When he was a boy, Harry Katznelson’s father was a bible scholar and would quote the beginning of a bible verse then have Harry or his brother Zev quote the end of the verse. Harry himself was from Lublin, while his future spouse Malka Meyerson was from a village in between Minsk and Pinsk. They were “living in a place ... Read More »
(Editor’s Note: This is a bit of a departure from the usual format. It is a fascinating research paper written by Maddie Bennet, for her 11th grade US History class at Kehillah Jewish High School in Palo Alto, CA.) I am a third generation American Jew, and, like many Jews, my roots go back to Eastern Europe. My research focuses ... Read More »
My grandmother, Palomba Aroesta, was 26 when she immigrated from Paris to the US. Before living in Paris, she resided in Salonika, Greece where she was born in 1900 and lived until she was 7 years old. My grandmother was the youngest daughter in her family of 8 children, most of whom where already married with families of their own. ... Read More »
This is a story about my Grandma Ida. Here is what I know: She came to the United States from Russia around 1910, when she was fourteen years old. Before she left, it was a dangerous time to be a Jew in her village; there were a lot of pogroms, and even though she was just a young girl, she ... Read More »
My great-grandmother, Rebecca Cohen, came to the U.S. in 1899, with her 6-month old daughter, Blanche, in her arms. She was fleeing the Cossack-led pogroms in the Russian Pale of Settlement, the only place the autocracy let Jews have permanent residency. We don’t know exactly where her shtetl was–somewhere in what’s now Belarus, near Minsk. My great-grandmother started a farm ... Read More »