Jennie and David (who is remembered by Curtis Ben Danning as Robert David) moved to California. The story goes that they honeymooned in California but couldn’t find the money to get back so they just stayed. Interestingly I find records on the Ellis Island database of a Raphael and other Misrochs from Russia coming from Buenos Aires to Philadelphia (through New York) around 1922. Although this is very similar to the names associated with Robert (Raphael?) David Danning, and the path from Russia to the US is the same, the date is way too late since David was certainly in California by then. Still there is evidence for a trail of Misrochs from Russia to Argentina to Philadelphia that must have been pioneered by Robert David, then continued at least into the 1920’s. <br /><br />I have possibly found records for Solomon’s and Dora’s trips from Europe to the US, but they are very uncertain. Solomon (according to the 1920 US Census) came to the US in 1904. I find a record of a Schlime Lewin, age 37, occupation: joiner (same age and occupation as Sawel/Solomon) who came over on the ship Statendam out of Rotterdam arriving in New York City. We have no memory of family in NYC at that time, but I do find records of Lubans from Jekapils (near Rezekne) in NYC. Maybe they are related. Maybe Sawel (living in Rezekne), Shlime (on a ship to the US) and Solomon (also called Samuel) are all the same person. <br /><br />Dora, Simon, Sarah and Celia are listed in the 1920 US Census as having come to the US in 1906. I find a listing for a Bassje D Lande, Ente Lande, and children named Simon, Sara and Chaje coming to Ellis Island in 1906 on the Corina from Liverpool. Their destination is Chicago, which is close to Milwaukee. This entry is actually crossed out from the ship’s manifest, but an entry for the same people (different spellings) is shown soon after on a ship named Campania from Liverpool. The ages of Simon, Sara and Chaje all match the ages of Simon, Sarah and Celia for 1906. Bassje D. Lande, however, is listed as age 46 while Dora would have been 36. Still, the “D.” in Bassje D. could be Dora. Finally there is Ente Lande. Ente’s age is identical to the age Ida would have been at that time. We don’t know when Ida came over, but it is likely that she came with Dora. So I think we have a somewhat garbled record of Dora, Ida, Simon, Sarah and Celia coming to the US. Ente is listed as the same name as Dora, yet Ida was not a Luban. I suspect that since she was traveling with Dora, and Dora was older by more than 10 years, Ida just went along using the same name to simplify immigration. All of this is speculation, but it a tantalizing link between Sawel and Dweira in Rezekne and Solomon and Dora in Milwaukee. <br /><br />So I conclude that our family came from Dvinsk/Daugavpils where Misrochs and Dimensteins abound. David got put on a ship to Argentina sometime around 1888. Probably, Dora was sent to Rezekne about the same time. By 1897 she was married to Solomon in Rezekne, though they had no kids yet. Simon might actually have been born that very year (1897). Sarah was born the next year (1888) and Celia in 1903. Solomon left for the US in 1904 (following his relative Henry who left in 1903) and Dora, with Ida, Simon, Sarah and Celia, followed in 1906. Norma was born 1910 and by that time they were in Milwaukee. It is unknown if they lived elsewhere before Milwaukee, but Henry Luban came to the US first, but, according to Henry Luban’s family, followed Solomon to Milwaukee. This implies an intermediate residence (Chicago, perhaps?). They were still in Milwaukee in 1920. Sometime around 1924 or so, Dora divorced Solomon and moved, with her kids, to Los Angeles where David already lived (after working his way up from Argentina via Philadelphia where he met Jennie Goldberg). It isn’t clear when Ida joined them. <br /><br />That covers where we came from. But who were Dora, David and Ida? Everyone, Harry, Ben and Leah Danning as well as Evalyn Michaelson, all remember the three of them as siblings. No one seems to suspect that these three were anything but two sisters and a brother. There is some uncertainty about their original last name. Everyone remembers Misrach, but there are echoes of another name, Diamondstein (probably originally Dimenstein, which is as common as Misroch in Dvinsk). Evalyn rememberd that David got his name “Danning” as a modification of Diamondstein. Harry, Leah and Ben counter this: Danning came from Denning, the last name of the woman who taught David English. I am uncertain as to whether he took the name Danning once he was in the US (in Philly?) or before. Ben does remember being teased as a kid about being really “Diamondstein” instead of “Danning”. I was ready to discount Diamondstein completely as mere rumor, but something from the Spero side makes me wonder. <br /><br />Here I enter the realm of California Death records, a useful, if morbid, database. Celia Jacobson’s death record lists her mother’s maiden name as “Misrach,” presumably reflecting Eve’s memory of her grandmother. Since the only records I find of Dora are from after her marriage, the direct records only indicate her married name of Luban. But according to Celia’s death record, Dora was a Misrach, originally. In agreement with this is the death record of Celia’s brother, Simon. His death record lists his mother’s maiden name as “Misroch.” The spellings are equivalent, so from both Simon’s family and Celia’s family it is rememberd that Dora was a Misroch/Misrach. There is no death record in this database for David Danning since he died before 1940, when the records began to be kept, so I can’t get more information from that side of the family. But when I turn to the Spero side I find something very strange. I find Ida Spero’s death record and it lists her mother’s maiden name as Mizrach, yet another spelling of this name. But wait! Dora and Ida are supposed to be sisters, yet Dora’s maiden name is Misrach, but Ida’s MOTHER’s maiden name was also Mizrach! This suggests they were not sisters. Dora’s death record lists HER mother’s maiden name as Cohn. I have no other evidence for this name, though there are lots of families with names similar to Cohn who lived in Daugavpils. Looking at the death record of Ida’s son, Simon, I find that his record lists his mother’s maiden name as DIAMONDSTEIN! Dora was a Misrach whose mother was a Cohn. Ida was a Diamondstein whose mother was a Misrach. This suggests that Ida and Dora were really cousins! I can find no way to reconcile these—memory insists they were sisters, but death records strongly suggest that they were cousins. If they were cousins, it is unclear where David fits in. Two things might back up the idea of Ida and Dora being cousins instead of sisters. First, according to death records, Ida was about 13 years younger than Dora and 12 years younger than David. This is a LONG time between children. Second, according to memory, Dora was sent away to live with an uncle. If that uncle was actually the husband of her aunt, her father and aunt would have been Misrochs, and the uncle she was sent to live with could have been a Dimenstein who was Ida’s father. I can’t resolve this unless I can find a way to contact the Spero side of the family, something I have been unable to do so far. <br /><br />The Misrochs are rememberd by the Latvian archivist, Aleksander Feigmanis as being timber mercahnts. I find records of these Misrochs on the Jewishgen.com website. He remembers Dimensteins as including religious personnel (Dora was proud of her family since they had many Rabbis…a hint at a Dimenstein connection?) I did find records of Dimenstein rabbis on Jewishgen.com. Aleksander also remembers Lubans as being innkeepers. <br /><br />I have only hints as to the names of Dora’s parents. My mother remembers she was probably named Chava. If Dora’s death record is correct, she was Chava Cohn or something similar. The 1897 “All Russia” census record for Dweira Luban lists her father’s name as Awsey. If her maiden name really was Misroch, then he was Awsey Misroch. This reasoning is summarized in the family trees at the very end. But before I get to the family trees of our family, I want to go through the documented evidence in more detail. <br /><br /> <br />MISROCHS AND LUBANS<br /> <br /><br />Mizrach/Mizrachi: Jews in Syria (not Iraq, though?), Iran, Afghanistan (who are from Iran), and India (not all) and beyond, including China. Includes very old established presence of Iranian Jews in the 1800s in Russia, and many European countries. A mizrach is also a religious item. Derived from the Hebrew word for “East,” Mizrach is something to put on the wall to indicate the direction a Jew should pray (direction of the Temple Mount). <br /><br />Luban comes from the name of a lake, Lake Lubanas, in Latvia not so far from Rezekne. Rezekne is south of the Lake. There was also a shtetl called Lubana north of the Lake. <br /><br />Our Family in Russia: <br /><br />From the 1897 “All Russia” Census, Vitebsk district: (From Jewishgen.org) <br /><br />The following two entries are the basis for my linking our family to the Rezekne and Daugavpils areas. <br /><br />Luban, Sawel, Father: Jankel; Occupation: Joiner; Age: 28; Birthplace: Rezekne; address: Rezenke, Volkov lane 11-2 <br /><br />Is this Solomon? According to Evalyn Michaelson, Solomon, her grandfather, sometimes went by Samuel. Solomon was a carpenter (same as joiner) and would have been 27/28 in 1897. <br /><br />Luban, Dwiera, Father: Awsey; Age 26; Birthplace: Daugavpils (same as Dvinsk); address: Rezenke, Volkov Lane 11-2. Comment: wife of Sawel. <br /><br />This is right for Dvorah. The name is similar, the age is about right (26/27) and the fact that she moved from her hometown (“was sent to live with an uncle outside the shtetl”) all fit. I should note that Dvorah may not have actually been her name. Dwiera looks more like Dvira, a different Jewish girl’s name that could also be anglicized to Dora. I think she would have left Daugavpils around 1884 or so assuming she was sent away at the same time that Robert David Misroch/Danning was sent away to South America. <br /><br />From same census there also are: <br /><br />LUBAN, Schmuila Jankel, Age: 76; Birthplace: Rezenke, address Plekshenskaya 24-2<br /><br />(this may be the Jankel who is Sawel’s father; Jankel/Yankel is a version of Jacob) <br /><br />LUBAN, Kreine, Age: 55; Birthplace: Rezenke, address same as Jankel; comment: wife of Schmuila Jankel (presumably Sawel’s mother; Kreine is probably a version of the name Kreindel) <br /><br />GALBRAICH, Josel, Age: 40; Birthplace: Kraslava; occupation: Shop-assistant; Father’s name: Schmuila (Galbraich?); address: Rezekne Bolshaya Ludzenskaya 38-3. This would be Esther Luban’s father (see below for Henry Luban’s family). <br /><br />GALBRAICH, Hanna Scheina, Josel’s wife. Age: 44; birthplace Rezekne. Presumably Esther’s mother. <br /><br />There was a widow living with Josel and Hanna: FALKOV, Glika aged 70, born Rezekne. <br /><br />There are many records for Maltinskys and Imjanitovs in Rezenke at that time (this is the name of Esther Luban’s mother’s parents). There are two households of Maltinskys who are neighbors to Josel and Hanna Scheina Galbraich (in Bolshaya Ludzenskaya 38-1 and –2). In 38-1 there is a Hillel (b. 1834) and Gitel (b. 1849) Maltinsky, who probably were Hannah’s parents (Hillel is also remembered as Ely or Eli). Ely/Hillel’s father was Meyer Maltinsky. <br /><br />I find no record that matches Henry (Henach) and Esther (Menucha) themselves even though they would probably have lived in Rezekne at the time. There is a 1911 record in the 1911 Vitebsk Gubernias Database ( http://data.jewishgen.org/wconnect/wc.dll?jg~jgsearch~model~[allbelarus]vsyaminsk ) of a Berko Luban from Rezhitsa (Rezekne) area whose father is Iankel (Jankel). This is likely to be a brother of Henry and Solomon’s that is otherwise not known. He may have stayed in Latvia when Henry and Solomon left. <br /><br />Rezenke (also called Rositte or Rezhitsa) is a town in what was the Vitebsk district of Russia. Vitebsk is now in Belarus, but Rezenke is in Latvia. Daugavpils (same as Dvinsk or Dinaburg) and was in the Lifland (or Livland) Province of Russia (whose capital was Riga). It is now in Latvia on the border with Lithuania. Dvinsk has many Misrochs, Cohns: (various versions of the name), and Diminsteins (see Jewishgen.org ALL LATVIA database) any of whom could be relatives. Lubans are concentrated in Rezenke (see above) and Jekabpils/Jekapils, also in the same area. <br /><br />The Misrochs and Dimensteins I find on Jewishgen.org in Dvinsk can be compiled into a handful of family trees but none have the name Awsey that is listed in the 1897 census record as being Dora’s father. There are too many variations on the name Cohn to compile any meaningful family tree. The Lubans also are hard to compile into a family tree mainly since the records for Rezekne, where the Lubans are centered, don’t include as much information about family connections as the records for Dvinsk. <br /><br />The Jewish Community of Dvinsk (Daugavpils): (adapted from JewishGen.org website) <br /><br />Dvinsk (now Daugavpils, Latvia, German variation: Dinaburg) was part of the Vitebsk Gubernia (province) of the Russian Empire. It was one of the leading Jewish cities and a centre of high Jewish culture and debate. Jewish gravestones in the area date from the 17th century. <br /><br />There is a book called Memories of the Days of My Childhood or A Look at the City of Dvinsk by Sarah Feige Foner of the House of Menkin - Printed in Warsaw, 1903 that describes life and religious conflict in Daugavpils between 1862 and 1871, the decade just before Solomon, Dora and Robert David’s births. Excerpts can be found at the website: http://www.fonerbooks.com/memoir.htm. In this book Foner outlines a fierce feud between the Hassidic and Mitnagdim (“opponents”) Jews. The former were more “spiritual” and the latter were more “intellectual” and were followers of the 18th century Rabbi known as the Vilna Gaon. In addition to this feud, Dvinsk also had a strong Jewish Mafia presence at the beginning of this period but was cleaned up by the end of the period. The St. Petersburg railroad ran through Dvinsk and the city included a fortress and large garrison. <br /><br />According to the Jewish Encyclopedia (Funk & Wagnalls), commerce and manufacturing in Dvinsk were largely in Jewish hands. The 1893 census showed 330 industrial establishments owned by Jews and 99 owned by non-Jews. The most important trades followed by the Jews were tailoring (1,210) and shoemaking. Interestingly, the professions of several of the Misrochs, Dimensteins and even Lubans found in Dvinsk and Rezekne are tailors or shoemakers. Some 32 factories are identified including button manufacture, a sawmill, match factory, tannery etc, all owned by Jews with a total of 2,305 employees recorded. A further 684 day labourers are noted. <br /><br />In 1910 the city numbered 111,000 of which 50,000 were Jews. Unlike its immediate neighbor the Courland district, Dvinsk was within the Jewish Pale of Settlement. Its ethos derived more from Russian, Lithuanian and Polish influences than from Courland which was broadly German in character and cultural background as a result of nearly 700 years of de facto domination by the Baltic Germans. Note, however, that many Jewish names in the area (e.g. Galbraich (Goldberg) from the German Halbraich) are German in origin. <br /><br />The poverty of the Pale was a feature of Dvinsk Jewish life and it is estimated that 30 per cent of Jewish families applied for aid from the community in 1898. There were numerous Jewish aid societies recorded including a Mutual Aid, founded in 1900 and with more than 1,200 members by 1901. A loan fund was established in memory of the Merchant M Vitenberg. Loans, secured by personal property, were advanced without interest. Other charitable institutions included a society for aiding the poor founded by the Jewish governor, with an income in 1899 of some 8,917 Roubles, soup kitchens, a charitable dining hall, a bikkur holim, a dispensary and a lying-in hospital all organized and run by the community. These testify to the traditions of self help and community organization that reflect the high value placed on charity to those less fortunate. <br /><br />Dvinsk was an important center of Jewish thought and culture and nurtured a number of Rabbis known and respected throughout the Jewish world. Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi Kuk [Kook] of Palestine was a pupil of Reb Reuvele Dunaburger. Meier Simcha Hacohen, Rabbi of Mitnagdim for 39 years while Rabbi Yosef Rosen served as the Chassidic rabbi for 50 years. Both were formidable Talmudic scholars and vivid personalities. They were considered rivals but were buried next to each other. <br /><br />Finally, the important painters Chagal and Rothko were born in the Vitebsk district. Rothko was from a Dvinsk family and a family portrait of the Rothkowitz family from which he was descended can be seen at http://www.nga.gov/feature/rothko/early1.html . <br /><br />Further reading on this important and most Jewish of Russian cities can be found in the Latvia SIG Newsletter – See: Vol. 1, No’s 1,2 and Vol. 5, No’s. 1,2,3 - which contains the "Jews in Dunaburg" extracted from the Jews of Dunaburg, published in 1993 by Z. I. Yakub. See also Dvinsk, the Rise and Fall of a Town, by Yudel Flior (translated from the Yiddish by Bernard Sachs), Johannesburg, Dial Press [1965]. Unfortunately this book is out of print but it is an excellent evocation of the flavor of Jewish life in Dvinsk at the turn of the century and above all records the enduring affection of the writer for his home town following his emigration to South Africa in 1928. <br /><br />Pictures from Daugavpils can be found at: http://www.avotaynu.com/wconnect/wc.isa?jg~jgsys~avotaynupc~Daugavpils <br /><br />The Pogroms:<br /><br />We supposedly left Russia due to pogroms. This is probably true, since our emigration, with the exception of Robert David Danning, precisely occurs just before and during the first stages of the pogroms. The following is a description of the Baltic revolution and its aftermath, beginning around 1905. Henry Luban, see below, left 1903 and Solomon and Henry’s family in 1904; Dora and her kids would still have been around as the revolution and pogroms started but left in 1906. <br /><br />Excerpts from the website: http://vip.latnet.lv/LPRA/fg_early.htm<br /><br />“Here we reach the focal point of this chapter, the 1905 revolution in the Baltic provinces of the Russian Empire. Marxism had been introduced to Latvia directly from Germany, and the Latvian proletariat had virtually no contact with the Marxist groups in St. Petersburg, Moscow, or other Russian cities. Unrest broke out in St. Petersburg on January 22,1905, and was echoed two days later in Riga with the proclamation of a general strike. The strike was called by the Federative Committee, which consisted of representatives from the Latvian Social Democratic Workers' Party (LSDSP, from the Latvian name), founded in 1904, and the Jewish Social Democratic organization "Bund," founded in 1897. One can say with confidence that Latvian Social Democrats and Jewish Bundists were close allies in leading the struggle for social reform, abolition of class privileges, a democratic constitution, and national autonomy -- territorial autonomy for Latvians, cultural autonomy for Jews. Bund representative Leonid Korobotchkin and others were prominent revolutionary activists alongside several Latvians. The LSDSP and the Bund established "military organizations" with 500 members at the garrisons in Riga and Liepaja (Libau), which agitated among soldiers of the Russian army. The Bund played a leading role in revolutionary activity in Latgale, Eastern Latvia, especially in the center Daugavpils (Dvinsk), a railway junction town where many Jews lived… <br /><br />“The 1905 revolution was followed by repression -- punitive expeditions, gallows, forced labor. Toward the end of 1905 and in early 1906, savage pogroms were organized in the western and southwestern parts of the Russian Empire, which claimed many Jewish lives. Latvians refused to join in these anti-Semitic actions. In the town of Ludza (Lutsyn) in Latgale, there was an incident in which local Latvian Catholic peasants prevented Russians from attacking the town's Jews. This was reported at the end of January 1906 by the newspaper Gaisma (Light), published in St. Petersburg in the Latgallian dialect: <br /><br />“‘Shortly before Christmas, the Black Hundred [a right-wing Russian gang] set out to attack the Jews in Ludza, to beat them up and plunder their shops. It is well known that no decent Latvian belongs to the Black Hundred. It had been decided to attack the Jews on a given day. Many of the Black Hundred showed up in Ludza, and by the end of the day, it appeared that the shedding of innocent blood was close at hand. Catholic Latvians from the surrounding area, having learned of this, came to Ludza in large numbers and stayed until late in the evening. They told members of the Black Hundred there would be no violence against the Jews, for Jews were people like everyone else. More Latvians than Black Hundred members had arrived in Ludza, who soon understood there would be no fooling around with the Latvians. Having failed to achieve their objective, the Black Hundred cursed the Latvians and retreated to their dark comers.’” <br /><br />Coming to America: <br /><br />Robert David Danning is the first of the family we know of to leave Russia. He was sent away “because the family could no longer afford to support him” when he was around 14. There may be another reason for his being sent off. According to Sarah Foner, during the 1860’s the Russians forcibly kidnapped Jews for service in the army, often using this as a way to separate them from their Jewish heritage. Any son after the first was liable to be taken. There was also a law that at least one son should be sent to a non-Jewish school. Many families sent away sons other than the eldest to avoid these fates (when they couldn’t pay for a substitute). It is quite possible that as David got older, his family realized they couldn’t buy a substitute and didn’t want him taken into either the military or the gymnasium, so they packed him off to Argentina. There is no record that I can find of David’s travels between Russia and the US, though, as I say above, there is evidence for other Misrochs following in his exact footsteps in the 1920’s, long after David had settled in California. <br /><br />Turning to the Lubans: <br /><br />There is a ship’s manifest (from the Ellis Island database, which can be accessed through Jewishgen.org) that might document Solomon’s entry into US. Hard to say. The ship is the Statendam out of Rotterdam, leaving Feb. 6 1904, arriving Feb 17, 1904. The year is right but Martin Michaelson has evidence from photos that Solomon came through England. The entry is: <br /><br />Schlime Lewin, age 37, married, Russian-Hebrew, Occupaation: Joiner, Last residence looks like something like Swislocs (???) and the destination seems to be New York. The age and occupation are correct, but we have no record of the Lubans being in New York (though Lubans from Jekapils did indeed settle in New York) and I have no clue where “Swislocs” might be. This is the only entry I can find for someone with the initials S.L. entering the US in 1904 who has a name remotely like “Solomon Luban” who also is a joiner/carpenter. Other entries may be more similar in name (e.g. Samuel Lewin…) but don’t match occupation at all. <br /><br />Even more tenuous is a ship’s manifest that might indicate Henry Luban’s family, Esther, Belle and Sarah’s, entry into the US. The manifest for the ship Kroonland from Antwerp (Aug. 20, 1904 arriving Aug. 29, 1904, has the following entries: <br /><br />Rachel Liebstein, age 37, married, Russian-Hebrew, from “Mosty?” Russia, going to join her husband, Ephraim (?) Liebstein in Brooklyn, NY. If Solomon was on his way to New York (see above) sailing from Holland, maybe Esther would have followed a similar path. Problem is, “Rachel” isn’t “Esther” and Esther would have been more like 26-27. BUT notice the last two children, below: <br /><br />Rachel was sailing with her children: <br /><br />Moische, age 9; Feiwel age 7; Leib age 3; Beile age 2; and Sore, age 11 months. <br /><br />In the 1920 census record, Henry and Esther’s elsdest kids were Belle and Sarah. They would have been age 2 and about 1 in 1904. No elder brothers are listed in 1920. No older brothers are mentioned by Henry Luban’s family. So this makes it unlikely that this record is of Esther and her family. Considering this entry to be referring to Henry’s family is based only on the names Belle and Sarah with about the right ages. Note also that Ephraim could well have been anglicized to Henry. The original was Enoch, similar to Ephraim to an immigration clerk? I can find no better candidate entry for their immigration, though we certainly know they came.<br /><br />In this context it should be noted that Belle Luban, daughter of Henry and Esther, rememberd that before emigrating from Russia, Henry and Esther had a son Moshe who died in early childhood (info thanks to a comment in another article in this blog from Amy Siegel, Helen Luban's granddaughter and Henry and Esther's great granddaughter). So it is interesting there is a Moishe in this ship's manifest as well. <br /><br />There are two ship’s manifests that might document the arrival of Dora, Dora’s three oldest children and Ida to Ellis Island. The first manifest contains appropriate first names and mostly appropriate ages, but the names are crossed out. A latter manifest for a second ship has the same names, but the ages are different (and less appropriate). In either case it takes some imagination. <br /><br />Manifest for the Corina, leaving Liverpool, England, November 17, 1906, arriving in New York November 26, 1906. There is no record of how they got from Russia to Liverpool. <br /><br />Transcribed from this manifest (though on the real manifest the place of residence is hard to read):<br /><br />Name Gender Age Married Ethnicity Place of Residence<br /><br />0005. Lande, Bassje D. F 46y M Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow<br /><br />0006. Lande, Ente B. F 23y S Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow<br /><br />0007. Lande, Simon M 8y S Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow<br /><br />0008. Lande, Sara F 7y S Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow<br /><br />0009. Lande, Chaje F 2y S Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow <br /><br />The “D” in Bassje D Lande could be Dvora/Dwieva, though she SHOULD be 36 in 1906. Bassje may be a version of Basya/Batyah. Ente could be Ida (who is not a Luban, but probably traveled with Dora and her family from Russia and hence would have used the same name for easier immigration) and she would have been about 23 in 1906. Simon and Sara are the correct names and ages. Chaje could be Celia, who would have been about 2 in 1906. Her real name may well have been Chaya (the feminine of Chayim, “life”). Oddly, their destination is Chicago, IL, where they are joining Bassje’s husband. Chicago is quite close to Milwaukee, of course, but I have never heard that we were in Chicago at any point. Bassje’s hair is listed as black and eyes as blue, unusual for a Jew but not uncommon in our family. She is 5’ even. Their place of origin on the original manifest looks more like “Sherpoli, Russia” rather than Kanislow which is shown in the transcript. <br /><br />These names are crossed out, along with the three above them, on the manifest. They show up again on a manifest for the Campania, leaving Liverpool November 24, 1906 and arriving in New York December 6, 1906. <br /><br />On the manifest for the Campania they are listed:<br />Name Gender Age Married Ethnicity Place of Residence<br /><br />0024. Lande, Bassin F 46y M Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia<br /><br />0025. Lande, Ente F 28y S Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia<br /><br />0026. Lande, Sura F 8y S Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia<br /><br />0027. Lande, Simon M 6y S Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia<br /><br />0028. Lande, Chaja M 3y S Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia <br /><br />These are clearly the same people as on the manifest above but Bassin’s age is still wrong, but now all the other ages are also off. Simon and Sara’s relative ages are reversed. Chaja is now male. On this manifest, Bassin is listed as being from something like “Therpole” (could this be Daugavpils?) and Ida from “Charnovsky” or something like that. Ida’s occupation is listed as “tailoress.” <br /><br />LUBANS IN WISCONSON AND BEYOND: <br /><br />There is documentation for Lubans in Milwaukee in 1920: <br /><br />From the 1920 US Census (courtesy of Patricia Kiddoo-Leibham)<br /><br />**Solomon Luban household, 1920 U.S. census, Milwakee, Milwakee County, Wisconsin, page 35A, sheet 8 A, lines 24-30; T625-1999.<br /><br />Listed with wife, Dora; daughters Sarah, Celia, and Norma; and sons Simon and Jacob. (see attachment transcribed by Patricia and the original, which is hard to read) <br /><br />What Patricia transcribes as “Litnok” looks more like “Lit…sk.” This could be some version of Livland/Lifland, the province in which Daugavpils is? Or, more likely, it is a miswriting of “Witebsk” (see records for Henry Luban, below) the district that contains Rezekne. <br /><br />From Wisconsin Death Record: http://www.vitalsearch-ca.com/jpgs/WI/deaths/1959-79/LIERMA/e07.htm<br /><br />Solo5on (sic) Luban; died 24 Feb. 1963; age 93, Milwaukee, WI. <br /><br />From the California Death Records:<br /><br />**LUBAN, DORA (D’vora) (Misrach) Birth: 05/08/1870 Mother’s maiden: COHN Death: 03/18/1960 (CA) <br /><br />Compiled from SSDI and California death index: <br /><br />**SIMON LUBAN <br /><br /> SSN 552-62-4000<br /><br /> Residence: 90005 Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA <br /><br /> Born 21 Mar 1897 (WI)<br /><br /> Mother: Misroch (Misrach) <br /><br /> Died Apr 1985<br /><br /> Issued: CA (1960)<br /><br />NOTE: Incorrectly indicates birth place as WI; actually born in Rezekne, Russian Empire <br /><br />**SARAH LUBAN <br /><br /> SSN 563-03-7188<br /><br /> Residence: 91405 Van Nuys, Los Angeles, CA <br /><br /> Born 1 Aug 1898 (WI) <br /><br /> Died May 1974<br /><br /> Issued: CA (Before 1951)<br /><br />NOTE: Incorrectly indicates birth place as WI; actually born in Rezekne, Russian Empire <br /><br />**CELIA L JACOBSON <br /><br /> SSN 563-12-1398<br /><br /> Residence: 90036 Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA <br /><br /> Born 1 Jan 1903 (WI)<br /><br /> Mother: Misrach <br /><br /> Died 27 Jan 1997<br /><br /> Issued: CA (Before 1951)<br /><br />NOTE: Incorrectly indicates birth place as WI; actually born in Rezekne, Russian Empire <br /><br />**NORMA LUBAN <br /><br /> SSN 546-24-0902<br /><br /> Residence: 91405 Van Nuys, Los Angeles, CA <br /><br /> Born 5 Mar 1910 (WI) <br /><br /> Died Aug 1979<br /><br /> Issued: CA (Before 1951)<br /><br />Note: Solomon Luban’s naturalization papers (kept by Sarah Luban, daughter of Simon Luban) has Norma listed as “Naomi.” <br /><br />Along with Solomon and Dora, living on the same street in a German neighborhood, there is also a Henry Luban. The following is from the 1920 Census record as transcribed by Patricia Kiddoo-Leibham: <br /><br />Henry Luban / Milwakee, Milwakee, Wisconsin / 1920 <br /><br /> Author: Patricia Leibham Date: 21 Nov 2002 1:10 AM GMT <br /><br /> Surnames: Leiphon, Leibham, Luban <br /><br /> Classification: Census<br /><br />Henry Luban household, 1920 U.S. census, Milwakee, Milwakee County, Wisconsin, page 201, sheet 10 B, lines 28-35; T625-2000.<br /><br />Listed with wife, Ester; daughters Belle, Sarah, Minnie, Sophia and Helen; and son John.