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The Case for Writing Stories

In our tradition we were named after a deceased relative. (This is an Ashkenazi Tradition. [Jews of Central and Eastern Europe] The Sephardim [Jews from around the Mediterranean basin] do name babies after living relatives but not usually parents]. Thus most of us were given the name of a person we had never met. The name was Hebrew or Yiddish and sounded strange on our tongue. Sometimes we were lucky and it sounded like an American name. Sometimes we weren't lucky and it sounded like a shout from the Shtetyl. If you were lucky you might also be given a fading photograph and some memorable story. If you are my age, the photo is sepia, a little cracked, and has disintegrating edges. The subject is always unsmiling. The photo is obviously a formal portrait. The subject sits stiffly staring into the lens of the camera, in their finest clothes with a grim expression. You look closely trying to decide if you look like the deceased. If you are younger, your photograph is probably of a smiling person in an informal snapshot. It is also fading. You laugh at the funny hairstyles and clothes. You look closely trying to decide if anyone you know looks like the deceased. The idea for naming a baby for someone special was to preserve that person's memory. To have a name without a story or two defeats the purpose for choosing that particular name. But sometimes sadly, sometimes the name is all that is left. The luckiest among us are the ones who have stories of their namesakes. I was named for my father's maternal grandmother. Her name was Freidel. I have no picture of her. I have no story about her either. My father's mother, Sura Rivka [Sarah Rebecca] died when he was six years old. She died before she could tell him about her mother, her sisters and brothers. He often lamented that he couldn't remember her face. All he could remember was that her legs were huge and white and that the room where she lay had a sweetish odor. The midwife had not washed her hands, and when she delivered his baby brother, she introduced an infection with her contaminated hands. His mother, my Bubbie, died soon after delivering her sixth living child. In the last century, women took a great risk when they decided to have a baby. There was no anesthesia. There was no blood bank. There were no antibiotics. My father Manuel [Menashe] never achieved closure with his mother's early death. Even in his nineties his eyes filled with tears when he told me about her death and burial. He was only six when he followed the funeral procession to the gates of the cemetery. Because he was a Cohan [priestly family] tradition ruled that he could not enter the cemetery. This denied him the closure that the rest of us get when we see the body lowered into the grave and hear the thuds of the earth as the body is covered. Soon his father remarried. He needed a wife and a mother for his six children. He married a widow [Reba Cherchonsky] who came with five sons. It was not a happy union for the children of the two families. My father never talked about those days. The Cherchonsky boys came to America too. I only met them once. I don't remember their names. I only remember that they were very handsome men and that they all died young from heart disease. With eleven children, his father Israel had to work long and hard to feed the family. His stepmother's days were just as long and hard. There was no end to the baking, cooking, and cleaning chores. There was no one and no time to tell Menashe about his birth mother or her family. Perhaps there was even some superstition about talking of the dead. People believed in ghosts. Especially they believed in the ghosts of the women lost in childbirth. To speak a ghost's name was to call her attention to you and that was a frightening prospect. When my father was fifteen he traveled for two days by wagons and train to visit his Mother's sister. He arrived on the market day. He didn't know how to find her. He didn't know what she looked like. When he asked around, a local man pointed out his aunt to him. What he saw was a very thin, poor woman who had little to sell. He stayed near her, watching. She sold very little. He saw that she was struggling with a brood of young children. He had questions that he wanted to ask his mother's sister. He had dreamt that she would embrace him with open arms, with maternal love. But what he had found was a poor woman weary and overwhelmed. He decided that he could not burden her with another mouth to feed and another soul to nourish. He never spoke a word to her. He just turned and left. When he told me this story, I asked what his aunt's name was. He couldn't remember it. I have no stories about my grandmother Sarah Rebecca or my great grandmother, Freidel. Poverty affects more than the hunger in our bellies. It can leave us starved in our souls. Still my father honored his grandmother, Freidel, by naming me after her. He could not give me one story about her or one picture of her. But I carry her name so that she will not be forgotten as her daughter, Sura Rivka's sister was. When my oldest grandson, Aaron, was born I decided to make a family tree. I needed names. I knew my parents' names and their parents' names. After that I wasn't sure who was who. To collect the missing information I called all my relatives and asked two questions. The first was, "Who were you named for?" Everyone could give me that information. The second question was, "Tell me a story or two about the person that you were named for." This often drew a blank. Even the simplest question, "What was their occupation or their town?" elicited an uncomfortable silence on the phone or an unknowing shrug in person. That's not quite right. If the person was a Rabbi or a Cantor, they knew the occupation. And women? The answer was always, "She was a good mother. She had to work very hard." If they were named for a grandparent they usually had one story to tell. My Aunt Rose's story was unique. She told me that she was named for an old neighbor. Her mother, my grandmother, Toiba, [Tova] was known for her compassion, her empathy. It seems that Toiba had a poor unfortunate neighbor. She was a barren woman. The neighbor lamented that when she died no baby would be named for her. It would be as if she never existed. No one would recall her name. She begged Toiba, who was fruitful, to name a child for her. She died and Toiba named her next girl child, Rose, for the neighbor. I imagine that her sisters often teased Rose about her namesake. As an adult Tanta Rose could laugh about being named for a childless neighbor since no one teased her about it anymore. Tanta (aunt) Rose couldn't tell me anything more about the neighbor. When it came time for me to name my own children, I started out in the traditional way. I had not known any of my grandparents. My sister, Matya, and my cousin, Tybe, were both named for my grandmother Toiba[Tova] My mother had the same name as my paternal