Mishpukhe
Title
Mishpukhe
Creator
Jacob Schlitt
Description
"As an only child of a widowed mother who had a sister in Paris and a brother in Vaslui Romania, I didn’t grow up with a lot of family around."
Date
circa 2008
Format
application/pdf
Type
text
Language
en
Identifier
MISHPUKHE
Text
MISHPUKHE
As an only child of a widowed mother who had a sister in Paris and a brother in Vaslui Romania, I didn't grow up with a lot of family around. I had friends with brothers and sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Except for cousins, I had none of that. Of course, when you don't have something, you don't know what it is to be with it, so you don't know what it's like to be without it. I read stories, and saw movies about large families, but I don't remember yearning for that world. A brother or sister would have been nice—and certainly a father…
Growing up, I didn't know the definition of cousin. I must have been in college when I learned that a cousin is the child of your parents' sibling. That means if my father or mother had a brother or sister, and they married and had children, those children would be my first cousins. It so happens that my father did have lots of brothers and sisters, but I didn’t know anything about them, and as far as I knew, they were all in Kishinev, where my father was born.
So, my mother's sister, Sura Leah, who was in Paris and married to Hersh Leib, were my uncle and aunt, as was my mother’s brother, Meilich, in Vaslui Romania, and his wife. And their children were my first cousins. If they grew up and married and had children, then their children would be my second cousins. I still have no idea what "once removed" is all about.
As far as I knew, my mother had a cousin named Beryl Goldstein and he was married to Yetta,, and they had lots of children, and I called them cousins, and a few of these children had children and I called them cousins. First of all, what kind of cousin was Beryl to my mother? Was he the son of a sibling of my mother's father? Both he and my mother were named Goldstein. But I was told that Beryl came from Bucharest. Well, maybe he was born in Vaslui and moved to Bucharest. Where did he meet Yetta? She is from a town in northeastern Romania called Botosan. (I learned this from her son-in-law Arthur Kestenbaum who married Beryl and Yetta’s daughter Ruth.) I believe Beryl and Yetta married in Romania and came to America together. How did my mother find them when she came to New York? I am glad she did because that family became an important family in my life.
As best as I can remember, Beryl and Yetta's children were Irna, Jean, Betty, Ruth, Sally and Louis. Irna was the oldest, and to me the most mysterious. I don't remember ever seeing her. She moved to California, married someone who I believe was not Jewish, did not have children, and lived a very glamorous life.
Jean became a nurse. I believe she was married and divorced. Remarried and moved to Florida and had a son and died at a relatively young age.
Betty was a wise-cracking, attractive woman. (All the Goldstein women were attractive.) She married a man named Harry Feit, who I remember as a fat, cigar-smoking hustler, and something of a politician. I believe Betty caught him cheating on her and left him.
Ruth was the anchor of the family. It was with Ruth, her husband Arthur and their daughter Barbara, that Beryl and Yetta lived. And it was to Ruth and Arthur’s apartment at 1530 Sheridan Avenue (TR2-3089) that my mother and I would come from time to time for Friday night dinner. If we were lucky, Jean, Betty or Sally might be there as well.
Sally was the youngest, and she married Lou Rosenberg who I liked a lot. He sometimes showed up at Ruth’s as well. I believe he was drafted in 1942, and we had a correspondence while he was in the Army, which I enjoyed. Soon after he was discharged, they left for Florida, and they had two daughters.
Finally, there was Louis, who, along with Arthur, was my role model. My mother and I visited Louis and his wife Esther in their home at 3041 Sedgwick Avenue (KI3-3850). I believe our visits tended to be on Sundays. How this pattern developed, I don’t know.
When the children were growing up, the Goldsteins lived on the Lower East Side. The story is that they survived by Yetta baking pretzels which the children would sell. Beryl would pass the day drinking tea on Second Avenue. Ruth went to work for Western Union after graduating from high school. I have no idea what the other girls did. Jean must have gone to nursing school, and Louis went to Syracuse University, interested in forestry. He married Esther Kavenoff and they had two children Rosalind and Edward.
I therefore had three younger cousins: Barbara, Rozzie and Eddie. Unfortunately, I didn't feel close to them. We chatted awkwardly when I visited, but it was clearly a visit of my mother with their parents, and I was taken along. I answered adult’s questions about school, and sat quietly. My mother spoke Yiddish with Beryl and Yetta, and English with their offspring.