<br /><br />See attached transcription<br /><br />NOTE: What patricia transcribed as “Wituls” looks more like “Wit..sk” probably the same place as “Lit..sk” on Solomon’s census record. Litovsk or Vitebsk best fit the data. Vitebsk is the most likely since this is the district that contains Rezekne. <br /><br />Esther’s maiden name was Goldberg, derived from the Russian Galbreich or Gelbraich which was originally German Halbreich. Her Hebrew name was Menucha. <br /><br />On Rootsweb.com I find a record of a Minnie Galbreich, born in 1873, married to an unknown Luban. This might be Esther, though according to the 1920 census record she should have been born later than 1873. If this is Esther, her parents were Jospeh Berl Goldberg (born 1857 in Shtetl Kreslavka (not far from Daugavpils), Russia, died 1918 in Manhattan) and Hannah Sheina Maltinsky (born 1853 in Rezhitsa (Rezekne) Russia, died in 1940, Brooklyn). Joseph’s parents were Schmuil Galbreich (born 1827, Russia) and Mnuche (unknown maiden name, born 1829, Russia). Hannah’s parents were Ely (Hillel) Maltinsky and Fannie Imonitoff. Joseph and Hannah had many children other than Esther. See: http://www.kornspan.com/goldberg_genealogy/goldberg.html and http://www.kornspan.com/maltinsky_genealogy/maltinsky.html for more details on Esther’s family. Ely’s father may have been Zolman Maltinsky, born around 1794. I have found a photo of Hannah and Joseph with 2 children from 1898 (go to http://www.kornspan.com/pictures/goldberg1_pics.html ). <br /><br />Much of the above information on the Galbraichs and Maltinskys was confirmed by Belle (nee Luban) Garfinkel, daughter of Esther and Henry Luban. <br /><br />Another Maltinsky can be found on Rootsweb.com: Meyer Maltinsky (born 1882, died 1939) married to Sarah Goldberg (born 1884, died 1966). Sarah Galbraich/Goldberg was Menucha/Esther’s sister (see photo link above for a picture of Sarah (aka Sadie). The relationship between Ely Maltinsky and Meyer Maltinsky is not certain but it seems that Ely Maltinsky’s brother, Chaim Maltinsky (also found listed on JewishGen.org in the 1897 All Russia census in Rezekne, b. 1843), had two sons, Morris and Meyer Maltinsky, making Ely and Meyer cousins. <br /><br />As shown above where I cover 1897 “All Russia” census data for Rezekne, there are records for Esther’s parents and grandparents living that year in Rezekne. <br /><br />Compiled from the SSDI: <br /><br />Known children of Henry and Esther: <br /><br />Belle is: BELLE Garfinkel is still alive. Her husband was Harry Garfinkel. Her daughter is Joan Tarachow, of Glendale, WI 53209. Among Belle’s grandchildren is Henry Rollins of rock fame. <br /><br />Sophia married Sidney Tarachow in New York. They had 2 daughters. <br /><br />SOPHIA TARACHOW born: 01 May 1908 died: 29 Mar 2000 (V) last known address: 10021 (New York, New York, NY) SSN: 113-03-592, New York <br /><br />“Minnie” is still alive but is actually Minette Luban (unmarried). Sarah and Helen are also alive in their 90’s. Sarah married Harry Fishman but had no children. Helen married Milton Hotzman and had a son and 2 daughters. <br /><br />HELEN LUBAN <br /><br /> SSN 387-44-4117<br /><br /> Residence: 53216 Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI <br /><br /> Born 1 Jan 1912 <br /><br /> Died 16 Apr 1988<br /><br /> Issued: WI (1961 And 1962) <br /><br /> This is actually wife of Jack Luban, not the same person as Helen Luban, sister of Jack and daughter of Henry, who is listed on the 1920 census record. Her maiden name was Wein. <br /> <br /><br />JACK LUBAN <br /><br /> SSN 387-40-3840<br /><br /> Residence: 53223 Milwaukee, Milwaukee, WI <br /><br /> Born 19 Jul 1911 <br /><br /> Died 11 Aug 2001<br /><br /> Issued: WI (1957 And 1958)<br /><br />Same as John Luban, the son of Henry. The records of Congregation Beth Israel in Milwaukee, which officiated at Jack’s memorial, indicate that his parents were indeed Henry and Esther and he had sisters named Minette (Minnie?) and Belle. His wife was Helen and he has a son David who lives in Maryland. <br /><br />THE DANNINGS: <br /><br />I can find no comparable census or ships manifest data on the Danning side. The roundabout way David came to the country seems to have hidden his tracks quite nicely. However, a bit of baseball trivia regarding Ike Danning from a baseball website: <br /><br />SARAH DANNING:<br /><br />Sarah Danning: USC law School: '24, retired in<br /><br />1995, after 71 years in practice. Born in<br /><br />1902 in Los Angeles, she was - like most of<br /><br />the students who studied law at USC - the<br /><br />first person in her family to attend college,<br /><br />let alone study law. A graduate of Los<br /><br />Angeles High School, Danning’s parents paid<br /><br />her tuition while she lived at home to save<br /><br />money. While preparing for a job interview,<br /><br />she remembered the wise counsel of Judge<br /><br />Clair Tappan who was also a professor at the<br /><br />Law School from 1904 to 1928: “Don’t tell<br /><br />the interviewers you can type; you will be<br /><br />treated as a secretary rather than an attor-<br /><br />ney.” Her seven-decade career included ten<br /><br />years in practice with classmate Ladislav<br /><br />“Jack” Styskal, and 22 years as a trustee on<br /><br />t h e b a n k r u p t c y c o u r t . S h e r e t i r e d f r o m<br /><br />Danning, Gill, Diamond & Kollitz <br /><br />Sarah Danning died in Nov. 2003 (?) <br /><br />Yiddish Baseball<br /><br />[Harry] Danning, by the way, was the brother of IKE DANNING, a catcher who played briefly in the majors and was a participant in our favorite Jewish baseball story. The scene is a 1930s celebrity game in Los Angeles. At bat is Yankee JIMMY REESE, born James Hymie Solomon in San Francisco. Pitching is HARRY RUBY, a famous songwriter. Danning is catching and rather than teach Ruby the signals, he calls out the pitch he wants in Yiddish. Reese gets four hits. Danning says to Reese, "I didn't know you were so good." Reese replies, "You didn't know I was Hymie Solomon." <br /><br />Of course it is really Ike’s brother, Harry, who was the famous baseball star in the 1930’s. He had a very promising career until knee problems and WW II interrupted his career. He was told after the war that he shouldn’t go back to baseball, so he retired without a pension, married and moved to Indiana, close to Chicago. There is an interview with Harry Danning in the book Dugout to Foxhole by Rick van Blair, 1994. <br /><br />Compiled from the SSDI and California Death indices: <br /><br />No record of David Danning’s death (he died in 1928 or so, before these records were kept) <br /><br />(David’s Wife?) DANNING JENNIE (nee Goldberg) born: 03/17/1879 died: LOS ANGELES(70) Manhattan Beach 11/01/1962. <br /><br />DANNING, IKE Birth:01/20/1905 Mother’s Maiden: GOLDBERG died: CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES Death: 03/30/1983 SSN: 548-05-5702<br /><br />(Ike’s Wife) DANNING , MARYON born: 02/06/1907 died: CALIFORNIA ORANGE 10/05/1973 . <br /><br />FLORENCE DANNING Birth: 12 Oct 1923 Death: 29 Sep 1999 (V) 90067 (Los Angeles, Los Angeles, CA) SSN: 555-24-8231 California <br /><br />GOTTLIEB, ESTHER (nee, Danning) Birth: 09/19/1908 Mother: (Jenny) GOLDBERG Father: (David) DANNING CALIFORNIA Death: LOS ANGELES(19) 03/12/1988 SSN: 548-05-8318 <br /> <br /><br />THE SPEROS: <br /><br />Compiled from the SSDI and the California Death indices: <br /><br />SPERO, IDA Birth: 11/14/1883 mother’s maiden: MIZRACH Death: LOS ANGELES 05/22/1966 Last residence: 91335 (Reseda, Los Angeles, CA) SSN: 566-80-8250 California <br /> <br /><br />Ida’s husband’s name is uncertain. The only candidate I can find who makes any sense is a James Spero, whose entry follows. However, according to Evalyn’s memory of Ida’s husband being referred to as “The Old Man,” this James Spero seems too young. <br /><br />JAMES SPERO Born: 18 Jul 1885 Died: Jan 1970 Last residence: 91335 (Reseda, Los Angeles, CA) SSN: 107-28-5710 New York <br /><br />Note: There are many Speros in New York, as well as a handful in California. <br /><br />The Spero children: <br /><br />SIMON SPERO Born: 06 Aug 1911, NEW YORK Died: Oct 1990 Last residence: 91607 (Valley Village, Los Angeles, CA) SSN 548-05-9245 California, Mother’s Maiden: DIAMONSTEIN <br /><br />EMANUEL B SPERO 17 Jan 1914 16 Dec 2000 (V) 91504 (Burbank, Los Angeles, CA) (none specified) 548-05-9242 California. <br /><br />Manny (Emanuel) Spero was a tail gunner in WWII, was shot down and was a POW. <br /><br />I don’t have information on Bertha Spero (who presumably goes by a different name since her marriage). <br /><br />THE JACOBSONS: <br /><br />To round things off, here is some information about Celia Luban’s husband, Joseph Jacobson’s, family. There are no records of Joe’s death since he died before the records were properly kept. However, I do find two records of land purchases made by Joseph in 1924 near San Diego. When I was a child Celia still had this land, inherited from her husband. Interestingly, 1924 is also the latest year that is likely to be when Dora and her family moved to California, following David’s family. <br /><br />Land sale:<br /><br />Name: JOSEPH JACOBSON<br /><br />Date: 18 Jan 1924<br /><br />Location: CA, San Diego<br /><br />Document #: 929362<br /><br />Serial #: CALA 0035853<br /><br />Sale Type: Cash Sale<br /><br />Meridian or Watershed: SB<br /><br />Parcel: Township 009S, Range 003W, Section 10 <br /><br />Name: JOSEPH JACOBSON<br /><br />Date: 18 Jan 1924<br /><br />Location: CA, San Diego<br /><br />Document #: 929362<br /><br />Serial #: CALA 0035853<br /><br />Sale Type: Cash Sale<br /><br />Meridian or Watershed: SB<br /><br />Parcel: Township 009S, Range 003W, Section 9 <br /><br />Joesph had a sister Hazel, who I know nothing about. He also had a sister Florence, but I don’t know the name of her husband, so I can’t trace her or her sons, Everett and Morton even though they probably live in Brooklyn where I live. He also had a sister Lena who married Henry Kaufman: <br /><br />LENA KAUFMAN born: 25 Oct 1887 died: Mar 1979 last known residence: 10471 (Bronx, Bronx, NY) SSN: 118-40-6093 New York <br /><br />He also had a brother George. I find two possible records of George Jacobson: <br /><br />GEORGE JACOBSON born: 28 Jun 1893 died: Mar 1970 last residence: 11209 (Brooklyn, Kings, NY) SSN:083-09-0243 New York <br /><br />Or <br /><br />GEORGE JACOBSON born: 16 May 1905 died: 05 Nov 1989 last residence: 11238 (Brooklyn, Kings, NY) SSN: 087-05-6309 New York <br /> <br /><br />Another family enters in even later than the Jacobsons: Evalyn Jacobson (Celia Luban’s daughter) married into the Kunkel family. This rather extensive family with almost equally extensive family records will be dealt with in another volume of this family history. The Michaelsons marry in at two points: to a branch of the Dannings (through Esther Gottlieb, nee Danning, whose daughter married Jay Michaelson) and as the second marriage of Eve’s, which is how I wind up David Michaelson. I may deal with the Michaelson clan in a separate volume if I can enlist the aid of Frank Michaelson, my step-brother. <br /><br />Evalyn Jacobson/Kunkel/Michaelson (anthropologist): <br /><br />Leigh M. Aaland and Evalyn Jacobson Michaelson <br /><br /> 1976 Masculinity, femininity, and androgyny 4(2) pp. 251-70 <br /> <br /><br />What follows are the family trees starting with the Misroch/Dimonstein/Cohn triad of families and branching into the Lubans, Dannings and Speros. I think there are still holes which I hope to fill in as family members critique my efforts.mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-78827093035508270222010-04-23T12:02:00.000-07:002010-04-23T12:07:56.419-07:00Family Controversy: Misrochs and DiamondsteinsThree siblings, known only by either their married names or immigrant names, were Dora Luban (wife of Solomon Luban), Ida Spero and (Robert) David Danning. All three were born in Dvinsk, Latvia. Their parents may have had hit hard times, so, maybe at about the same time, David was sent off to Argentina and Dora (and Ida?) was sent to live with an uncle who owned an inn. Some family memory suggests that their parents committed suicide due to the hard times. My guess is that the uncle lived in Rezekne and that is where her marriage to Solomon was arranged. I do find a record of one family of Misrochs living in Rezekne, but the husband’s occupation is “Coopersmith,” and there is no mention of an inn (see Misroch family tree starting with Moisey). Interestingly, family memory among Henry Luban’s family suggests that the Lubans of Rezekne were innkeepers. Was Dora’s “uncle” a Luban?? <br /><br />But who were Dora, David and Ida? Everyone, Harry, Ben and Leah Danning as well as Evalyn Michaelson, all remember the three of them as siblings. No one seems to suspect that these three were anything but two sisters and a brother. There is some uncertainty about their original last name. Everyone remembers Misrach, but there are echoes of another name, Diamondstein (probably originally Dimenstein or Dimenst, which is as common as Misroch in Dvinsk). Evalyn rememberd that David got his name “Danning” as a modification of Diamondstein. Harry, Leah and Ben counter this: Danning came from Denning, the last name of the woman who taught David English. I am uncertain as to whether he took the name Danning once he was in the US (in Philly?) or before. Ben does remember being teased as a kid about being really “Diamondstein” instead of “Danning”. I was ready to discount Diamondstein completely as mere rumor, but something from the Spero side makes me wonder. <br /><br />Here I enter the realm of California Death records, a useful, if morbid, database. Celia Jacobson’s death record lists her mother’s maiden name as “Misrach,” presumably reflecting Eve’s memory of her grandmother. Since the only records I find of Dora are from after her marriage, the direct records only indicate her married name of Luban. But according to Celia’s death record, Dora was a Misrach, originally. In agreement with this is the death record of Celia’s brother, Simon. His death record lists his mother’s maiden name as “Misroch.” The spellings are equivalent, so from both Simon’s family and Celia’s family it is remembered that Dora was a Misroch/Misrach. There is no death record in this database for David Danning since he died before 1940, when the records began to be kept, so I can’t get more information from that side of the family. But when I turn to the Spero side I find something very strange. I find Ida Spero’s death record and it lists her mother’s maiden name as Mizrach, yet another spelling of this name. But wait! Dora and Ida are supposed to be sisters, yet Dora’s maiden name is Misrach, but Ida’s MOTHER’s maiden name was also Mizrach! This suggests they were not sisters. Dora’s death record lists HER mother’s maiden name as Cohn. I have no other evidence for this name, though there are lots of families with names similar to Cohn who lived in Daugavpils. Looking at the death record of Ida’s son, Simon, I find that his record lists his mother’s maiden name as DIAMONDSTEIN! Dora was a Misrach whose mother was a Cohn. Ida was a Diamondstein whose mother was a Misrach. This suggests that Ida and Dora were really cousins! I can find no way to reconcile these—memory insists they were sisters, but death records strongly suggest that they were cousins. If they were cousins, it is unclear where David fits in. Two things might back up the idea of Ida and Dora being cousins instead of sisters. First, according to death records, Ida was about 13 years younger than Dora and 12 years younger than David. This is a LONG time between children. Second, according to memory, Dora was sent away to live with an uncle. If that uncle was actually the husband of her aunt, her father and aunt would have been Misrochs, and the uncle she was sent to live with could have been a Dimenstein who was Ida’s father. I can’t resolve this unless I can find a way to contact the Spero side of the family, something I have been unable to do so far. <br /><br />The Misrochs are rememberd by the Latvian archivist, Aleksander Feigmanis as being timber mercahnts. I find records of these Misrochs on the Jewishgen.com website. He remembers Dimensteins as including religious personnel (Dora was proud of her family since they had many Rabbis…a hint at a Dimenstein connection?) I did find records of Dimenstein rabbis on Jewishgen.com. Aleksander also remembers Lubans as being innkeepers. <br /><br />I have only hints as to the names of Dora’s parents. My mother remembers Dora's mother was probably named Chava. If Dora’s death record is correct, she was Chava Cohn or something similar. The 1897 “All Russia” census record for Dweira Luban lists her father’s name as Awsey. If her maiden name really was Misroch, then he was Awsey Misroch.mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-21691212711819892812009-04-08T16:08:00.000-07:002010-04-23T11:53:25.460-07:00Passover and Jewish HistoryEvery year at Passover I write a diary focused on the origins of Jews. This is largely what I wrote last year, including a discussion of threads of evidence that influences from Egypt were part of the origin of Judaism, just like the Passover story goes.<br /><br />Passover celebrates, supposedly, the escape of the Jews from slavery in Egypt. This escape is considered one of the defining moments in Judaism, perhaps THE defining moment. Into this event is placed the entirety of the ancient Jewish identity, supposedly divided into "12 tribes," as well as the defining of Jewish religious law. That is a lot to put into one holiday! But there is a more general theme, that of the struggle for freedom that many cultures can relate to.<br /><br />The problem is that the bible account is internally inconsistent and is clearly a mixture of several traditions and myths. That does not mean that there aren't kernels of truth in it, but it is not clear how many events are covered by the Exodus story and what times those various events took place, or if any of the characters involved were real people. What is clear is that the story was written LONG after the events it claims to describe took place, which is common for ancient legends. The bible cannot be taken literally because it is often internally contradictory. That is odd if it is the revealed word of God, but it is very understandable if it is the collected lore of a small group of semi-nomadic people (Hapiru? Shasu Bedouins?) who eventually established a small state or collection of tiny states and were desperately trying to define their identity in relation to their often much stronger and very aggressive neighbors.<br /><br />Most of the bible was never written down anywhere close to the events that are described. Much of the Torah (the first five books of the bible) did not form a coherent text until much later, probably the reigns of King Hezikiah or Josiah when the single Kingdom of Judah was trying to lay claim to the entirety of Jewish tradition at the expense of the then conquered and exiled Israel (which was probably the origin of the biblical and modern Samaritans). So the bible has about as much historical merit as, say, the Iliad or the story of Jason and the Argonauts or the Hindu Bagavad Gita. It cannot be ignored because historical people, places and events are there in the background, but it must be taken with Lot's wife's weight in salt.