grandmother. There were lots of boys named for my maternal grandfather Shlomo (Solomon). There were Stephen and Spencer, and Shlomo, to name a few. My brother, Irving, was named for my paternal grandfather [Israel]. What to do? Follow tradition! I named my first baby David for my Mother's great grandfather (no stories here) and Solomon for my grandfather, Shlomo. [We have stories about him]. My husband bore the same name as my Mother's grandfather, so Abraham was eliminated from my list of choices. The next child I named for my great grandmother, Deborah. (No stories) I spelled it the modern American way, Debra. I picked Channah (Ann) because I liked it. I could fudge it and say it was for my great aunt, [also named Channah] but I won't. I chose it because I liked it. My youngest daughter I named Ruth Miriam. I chose Ruth because I admired Ruth of the bible so very much. I didn't much care that there were not any Ruth's in any of our family trees. I simply decided that we were due for a Ruth. Miriam I choose in memory of my father's sister, Mindel. Mindel had a sad life. Before I tell you Mindel's story, I need to tell you a story or two about my grandfather Shlomo. He was the only one of my grandparents who came to America. He died when I was 4 years old so I have no real memories of him. Zeidie [grandfather] Shlomo lived in Erie Pa. with his oldest son. On occasion he came to visit my parents in Philadelphia. He was a very pious man. When he said his evening prayers, he liked to do it outside in the middle of the street. None of our neighbors owned cars so there was no traffic to annoy him or to break his concentration. He liked to say his evening prayers where he could see the first stars. And just maybe he thought that out there in the middle of the street, God could see and hear him better too. In the morning the neighbors would tell my mother that they heard her father singing the night before and that he had a pleasant voice. I have already told you that my grandmother Toiba was a woman of breit hartzik [very kind and generous]. When she was in her early forties, there was another terrible pogrom in Koshovoto. My bubbie [grandmother], two of her daughters and her grandson took refuge in the fields outside of town. They spent the cold winter night lying on the ground hidden by the plants. On that night my bubbie caught a cold and it kept getting worse. I guess that it changed to pneumonia and she soon died. Shortly after that pogrom all the Jews of Koshovoto moved to Tarashta a bigger town with more Jews and they hoped with more safety. Here a strange thing happened. My mother and her sister Yetta [a widow] and Yetta's son, Harry moved into a place of their own. They said that their father, Shlomo, lived near by. I pestered them about these living arrangements and finally they told me that Shlomo had remarried. Religious Jewish men are not supposed to live celibate lives. A religious man would soon remarry and it seems my grandfather did so. Being religious does not mean that you always use good judgment. It appears that this was not a judicious marriage. Neither Zeidie nor his new wife was happy. The marriage soon ended. Her name? It was forgotten. Now back to Mindel's story. Things in the Ukraine under the new U.S.S.R. were almost as bad for Jews as they had been under the Tsar. My father's brother Joseph and sister Liza were in America. They wrote that life was hard, but that there was no governmental anti-Semitism. My father, Menashe, his sister Chaika, her husband, Beryl [Benny] and their son, and his sister Mindel decided to go to America too. They had no papers when they went to the border with Romania. There they sat for almost a year. They had no money. Conditions were very difficult. The conditions were primitive and the men could find little work. The baby boy took sick and died. Chaika gave birth to a second child, a little girl named Sarah. Just as they were giving up hope, my father arranged with the smugglers for them to take him over the border to Romania. He agreed to carry a sick child tied onto his back. The family of the sick child agreed to pay the smugglers to bring him across the border with them. In Romania it took a little time, but finally he was able to get legal papers and to arrange to bring over his two sisters, his brother in law and his young niece. But Mindel had grown discouraged. She had given up and returned to Tarashta, to her father and her little brother. Thus she lost her chance to come to America. The United States changed their immigration laws in 1923. At the end of 1924, the doors to the United States were closed to Russian Jews. Mindel never married. My father would only say that she had a hard, short life. When I pressed him, all he would answer was that it all happened so long ago. My daughter Debra asked me where and when the surnames Korostoshevsky and Gubenko came to be used. I'll tell you about Gubenko first. All I know is that it is a common Ukrainian name. When the family came to The United States they shortened and Americanized it to Gabin. Korostosheska is a little longer story. Joseph Korostoshevska was an itinerant rabbi. When he came to the town of Koshovato he met and married a local girl named Mindel. Joseph had come from a town called Korostishev. His last name meant coming from Korostishev. [Aside- Joseph and Mindel had only one son, Avraham. Avraham married Freidel and they had five sons and one daughter. My grandfather was one of the five sons.] I was very curious. I couldn't understand why Avraham became a cantor and not a rabbi. My Father said that Joseph never had enough money to send his only son West to study in a rabbinical school.] My father spent two years in Romania [1920 to 1922] waiting for a passport to the United States. In those days passports were issued to families and not individuals. A family named Bougaslav got a passport. When they filled in the names, they added my father as a younger brother and also added two young women as their children. So my dad came in as Manuel Bougaslav. When he felt safe in America, he changed his name back to his real name. Well he Americanized it, and shortened it to Korostoff. He had first cousins who really Americanized Korostoshevsky and they became Carsons. This story about coming in under another family's name was quite common in those years. Some people took back their own names and some people kept their passport name. Why do I write stories about my family? So you, my children and grandchildren, can remember the name and the person that I loved and that I remember. Before I leave this topic, I must tell you what one of my grandsons promised me. He was very young when we had this conversation. "Bubbie, when I have a baby I will name the baby after you." I answered," How nice. But you know, I never liked the name Florence. I don't think your baby will like it either. Still you could give the baby my Hebrew name, Tzipporah." "Florence? Tzip what? Who are they? I am going to name the baby 'Bubbie' Just like you!"