Name Game in Jewish Genealogy - Ancestry DNA Cousins... Ya... Help... Surnames & Shtetls Dizzying Array of Options. Key West, Miami, Philadelphia, England ... Plunge, Ludwinkoff? Chernigov, Nizhin ... Jewish Gen ..

Badalo Hungary.

Small town.

Bereq.

Just North of Satu Mare Romania.

Yehuda Leib AKA Leopold Schwartz (born Weiss)

(born in Badalo Hungary)

Rivka Gizelle aka Gussie (born Vais) Schwartz

(born in Satu Mare Hungary/Romania)

Oh Lord ....What is in a name?

Jewish Genealogy.

Never easy.

Family descendants today.

The family above died in the Holocaust.

One on their young sons survived.

The older children remained in America.

They moved here....

.... moved back to Hungary early on.

Picture taken at their older daughter's wedding.

Some of their descendants and spouses below.

Another wedding.

My oldest son next to his daughter in the center is named for the son of the man in the above picture. We are a very blended family. My son-in-law is from a Satmar Family (as was my Great Grandmother above) who married into a Chabad family (mine) ... my ex-husband was German and my children are directly related to Anne Frank on his side... my newest son-in-law top right is Yemenite. We be very blended these days...

It's been a while but the hurricane season is winding down (my main job) and I'm looking into some loose ends on the Family Tree still trying to make sense of it all. It occurs to me over and over that I can't imagine anything harder than trying to weave your way through Jewish Genealogy. Ancestors with so many name changes that it hurts my brain to try and follow families from place to place. It's said we are called "Wandering Jews" and from a religious viewpoint we are wandering about bringing Godliness down into the universe while we are in Golus on our way to Geulah. Many of us get lost along the way and fall short on that goal, but that's the general plan. Seems as we get closer to that "End Game" science comes along and helps us reconnect with those lost 3rd cousins with names that sound familiar that we have never heard but a DNA test confirms we are closely related.

What is in a Jewish Name and why did they constantly change over time? That's basically what I am discussing here today as I'm trying to find a system that works for me.... to keep track of the  many names to figure out how I am related to people who I share the same Great Grandparent with but nothing makes much sense. I had an English Professor at FIU who was named St. George Tucker Arnold Jr. and who spent his summers going back to cemeteries trying to record new relatives into his family tree.... he didn't have this problem.

https://www.behindthename.com/names/usage/jewish

https://www.jewishgen.org/InfoFiles/namfaq0.htm

In South Florida my cousin's grandson plays with my grandson at family functions and yes they are both adorable. Yet I can't recognize people who show up as my 2nd cousins in a DNA Ancestry result. And, yes due to Endogamy that was common in small Shtetl's in Europe with European Jews a 2nd cousin is probably a 3rd cousin with a few shared distant ancestors... still it's frustrating. My husband grew up in the mountains (Catskills) where his Grandmother owned a hotel and every relative around by marriage or blood had a job there in the summer. They hung out.... they worked...they made memories they share today on Facebook or when talking at any family function. They actually know their 3rd cousin by marriage and how they are related ... or at least they do on that side. They kept their basic name (or most seem to have) being Schaeffer from Bialystok. All seems simple, but I'm sure it's not so simple yet a cousin made a beautifully drawn tree with every branch filled in and added to it as the family grew. On my husband's father's side (we could be distantly related) they were Hungarian (a mix of Weiss and Biederman) and even those family members by marriage had summer jobs at Fanny Schaeffer's Vegetarian Hotel. Seems the family that worked and played together actually knows who their second and third cousins are and how they are related!

https://www.happycow.net/blog/vegetarian-hotel-woodridge-ny/

My family moved about in business following the trade winds to whatever places were popular at the time and provided a good stream of income; often owning homes in two different places depending on the time of year.  As they were able to move about often (during the seasons when it was horribly hot in Key West without AC) they seem to have come  to America with money before they set up their Dry Good stores or Tin Ware business (Key West after the 1886 fire needed rebuilding) and like a cat on a hot tin roof Wolfe or Woolf or Wolf moved about looking for the next hot place to make money. Tampa, another boom town, called and he sold timber.... tobacco... and probably tin. At one time or another towards the end of his life he sold Singer Sewing Machines. But ....where did Wolfe come from and why does one daughter have his name on her tombstone as Velvel and the other insisted it was Zev? Kind of sketchy.... or just the way it was back in the day. Velvel was his Yiddish name and Zev his Hebrew name. Jewish genealogy not easy.