<br /><br />The bible account of Exodus is now thought to conflate at least two (and maybe many) separate stories: one about an escape from Egypt (or, as I will mention later, maybe from Egyptian control rather than from the state of Egypt per se), and one about a forced expulsion from Egyptian territory. Neither of these events is recorded in Egyptian records, but the structure and narrative of the biblical story clearly involves both an escape and a forced expulsion. This suggests that two groups of proto-Jews came from an Egyptian background of some sort.<br /><br />I have read about a dozen books on the subject, but I find that the two most convincing are Jonathan N. Tubb's book <i>Canaanites</i> (1998) and Israel Finkelstein's book <i>The Bible Unearthed</i>. Both use primarily archaeology and only occasionally try to fit biblical stories to the archaeological facts. Most other books start from the bible and try to smoosh in archaeology to make sense of the biblical chronology. Needless to say, as a scientist, I prefer an approach that gets facts on the ground first and only afterwards tries to fit in the bible. To these two main sources I also add a casual observation from the book <em>Salt</em> by Mark Kurlansky.<br /><br />In the bible, the Hebrews are a coherent group of about 12 tribes (really the number and the names vary) who often look to a single leader (something that probably never happened until the Maccabees if even then) and who migrated from Babylon to Canaan to Egypt then back to Canaan. Archaeologically, the Hebrews were a group that evolved <em>in situ</em> from the native Canaanite population. There is almost no archaeological evidence for a Babylonian or Egyptian origin, yet it is interesting that these two empires played a powerful role in the early history of the Jews, so influences and even people from both of these empires clearly helped shape Judaism.<br /><br />Passover celebrates a man named Moses leading "his people" out of Egypt against the wishes of the very powerful king of Egypt followed by the reception of "THE LAW" and the entry into the "promised land." This is the foundation myth of Judaism. It is, quite simply, a myth with many false leads and dead ends...but it also hints at historical facts.<br /><br />So just who was this "Moses?" He is the central character of the Passover myth, but who was he? Was he real? There is no corroborating evidence that any such person existed. But the name is intriguing. It is NOT a Jewish...or even a Canaanite name. In fact it is only half a name and it is clearly Egyptian. The nature of the name may give a hint at the origin of the Jewish religion.<br /><br />There is no question that "Moses" is the same as the Egyptian "Mose" which means "born of" as in the names of the Pharaohs "Ahmose" (born of the moon) or "Tuthmose" (born of Thoth). The entire story of Moses, including his partially recorded name, suggests Moses was an Egyptian or an acculturated foreigner, fully integrated not just into Egyptian society, but into the Egyptian royal family. He was buddies with a royal prince (of which there often were many) and may well have been brought up educated within the royal sphere (as many Egyptian nobles and foreign princes were). Moses may or may not have had foreign origins, but he was culturally Egyptian and had an Egyptian name. So when we look into his beliefs, we have to look to Egypt and the situation in Egypt to understand him.<br /><br />What was his full name? The most common names based on "Mose" were Ahmose and Tuthmose, neither of which would fit with Jewish ideas of who their leaders should be since both imply Polytheism. Either one is a possible real name for Moses, though I favor another somewhat more far-fetched possibility. Maybe something like "Atmose," a name I essentially make up based on what had recently happened in Egypt. His name probably was NOT Atmose, but it might have been and it would really explain a great deal about Jewish origins. But more on that later.<br /><br />Let's start with three solid facts, really about the only solid facts there are regarding the Jews at this early stage. These three things are the ONLY things we can be sure of:<br /><br />1. Genetic studies show that almost all modern Jews are descended from a population that lived in the area of ancient Canaan, quite closely related to modern Palestinians. Jews and Palestinians (as well as Lebanese, most likely) are modern day Canaanites and are probably escended from the earliest inhabitants of the region. There may well have been groups who came from Babylon or Egypt who mixed with the Canaanite natives to form the Hebrew culture. And there probably were Greeks who mixed with the Canaanite natives to form the Palestinian culture. But there is no genetic evidence for this to date. Y-chromosomal studies indicate that modern Jews, including Sephardim, Ashkinazim and Sabra and to a lesser degree even Ethiopian Jews and the South African Lemba, are a very genetically homogenous group (compared with most populations which show more genetic diversity) that originated in the area of Israel and Palestine. Modern Jews and modern Palestinians show remarkable genetic relatedness, indicating both populations derive from the same ancient stock in the Levant. The genetic evidence puts Jewish origins precisely where the bible puts it at about the time the bible puts the formative years (the same time Phillistines/Palestinians are becoming an ethnicity). As a side note I should mention some recent evidence that shows that links between Jews and other populations can be two ways. A recent study shows that about 20% of the modern populations of Spain and Portugal also are genetic descendents of ancient Jews. This shows either that there was considerable intermarriage between the Sephardic Jews and the Iberians prior to the expulsion of the Jews or, more likely, that the Jews who were forced to convert to Catholicism by the Spanish became a significant part of the population of Spain.<br /><br />2. The very first historical mention of "Israel" was during the Egyptian 19th dynasty, in the reign of Pharaoh Merneptah (the son of Ramesses II and hence soon after the Exodus supposedly took place). This inscription refers to the complete destruction of a group of people (not an organized nation or city) called "Israel." This earliest written mention of "Israel" gives us an almost unique fixed point in which to place ancient Jewish history. Whatever the origins of the Jews, a unique people who were the genetic ancestors of modern Jews existed in Canaan by the reign of Merneptah and got their collective ass kicked by Merneptah's armies. Again, they were a group of people or ethnicity, not a nation, at this time, based on the grammer used in the inscription. I should also note that the first mentions of Phillistines (and/or related groups, collectively called "Sea Peoples") occurs at about the same time.<br /><br />3. The archaeological evidence for this period (as outlined in Israel Finkelstein's book <i>The Bible Unearthed</i>) is also interesting. In the region that became the earliest core of the Israelites, what is now the highlands of Israel and the West Bank, archaeology shows us there was a very typical, if somewhat impoverished, Canaanite population. This population has typical Canaanite pottery, typical Canaanite religion (with many deities including El (same as Elohim), Yahweh and Astarte, names seen in the bible being worshipped by the Jews), and almost a typical Canaanite diet. This Canaanite archaeology is not interrupted by any invasions. There is no obvious new influence from either Babylon or Egypt. But there is one, and only one, change in the archaeology of this region during this period: pig bones disappear from their garbage dumps. At the point when Israel is supposed to first be forming according to the bible, and jsut when Merneptah kicked some proto-Jewish ass, the future Jews still worshipped many gods and were in every way Canaanites, but they gave up eating pork. For a long time I found this fascinating, but not a critical aspect of the search for the origin of Jewish beliefs. It is evidence that confirms the genetic evidence that modern Jews are descended from Canaanites, but I never realized that it could also help determine the origin of Jewish beliefs. But later I will show why this really is a key bit of evidence, along with the name "Moses" pointing to an Egyptian origin of Jewish beliefs. Jewish Monotheism and pork aversion may really come from Egypt as the Passover myth suggests.<br /><br />So we have an ethnic group called "Israel" that gave up eating pork in the exact place and time that the Israelites were forming an ethnic identity according to the bible. And this population seems to be the true genetic ancestors of most modern Jews. And they were definitely Canaanites.<br /><br />The bible story from Joseph to the Exodus, whatever truth there is in it, took place during one of the most interesting periods of Egyptian history, spanning the so-called 15th through 19th dynasties of Pharaohs.<br /><br />The 15th dynasty was considered a huge disaster and embarassment by the proud Egyptians, because it was a dynasty of foreigners. In fact, this dynasty, the so-called Hyksos, were primarily Canaanites (probably with some non-Canaanite elements). So Canaanite rule in Northern Egypt predates the Exodus and somewhat corresponds with the period that Joseph was supposed to be entering Egypt. This Canaanite dynasty was ousted by the native Egyptian 17th dynasty, which then became the famous 18th dynasty once it reconquered all Egypt. Also predating the Exodus, during the late 18th dynasty, was a brief and controversial period of official monotheism in Egypt, the period many people know because it was founded by the Pharaoh Akhnaten and ended during the reign of Tutankhamun, the Pharaoh perhaps best known by the world because his rather hastily and shoddily assembled tomb goods were discovered almost intact. The Exodus, whatever it was, is thought to have taken place during the early 19th dynasty, during the long and glorious reign of <a href="http://www.culturekitchen.com/mole333/blog/ancestors_whos_your_great_great_great_great_gra">Ramesses II</a>. And the first ever reference to "Israel" (see below) occurs during the 19th dynasty reign of Ramesses II's son, Merneptah. This is the general historical outline. Now lets look at details.<br /><br />Some time before the Exodus, during Egypt's so-called Middle Kingdom in the Middle Bronze Age, Egypt saw a large influx of Canaanites into it's Northern area (the Delta). Entire settlements are Canaanite, rather than Egyptian, in character. At some point either this foreign element destabilized Egypt, or took advantage of existing instability due to other causes, and the Egyptian Delta was taken over by a group of people known as the Hyksos. The meaning of Hyksos is debated, but may mean "foreign kings." Archaeologically, the Hyksos are clearly Canaanites with a hint of other non-Semitic influences. But in essence, the Hyskos rule over Egypt was a Canaanite dynasty and Canaan and Egypt became far more closely linked than ever before. Some think that this might be the time that Joseph entered Egypt, if there ever was such a single event. It does fit the timing suggested by the bible for when Joseph lived and it was a time when Canaanite advisors would certainly have risen to great power. At some point, though, the southern, native Egyptians expelled the Hyksos and re-established not only native control over Egypt, but Egyptian control over Canaan. <br /><br />One possible theory, though not well accepted, is that the expulsion story in Exodus may just possibly be an echo of the expulsion of the Canaanite Hyksos rulers out of Egypt. I tend to see this as unlikely. However, Canaanite domination of the Superpower Egypt would certainly have made a lasting impression on all Canaanites, including the people who became the Hebrews, and could easily have influenced later myths. If Haiti took over the United States for awhile and then was expelled, you can be sure that Hatians would remember that period of dominance for centuries to come! It would become legendary. So a Hyksos/Hebrew link, though tenuous, may have some validity and just might form the basis for the expulsion story within Exodus.<br /><br />At all times of Egyptian history the population was diverse and there was room for advancement even for prisoners of war. Three different groups were always part of the Egyptian melting pot (with other groups appearing more sporadically): Native Egyptians (probably related to the Berbers), Nubians/Kushites from what is now the Sudan, and "Asiatics," who were essentially Canaanites of various sorts. The life of a man named Urhiya and his son Yupa illustrate how "Asiatics" (in their case maybe Hurrians, not Canaanites, though both groups mixed during the Hyksos period) could attain the highest ranks of Egyptian society (described in <em>Lives of the Ancient Egyptians</em> by Toby Wilkinson). Urhiya was a first generation immigrant to Egypt with a foreign name, yet he rose to the rank of Army General and High Steward to Ramesses II, the Pharaoh most often thought to be the one reigning during the Exodus. Urhiya's son, Yupa, rose to even greater rank, in the full confidence of the Pharaoh.<br /><br />The story of Joseph can be considered in the context of two known aspects of Egyptian history: the ability of foreigners to rise to the top ranks of Egyptian society, and the period of Canaanite rule in the Egyptian delta, the 15th "Hyksos" dynasty. At about the right time according to the bible for Joseph to have lived you had the Canaanite rulers of Egypt. And you have the fact that even when native Egyptians ruled you had ample chances for Canaanites to reach the highest ranks of Egyptian society, you have very real precedents for people like Joshua. I think it is very likely that a group of Canaanites linked to a major advisor to pharaohs (Hyksos or native or both) may have been part of Jewish origins.<br /><br />There is then a gap in the biblical story that spans exactly the period between the Hyksos and the 19th dynasty. From Joseph to Moses and then Joshua, there is nothing much mentioned. And this is supposed to cover precisely (almost too precisely!) the period that separates the Hyksos from Ramesses II. We have no idea from any source what might have happened in this period. To me this suggests that Joseph had nothing to do with the Hyksos, but rather was a 19th dynasty Canaanite who, like Urhiya, made it big in Egypt among a group of Canaanites who later left under an Egyptian or Egyptianized Canaanite named SomethingMose (Moses). If so, Joshua probably SHOULD be among Egyptian records and so could be part of Urhiya's family...maybe. If Joshua was a real person and really was powerful in Egypt, his tomb should be out there. On the other hand, there currently is no existing evidence for a high ranking Canaanite named Joseph and that suggests he may well have been rememberd from Hyksos times, a period that later Egyptians preferred to forget and expunge from the records. OR...and here is a key thing, maybe he was a Canaanite who made it big during the 18th dynasty reign of Akhnaten who was caught up in Egyptian monotheism and spread it to his Canaanite relatives and followers. Such a person would DEFINITELY be wiped from the Egyptian records. There is no evidence for this, but it would explain the lack of evidence for someone who SHOULD be attested in the archaeological and historical records (which were well kept) and WOULD have stood out. So Joseph might have been a high ranking Canaanite during the Hyksos dynasty (the lack of reference to him and the bibilical time scale support this...weak evidence), or he was an 18th dynasty Canaanite close to the Akhnaten monotheism (no evidence, other than the lack of reference to a Joseph who should be referred to, and the possible influence of Akhnaten's monotheism on Judaism) or he was a 19th dynasty Canaanite, just possibly in the family of Urhiya, who made it big just before someone named SomethingMose (Moses) led an Exodus.<br /><br />There seems no direct connection between Joseph and Moses. So the Joseph line may be one thread of Canaanite/Egyptian history that contributed to the origin of the Jews, and the Moses line might be a separate thread. And both might be peripheral to the main thread of Jewish history which, according to archaeology and genetics, is almost exclusively Canaanite.<br /><br />After the expulsion of the Hyksos, Egypt reached the pinnacle of its power under the 18th and 19th dynasties, and even into the more troubled 20th dynasty. These three dynasties are the most important for Jewish identity because it is in this period that entities that were Hebrew and/or Israeli began to take form. Again, the very first reference to both Israel and to groups related to the Philistines (ancient Palestinians?) come in a single 19th dynasty Egyptian text that mentions the destruction of both. In this text, both Israel and the "Sea People" (among whom the Philistines were later included; the name "Sea People" could mean either people from across the sea or people from the coast or people from the islands...all of which points to Greek and Anatolian origins) are groups of people, not nations, and are clearly bit players, simply ruffians to be beaten up by the Egyptian military power or, in the case of some "Sea People" (specifically the Sherden) they were also mercenaries in the Egyptian Army. Specific reference to the Philistine branch of the "Sea People" came about 75 years later. These very first references to Philistines and Israelis clearly come after any Exodus.