I gotta ask him about that

My eyes still dilated after an eye examination, my vision blurred, I walked as best I could down Rehov Yaffo, determined to find my way, no matter what obstacles were placed before me, to Power Coffeeworks, the home of the finest coffee known to mankind and the most unexpected conversations you’d ever want to hear, guaranteed to glue you to your seat long after you’ve finished sipping your beverage. Perched at my usual stool at the counter, I could not but hear the fellow a few seats away. Somewhere in the middle of his discussion with the young barista on-duty, he mentioned his great-grandmother. This guy remembers his great-grandmother? I gotta ask him about that.

It seems that Natan Shlomo’s great-grandmother was part of his life until he was nineteen. He remembers her well and the stories she told about their family. Some of their ancestors were on board a ship on the Black Sea, ostensibly headed for the Holy Land. But to avoid pirates, the captain sailed in the other direction, landing in England and ultimately in Boston. This was in 1810, a Jewish family arriving in New England when there weren’t many kindred souls to greet them as they disembarked from the ship.

Do you realize, I asked, how fortunate you are? Some of us are spending copious amounts of time and effort – let alone money – to find out even a fraction of the information you’ve acquired about your family. By the time I was four, I explained, I had only one grandparent left, my beloved grandmother, known as ‘Tante Mascha.’ I remember reading to her when I first learned how, ‘teaching her English.’ When I was in college, I would visit her at the ‘Old Age Home’ where she would live out her last years. (Today they would call it a ‘Senior Residence.’) I would walk into the lobby and have to pick her out from a long row of elderly Jewish women sitting quietly by themselves with not much to do. As soon as I located her and said, ‘Hello Grandma,’ she would invariably inquire if I was ‘Frankie’ (my fraternal twin-brother) or ‘Freddie,’ even though I was always the one who stopped by to see her. (It’s always good to be sure!)

Unlike some of her contemporaries, Tante Mascha was not the sort to regale you with stories about her long life. Maybe if I had thought to ask; if I had sat down and compiled a list of what I’d like to know about a woman who arrived in the New World in 1889 and now it was 1960 and things had changed a bit. But I was too busy being an indifferent English major at City College to give a thought to where she came from or what she remembered about her family. (What made you decide to leave Europe? Did you come alone? Do you remember what it was like when you arrived at Castle Garden?)

It didn’t take long for Natan Shlomo and me to engage in a long conversation Power Coffeeworks-style, one in which I talked about MY great-grandmother Zelda (the one who was born sometime between 1827 and 1831 and died in 1929), he talked about his Jewish journey, and we exchanged thoughts about the Ramchal, Shammai, and Tiferet Shlomo (more on him later). We could have kept chit-chatting for the longest time, but there are always things to do and places to go. I said good-bye to the crew at Power Coffeeworks and headed home, thinking about what it would be like to converse with a great-grandparent.

There was this guy named Yankel…

Because I can’t reach out to the parents of my grandparent – even if we shared a common language – I needed to join the army of special people who do genealogical research to learn about who they were, where they were from, and what was life like back then. I first conceived of this project as akin to solving a puzzle, placing pieces in the right places, or deciding that the answer to ‘certain photoreceptor cells’ in four letters was ‘rods.’. Then I realized that the puzzle was never ending; every time you thought you were done, there was another clue to solve or another piece to add. But maybe it’s more like a journey; perhaps akin to starting out for the Holy Land and winding up far away in New England, where you never thought you’d be. And along the way, there are people who will help you. Otherwise, you’d still be on dry land, watching the ship set sail without you.

I’ve already mentioned Jeremy, who got me started, in effect, carrying my luggage aboard the ship. But, in growing my Family Tree, there were other genealogists who helped me along the way, and I owe them a HUUUUUGE debt of gratitude.

Barbara’s cousins Pat and Jerry, hearing about my project, wrote to her, Hey, our son David has researched our lineage. Why doesn’t Fred contact him? Which I did. And what did he send me?