Going back before 1860 is often difficult for American Jews and going back to 1840 is almost impossible unless someone has it written down in the Family Bible and as it was considered a sin to write in a Holy Book ... Jews rarely have a Family Bible.

In Europe they simply went by the name they were called up to read the Torah by or a name someone used to pray for them should they be ill and need a blessing. Ida (Maybe Marks) the widow Seidenberg (1st marriage) Abrams (2nd marriage) and moved to Key West. When she was born she was simply Chaya Etel Bas Yoseph (the chazan) but in Tampa her husband changed his name often and may have been originally Abramowitz though most of his family in England changed it to Abrahams and then he changed it to Abrams in America.

Add in the shuffle game of trying to hide your sons from being drafted (abducted) into the Tzar's Army found family's that had means sending young boys to distant relatives in different towns nearby and changing their names. It was not uncommon for a small child the age of 8 or 9 to be kidnapped from his home while playing in a field and being put into the Tzar's Army and being indoctrinated while there for the next ten or twenty years into Christianity. Families did almost anything to avoid this if they could and so my Great Grandfather was a Schwartz yet his father was a Weiss and most likely it seems he was sent to the small town of Badalo where some of the family lived from another city nearby. His wife was a Vais (Weiss) who was a distant relative who lived in Satu Mare when it was Hungary before it was Romania. He lived in Badalo Hungary, yet his younger sister was born in Badalo, Czechoslovakia.

I mean really what is in a name? Even the towns changed their actual name. Add in most towns had a Polish name, a Yiddish name, a Hebrew name, a German name and a Lithuanian name which various relatives used depending on their mindset. Herman Schwartz married Esther Peres from Plunge or Plumyam depending on who was talking. I'm pretty sure that the name Peres was spelled several different ways as was her father's name Neftalin.

Then add in the the distant siblings of my Grandparents who made it to Israel after surviving World War 2 and not dying like their other siblings in the Holocaust. In Israel is was popular to change the Yiddish sounding old world name to a HEBREW NAME as Hebrew as a modern language had been developed so Bela Schwartz who settled somewhere in Tiberias changed his name to Simcha Schwartz and I believe another last name was later added that sounded more Hebrew. Oh my goodness.

In truth Bela was his Hungarian name as Hungary demanded the Jews have secular names on government records so Herman Schwartz's mother either Rivka Gizelle, however when he got married in NYC he put down her name as Gussie Schwartz. His father Yehuda Leib who I was told went by Leib was named Leopold on Herman's wedding certificate. First I ever heard of Leopold and that's consistent because it seems her father Bentzion Neftalin also went by Benjamin on government records. Esther's mother Tzipora who went by Tzipi is listed as Celia. I mean who knew? Now I know. She most likely was named after a Faigy (Yiddish) before the family was more modernized after having a Hebrew name became popular. Of course that has not been proven but probable. Zionism in Europe grew and I have friends whose Grandmothers were named Shoshana after their grandmothers who were Raiel or Roza.

It's a name game and not easy.

Ancestry doesn't let you look up "Chaya Etel Bas Yoseph" it demands a Surname or a Place. Luckily the Neftalin or Naftalin or Naftolin family as they are named on various documents are well documented and records for Esther's parent's marriage are up on JewishGen. Of course that document spells the names differently, but it is definitely their marriage certificate. One of those "moments" doing research when you come across your Great Grandparent's marriage certificate and you just stare... Of course his name is spelled Bentsion and her's Cipi ... more variations on the same name.

Record of my Great Grandparent's marriage.

Record of my Great Grandmother's death.

Ancestry on some level is nice and it's fun to get your pie chart (I'm 91% European Jewish) but if you don't already know your Family Tree it's almost impossible to figure out who any of those 2nd or 3rd cousins are that pop up. Yes, it's easy to say someone had an affair or some woman was raped or some traveling peddler fathered a child no one knew about... happens throughout history. But, in this case most likely it's the problem of Goldson who changed their name to Colson and his later relative changed it to Cole because really .... "what is in a name?"