<br /><br />Turning back to the 18th dynasty, this is the Egypt most people know something about because it included Akhenaten and Tutankhamen. Akhenaten is interesting because he is the first person in recorded history to be monotheistic. He tried to reform all Egyptian religion to focus on a single god, the visible sun disk, the Aten. If the theory that Jews had already entered Egypt by this point is true, and if they had not yet left, then they would have experienced the tumultuous time of Akhenaten's religious reforms. Many people think that Akhenaten may have been the inspiration for Jewish monotheism. I have problems with this. Akhenaten's religion was not a widespread religion. It was rather HIS religion with HIMSELF as the ONLY link between the one god and humans. It was not very much like later Jewish monotheism, though there are definitely some common themes. Furthermore, there is no evidence at all for Jewish monotheism at this time or for centuries afterwards. And yet, some see close parallels between some of Akhenaten's own writings and later biblical passages (particularly certain psalms). Could some small group of Canaanites have taken to Akhenaten's religion and preserved a memory of his writings that later got incorporated into the bible? Maybe, but as with the Hyksos/Hebrew connection, this is very tenuous. However, one new piece of information I recently came across strongly suggests that some of the earliest uniquely Jewish beliefs may well have come from Egypt, not evolving in situ.<br /><br />Remember that I said above that the very first archaeological difference in what is now the highlands of the West Bank and Israel that shows a new group was evolving in what became the core of ancient Israel and Judah was the disappearance of pig bones from their garbage dumps, indicating that a ban on pork was the first defining feature of what became Judaism. This change is unique among the Canaanites and unique in the whole region. To many it seems so distinctive as to be difficult to explain. Some, including myself, have envisioned a local strongman who got sick after eating pork or a whole group that got sick after eating pork, leading to a prohibition on pork. I should note that the claim that this aversion to pork grew out of an avoidance of parasites doesn't hold up because the effects of such parasites would happen well after consuming the meat, so wouldn't be obviouly linked to the meat, and cows, sheep and goats are also subject to parasites. Others have hypothesized that the fact that all Canaanites ate pork might mean that the proto-Jews were specifically distinguishing themselves from their neighbors by abandoning pork. To me this would only make sense if a Canaanite religious ceremony of considerable importance involved pork, and emerging monotheists rejecting that ceremony threw the pork baby out with the polytheist bathwater.<br /><br />But all of this speculation ignores one basic fact. Rejection of pork, though unique among the Canaanites, was NOT unique at that time, but was actually a characteristic of one of the region's major Empires...Egypt. This is something I picked up re-reading the book <span style="font-style:italic;">Salt</span> by Mark Kurlansky. In this book there is an offhand reference to the fact that ham would have probably been invented by a culture as into the salt-curing as the ancient Egyptians had they not been averse to eating pork. The religious leadership of ancient Egypt considered pigs carriers of leprosy and considered pig farmers social outcasts. This is a critical piece of evidence in considering the origin of Jewish beliefs! The very first archaeologically attested characteristics of the proto-Jews was the adoption of an Egyptian aversion to pork shortly after the Exodus was supposed to have happened.<br /><br />Getting back to the Egyptian historical contex, Akhenaten, busy with religious turmoil, neglected his empire in Canaan. This period is extremely well documented because we have extensive archives of diplomatic correspondence from this time. Canaan was a mess, with small cities fighting it out and with groups of semi-tribal/semi-bandit groups roaming the countryside and occasionally even taking over cities. These semi-tribal group were of mixed origins, but the term used for them, Hapiru, is thought by some to be the earliest form of the word "Hebrew." The Hapiru/Hebrew link was once thought to be exact. More recently, it has been largely rejected. However, it is hard for me to ignore and it seems to be coming back into vogue (as evidenced by the book <em>Ramses II</em> by Christiane Desroches Noblecourt published in 2007). The word is similar (particularly taking into account the lack of written vowels in Semetic languages), it refers to a group that seems very much like the bands of roving Hebrews under Joshua, and they occur before and at the time of the Egyptian reference to a people (not a nation) called "Israel". The current theory can be summed up as: Not all Hapiru were Hebrews, but all Hebrews were Hapiru. The group of Canaanites (perhaps fresh from Egypt?) that became Hebrews and Israel, may have just been one band of bandit Hapiru, and that rather derogatory name may have stuck...or even been proudly adopted the way many Australians are proud of their convict ancestry. It should be noted, though, that the name "Hebrew" was applied much later than the name "Israel." "Hapiru" predates both. It would be odd if the earlier Hapiru came back into vogue after a period of being called "Israel," but not unheard of.<br /><br />After Akhenaten, a series of warrior Pharaohs ruled Egypt, and retook Canaan. Various groups of Hapiru were subdued, others served as mercenaries under Egyptian rule, and some served as laborers. It is quite possible that the group that became Hebrews were a group of Hapiru that served as mercenaries and/or laborers under the Pharaohs Seti I, Ramesses II and Merneptah. This was a period of Egyptian domination, but there were Canaanite rebellions as well. In fact, this was also a period of uncertainty within Canaan as the Egyptians and their main rivals, the Hittites of what is now Turkey, fought it out for domination of the region. Some, including Christiane Desroches Noblecourt, believe that the Exodus occurred in the context of Ramesses II's military expiditions into Canaan and the Hittite control of various regions in Canaan in opposition to Egypt. Hittite control of parts of Canaan would give an opportunity for dissident groups like the Hapiru to escape Egyptian domination. <br /><br />Did one group of Hapiru, possibly including some people influenced by Akhenaten's religious reforms (now being suppressed by the reestablished Egyptian priestly authorities) and serving as mercenaries and laborers in Egypt, suddenly make a bid for freedom and escape into the wilderness east of Canaan, perhaps aided by the newly established Hittite control of part of the region? This is a perfectly plausible scenario that fits reasonably both the archaeology and the bible, but it is just a story and is supported by little more than circumstantial evidence. But that text I mention that is the first reference to Israel and to Philistines was written during the reign of Merneptah. Based on place names and general events, many place the biblical Exodus story as referring to the reigns of Seti I and Ramesses II, or of Ramesses II and Merneptah.<br /><br />One thing that strikes me is that around this time Egypt controlled most of Canaan, in fierce competition with the Hittites, another empire I love to read about and I have visited the ruins of their capital city. In fact this is the period where the famous battle of Kadesh took place, claimed by Ramesses II as a great victory, but in reality an embarassing stalemate for both empires. This battle eventually led to the world's first documented peace treaty, but there was a considerable gap between the battle and the treaty during which things were very much in flux in Canaan.<br /><br />One of my pet theories is that the Exodus is not at all about Jews leaving Egypt proper. Maybe it is about Jews throwing off Egyptian imperial control at one of the periods of declining Egyptian rule. That would place the Exodus story either right after Kadesh, or at a later date than I suggest above and would turn the story on its head somewhat. But Canaanites did gain independence from Egypt at a slightly later date that is traditionally thought for the Exodus, and certainly the Jews would have been one of the communities that would have gained and celebrated freedom from Egyptian control. It all could have happened right in Canaan rather than in Egypt. But that is just one of my pet theories. I am not aware of any archaeologists or biblical scholars who see it that way. But it would simplify the story a great deal.<br /><br />So we see Canaanites entering Egypt and even ruling before the 18th dynasty expelled them. We have a period of Canaanites being split between urban, pro-Egypt but squabbling and sometimes rebellious city-states (the hated Canaanites of the bible would fit this description), and non-urban troublemakers called Hapiru, a name similar to Hebrew. During the 19th dynasty we even have an outright reference to Israel. Then, during the 20th dynasty, there was a sharp decline of Egyptian control, and there were cataclysmic events that included either invasions and/or native uprisings and/or uprisings by former mercenaries that brought down several Empires (e.g. the Hittite and Mycenaean nations) and weakened others (Egypt). The Iliad may date to these events since the same wave of unrest and instability engulfed the Greek world and was a time when Troy itself (another city I have visited) was destroyed. In this period of massive unrest (around 1200-1140 BC range) the Philistine city states developed. It is at this time that the bible places the rise of a unified Kingdom of Israel that then split into the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah. The biblical story of the rise of Israel is not well supported at this point. It is only during the period of the divided kingdom that we get historical references to kings like Omri, Ahab, Jehoram and others. So there is about a 200-year gap in the written references from the first mention of "Israel" during Merneptah's reign, to Moabite references to king Omri (of Israel, then only one of two Jewish kingdoms). And archaeology does not support any great united Kingdom of David and Solomon but rather suggests the Hebrews were little more than bandit groups akin to Hapiru. However, there is little question that the Hebrews/Israelis did indeed exist at this time, eschewing pork, just like Egyptians, but not otherwise different from other Canaanites, who emerged in the Hill Country (a backwater) of Canaan and eventually, in the times of Omri and Ahab, became a major local force. Judah, though it is more important in the bible, was the minor partner with only Israel (the denegrated partner in the bible) ever fielding a large army and conquering neighboring lands. In fact the second historical reference to Israel is a Moabite reference to king Omri of Israel kicking Moabite ass! After that, though, most references are Assyrian and Egyptian references of tribute from Israel and Judah, or conquest of various cities in Israel and Judah. Of course eventually Assyria destroyed Israel and Babylon destroyed Judah, though there always was a population that remained in Canaan, eventually forming the Jewish people that exist today.<br /><br />So there it is. The echoes of the Passover myth that exist in historical and archaeological evidence are few. But they are there. To me the name "Moses" is so un-Jewish that it must reflect a real Egyptian name that got modified later and so reflects a real person. The Pharaohs are real and the cities the Jews were supposed to have labored on were real and did involve Hapiru labor. And soon after, Merneptah defeated a tiny group of people called "Israel." Somewhere in that thin evidence is a real Passover story. But we may never know what it is. Yet that story still resonates even beyond the Jewish community to become something of a human story of freedom.<br /><br />So to all, a Gut Pesach.mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-22166138228276482162009-03-31T16:38:00.000-07:002010-04-23T11:54:19.666-07:00Meeting Jews: Purim in BrooklynThis last Purim was a special one for my 4 year old son, Jacob. Last year we introduced him to Purim, but he had only a vague idea of it. Though he did develop a slight fear of the holiday because he remembered it as the one who had the "bad person" as part of it (I guess he remembered Hamen!). This year, thanks to a diversity of Jews in our neighborhood, Jacob now has a much better sense of the holiday.<br /><br />As I was on my way to pick Jacob up from his day care center, I ran into a neighbor named Jesse. Jesse was just coming from synagogue and he had a fruit leather treat he had been given there as a Purim gift. He knew I had a 4 year old son, so he asked if he could give the fruit leather to Jacob, in the spirit of giving on Purim. Of course I said yes and put the fruit leather in my pocket for Jacob.<br /><br />Jesse is as secular as I am. Neither of us wear kippehs regularly. But he went to synagogue on Purim while I was simply rushing from a long day at work to pick up my son from childcare.<br /><br />When I entered his classroom, as usual and, wonderfully as always, Jacob came running up to me to give me a big hug. "Daddy!" he called. I hugged him then dressed him for the still-winter cold.<br /><br />As we left I took out the fruit leather and offered it to him, explaining that today was Purim and our neighbor, Jesse, had given it to me to give to him for Purim. Jacob was curious and tried it. He loved it. He now wants me to find them and buy them for him.<br /><br />As we walked home, my son and I ran into some Chabad Jews (Lubavitchers). I have to admit that sometimes I avoid the Lubavitchers. I am a their ideal target: a secular Jew who knows the history and details of the religion and who values our traditions even if I seldom practice them. And I have found they know I am their perfect target, so I sometimes avoid them. But since my son was born, I am more interested in talking with them and performing a mitzveh or two with them. Why?<br /><br />I am secular in most ways, but I have always, since birth, considered myself Jewish. The Lubavitchers meet me on my own terms. They know on sight I am Jewish. On the rare occasions I have told them I am not because I am in a hurry, they look at me with a knowing look. They KNOW I am Jewish and my denials don't fool them. When I say I am Jewish and I participate in a mitzveh or two with them, I do so with a full understanding of what it means, and they recognize that. And they appreciate it. We come from very different branches of Judaism. I strongly suspect that even in the old country my family were Mitnagdim, and we followed the path of the Haskalah. When we came to America we followed the path of assimilation. So when I meet a Lubavitcher, there is a long history of difference between us dating back as far as the Vilna Gaon's opposition to Hasidism. And yet I am drawn to them, particularly when I am with my son. They are the keepers of tradition for me and, when they offer, I like to share that tradition with them even though the meaning of that sharing is different for us.<br /><br />My son and I approached the Lubavitcher and he saw immediately we were Jewish and moved to meet us. In the spirit of Purim he gave us great gifts including the biggest Hamentashen I have ever seen. It was the size of my head! And in the spirit of Purim I agreed to doing the tefillin, a religious ceremony I have seldom done. And in the spirit of Purim the Luvavitchers gave me some booze to drink (others were given wine, but the Lubavitchers liked me and Jacob enough they gave me the hard stuff they were drinking). Jacob and I spent about half an hour with them, and we all enjoyed it and we said many a "Baruch Atah Adonai Eloheinu..."<br /><br />Chabad reaches out to all Jews. I do not agree with all they believe in, and I am sure they look at me with some indulgence, as they might look on a child. But I appreciate their preservation of tradition and their sharing of Jewish tradition with all Jews, religious or not, who want to share in it. For them it is a mitvot to share these traditions. For me it helps me, secular Jew that I am, share our traditions with Jacob. Together we continue a long-standing contradiction: both a conflict between assimilation and uniqueness, and a shared tradition we can all cherish.