The story of Louis and Esther is also the story of Esther's family—the Kavenoffs. The matriarch of the Kavenoff family lived a block away from me on Beck Street (722) in a "private house." That is how we referred to homes that were not apartment houses. Living there were a sister Ray with her husband Bob Pollack and their daughter Sallie Mae, and a brother Max and his wife Jackie and their daughter Cynthia. Max was a lawyer in partnership with his brother Joe. Max played the violin, was active in local Democratic politics, and had polio. My mother went to him when she drafted her will. Another sister, Lillie, assisted Esther. There were two other brothers—Morris and Sidney, and two other sisters—Rose and Yetta. Quite a family! I had a crush on Sallie, and was thrilled when Cynthia was born. I really didn't know Joe who moved to Florida and had Francine and two other daughters, Roz and Ruth. Francine and her husband Mark and their daughter Shelley lived here in Brookline and for want of a better word, we call each other cousins.
There was one other cousin—the Moskowitz's. They lived in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn—2013 East 13th Street. Again, I have no idea how we were related. I know they were from Romania, and it is possible that the connection was with Hannah Moskowitz. Her husband was Sigmund and I believe they ran a grocery store. They had two daughters whose names I have forgotten. I do remember that they had a dog that I couldn’t stand, I I kept confusing the dog's name with one of the daughters: one was Bootsie and one was Mitzie, but I don't remember who was who. The other Moskowitz family that we considered cousins but that we didn't visit was Harry Moskowitz. He was a handsome man with a carefully trimmed moustache who was a successful furrier with a business in Manhattan.
I have already written about having discovered that I had real cousins named Schlitt when I was 11. Henry Schlitt was the son of one of my father's brothers. My parents helped him and his wife Dora to come to America, helped get them an apartment next to my parents on Beck Street and may have even gotten Henry his first job. We called him Chaim, Dora called him Yefim, And he turned out to be very enterprising. But there was a falling out between my parents and Chaim, they left the Bronx and moved to Astoria, and I never knew they existed until we received an invitation to their son Gabie's Bar Mitzvah. At the age of 11 I found Gabie and Bobby, real first cousins. And my mother became "The Mima.—the aunt."
In 1997, David and I went to Vaslui and Kishinev to see the cities where my parents were born. (We also did a bit of sightseeing in Romania.) I found somebody who said that he knew my mother's brother Meilich who was employed as the Shamas of the Shul. He survived the Holocaust—I even have letters from him into the '50s. When I asked if he had any children he said he had a son named Solo. I asked what kind of name is that, he explained: Solo—Solomon. He said that he went to Buenos Aires. I tried to locate him through HIAS, but with no success. There was no one left in Kishinev, but according to Bobby, those who did not go to Israel went to Moscow.
As an only child of a widowed mother who had a sister in Paris and a brother in Vaslui Romania, I didn't grow up with a lot of family around. I had friends with brothers and sisters, grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins. Except for cousins, I had none of that. Of course, when you don't have something, you don't know what it is to be with it, so you don't know what it's like to be without it. I read stories, and saw movies about large families, but I don't remember yearning for that world. A brother or sister would have been nice—and certainly a father…
Growing up, I didn't know the definition of cousin. I must have been in college when I learned that a cousin is the child of your parents' sibling. That means if my father or mother had a brother or sister, and they married and had children, those children would be my first cousins. It so happens that my father did have lots of brothers and sisters, but I didn’t know anything about them, and as far as I knew, they were all in Kishinev, where my father was born.
So, my mother's sister, Sura Leah, who was in Paris and married to Hersh Leib, were my uncle and aunt, as was my mother’s brother, Meilich, in Vaslui Romania, and his wife. And their children were my first cousins. If they grew up and married and had children, then their children would be my second cousins. I still have no idea what "once removed" is all about.
As far as I knew, my mother had a cousin named Beryl Goldstein and he was married to Yetta,, and they had lots of children, and I called them cousins, and a few of these children had children and I called them cousins. First of all, what kind of cousin was Beryl to my mother? Was he the son of a sibling of my mother's father? Both he and my mother were named Goldstein. But I was told that Beryl came from Bucharest. Well, maybe he was born in Vaslui and moved to Bucharest. Where did he meet Yetta? She is from a town in northeastern Romania called Botosan. (I learned this from her son-in-law Arthur Kestenbaum who married Beryl and Yetta’s daughter Ruth.) I believe Beryl and Yetta married in Romania and came to America together. How did my mother find them when she came to New York? I am glad she did because that family became an important family in my life.
As best as I can remember, Beryl and Yetta's children were Irna, Jean, Betty, Ruth, Sally and Louis. Irna was the oldest, and to me the most mysterious. I don't remember ever seeing her. She moved to California, married someone who I believe was not Jewish, did not have children, and lived a very glamorous life.
Jean became a nurse. I believe she was married and divorced. Remarried and moved to Florida and had a son and died at a relatively young age.
Betty was a wise-cracking, attractive woman. (All the Goldstein women were attractive.) She married a man named Harry Feit, who I remember as a fat, cigar-smoking hustler, and something of a politician. I believe Betty caught him cheating on her and left him.