Add in many on Ancestry are just trying to figure out what kind of hat their ancestor wore or "how Jewish they are" in the case of Jews always looking for some distant Scottish or Native American Ancestor. The closest I get to "other" is 4% Italian/Greek. Could be someone who was doing business in Chernigov and converted as there were many Greek merchants in Chernigov or possibly that part of Hungary closest to Italy or ????  Sarah Beila also went by Sara Bella and her father was Gabriel/Gavriel Rosen but she seems linked to many Rabbinical families and it's doubtful there's where the non Jewish blood came in but seriously one never knows. We could look towards Wolf Abrahams who told my mother they took the name Abrams after an Ancestor named Abraham. She wondered if possibly that Abraham had converted as converts often take the name Abraham. Then again as I pointed out to her... Abraham is a very Jewish name. His wife was Mary Morris from Russia (not Ireland) but maybe he lied? His daughter's husband Myron Falk often lied on census records and when he spoke to the census worker he told them that his wife Anna Abrams Falk was of German descent on both sides. No ... she wasn't but he was of German descent and I suppose he preferred writing that down. The Falk family... Southern Jews from Germany who were active in the Tobacco business.

So the point of this long rant on name changes is I'm trying to work things through my head and doing so here as I plan on being more active here again now that the Atlantic Hurricane Season has wound down.

Maybe we should trace hobbies or interests. Wolfe and Ida liked the water and moved to Key West where the weather was always warm as they started out in Russia before some time in England. I've been told Wolfe had asthma and he felt better by the water. Wolf also enjoyed sitting on his porch in Tampa watching thunderstorms coming in from nearby Tampa Bay. My Grandmother Mary was terrified of thunder as once a lightning bolt came int through the chimney terrifying everyone in the family except for probably Wolf who probably being my Great Grandfather thought it was the coolest thing he had seen since he first put into port in Key West in the late 1870s or early 1880s.

My kids playing in Key West in the 1980s.

100 years after my ancestor's became moved to Key West.

Jewish Conchs... 

The picture above is taken a few hundred feet from here.

Where our family was naturalized.

Old red court house....by Mallory Square.

Key West, Florida.

My family's "Old Country"

Way before American Jews began changing names and using American names their ancestors were changing them as they tried escaping the Tzar's Army or tried to fit into a new world where an old name seemed odd and unpopular. The English side of my family (from "Russia") went by Marks, Morris and Abrams. Nice names but they did not start out that way trust me...  The ones who made it to Israel were pushed to use Hebrew Names to get jobs as .... it was a lot like Castro's Cuba it seems. For good or bad the early settlers were a bit socialistic and building a new world...  one based on Hebrew Names vs ones from the old world. Taking a "Modern Hebrew Name" moved you up the food chain towards a better job in the government. I've interviewed several people whose family moved to Israel and changed both the first name and their surname in order to be eligible for some jobs. Their grandchildren moved back to America and for them trying to find the original name of relatives on Ancestry DNA is extremely difficult.

Tombstones don't really work as my Grandfather Ben has his written down as Beryl however his name was Ber but Beryl was his nick name and my Aunt (my mother's older sister who knew nothing about Chabad naming traditions) told me his name was really Dov Ber but he went by Beryl. Ber's father was Yonah Chitrick and that name was shortened from Chitrikoff or Chitrickov and when they lived in Nizhin in the Chabad community that ended up moving to Chernigov after a Pogrom. I suppose you can say they moved for a better quality of life the way people move to Raleigh because it's generally safer and has a low cost of living compared to the bigger cities with crime and a higher cost of living. Except of course without the drunken Cossacks motivating them to find a better quality of life. Most of the members of the Chabad Nizhin families who moved to Chernigov later moved to Philadelpha after Pogroms followed them where ever they traveled in "Russia"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Jewish_pogroms_in_the_Russian_Empire

http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~ukrchern/chernigov/geography/townsNezhin.htm

The Chitrik family came to America in parts and went by the various forms of the name. Ben's brother came to America with Chitzik on his travel records. Karl Rick came into this country as Koppel Chizik, however it's worth remembering that Koppel is another name for Jacob.

It's a real shell game.

Why we can't have a genealogy company allow a search for various forms of first names and the names used by our ancestors is the question.  Jews early on were simply Yosef Yitchok Ben Sholom Dov Ber.

The Morris side may have been Smigelski originally so okay I get the name change and yet many of the members of the Morris family who moved to England early on married out of their religion and no one knows until they do Ancestry they may have been Smigelski........

It's a real shell game.... back when our ancestors moved from Germany into Poland into Lithuania changing their names before getting on boats across the North Sea to England and Ireland before moving to America changing their surnames again along the way they did not expect one day their Great, Great Grandchildren would be spitting into test tubes they bought from Ancestry for $79 during a sale to try to figure out where their grandparents came from...........

And someone named Savannah Rose living in Georgia of European Jewish Ancestry may have been named after a Shoshana Raizel who immigrated to America, met a nice man and settled down to raise a family in a free world living safe lives far from the Cossacks. Lord help Savannah Rose if she ever tries figuring out where her family came from as the death certificate for her grandmother probably simply listed "Russia" as her  place of birth.