<br /><br />The Hamentashen they gave us was more than enough for my family. It had a prune filling, which I normally don't like (preferring the tradutional poppyseed filling). But in this case not only was it huge, but it was delicious. My family shared it and loved it.<br /><br />Jacob expressed our sentiments very well as he drank some grape juice and ate some chocolate the Lubavitchers gave us: "Thank you Lubavitchers!" He seemed to love saying the word "Lubavitchers," repeating it several times with gusto.<br /><br />When Jews meet on the street anywhere in the world, no matter how different they are, there is a shared tradition and understanding that even a child can recognize. No matter that their respective branches of Judaism may share a grudge going back to the 18th century. They know they share as much or more than they dispute. My son was also drawn to the Abayudaya children singing when I introduced him to their CD. Within our diversity we still share a commonality that is important to us all. We cannot always agree what it means to be a Jew (and that is a topic I will discuss later). But somehow when we meet on a street anywhere in the world, we share more than we differ.<br /><br />About three weeks later, out of the blue, Jacob asked me, "Did Jesse give you anything for me tonight."<br /><br />This last Purim, Jacob was touched by the wider Jewish world.mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-354092432096991638.post-37581298352934024382009-03-08T12:31:00.000-07:002011-09-05T17:20:48.011-07:00Saving Heritage: Jewish Roots and a Small Synagogue in LatviaThis is one of many adaptations I have made from a talk I gave to the Latvia Special Interest Group luncheon at the Jewish Genealigical Conference in NYC in 2006. My personal story began when I started exploring my ancestry in 2003, both my non-Jewish father's side and my Jewish mother's side. I was able to make some pretty major connections on both sides. This is the story of my mother's side, particularly the Luban family from Rezekne, Latvia, and a synagogue that they would have known that still, barely, survives in 2009. To me that synagogue and my desire to save it are the symbols of what Jewish identity means to me, and so, in answer to the qustion of why I am so interested in this one synagogue, I explore the question of heritage in general, and Jewish identity in particular.<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">BEING JEWISH:</span> It all began with the pork<br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">"Your origin and your birth are of the Canaanites; your father was an Amorite...your mother a Hittite."-- (Ezekiel 16:3)</span><br /><br />Genetic evidence confirms the belief that most, though not all, mainstream Jews are closely related, and that ultimately we have roots in the land of Israel or at least its general region. Even an isolated black South African tribe that claims Jewish descent, the Lemba, have genetic traits suggests a common Jewish ancestry. Archaeology shows that the original Jews, if I can use that term for people living so long ago, lived in a small group of poor and isolated villages from around 1200 BCE in what is now the highlands of Israel and the West Bank and whose only unique characteristic we can detect archaeologically is that they didn't eat pork. In all other ways these original Jews were typical Canaanites archaeologically. But they gave up pork. All the surrounding Canaanite trash piles included pig bones. In the highland villages those bones suddenly disappear from the archaeological record. No one knows why those Canaanites gave up pork, the meat that all other Canaanites loved. Some, including myself, have envisioned a local strongman who got sick after eating pork, or a whole group that got sick after eating pork, leading to a prohibition on pork. Others have hypothesized that the fact that all Canaanites ate pork might mean that the proto-Jews were specifically distinguishing themselves from their neighbors by abandoning pork. To me this would only make sense if a Canaanite religious ceremony of considerable importance involved pork, and emerging monotheists rejecting that ceremony threw the pork baby out with the polytheist bathwater. But I recently, in a single offhand, but perhaps critical, fact mentioned in the book <em>Salt</em> by Mark Kurlansky, may have found the key to why pork bones disappeared from the trash piles of those villages right about the time when the bible suggests Judaism was forming as a national identity.<br /><br />The truth is, rejection of pork was NOT unique at that time, even if it was unique among the Canaanites. It was a characteristic of one of the region's major Empires...Egypt, according to <span style="font-style:italic;">Salt</span> by Mark Kurlansky. In this book there is an offhand reference to the fact that ham would have probably been invented by the salt-cured fanatics, the ancient Egyptians, had they not been averse to eating pork. Egyptians apparantly salt cured everything...but not pork. The religious leadership of ancient Egypt considered pigs carriers of leprosy and considered pig farmers social outcasts. This is a critical piece of evidence in considering the origin of Jewish beliefs! The very first archaeologically attested characteristics of the proto-Jews was abandonment of pork. The biblically attested founder of the Jewish identity and law was supposedly someone with an Egyptian name, ending in "Moses." And ancient Egyptians rejected pork and invented monotheism (though then rejected it) in the century prior to the Exodus. This starts to be too much evidence to be ignored. It seems that there really was an Egyptian origin to at least some of Jewish beliefs even if the current genetic evidence points to a strictly Canaanite origin.<br /><br />In those tiny, pork-shunning villages we all probably have distant ancestors.<br /><br />But genetic, biblical, historical and archaeological evidence show that we all are also probably of some mixed origins. At least since the first Diaspora, and even from the earliest passages in the bible, mixed marriage and mixing with local populations have been major issues for Jews. Archaeologically, those earliest Jews were Canaanites. But some of the 12 tribes described in the bible seem to have different origins. Did some people come from Egypt? Did some come from Haran or Babylon? Did the tribe of Dan, as some think, come from a people who were related to the Philistines and hence may ultimately have been Greeks? The bible, genetics and archaeology give us tiny hints at a mixed origin as well as common roots. And of course each Diaspora that we suffered brought up anew the controversies of mixed marriage, assimilation and the fundamental question of what does it mean to be a "Jew."� Is our identity primarily genetic, religious, national or cultural? This is not a new question but can be found throughout the bible. In some ways being Jewish seems bound up in this identity crisis of just who we are and how we define ourselves.<br /><br />What is the core of Jewish identity?<br /><br />And why is this question one of such vital importance?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">HERITAGE AND SURVIVAL:</span><br /><br />There is a politician in Brooklyn named Bill Batson. He is a good guy, running for office not out of ambition but because he is concerned about what is happening to Brooklyn. He fears that modern development is destroying the soul of Brooklyn in very real ways. Historic neighborhoods are being uprooted to make room for skyscrapers. Families who have lived in Brooklyn for generations are being forced out. And, the heritage of Brooklyn, particularly, in his view, the heritage of the black community in Brooklyn, is being destroyed. He points to an old graveyard where black veterans were buried. He points to the Harriet Tubman museum. He points to buildings that were stopping points along the Underground Railroad. These are among many sites of cultural importance that are the first places to be lost to modern development. As I write this in Spring 2009, despite years of trying to save it, one of those Underground Railroad sites (231 Duffiel St. in Brooklyn) has <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/28363759@N08/sets/72157614746047105/">just been demolished to build a hotel</a>. Cultural sites are lost first, then the rest of the community withers away.<br /><br />Bill Batson fears this process because he fears that a loss of heritage means a loss of identity. He says it this way: <br /><br /><blockquote>"If you take away a person's heritage, you can do anything you want to them."</blockquote><br /><br />This phrase struck me. He was referring to black heritage in Brooklyn. But it made a huge impression on me. Why? Because in that phrase you have the history of Judaism in a nutshell. From the Babylonian exile to Nazi Germany, you have an attempt to destroy our identity by destroying not just our lives but also our heritage.<br /><br />What does it mean to be a Jew? Genetics, religion, culture, nationality...More recently, through the organization <a href="http://www.kulanu.org/">Kulanu</a>, I have learned about people in Uganada and Ghana who have chosen on their own to be Jews, in many ways recreating the development of Judaism on their own, initially in isolation. These people reach Judaism through a completely different path than I have. It is my genetics, on my mother's side, and my culture. And, if I chose to accept Israel's open invitation, it could be my nationality. For the Abayudaya of Uganda, they chose Judaism as their religion because it made sense to them as a religion, and have negotiated ever since to be included in the wider cultural sea of Judaism and to be accepted by Israel as natioanlly Jewish even though they do not share the genetic link many of us do. By contrast, another Brooklyn politician, Brand Lander, who does share that genetic link, accepts the cultural and religious aspects of Judaism while <a href="http://www.r8ny.com/blog/chaim_yankel/my_brad_lander_problem_and_israels.html">rejecting the nationalist aspects</a>. Where in all this is the core of Judaism? To me, ALL of these threads are legitimate, if contradictary, aspects of Judaism.<br /><br />My wife once put it most starkly. My wife and I are both only half Jewish with Jewish mothers and Christian fathers. We are not very religious. Yet we define ourselves very consciously as Jews. Why? I am still in the process of answering this question for myself, but my wife once put it this way: <br /><br /><blockquote>"We are Jewish because there are people out there who would kill us because of it."</blockquote><br /><br />To the average American, my wife and I just look like white Americans. But many Jews and many Eastern Europeans and everyone in Israel took one look at us and knew we were Jewish. We were glared at and jeered at in St. Petersburg and in Latvia by people who saw us and knew immediately we were Jewish. We need our heritage because, without it, those who hate us for who we are have that much more power over us. Our heritage, anyone's heritage, is what helps define our identity and that identity helps us survive in a hostile world. Heritage gives us the roots to stand up to society's sometimes very violent storms.<br /><br />That is why s small, condemned synagogue in Latvia means something to me. It is part of my family heritage and a part of the heritage of all Eastern European Jews. Hitler tried to destroy that heritage and his attempts still echo to this very day. That also struck me when I visited Latvia: the events that Hitler set in motion are still playing out for many small, dying Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. If we let this and similar synagogues go, it is one more success by Hitler, though long dead, to destroy our heritage and thus our identity. My wanting to preserve this synagogue is an effort to connect with and preserve my personal identity as well as our collective identity as Jews. And it is my personal act of defiance against Hitler and all who would destroy our identity.<br /><br />What is the core of Jewish identity?<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">FINDING HERITAGE:</span><br /><br /><img src="http://www.lakenetnwi.net/member/notable/images/photos/danning.jpg" width="375"><br /><br />--<a href="http://www.lakenetnwi.net/member/notable/html/Harry%20Danning.htm">Harry "the Horse" Danning</a>, Cousin and Major League Baseball Player<br /><br />This is a question I never thought much about until about six years ago. In this I am typical of my family. My distant cousin was Harry Danning, a famous baseball player in the 1930's. His father was the brother of my great-grandmother. I talked to him about a year before he died when I had just started getting into my genealogy. I was hoping that he, as one of the oldest surviving relatives at the time, would remember things about our past. He remembered very little. What he said to me in that phone call was this: <br /><br /><blockquote>"When I was a kid I was never interested in that stuff. I was only interested in playing baseball. Ya follow me?"� </blockquote><br /><br />Often, American Jews don't care about their heritage until they are adults, often only when they have children, if even then.<br /><br />For me a simple question asked by a professor I worked with got me on the track of my genealogy. He simply wanted to know if there was a website I knew where he could look up biographies of historical individuals. He knew I was competent on the Internet, so he asked me to find him some sites. I did a quick search, found him some sites that met his needs. But also noticed something called the Social Security Death Index. I was curious so I clicked on the link.<br /><br />I found I could look up any dead person who had a SSN and get a little info on that person. On a whim, I entered my father's name. My parents divorced when I was a year old and I never knew my real father other than knowing that he wasn't Jewish and that my original last name was Kunkel, a German name. I entered my father's name and found that he had died.<br /><br />I never knew my father, so this had only a vague emotional impact on me. But the thought that I could use the Internet to find out about my origins fascinated me. From there, and from my mother's memory, I not only tracked my father's lineage back to the 16th century, thanks to the fact that German Lutherans keep perfect church records, but I also traced my maternal grandmother's ancestry back a couple of generations to two towns in Latvia: Daugavpils, also known as Dvinsk, where my great-grandmother Dora was born, and Rezekne, also known as Rezhitzka, where my great grandfather Solomon was born.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">BACK TO LATVIA:</span><br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQv33_WYKI/AAAAAAAAAB8/zGugkT5pAYs/s320/dora_pre_film.jpg" width="275"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQ06mY04DI/AAAAAAAAACs/zI0xlpVZRZU/s320/solomon_luban.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310928041918390322" width="250"><br /><br />--Dora (Dviera) and Solomon (Sawel) Luban<br /><br />And I found our addresses in the 1897 "All Russia Census" and was able to visit our homes in Rezekne.<br /><br /><blockquote>Luban, Sawel, Father: Jankel; Occupation: Joiner; Age: 28; Birthplace: Rezekne; address: Rezenke, Volkov lane 11-2 <br /><br />Luban, Dwiera, Father: Awsey; Age 26; Birthplace: Daugavpils (same as Dvinsk); address: Rezenke, Volkov Lane 11-2. Comment: wife of Sawel. </blockquote><br /><br />I found where their home used to be...it is now mostly an empty lot:<br /><br /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQ6Wj3m2kI/AAAAAAAAADE/ZwLjF4w2YI0/s320/Luban_lot.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310934019836664386" width="450"><br /><br />Sawel Luban's parents also lived in Rezene at the time:<br /><br /><blockquote>LUBAN, Schmuila Jankel, Age: 76; Birthplace: Rezenke, address Plekshenskaya 24-2<br /><br />LUBAN, Kreine, Age: 55; Birthplace: Rezenke, address same as Jankel; comment: wife of Schmuila Jankel</blockquote><br /><br />Eslewhere I found a record indicating that Kreine was Jankel's second wife. I have no idea whether there were children from his previous marriage.<br /><br />I found near these sites a condemned, run-down synagogue that just might have been the synagogue my family used.<br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQ0K3TaJxI/AAAAAAAAACc/rY9hahpSNLk/s320/01-RezeknesSinagogaFas01.jpg" width="450"><br /><br /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbT6HsuigTI/AAAAAAAAAG0/tPblC_rgQl0/s320/Rezekne+Synagogue+78.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311144870749045042" width="450"><br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbT2x67qX1I/AAAAAAAAAGc/aHncEAKqCUM/s320/02-RezeknesSinagogasFas02.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311141198070177618" width="450"><br /><br />For a few years after finding this synagogue, I spent a great deal of time trying to raise the needed funds to save and restore that synagogue. I have only partly been successful. My decision to do this was purely an emotional one. I wasn't really sure why I wanted to at the time. But somehow I knew it had to do with my identity, with both my family's past and the past of Eastern European Jews. Now I know that it has to do with Bill Batson's comment: I want to preserve our heritage so that we have one more deep root to help us withstand those who hate us for what we are.