Descendants of the Danilevsky Family

Family tree started by David Danoff (b. 1939, grandson of Hyman)

Expanded by David. J. Danoff (b. 1977, great-grandson of Avraham Lev)

Last updated 6/10/2023

There was this guy named Yankel, who lived in the area close to the borders of today’s Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. He and his wife Chatsel had a son Shloma (born around 1810), who, with his wife Riva, had a son Sholom, who, with his wife Sora Raisa, had three sons, Abraham, Chaim Yehezkel, and Orlik, and one daughter, Brina. And these four had together thirty children, born between 1892 and 1922. And there it was, downloaded and printed out in outline form, covering thirteen pages, are all of the above-mentioned and all their children and their spouses, and their children and their spouses, going through eight generations (starting with Yankel). I showed this extraordinary research to Barbara, which enabled us to make connections between members of her sprawling family. (Barbara, didn’t we meet someone named Lil Burka at your mother’s apartment in Deerfield Beach – some sort of cousin? Well, there she is on page nine. She’s the granddaughter of your great-grandmother’s sister.) Anyone who looked at this chronology would get a sense of a typical Jewish family coming to America one by one and going off in many directions. Over here in generation #7, we find a Gandalf and a Galadriel, and over there in a different lineage, we find in the same generation, a Chananel, a Yechezkel, and a Elyashiv. All duly entered in my Family Tree.

And then Jason Casden and I connected. Unlike Barbara’s family, which regularly held Family Circle meetings with over 100 attendees (I know because I got to attend a few of them), the Casdens were a little more stand-offish. I always knew that Henry Cohen – who died a few months after we were born – had a brother, and together they had a shop on the Lower East Side, in which they made furniture. But I never saw hide nor hair of any of his family. As in, Nathaniel Casden had first cousins who were total strangers to us. That’s not normal, but….

Anyway, the brother, Charles/Yishai, was not just making furniture. There’s a whole family out there that I never knew about, including Jason, who should be my second cousin twice removed. And he has been doing some research, including DNA stuff. In addition to adding several layers to my Tree, he shared with me some correspondence between himself and Adam Cherson, a major researcher of Cohanic DNA. According to Cherson, ‘the current data suggest you are a direct descendant of a close paternal relative of R’ Eleasar HaCohen, grandfather of Tiferet Shlomo. R’ Eleasar was the chief rabbi in Vaidislaw around 1740 CE, a small town in Poland south of Katowice and Czestochowa. Tiferet Shlomo (I said I would get back to him.) was the founder of the Radomsker Hassidic Dynasty, in a town just north of Czestochowa.’ Holy moley, the Casdens, today a very un-Hassidic family, most likely have some very interesting ancestors! I shared this information with Jeremy, and, not to be outdone, he sent me a link to a YouTube video he had made, tracing part of his family a lot further back. A lot further back! (You may watch here.)

All the way from Utah…

And then I heard from Susan, all the way from Utah, of all places. She tracked me down through a DNA match that established that we are (likely) second cousins on the Jacobson side.  Thanks to Jeremy, we had already established the existence of great-grandmother Zelda Allschwang and a whole slew of related Allschwangs, one of whom, Schorre (or Sarah), was Susan’s ancestor. Her son Mark was hot on the trail of our common lineage and the connections between the Jacobsons and the Allschwangs, with some Effenbachs and Michelsons thrown in for good measure. Sure enough, he had all this material from the Latvijas Valst Vēstures Arhïvs. (I love how easy it is on a Mac to add these funny accent marks). The first cover letter says:

In reply to your application please be informed that the records of the archives fond (sic) “Riga Tax Administration” – the lists of Jewish families belonging to Riga, set up in 1858-1887, 1902 and subsequently supplemented, as well as the birth, marriage and death records of the Jewish community in Hasenpoth for 1885-1905, as available at our archives, the inhabitants lists of Jewish families living in Grobin-Hasenpoth district, set up in 1893, contains the following information on the family of Max Jacobson…. Well OK then!

What was enclosed, in addition to two pages of summary information about the life and death of sundry individuals, were twenty-eight sheets, photocopies of barely legible hand-written documents in who-knows-what language, a translation into English of what those documents said, and three handy-dandy genealogical charts. If that wasn’t enough, what followed in a subsequent correspondence was ‘…the recruits’ enlistment registers of the Jewish community in Pilten for 1848, 1851, 1854,1871…’ If nothing else, these folks were thorough. Well, thorough but not always accurate – or at least needing a proofreader. As in:

‘Leiser’s relative Hirsh – son of Joseph Jacobsohn, born in ca. 1772 or 1873 or 1775… His wife Zippe, born in ca. 1877 or 1879 or 1881 (she was registered as aged 25 in ca. 1805-1806…) A good try, but come on! Or as my charming wife would tell me: Pay attention. Always good advice.