I was a Reference Librarian. I helped people from South Carolina find five generations of their tree in one easy afternoon on the Reference Desk as people who aren't Jewish usually name after the living. And, I did that using published books in the Reference Section without the help of Google. One generation closer to the original name and less name changes along the way as every tombstone in Hardeeville South Carolina has the same surname for generations and often the oldest son's middle name was his mother's maiden name.

More frustrating than watching the Miami Dolphins find new boring ways to lose football games :(

At least we know the names of the players on that distant Perfect Season. About as hard to replicate it as it is to figure out where in "Russia" your Grandma Mary's family was originally from before making money in Manchester England and moving on to warmer, sunnier ports of call.

More to come... sorry for the rambling but it's my blog and I'm in the mood to ramble. We call rambling out loud "thinking" where I come from...

Some links you may find helpful to understand terminology I used while rambling above.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endogamy (when a shtetl had 9 families there was a lot of intermarrying)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shtetl

Golus: http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-english-lexicon/words/198

Geulah: http://www.jewish-languages.org/jewish-english-lexicon/words/190

Getting called up to the Torah by your Jewish Name:
http://www.chabad.org/multimedia/media_cdo/aid/1291594/jewish/How-to-Get-Called-Up-to-the-Torah.htm

www.chabad.org

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chabad

Nizhin and Chernigov:
http://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/3285481/jewish/Timeline.htm

http://www.iajgsjewishcemeteryproject.org/ukraine/nizhyn-chernihiv-oblast-nezhinnyezhin-niezhin-niezynv-nischyn-nizhin-neshin.html

Satmar? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Satmar_(Hasidic_dynasty)

Yeminite Jews: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jews-of-yemen

Key West 1886 Fire by San Carlos building on Duval Street:
http://www.keywesthistoricmarkertour.org/Markers_Detail.php?ProductID=442

Key West Jewish History. Old article but good.... we are it seems related (not surprisingly) to the Wolfsons and Wolkowsky families. Much like at the "Veg Hotel" families tended to travel and work together in the same places over time. DNA confirms what logic dictated way before Ancestry. In Miami in the 1950s if your Grandfather worked for FPL most of your cousins got jobs there too if they wanted...

https://www.kintera.org/site/apps/nlnet/content.aspx?c=twI6LmN7IzF&b=5698175&ct=11518609

Ya... various spellings possible for the same town... never easy researching but slowly, bit by bit, you get there. If it wasn't hard enough trying to find the right spelling for Bentzion Neftalin it's even harder trying to find the right spelling for the town they were born in and that's if you know the town vs "Russia" . . .

Much love.... and lots of luck trying to work your way through those thousands of 3rd and 4th cousins on Ancestry!

Bobbi aka Bracha aka Barbara... Granddaughter of Wolf aka Wolfe aka Woolf aka Velvel aka Zev. Seriously the name game obviously runs in the family...

Ps... And I didn't even mention my daughter in law whose family is Cuban/Columbian but from the same general area as the Weiss family around the border of Hungary/Romania so as Spanish as this generation is when the Abeula starts singing a Yiddish song she sounds like she just got off the boat with a heavy Yiddish accent! Cuban Yiddish the same way my Grandma Mary spoke Yiddish with a Southern Accent.  Beautiful couple...



Looking forward to being officially an Abuela ;)  and that's a high honor growing up in Little Havana in Miami the way I did...

http://www.spanishdict.com/translate/abuela

My family worked with Cuban Tobacco, Cigars in Key West then later Ybor City in Tampa... been drinking Cuban Coffee my whole life even before my part of Miami (the Roads Section) became known as "Little Havana"

Besos Bobbi

Best video ever ;)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=___38lDHvgE

My Father and Why I Am Blogging.

I suppose first off the most basic reason I am blogging is that I am a writer. I write and I blog and therefore makes sense it's easier for me to keep my thoughts here on a blog for me to review and to share with you. It's what I do and what I do best in many ways. And as it's my blog and something I am doing for fun I don't always follow rules. When I am editing something for someone I stick to the rules. When I have a writing assignment and am told it needs to fit into a space, mention certain subjects and be no longer than 750 words I come in at 749 words with all the i's dotted and t's crossed just write in a precise way. However I am just writing here in an often flow of thought state of mind to help me organize my thoughts so hang on and I hope by reading my story it will help you with your own search for lost relatives and branches of family trees that have broken off and drifted away with the wind.