Ruth was the anchor of the family. It was with Ruth, her husband Arthur and their daughter Barbara, that Beryl and Yetta lived. And it was to Ruth and Arthur’s apartment at 1530 Sheridan Avenue (TR2-3089) that my mother and I would come from time to time for Friday night dinner. If we were lucky, Jean, Betty or Sally might be there as well.
Sally was the youngest, and she married Lou Rosenberg who I liked a lot. He sometimes showed up at Ruth’s as well. I believe he was drafted in 1942, and we had a correspondence while he was in the Army, which I enjoyed. Soon after he was discharged, they left for Florida, and they had two daughters.
Finally, there was Louis, who, along with Arthur, was my role model. My mother and I visited Louis and his wife Esther in their home at 3041 Sedgwick Avenue (KI3-3850). I believe our visits tended to be on Sundays. How this pattern developed, I don’t know.
When the children were growing up, the Goldsteins lived on the Lower East Side. The story is that they survived by Yetta baking pretzels which the children would sell. Beryl would pass the day drinking tea on Second Avenue. Ruth went to work for Western Union after graduating from high school. I have no idea what the other girls did. Jean must have gone to nursing school, and Louis went to Syracuse University, interested in forestry. He married Esther Kavenoff and they had two children Rosalind and Edward.
I therefore had three younger cousins: Barbara, Rozzie and Eddie. Unfortunately, I didn't feel close to them. We chatted awkwardly when I visited, but it was clearly a visit of my mother with their parents, and I was taken along. I answered adult’s questions about school, and sat quietly. My mother spoke Yiddish with Beryl and Yetta, and English with their offspring.
The story of Louis and Esther is also the story of Esther's family—the Kavenoffs. The matriarch of the Kavenoff family lived a block away from me on Beck Street (722) in a "private house." That is how we referred to homes that were not apartment houses. Living there were a sister Ray with her husband Bob Pollack and their daughter Sallie Mae, and a brother Max and his wife Jackie and their daughter Cynthia. Max was a lawyer in partnership with his brother Joe. Max played the violin, was active in local Democratic politics, and had polio. My mother went to him when she drafted her will. Another sister, Lillie, assisted Esther. There were two other brothers—Morris and Sidney, and two other sisters—Rose and Yetta. Quite a family! I had a crush on Sallie, and was thrilled when Cynthia was born. I really didn't know Joe who moved to Florida and had Francine and two other daughters, Roz and Ruth. Francine and her husband Mark and their daughter Shelley lived here in Brookline and for want of a better word, we call each other cousins.
There was one other cousin—the Moskowitz's. They lived in the Brighton Beach area of Brooklyn—2013 East 13th Street. Again, I have no idea how we were related. I know they were from Romania, and it is possible that the connection was with Hannah Moskowitz. Her husband was Sigmund and I believe they ran a grocery store. They had two daughters whose names I have forgotten. I do remember that they had a dog that I couldn’t stand, I I kept confusing the dog's name with one of the daughters: one was Bootsie and one was Mitzie, but I don't remember who was who. The other Moskowitz family that we considered cousins but that we didn't visit was Harry Moskowitz. He was a handsome man with a carefully trimmed moustache who was a successful furrier with a business in Manhattan.
I have already written about having discovered that I had real cousins named Schlitt when I was 11. Henry Schlitt was the son of one of my father's brothers. My parents helped him and his wife Dora to come to America, helped get them an apartment next to my parents on Beck Street and may have even gotten Henry his first job. We called him Chaim, Dora called him Yefim, And he turned out to be very enterprising. But there was a falling out between my parents and Chaim, they left the Bronx and moved to Astoria, and I never knew they existed until we received an invitation to their son Gabie's Bar Mitzvah. At the age of 11 I found Gabie and Bobby, real first cousins. And my mother became "The Mima.—the aunt."
In 1997, David and I went to Vaslui and Kishinev to see the cities where my parents were born. (We also did a bit of sightseeing in Romania.) I found somebody who said that he knew my mother's brother Meilich who was employed as the Shamas of the Shul. He survived the Holocaust—I even have letters from him into the '50s. When I asked if he had any children he said he had a son named Solo. I asked what kind of name is that, he explained: Solo—Solomon. He said that he went to Buenos Aires. I tried to locate him through HIAS, but with no success. There was no one left in Kishinev, but according to Bobby, those who did not go to Israel went to Moscow.
Original Format
application/msword
Collection
Citation
Jacob Schlitt, “Mishpukhe,” Autobiographical stories & other writing by Jacob Schlitt, accessed April 24, 2024, https://tsirlson.omeka.net/items/show/72.