<br /><br /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQ0nz-RciI/AAAAAAAAACk/Ut5xdcTKlgM/s320/02-RezeknesSinagogasFas02.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310927719147598370" width="400"><br /><br />In 1845, the small East Latvian town of Rezekne (or Rezhitsa in Russian) was part of the massive Russian Empire that stretched from Poland to Siberia. In that year, a small wooden synagogue was built in Rezekne. This synagogue was one of about a dozen synagogues in the city of Rezekne in the middle years of the 19th century, synagogues that served a large Jewish population, about half the total population of Rezekne at that time. This particular synagogue was painted green, and hence the building has been known ever since, rather prosaically, as the "Green Synagogue." The Green Synagogue is the only synagogue in Rezekne to survive World War II, and even now it stands, though only as an empty, condemned building. Like the Jewish population in many corners of Eastern Europe today, the Green Synagogue is in danger of being forgotten and lost.<br /><br />Rezekne is a city that was shaped by an interaction of cultures: native Latvian, German, Russian and Jewish cultures mixing both peacefully and violently. Rezekne was originally a castle town and the ruins of its castle, possibly dating as far back as the 9th century, remain today. This castle was one of the first buildings built in Rezekne. But signs of a Jewish presence are just as old since right next to the ruined castle is another old building that is thought to have been the town's first inn, and this inn was thought to be run by Jews from very early on.<br /><br /><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQ4uNhfVjI/AAAAAAAAAC0/meyasRkgd4I/s320/castle_inn.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310932227131921970" width="400"><br /><br />This was a very common pattern in Eastern Europe, with Jews running local inns and taverns next to the local castle. The Jewish population of Rezekne grew as the city grew until half the city was Jewish. <br /><br /><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQ5XwvUbDI/AAAAAAAAAC8/24hO_7h5nFk/s320/pharmacy.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310932940959804466" width="400"><br /><br />This was no little shetl, but neither was it a big city. Above I show an example of the beautiful brick architecture that made up the center of Rezekne in the 19th Century. This building was once a pharmacy in the main area of old Rezekne, very near the synagogue. Here is a picture down the same street showing the same pharmacy on the left:<br /><br /><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQ63wvMxVI/AAAAAAAAADM/2dW0rrITWBI/s320/pharmacy_old.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310934590226744658" width="400"><br /><br />Jews participated fully in city life, including sitting on the city council. This building used to be a Jewish bank just across the street from the synagogue:<br /><br /><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQ7dr0NuAI/AAAAAAAAADU/cN7KeQ9rFus/s320/bank.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310935241740630018" width="400"><br /><br />Jews were an integral part of Rezekne's life until World War II. Though of course most Jews remained poor, living in wooden houses like this:<br /><br /><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbQ8JFwy1cI/AAAAAAAAADc/HuaaKLAwmqY/s320/old_building2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310935987439982018" width="400"><br /><br />The records I can find indicate that the Green Synagogue was built in 1845. I recently came across another reference to the Green Synagogue on <a href="http://community.livejournal.com/rempel_museum/11224.html">someone else's website</a>. There is a document that links a Rabbi of the Green Synagogue to Yehudah ben Bezalel Levai, the Talmudic scholar from Prague also known as the MaHaRaL, known for <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golem">the golem story</a>. Here is the text and the description from the website I found it on:<br /><br /><img src="http://pics.livejournal.com/rempel/pic/002c22zp" width="450"><br /><br /><blockquote>A page from a book on Latvia Jewry citing the scripture from Green Synagogue<br /><br />Ziska born in Resekne in 1919, survived the war in Russia and lived in Resekne until 70s, in 70s moved to Israel, where he lives now with a big family. Ziska speaks Yiddish, Russian and some Hebrew. Ziska is a great grandson of Aaron Azriel Jafet. Garav Aaron Azriel JAFET (1810 (appr.) -1861) was the head of the Resekne rabbinic court and the Rabbi in Green Synagogue in Resekne, and was the father of another Ziska (Zisl) JAFET (appr. 1830-appr.1880), who was the father of Azriel JAFET (1880-1937), the director of school, who was the father of .Ziska (Zisl, Alex) JAFET (b. appr. 1919). Ziska grew up in pre-war Rezekne and was fully immersed in Jewish life before the war. Both Ziska and his father Azriel, the respected director of Rezekne school attended Green Synagogue. The Green Synagogue was known to be build some time before by their respected relative Yimyanitov, who had houses along the street where Green Synagogue is located. The old books of Gemar in the Sinagogue also belonged to Yimyanitov. One of the Gemar Books had a handwritten inscription that was tracing genealogy of Rabbi Aaron Azriel JAFET to Maharal of Prague. Every new generation added their record to this inscription. Ziska's father copied the inscription and gave it to the author of the book on history of Jews in Latvia. A friend of Ziska found this page (above) and made a copy for Ziska.<br /><br />Here is the line connecting Jafet line to Maharal as described in Hebrew text.<br /><br /> * MaHaRaL of Prague<br /> * daughter married Rabbie Yosif Yoska the head of the (Dubno or Lublin?) rabbinic court, Rabbi of all Diaspora.<br /> * Reb Tsvi Sabal (or Tsvi Hersh?) the kabbalist<br /> * Gaon, tsadik Moshe<br /> * Gaon Kabbalist Yudul, the head of Kael (Kayuk?)court and region<br /> * Head of Rabbinic Court and of Yeshiva of Minsk - Galil Shmilevich of shtetl Pierda<br /> * Moisha ZE'EV VOLF the head of Minsk and Smolensk Region, later of Fiod. region<br /> * Akiva the head of the Borisov rabbinic court.<br /> * Shlomo <br /> * Menachem Nohum<br /> * Abraham Itsak KATZ<br /> * Rabbi Garav Aaron Azriel YAFET [Rabbi in Rezekne]<br /><br />I checked the available information on Internet and found that some connections are mentioned elsewhere. I also tried to reconstruct the years in this line to see if they make sense.<br /><br /> * Yehuda LOEW, the Maharal of Prague (1525-1609) married Perla Shmelkes. For genealogy, see N'tiv Hoalom. Children: Rabbi Betzalel Loewe, Vogele Bezalel, Rachel Lowe.<br /> * Tila LOEW, the 5th Maharal's daughter married Rabbie Yosif Yoska (b. appr. 1540), the head of the Dubno rabbinic court.<br /> * Reb Tsvi Sabal (b. appr. 1570), the kabbalist<br /> * Gaon, tsadik Moshe (b. appr. 1600)<br /> * Yehuda Yudul (b. appr. 1630), the head of Kael court and region<br /> * Moisha ZE'EV VOLF (b. appr. 1660) - the Jewish head of Minsk and Smolensk Region, later of Fiod. reg.<br /> * Akiva (b. appr. 1685), the head of the Borisov rabbinic court.<br /> * Shlomo (b. appr. 1710)<br /> * Menachem Nohum <br /> * Abraham Itsak KATZ (b. appr. 1780)<br /> * Rabbi Garav Aaron Azriel YAFET (1810 (appr.) -1861), the head of the Resekne rabbinic court.</blockquote><br /><br />Rabbi Garav Aaron Azriel Yafet would have been the main rabbi of Rezenke during the time my great-great grandfather was around.<br /><br />My great-great grandfather, Schmuila Jankel Luban (born in 1820), was 24 years old when the Green Synagogue was built by Yimyanitov, the relative of Rabbi Garav Aaron Azriel Yafet, descendent of the MaHaRaL. Jankel's last name, Luban, was probably only recently adopted by the family, since it was only around that time that Jews of the lower classes commonly took last names in Eastern Europe. "Luban" indicates that the family was originally from a shtetl near Lake Lubanas in Eastern Latvia. The Lubans were a family of craftsmen, not well off, but not so poor either. They lived mostly in the brick buildings in central Rezenke, not in the run-down wooden homes of the poorer class. Jankel married a woman named Kreine and they lived not too far from the Green Synagogue. <br /><br />Until recently, Jankel was the earliest Jewish ancestor of mine I can trace. In his honor, my wife and I named our son "Jacob," linking my son with his Latvian-Jewish heritage. We soon discovered that little Jacob sometimes looked very much like a cranky old Jewish man, living up to the name "Jankel":<br /><br /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRB1pxyDeI/AAAAAAAAADk/M7sPmhrV4C8/s320/sleep.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310942250580184546" width="270"><br /><br />Of course now a days he is older and has taken on a more modern NYC attitude:<br /><br /><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRDoeD5UwI/AAAAAAAAADs/yhcMq78wDvE/s320/photo.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310944223119889154" width="270"><br /><br />More recently I found an entry for an older brother of Schmuila Jankel Luban named Abram Luban (born in 1814), married to a woman named Golda with a son named David Luban (born in 1852), married to a woman named Sora Zipa. The father of Abram and Schmuila Jankel Luban was named Genuch, which is the same as Henoch/Henry, a name I will come across later.<br /><br />We don't know when Schmuila Jankel and his wife, Kreine, died but there is no record that they ever left Rezekne. They almost certainly are buried in the run-down Jewish cemetery just outside Rezekne that I show here:<br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRFP_Xy_5I/AAAAAAAAAD0/J4nJMbI2m1I/s320/old_grave.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310946001588256658" width="400"><br /><br />The last record of their existence is their entry in the 1897 "All Russia" census where I was able to learn of their existence and the address where they lived. <br /><br />But two of their sons, Sawel and Henach (same as Genuch, presumably named for his grandfather Genuch discussed above), fled Russia for America with their families by 1905, fleeing political unrest, military conscription and pogroms. Henach had been forced to serve in the Russian army in the ill-fated Russo-Japanese war, and when on leave he fled Russia rather than being sent back to the front. Both Sawel and Henach had married and had children by the time they fled Russia. In fact, my grandmother, Celia, was the last member of these two families to be born in Rezekne. <br /><br /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRGv2QVyDI/AAAAAAAAAD8/8ZfdFa1hjXs/s320/celia_87.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310947648408504370" width="200"><br /><br />--Celia Jacobson, my grandmother and daughter of Dora and Solomon Luban (picture taken in 1987)<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">COMING TO AMERICA:</span><br /><br />Since both families lived near the Green Synagogue, it is very likely that when they married, Sawel and Henach had their weddings at the Green Synagogue. Both families settled in Milwaukee, Wisconsin where some of my distant relatives still live. Sawel became Solomon Luban in America and was my great grandfather.<br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRHmYKEUJI/AAAAAAAAAEE/eD4KpivFZJA/s320/soloman.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310948585221935250" width="350"><br /><br /><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 335px; height: 240px;" src="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~knappdb/Photos%20-%20ships/statendam.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br /><br />--The Statendam (from <a href="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~knappdb/ships_S.htm">Rootsweb</a>)<br /><br />There is a ship’s manifest (from the Ellis Island database, which can be accessed through Jewishgen.org) that might document Solomon’s entry into US. Hard to say. The ship is the Statendam out of Rotterdam, leaving Feb. 6 1904, arriving Feb 17, 1904. The entry reads something like: <br /><br />Schlime Lewin, age 37, married, Russian-Hebrew, Occupaation: Joiner, Last residence looks like something like Swislocs (???) and the destination seems to be New York. <br /><br />The age and occupation are correct, but we have no record of the Lubans being in New York (though Lubans from Jekapils did indeed settle in New York) and I have no clue where “Swislocs” might be. This is the only entry I can find for someone with the initials S.L. entering the US in 1904 who has a name remotely like “Solomon Luban” who also is a joiner/carpenter. Other entries may be more similar in name (e.g. Samuel Lewin…) but don’t match occupation at all.<br /><br /><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 335px; height: 216px;" src="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~knappdb/Photos%20-%20ships/kroonland.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br /><br />--Kroonland (from <a href="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~knappdb/ships_K.htm">Rootsweb</a>)<br /><br />Even more tenuous is a ship’s manifest that might indicate Henry Luban’s family, Esther, Belle and Sarah’s, entry into the US. The manifest for the ship Kroonland from Antwerp (Aug. 20, 1904 arriving Aug. 29, 1904, has the following entries: <br /><br />Rachel Liebstein, age 37, married, Russian-Hebrew, from “Mosty?” Russia, going to join her husband, Ephraim (?) Liebstein in Brooklyn, NY. If Solomon was on his way to New York (see above) sailing from Holland, maybe Esther would have followed a similar path. Problem is, “Rachel” isn’t “Esther” and Esther would have been more like 26-27. BUT notice the last two children, below: <br /><br />Rachel was sailing with her children: <br /><br />Moische, age 9; Feiwel age 7; Leib age 3; Beile age 2; and Sore, age 11 months. <br /><br />In the 1920 census record, Henry and Esther’s elsdest kids were Belle and Sarah. They would have been age 2 and about 1 in 1904. No elder brothers are listed in 1920. No older brothers are mentioned by Henry Luban’s family. So this makes it unlikely that this record is of Esther and her family. Considering this entry to be referring to Henry’s family is based only on the names Belle and Sarah with about the right ages. Note also that Ephraim could well have been anglicized to Henry. I can find no better candidate entry for their immigration, though we certainly know they came. I can also find no evidence for Henry’s entry to the US. Remember, he was fleeing Russia to escape returning to the Russo-Japanese war. Did he come via the Pacific rather than the Atlantic? Was his immigration comlpetely above board? Interestingly, we remember moving to Milwaukee because we already had relatives there...I assumed Henry and his family. But one of his family told me they had moved to Milwaukee because Solomon's family (mine) were already there. Muddled stories.<br /><br />There are two ship’s manifests that might document the arrival of Dora, Dora’s three oldest children and Ida to Ellis Island. The first manifest contains appropriate first names and mostly appropriate ages, but the names are crossed out. A latter manifest for a second ship has the same names, but the ages are different (and less appropriate). In either case it takes some imagination. <br /><br />Manifest for the Corina, leaving Liverpool, England, November 17, 1906, arriving in New York November 26, 1906. There is no record of how they got from Russia to Liverpool. <br /><br />Transcribed from this manifest (though on the real manifest the place of residence is hard to read):<br /><br />Name Gender Age Married Ethnicity Place of Residence<br /><br />0005. Lande, Bassje D. F 46y M Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow<br /><br />0006. Lande, Ente B. F 23y S Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow<br /><br />0007. Lande, Simon M 8y S Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow<br /><br />0008. Lande, Sara F 7y S Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow<br /><br />0009. Lande, Chaje F 2y S Russian, Hebrew, Kansilow <br /><br />The “D” in Bassje D Lande could be Dvora/Dwieva, though she SHOULD be 36 in 1906. Bassje may be a version of Basya/Batyah. Ente could be Ida (who is not a Luban, but probably traveled with Dora and her family from Russia and hence would have used the same name for easier immigration) and she would have been about 23 in 1906. Simon and Sara are the correct names and ages. Chaje could be Celia, who would have been about 2 in 1906. Her real name may well have been Chaya (the feminine of Chayim, “life”). Oddly, their destination is Chicago, IL, where they are joining Bassje’s husband. Chicago is quite close to Milwaukee, of course, but I have never heard that we were in Chicago at any point. Bassje’s hair is listed as black and eyes as blue, unusual for a Jew but not uncommon in our family. She is 5’ even. Their place of origin on the original manifest looks to me more like “Sherpoli, Russia” rather than Kanislow which is shown in the transcript. <br /><br />These names are crossed out, along with the three above them, on the manifest. The Corina is not even listed as a ship that went to Ellis Island on the Rootsweb Ship list. They show up again on a manifest for the Campania, leaving Liverpool November 24, 1906 and arriving in New York December 6, 1906. Perhaps for some reason they switched ships.