My father was born in the Bronx. My grandmother Esther was very proud he was born in the hospital and he was first generation American. He was indeed very American in the ways that we judge people by and yet he identified mostly as a Jew from New York .. more specifically the Bronx. In those early years before I knew there were five boroughs I thought "THE BRONX" was it's own city different from New York City. It was "THE BRONX" as he would say it and now that I am older and have known people from Brooklyn and Manhattan and Queens I can definitely say each borough produced a somewhat different version of a New Yorker. And no I never met anyone who was born and raised in Staten Island, however I know they exist. Suffice it say he was proud of being from "THE BRONX" and enjoyed his childhood greatly I believe from his many stories of life growing up there.

He also enjoyed Miami and he never looked back on his decision to move to Miami. But that's for later in this story.

His name was Seymour B. Schwartz and he went by Sy. Later in life he went by his Hebrew name Shmuel Ber as he became more religious after he turned 40 and became involved with Chabad also known as Lubavitch.

His father Herman (Chaim) Schwartz was from Hungary. Herman came to America to escape the troubles most Jews faced in Europe. His parents came from their home in a town named Budalo where they owned a store and had a good life with good food and lot's of "country air" but times were not good and everyone said to move to America for a better life. Herman liked America as did his sister Mary and his older sister Sarah (Sadie) who got married and settled down. His father did not like America and missed Hungary. Apparently my Great Grandfather Yehuda Leib didn't like the sweat shops in New York City and the lack of clean air and the family he left behind. He left with the younger boys and his wife and Herman and Mary remained behind with their grown married sister in America.

When this picture was taken I don't know.

Possibly at Sadie's wedding or possibly to mark their life in some way.

Cute little dress Gussie (Rivka Gizelle) was wearing. 

Almost looks like she might be pregnant.

She covered her hair as was the custom of her faily.

Of the three boys there only one surived.

They were all killed by the Nazis...

One Bela who bcame Simcha in Israel gave testimony.

Sad, but true.

But this blog post is not about the Holocaust.

It's about my father and life in the Bronx.

The very beautiful Sadie died young.

She needed a minor operation....

...but back then no operation was minor.

And she died.

Leaving Herman a young teenager to take care of his Mary.

As my cousin Howard tells it..

It was a big, huge responsibility.

But Herman took care of his mother Mary always.

And they were left to deal with the loss of their big sister.

Life goes on...

Herman from Hungary married Esther from Plunge, Lithuania in New York City. It was almost a mixed marriage as they came from very different cultures. Her family were litvaks and city dwellers who owned stores and traded and just were very different. They had two children. My father Sy and his older sister Sylvie who was named after Esther's mother Tzipporah. Herman liked to play chess, Grandma Esther liked to paint and go to art galleries. And Herman worked hard building up a tie business that eventually sold to large stores such as Bloomingdales. They had a good life despite the sadness of losing relatives who were still in Europe and that is part and parcel of all of our Jewish Family History isn't it? Life went on and the focus was on the here and now, day to day of life. They traveled to Florida often in the winter and eventually retired to South Beach where Herman played chess and Grandma Esther kept busy with her sister Ida and enjoyed visits from the Grandkids who lived in Miami nearby.

So back to my father.... Hard to say where to start. He loved baseball. If there was one thing I could, would say it was he loved baseball. And when I say baseball I don't mean he had some sort of hero worship of a player as much as the mathematics of baseball. It's very mathematical from a statistics point of view. I mean let's be honest it's not Ice Hockey or Football or even Basketball where there are scores being scored and plays being made and drama and excitement every minute of the game. Sometimes you just sit there waiting, biting every nail off waiting for someone to for gosh sakes hit the fricking ball. Being a girl raised down South where Football is King watching a baseball game to me was like watching a slow motion tortoise race . . . And my father would explain "THAT WAS THE EXCITING PART a good no hitter!!" Obviously Daddy and I had very different tastes when it came to exciting sports. Baseball to me was tediously slow but my father watched or listened to it like background noise while working on paper work. 

