Yiddishology

It seems that the new show, Who Do You Think You Are, which airs on NBC, and is sponsored by Ancestry.com,  has triggered some fascinating personal family memories. 

Actress Lisa Kudrow’s trip down memory lane uncovered a tragic but riveting family holocaust story that brought her to Russia and Poland.  I was thoroughly engrossed and later learned, so was Mom.  When we talked on the phone, Mom told me that when she saw Kudrow’s family photos of her grandmother, it reminded her of her Russian ancestors – who she remembers seeing in her own family photos, but the photos were lost to her, apparently kept by another relative – who is now long gone. 

This sparked two VERY interesting tales, neither of which she had ever shared with me before.

My mom’s father, my grandfather (“M”), who died when I was young and who, by all accounts was NOT a nice man, “escaped” the Russian army and fled to the United States.  He settled in The Bronx, NY, I’m guessing somewhere around 1915.  The rest of the details are sketchy, but we can flash forward about 26 years when “M” was still living in the Bronx with five children and a deathly ill wife.  My mother was 16, the youngest child.  My mother’s brother, Uncle P, somehow discovered a man with the same last name as them – and about the same age as Grandpa, living in the Coney Island section of Brooklyn.  They met, weren’t really sure of a family connection, but thought they looked alike and surmised they must be related.  This man had a daughter, not much older than my mother, who became “close” with my grandfather and MARRIED him within a few short months after my grandmother died.  

This leads to the next revelation.

Not happy about this contemptuous insult to her mother, my mother, all of 17 at this point, moved out and got a job working for Western Electric in New Jersey.  Working 7 days per week and earning good money, she rented a very nice Bronx apartment (with parquet floors!) for $34 per month.  Originally, she shared the apartment with two of her siblings, Uncle J and Aunt S, but neither wanted to contribute to the rent, so they moved out.  Mom told me that she was a good girl and was afraid to let anyone know she lived alone, so she never had friends to visit and certainly never brought a date upstairs.  (Who even knows how she had time for a social life?)

Going back a year prior to when she was 16, my mother and a group of her friends went to a field day to watch some of the boys play baseball.  One of the boys asked if she had any food, so she tossed him a sandwich.  She then told her friend – “See that cute boy with the blue eyes?  I’m going to marry him.”  Somehow, someway, she wrestled his attention away from the cutie perched on his lap and won his heart.  They became engaged within a couple of years.  <Note to hopeless romantics – hold onto your handkerchiefs, this is not your typical happily ever after.>  

Then my mother drops THIS bombshell on me – when my father wanted to have sex and she said NO, he broke off their engagement.  <Snake!> She, however, kept the ring, because SHE had paid for it!  <A poor Snake at that!> Obviously, they got back together and married.  She didn’t tell me the circumstances of their re-engagement – perhaps that’ll be another blog post.  Unfortunately, I can’t confront my father with this revelation; he died when I was four.  Mom remarried four years later and remains married to my stepfather, the only father I have ever really known.

I know this is a long post, but this is exactly the type of story that sparked the conception of Yiddishology.  It’s not a site about religion or Yiddish, per se, but more about a forum to study the culture of our families by sharing historical anecdotes and tracing the social progression of our ancestors to our current family units – how we got here and where we may potentially go.

For those readers who are still so lucky as to have a parent or elder relative who can share stories – ask them about their life back in the day.  No doubt you will get an earful – and I hope you’ll come back and share them with us.