<br /><br /><img style="cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;width: 335px; height: 208px;" src="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~knappdb/Photos%20-%20ships/campania1893.jpg" border="0" alt="" /><br /><br />--Campania (from <a href="http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~knappdb/ships_C.htm">Rootsweb</a>)<br /><br />On the manifest for the Campania they are listed:<br />Name Gender Age Married Ethnicity Place of Residence<br /><br />0024. Lande, Bassin F 46y M Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia<br /><br />0025. Lande, Ente F 28y S Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia<br /><br />0026. Lande, Sura F 8y S Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia<br /><br />0027. Lande, Simon M 6y S Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia<br /><br />0028. Lande, Chaja M 3y S Russia, Hebrew ...isslov, Russia <br /><br />These are clearly the same people as on the manifest above but Bassin’s age is still wrong, but now all the other ages are also off. Simon and Sara’s relative ages are reversed. Chaja is now male. On this manifest, Bassin is listed as being from something like “Therpole” (could this be Daugavpils?) and Ida from “Charnovsky” or something like that. Ida’s occupation is listed as “tailoress.”<br /><br />Such is the mess that are immigration records for the early 20th century.<br /><br />Henach became Henry Luban in America, and many of his children, grandchildren and further descendents are still alive. I found the 1920 American census records for both families in Milwaukee, WI: (Sorry...the pictures I have are readable but didn't upload well)<br /><br /><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRMeW8lJsI/AAAAAAAAAEM/YcikB1hcfFI/s320/Solomon_Luban_1920_Census.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310953945016116930" width="450"><br /><br />--Solomon Luban household, 1920 U.S. census, Milwakee, Milwakee County, Wisconsin, page 35A, sheet 8 A, lines 24-30; T625-1999. Listed with wife, Dora; daughters Sarah, Celia, and Norma; and sons Simon and Jacob<br /><br /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRR6TC7xPI/AAAAAAAAAEU/3I-3qyE5dvc/s320/Henrycensus1920.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310959922563499250" width="500"><br /><br />--Henry Luban household, 1920 U.S. census, Milwakee, Milwakee County, Wisconsin, page 201, sheet 10 B, lines 28-35; T625-2000. Listed with wife, Ester; daughters Belle, Sarah, Minnie, Sophia and Helen; and son John.<br /><br />They lived in a German Catholic neighborhood, according to my grandmother. So they did face some anti-Semitism, but because they were all fair skinned and green or blue eyed, and many had red hair, they were considered "almost one of us" by the Germans.<br /><br />One descendent of Henry Luban's is his great-grandson Henry Garfield, better known to many of us as the punk rocker Henry Rollins, shown on the right in the picture below. I also show on the left the Maltinskies, the family Henach's wife, Esther (Menucha), came from.<br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRlqgpbWBI/AAAAAAAAAEc/Rs5Kc6Eq_Ys/s320/immigration.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310981641569261586" width="500"><br /><br />I think of this as the epitome of "before" and "after" coming to America pictures.<br /><br />There are other branches of the Luban family in the same records for Rezenke and Jakobpils, Latvia, and the names "Jankel" and "Schmuila" repeat within them, suggesting a possible link among these families in earlier generations. But I have no data direcly linking them and no idea what became of them. Among the last records is a store owner named "Berko Luban" in Rezekne in 1911. His father was a Jankel Luban, but not the same as Shmuila Jankel Luban.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">THE DEATH OF LATVIAN JEWERY:</span><br /><br />While my family was thriving in America and forgetting about Rezekne, the Jewish population left behind suffered terribly. Emigration, starvation, pogroms and forced relocation reduced the Jewish population of Rezkne considerably by the time World War II started. But the Green Synagogue survived. It was even renovated in the 1930's. When the Germans came, in one single day, 5000 Jews and the Latvians who tried to help them were machine-gunned just outside of town. <br /><br /><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRsKRye4II/AAAAAAAAAEk/RlSKf9TvxFk/s320/holocaust2a.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310988784406290562" width="450"><br /><br /><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRsolXw91I/AAAAAAAAAEs/jUgp5KoRFOQ/s320/holocaust2b.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310989305059014482" width="450"><br /><br />I visited this place, the only actual Holocaust site I have ever visited. Walking along the grassy space that is the mass grave, walking for a very, very long time along that grave, the impact of "5000 killed in one day" hit me very hard and I had tears in my eyes and a great deal of anger in my heart.<br /><br />The Jewish population of Rezekne was almost wiped out on that single day. Only a handful survived, protected by some local Latvians. By the time many members of my family were returning to Europe as soldiers in the US military fighting the Nazis, those Nazis had all but wiped out any of our relatives who had remained in Rezekne.<br /><br /><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRu5L8LMwI/AAAAAAAAAE0/hVbyvLshtIM/s320/bullet_grave.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310991789313438466" width="450"><br /><br />Even the graves in the Jewish cemetery were shot by the Nazis. But somehow, the Green Synagogue survived. All other synagogues in Rezekne were destroyed. But the Green Synagogue still stands.<br /><br /><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbRvxjOpNNI/AAAAAAAAAE8/-Vuozprb0Yk/s320/Synagogue11.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5310992757637592274" /><br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">MY JOURNEY:</span><br /><br />Some remember that the Green Synagogue survived because it was used as a holding pen for Jews on their way to death camps and that this is why it survived. Rezekne is on the major railroad route between St. Petersburg and Warsaw, so Jews from all over the region were brought into town to await transport to the camps. Rezekne was one small node on a massive railroad network feeding the death camps. The Green Synagogue may have been the last synagogue many of those people would ever see.<br /><br />In 2003, after I had rediscovered my family's past and found the addresses where we had lived in 1897 Rezekne, I went to visit the city of my great-great grandfather to see where we had come from. I took my wife and stepdaughter and we met with Rashel, the head of the Jewish community of Rezekne, to see the city and to learn what it was like when my family had lived there:<br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbR3i7waUpI/AAAAAAAAAFE/rUS-b6SFunw/s320/synagogue2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311001302616658578" width="450"><br /><br />--Rashel, Joy, Sarah and myself before the Green Synagogue<br /><br />Some of the buildings where we lived are long gone (like the building where Sawel and Dwiera lived, shown as a largely empty lot earlier in this article)<br /><br />But some, like the brick apartment building where Henry Rollin's great grandmother's family (the Maltinskys and Galbraichs) lived, still stand (see below). And many of those addresses are near the Green Synagogue, suggesting to me that the Green Synagogue was our family's synagogue.<br /><br />The city itself is beautiful, though we saw some remnants of lingering anti-Semitism. But overall our brief stay in Rezekne was very pleasant. The countryside is beautiful, the town small and quiet. It is a part of Latvia that is more Russian than Latvian, and most restaurants had Russian menus and served Russian food. <br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbR6Qg-D8oI/AAAAAAAAAFM/uoYYE-2PJlg/s320/Josef_Hannah1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311004284723393154" width="400"><br /><br />Some of the best Russian food I have ever tasted was in a restaurant (shown in the above picture) just down the street from where Henry Rollins' great grandmother's family, the Maltinskies and Galbraiths, had lived:<br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbR9eTzgpEI/AAAAAAAAAFU/M7L4aOka3xM/s320/vokzalnajaulica.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311007820242527298" width="400"><br /><br />(shown above as the street looked in the 1920's across from the pharmacy I showed earlier)<br /><br /><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbR-JiFIb0I/AAAAAAAAAFc/yKtcr_3YvpU/s320/Josef_Hannah2.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311008562808909634" width="400"><br /><br />And this is the building where the Maltinsky and Galbraith ancestors of Henry Rollins lived as it looked when I visited in 2003.<br /><br />Today only about 50 Jews remain in Rezekne. They have no proper synagogue since the Green Synagogue was condemned in the 1990's due to severe water damage. <br /><br /><img src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbR-rxpWFxI/AAAAAAAAAFk/jv09QtAVFrw/s320/06-LugsanuZaleZAvirz.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311009151102883602" width="400"><br /><br />Their shul is a handful of rooms in an office building in another part of town.<br /><br />Our tour of Jewish Rezekne ended at the Synagogue and it was there that Rashel told me much of what I have told you today. <br /><br /><img src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbSBfnwtEjI/AAAAAAAAAF8/txyIEWf1lwc/s320/Synagogue3.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311012240825848370" width="400"><br /><br />We saw the synagogue by candlelight. The inside is dusty and water damaged with many windows boarded up and parts of the ceiling falling down. It was a very sad building, but some old painted decoration from the 1930's, if not earlier:<br /><br /><img src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbT3OvZ6IyI/AAAAAAAAAGk/hu3Con6otts/s320/Rezekne3.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311013126598158082" width="250"><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbT0xcsdYoI/AAAAAAAAAGU/L4J7iROq2qI/s320/08-RezekneSinagoga1stRozete.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311013541116414338" width="280"><br /> <br /><br /><br /><br />and even a few fragments of the original stained glass still remain.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.culturekitchen.com/files/images/Synagogue2.preview.jpg" width="375"><br /><br /><br />30. I stood there that day in the condemned Green Synagogue and imagined the wedding of my great grandparents. My ancestors had probably stood in that same synagogue more than 100 years before I did. And then I imagined thousands of terrified Jews in the 1940's spending one night in that same synagogue before being sent to almost certain death.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.culturekitchen.com/files/images/Rezekne%20Synagogue%2055_1.preview.JPG" width="375"><br /><br />31. The joys of weddings and the fear of death surrounded me in that dark, sad building. It was at that moment that I decided that I would try and save the Green Synagogue. As a monument to the Jews who had helped shape Rezekne from its early days as a castle town to its later days as a stop along a major Russian rail line, I wanted to save that synagogue. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.culturekitchen.com/files/images/Rezekne%20Synagogue%2040.preview.JPG" width="375"><br /><br /><br />32. As a place for my family to return to see where we came from, I wanted to save that synagogue. <br /><br /><img src="http://www.culturekitchen.com/files/images/05-LugsanuZaleDRvirz_1.preview.jpg" width="375"><br /><br />33. As an act of defiance against the Nazis who practically wiped out the Jews of Rezekne, I wanted to save that synagogue. And as a symbol of hope for the surviving Jews of Latvia, I wanted to save that synagogue.<br /><br /><img src="http://www.culturekitchen.com/files/images/Rezekne%20Synagogue%2054.preview.JPG" width="375"><br /><br />I had never undertaken this kind of project before and had no idea how to go about it. I still have only a vague idea of how to complete the project. But I was very lucky that the local government of Rezekne had already taken an interest in restoring the Green Synagogue. <br /><br /><br /><br />One of the adjacent streets was renamed "Israel Street" in honor of the synagogue and they had looked into what it would take to restore. <br /><br /><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbT5zQV5FcI/AAAAAAAAAGs/VDF1OlxhL30/s320/Rezekne+Synagogue+77.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311144519532090818" width="450"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />Sadly, they dropped the plan due to lack of funds. So I decided that maybe I could help find at least some of the funds needed to restore the Green Synagogue and so, soon after returning to the US after my trip to Rezekne, I went online to find funding agencies that might be interested and to find descendents of Rezekne Jews who might be able to help me. I was able to find some two-dozen descendents of Rezekne Jews who were interested in helping restore the Green Synagogue and without their help and advice, I would never have even been able to begin. And it is through this network of Jewish descendents of Rezekne Jews that I was able to get the ball rolling.<br /><br />35. About a year after returning from Rezekne, I was able to get a small grant (about $14,000) from the <a href="http://wmf.org/jewish.html">World Monuments Fund's Jewish Heritage Grant Program </a> that would cover the cost of hiring an architect to survey the site of the Green Synagogue and determine what work needed to be done and how much a full restoration would cost. <br /><br />36. Here is a sample page of the plans the architect made:<br /><br /><img src="http://www.culturekitchen.com/files/images/AC3-05_0.jpg" width="450"><br /><br />That phase of the project has recently been completed and now the real work can begin. The local government in Latvia, inspired by the interest that I and the World Monuments Fund were showing, was able to find more than $40,000 to repair the roof, so that no further water damage will occur, and to repair the timbers that have been most damaged. But this is only the beginning. The site survey that the World Monuments Fund supported has found that nearly $200,000 worth of repairs will be needed to restore the synagogue to the way it was in the 1930's. <br /><br />37. <img src="http://www.culturekitchen.com/files/images/synagogue12.preview.jpg" width="375"><br /><br />I am hoping to find people who are interested in preserving this small piece of Eastern European heritage, in defying the Nazi attempts to eradicate all signs of Judaism in Europe and in giving hope to the surviving Jews of Latvia. <br /><br />38. I invite anyone who can help raise money or interest in this project to contact me so that the Green Synagogue, which has stood for 160 years of both joy and despair, can continue to stand for the Jews of Rezekne and as part of our surviving heritage. Thank you.<br /><br /><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbSAoACuMGI/AAAAAAAAAF0/IfICV1bNySk/s320/Synagogue2-1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311011285271195746" width="450"><br /><br /><br /><img src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_95K8jCK-mkM/SbT7F9_PMhI/AAAAAAAAAG8/_FjQ09-zLwQ/s320/Rezekne+Synagogue+68.JPG" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5311145940534374930" width="450"><br /><br /><br /><br /><br />All photographs of the Green Synagogue of Rezekne, Latvia, photographed either by Joy Romanski in 2003, by Lavi Soloway November 27, 2003, or on October 31, 2005, by AIG ("Arhitektoniskās izpētes grupa" Ltd.) Architectural firm (Riga, Latvia). US Census information thanks to Patricia Liebham. A great deal of this info comes from <a href="http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/">Rootsweb.com</a> and <a href="http://jewishgen.org/">JewishGen.org</a>. Some information and pictures from the <a href="http://www.rezekne.lv/index.php?id=86&L=1">Rezekne civic website</a>.mole333http://www.blogger.com/profile/11350258348093301297noreply@blogger.com0