And oddly my father's favorite team was not the Yankees but the Detroit Tigers. It turns out this was not really soooo odd as to many Jewish kids growing up in America the team that the Jewish Hank Greenberg played on became the favorite team of many kids both in Brooklyn and the Bronx. If therew as one unifying factor in boys lives back then it was Jewish Pride for the Jewish players on the Detroit Tigers team.

http://www.baseballinwartime.com/player_biographies/greenberg_hank.htm

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/anti-semitism/

once-the-detroit-tigers-were-a-jewish-team-anti-semitism-delmon-young-hank-greenberg/

My father who received a BS in Mathematics from the University of Miami took to baseball the way he took to watching the dogs at the Dog Track. He enjoyed the math behind the game more than gambling. He often told me if he just wanted to gamble he'd only go to Jai Alai as there was no guarantees with dealing with people, but dogs had a pattern and dogs ran and if you knew each dog and how they ran against other dogs you could probably make a living at the Dog Track. I do think he enjoyed gambling ;) but to him he was quiet at the track or watching a baseball game watching for every little nuance and keeping note of statistics for the next time. There was no yelling or screaming or emotion shown other than an occasional "crap!" or "how about that!" when he was watching a baseball game. He was like that at Jai Alai too. You could never tell for sure if he won or lost until he went to pick up his winnings. 

When he was young he worked for a watchmaker in NYC that was a friend of the family. He said he wasn't really an apprentice as much as he'd do favors for the watchmaker. When I asked him what kind of favors he'd laugh and say he'd send him on errands on the subway to another jeweler or watchmaker and trade whatever he was carrying for whatever he was given by the other person. One day he looked inside the cigar box that was shut tight and there was expensive jewelry in it. He realized it was worth a fortune and he was trusted to carry it back and forth on the subway. After that sometimes he'd look inside and see money. He also suggested maybe he was running numbers who knows. It really didn't matter in the world of the mid 1930s he had a job. And while there he taught him how to fix watches which he would do sometimes to make extra money when I was very little. He said in retrospect it was crazy to let a kid get on and off 3 subway cars carrying valuables but he trusted him to get the goods wherever they were going. Life in the fast lane in New York City in the mid 1930s. 

As a young child he heard that some of the neighborhood kids were going out at night loading crates onto ships headed for Palestine. He knew it wasn't considered 100% kosher legally but all the kids were doing it not because they were Zionists but because they were Jewish and wanted to do something to help the hoped for state of Israel. His father caught him sneaking back in the house one night and asked him what he was doing. Being honest, though he could be sketchy at times, he told his father who told him he wasn't to do it again and being a good kid he listened to his father and didn't. Over time interviewing people doing Oral Histories I've heard this story over and over from kids his age who lived in NYC. Some people were members of Betar and others were just there to impress a girl or a new friend or do to something, somehow to make a difference. 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betar Many of our fathers and grandparents snuck out one night late not to party or get high or dance the night away, but to do something to make a statement, take a stand... to stand up for what would be the new State of Israel. But they didn't all talk about it and in truth to many it wasn't such a big deal, but something you did with a few friends because you were a Jew and you wanted to do your part even far away in the Bronx or Brooklyn.

Around fifteen years old my father got sick when he was young and he didn't get over it very fast. Finally after a few weeks went by he was diagnosed with Rheumatic Fever. Whether he had it or he didn't was in question when he was older as he had no scar damage in his lungs. But the upside of that illness was he was exempt from army service towards the end of WW2 when he came of age to do his civic duty. He did have bad allergies, post nasal drip and sinus problems. When he was about 15 he graduated high school early in a special program for kids with good grades and moved to Miami to live with his beloved Aunt Ida who was a widow and living in Miami Beach. The weather helped his allergies and his health improved. He went home on Winter Break, joined a few friends on a triple date that entailed taking two trains from the Bronx to Brooklyn, picking up the girls and going into Manhattan then taking them back to Brooklyn and then going back to the Bronx. It was bitter cold, he was freezing, he got sick a few days later and decided he was staying in Florida. And he did...

He went to the University of Miami at the age of 16 taking classes, working as a waiter on Miami Beach for money and free meals and staying in close touch with his Aunt who was much like a second mother to him. He hung out in the various local Jewish Youth groups. He worked, he studied and if he did something it was something "Jewish" and he went to UM games with friends. One of those friends was my mother who he met at some Jewish Youth group after graduating working in the Miami area. She was studying music and performing with the local Opera group, but her father died and she stopped singing briefly and at loose ends she met my father. This post is about him, but it would suffice to say they had basic root, core beliefs in common yet they were very different. He was very left brain, she was very right brain. She was raised by Grandma Mary who was a somewhat spoiled Southern Belle raised in Florida and he was raised in the Bronx during the depression.

Famous true family story came shortly after they were married. Their food bill seemed overly high. She cooked nice enough dinners but he couldn't figure out what was costing so much. He decided to go shopping with her to see for himself what she was buying. He noticed she ignored sales and bought whatever brand she wanted often, but still that didn't account for the large disconnect in the food budget. She made chicken, hamburgers often nothing special and he couldn't figure out what was costing so much. After mentally adding up several things that could have been cheaper they got to the meat aisle. She looked through the meat for sale, picked up a package of beautiful steaks and rang the bell for the butcher. He was excited thinking she was going to make him a special dinner tonight when they went home. The butcher came over and she handed him the steaks and asked him politely to please grind them twice. He smiled and went off to grind them twice special for her and my father freaked. "WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" he said very loudly with his rough Bronx accent. She said very casually in a slow Southern Drawl "well I'm getting some meat for hamburgers that's all.... " He picked up a pack of cheap, ground meat on sale in some sort of bologna looking package and told her "THAT'S FOR HAMBURGERS!!" and she stared down and shook her head and told him no one eat's "that stuff!" and he yelled back that he was "RAISED ON THAT STUFF!"  He quickly figured out why his food bill was so high... He'd been eating expensive steak for hamburgers most nights. Culture clash ...from day one. 

My father was impressed by my mother's brains, creativity, looks and he felt blessed to have her as his wife. But to understand how she thought was about as foreign to him as a Princess from a different planet. He was raised in the Bronx during hard times, everyone worked and looked for sales, discounts and ways to survive. His father worked hard building up a business, his mother worked for his father part time and his Aunt Mary worked there as well. Everyone worked, everyone cut corners and to be honest he wasn't much of a dresser nor did he care about labels or styles he did this thing and my mother cared about styles, quality and she made me lamb chops for lunch and I don't just mean lamb chops but baby lamb chops. She accessorized and she studied art and music and never really majored in anything but fed her passion for artist expression. She actually dropped out of high school to study music and eventually went back at night to get a degree and then went on to studying in college for the next three decades doing everything possible to avoid actually graduating. My father's philosophy was if she was happy the family was happy so it didn't really matter as it was cheaper than her spending money redecorating the house. 

He worked two or three jobs though to be honest often I think it was so he had an excuse to get out of the house. Not because he didn't like being home with my mother he was born with a condition many Jews refer to as "no sitz fleish" meaning he was born restless and couldn't sit still easily. He liked being busy, he was a born multitasker before it was popular. He drove a taxi part time, he fixed watches, he worked a 9 to 5 job and she cooked dinner when she was in the mood and not busy finishing homework or a painting or redecorating the house. To my father redecorating the house was cheaper than moving which she wanted to do often.

Around 1973 she began studying with Chabad after taking classes with the local Rabbi often and working with Mizrachi and Hadassah and decided to move out of the suburbs to Miami Beach to be part of a larger Orthodox Community. My mother had started keeping Shabbos when I was five and made the house kosher. My father stayed home on Friday nights for dinner, enjoyed the meal, said Grace After Meals and went to sleep early. He woke up even earlier and drove a taxi to make extra money. After twelve years of that arrangement while he was saying Kaddish for his parents who died 11 months apart he decided to start keeping Shabbos as well. One thing led to another and by the late 1970s he considered himself a Lubavitcher and wandered around often from shul to shul on Miami Beach as he was restless and enjoyed watching different things. Eventually he found his way to a Shteeble (small shul in someone's home) and after enjoying a large kiddush after services complete with Cholent and Kishke that tasted much like he remembered as a child he found a place he felt comfortable.

The irony is that he had basically come home without realizing it. He was surprised to find the same prayer books there that his father used as a young man when he was a small child. He opened up a siddur one day, it was Hebrew on one side and Hungarian on the other side and he realized it was the type of prayer book his father used in the Bronx. It turns out the family that owned and operated the Shteeble was originally from the same area as the town his Grandfather was from in Hungary. Same county and at some time they actually lived in the town where he lived. 

The family name of Schwartz was really originally Weiss which means they went from being White to Black in ways. Another commonality for people with Jewish European Ancestry is family name changes to avoid service in the Tsar's Army. Google Conscription. They would come and take small boys away to serve for twenty some odd years and while there they were taught to be good Christians. Families did everything to protect their sons who were sometimes kidnapped as young boys in front of their homes. They sent children to other relatives, they moved to other places outside the reach of the Tsar or they sent their sons to relatives in other cities. Every family looking for lost Jewish Roots, broken branches comes across the name change game that makes finding the ancestors back in time extremely difficult if not impossible. 

Before the family lived in Budalow they lived in another town nearby. Sometimes the town was Hungary, sometimes Czech sometimes Russia. My father's father Herman taught me once to find it on a map by finding the river nearby as he said the borders changed all the time. He made good quality ties, I have a few of them. Silk, beautiful and some he imported from India..not just China. But, my father grew up in New York City hanging out with friends, taking trains, going to ball games and involved with other Jewish kids growing up in the shadow of events in Europe that were whispered about but never confirmed until after the war.

Being "Jewish" took up a big part of his life. When we lived in North Miami Beach he would go fill up at his car at the "Jewish Gas Station" and I'd argue with  him telling him it wasn't "JEWISH" it was a GAS STATION. He'd point out Israeli's owned it and I'd point out they sell eggs brined with pig's feet it's NOT Jewish it's just a gas station but he was a product of his times. He had good friends who were Italians, Greeks and your regular old Southern Baptists that you found in Miami but he was Jewish. He didn't eat pork and he was convinced God was onto something because you could get sick from eating a bad flounder but you could die from eating bad shellfish. And in his old age, his older years he became very religious. 

So what I'll end with here is something he told me several times and others. You can change your life at any age, he didn't start keeping Shabbos until he was turning 50 and he changed his life around one deed at a time and eliminating things he did, switching them up and studying... learning in the same way my mother always loved to learn suddenly he'd get in the car, drive down to the Yeshiva on South Beach, get a cup of coffee in the kitchen and sit and learn with a few of the students or the Rabbi. Bit by bit he learned and bit by bit his Hebrew got better until at one point he finally got to the point where he could pray from an all Hebrew Prayer Book. It's never too late to want to start doing something was his belief and that's true in ways. Not so hard to do in real life though but it is true.

My father used to say when he was old we had to promise to drive him to Jai Alai and drop him off so he wasn't the type of old guy chasing cars with his cane. Yet, as he got older he went less and less. When I was 19 he'd tell me to dress up with heels and he'd sneak me into Jai Alai, buy me a drink as long as I was quiet while he was thinking. Black Russians he'd order me and I'd watch the game and he'd try to explain it all to me. He loved it the excitement the fast pace no time for grammar just run, jump, catch the ball in the cesta swing it around fast and keep going.

He loved to talk to my friends and told me that those years when I was in High School and our house was party central were good years for him. He'd take long rides with my ex-husband and I at night to talk or just for company when he needed to get out and "drive on up to Hollywood Beach" trying to avoid the speed traps in Haulover on Collins Avenue. He was a quiet talker in a ways. Not a party animal but friendly. He made a better grandfather than he did a father as he worked nonstop when we were little and yet when my kids were little he'd drop everything to go pick one up from school when they got sick or in trouble and he'd take them out to the bakery or the movies. He was an easy going Grandfather... go figure.

He kept the picture below in his wallet.

His last wallet, a bit messy but his favorite pic I guess.

He came by the house and picked up the baby and took her for a walk.

He liked hot dogs and kishke. He liked to pile sauerkraut on his hot dogs.

He liked to walk the dog and shmooze with the neighbors.

He liked to jump in the car and go anywhere anytime without making a fuss for a ride.

He liked when my mother was happy, when we were healthy and he was a UM Fan.

UM fan and graduate.

Detroit became his city in all sports yet he never went there to visit.

He lived a basically good life as I believe he was low maintenance and took the long view.

He moved away from cold weather and spring allergies and found his own paradise.

He loved his family, had a few close friends and appreciated the small things. 

I learned the basics in life and the reality of "you gotta do what you gotta do" and applied it to life to get the job done. I was told by my mother that I am pragmatic like my father. Probably no one else would call me pragmatic but she spit out the words as if he wasn't a good thing. Being my father's daughter... I thought it was a good thing.

I miss him. 

So I may fix this up tomorrow or the next day. I may play with the grammar, add some links or pictures but one thing I want to leave you with is this... 

Whether you are forty or fifty or sixty it's not too late to make changes and to evolve. Restless people get that as they don't want to stay stagnant too long. Life is for living and evolving can be good sometimes and if things go badly... there's always Plan B and evolve again.

Sy Schwartz became Shmuel Ber to many, Daddy to the three of us and Zeyde to his grandchildren. My Grandma Mary adored him saying he "had a good heart and he was a prince of a man" so I'll leave it with that. For years he would drive down to his Aunt's apartment sometimes twice a day to check on her, to make sure she took her pills and had food in the house. On Jewish Holidays he'd walk down to South Beach from our house close to 3 miles to her apartment to make sure she was okay and took her pills. Who does that? He did as he loved her and you did what you had to do and he did... 

Besos BobbiStorm

Some pics of my father in his older years... 

Being my mother's daughter I'll think on spell checking tomorrow........