Dear Miriam and Sarah,
I know you are being raised to think of yourselves as nice Jewish girls--and you are nice Jewish girls! But, I am afraid there is more to the story. You can blame me for that. You see, just like your mother, you are also nice Irish-Scottish-English-Danish-French girls. On your father's side you get names like Shapiro, White, Kuperstock, Michels, Weiler, Zinnamon, and Stein. On my side you get names like Fraser, Christensen, Sweeney, McGoldrick, Colver, Albert, Noel, and Miller.
What amazes me about you girls that is that in your family tree one can see so much history, so much human drama. Let's see. So far in my family tree project I have found direct ancestors who have witnessed or participated in the following: the founding of the Plymouth colony (the Colvers), the Huguenot migration to Virginia (the Noels), the Revolutionary War and the pioneer history of Kentucky (the Alberts), slave-holding (the Alberts), the early history of Iowa (the Colvers), the Irish Famine and subsequent migration to America (the McGoldricks and the Sweeneys), the Haymarket Riots in Chicago (the Frasers), the growth of the meat-packing industries of the mid-west (the Christensens), the migration of Russian and Polish Jews to New York between 1880 and 1920 (the Kuperstocks, the Shapiros and the Whites), and the migration of German Jews to Gold Rush California (the Michels). Wow. And there are still maternal lines I have not discovered. I will be telling you more about all of this in the coming months. Stay tuned!
Love,
Mom
Saturday, August 29, 2009
Thursday, August 27, 2009
The Truth About Your Dad
Dear Miriam and Sarah,
You know your dad as a fun, hard-working, loving father who likes to lay in his bed whenever possible. I know him as a wonderful husband and a good man who likes to lay in his bed whenever possible. But did you know that he could actually be the poster child for Bay Area Jewish History Month if there was such a thing. Let me explain:
Your father is a complex and fearsome combination of the two big strands of the Bay Area Jewish community--the German Jews and the Eastern European Jews. His paternal relations, the Michels, are the German Jews and they have been in San Francisco since the 1860s. On the maternal side are the Eastern European Jews, the Shapiros and Whites (or Witkoviches). They came to New York in 1890 and 1920--so during the Great Migration--and moved to San Francisco in the 1930s. The Michels, like most of the German Jews who came to the Bay Area in the middle of the 19th century, were fairly prosperous merchants. Many belonged to Temple Emanu-el, though they were never particularly observant. Mostly they were pretty assimilated and they enjoyed the pleasures of San Francisco life, including the delicious shellfish! On the other side, there was Rabbi Saul White, one of the great Conservative Rabbis of San Francisco. Saul was raised in a Polish shtetl and his mother Chava was an observant, Yiddish speaking woman. Now, Saul assimilated too in his own way, but you get my point.
Your father seems to have merged these two strands and come up with a pretty interesting and mostly workable Jewish identity.
On the one hand,
Love,
Mom
You know your dad as a fun, hard-working, loving father who likes to lay in his bed whenever possible. I know him as a wonderful husband and a good man who likes to lay in his bed whenever possible. But did you know that he could actually be the poster child for Bay Area Jewish History Month if there was such a thing. Let me explain:
Your father is a complex and fearsome combination of the two big strands of the Bay Area Jewish community--the German Jews and the Eastern European Jews. His paternal relations, the Michels, are the German Jews and they have been in San Francisco since the 1860s. On the maternal side are the Eastern European Jews, the Shapiros and Whites (or Witkoviches). They came to New York in 1890 and 1920--so during the Great Migration--and moved to San Francisco in the 1930s. The Michels, like most of the German Jews who came to the Bay Area in the middle of the 19th century, were fairly prosperous merchants. Many belonged to Temple Emanu-el, though they were never particularly observant. Mostly they were pretty assimilated and they enjoyed the pleasures of San Francisco life, including the delicious shellfish! On the other side, there was Rabbi Saul White, one of the great Conservative Rabbis of San Francisco. Saul was raised in a Polish shtetl and his mother Chava was an observant, Yiddish speaking woman. Now, Saul assimilated too in his own way, but you get my point.
Your father seems to have merged these two strands and come up with a pretty interesting and mostly workable Jewish identity.
On the one hand,
- He definitely has the aristocratic bearing of the German Jews
- He loves shellfish and has never been able to turn down a local Crab in Black Bean Sauce
- He takes his girls to services every weekend
- We keep a kosher home
- He objects vociferously to guitar playing on the Sabbath
Love,
Mom
And so it starts...
Dear Miriam and Sarah,
I was driving home from work the other day thinking about you girls and how crazy things are with all these budget cuts in the schools and the surreal state that California has gotten itself into and the whole mess over health care and the crazy meanness I see splashed all over the news and whether or not we will ever be able to send you to college. You get the point. You know your mom is a bit of a worrier. But then I began to ponder how essentially breathtaking the two of you are. Jeez, it just astounds me daily to think that you came from me and your Dad. And I began to think of all the forces that are going into shaping the lives of Miriam and Sarah--all the historical forces, social forces, economic forces. I know, that seems weird, but I am an historian and archivist and that is what I do when I am driving! It comforts me somehow to look at the big picture, to search for context and relationships. So, I found myself thinking about the context of Miriam and Sarah.
Actually, I think endlessly about context. I think I have some pathological need to contextualize my life. I remember reading biographies and memoirs when I was younger mainly because they somehow helped me gauge where my own life was going. I know, that seems crazy narcissistic. But what can I say? So, now I am contextualizing my daughters. It was inevitable. But now my contextualizing habit is worse than ever because I am doing the genealogy thing. You see, in the past few months, I have begun to create a family tree for you girls. I know you could not give a fooey (or whatever) about this right now. And maybe you will never give a fooey about it. That's OK because, just between you and me, I am really doing it for myself. Shocking, I know. I am really doing it to explain myself to myself. Somehow, I became an Irish-Scottish-English-Danish-possibly French-Jewish wife, mother, archivist and historian living in the Bay Area of California at the beginning of the 21st century. I really just want to know how the heck that happened. So, bear with me girls as I try to figure it out because it might tell you a lot about yourselves and all the amazing forces that built you. And who knows? In the process, maybe I will figure out the history of everything. I can try anyway.
Love,
Mom
I was driving home from work the other day thinking about you girls and how crazy things are with all these budget cuts in the schools and the surreal state that California has gotten itself into and the whole mess over health care and the crazy meanness I see splashed all over the news and whether or not we will ever be able to send you to college. You get the point. You know your mom is a bit of a worrier. But then I began to ponder how essentially breathtaking the two of you are. Jeez, it just astounds me daily to think that you came from me and your Dad. And I began to think of all the forces that are going into shaping the lives of Miriam and Sarah--all the historical forces, social forces, economic forces. I know, that seems weird, but I am an historian and archivist and that is what I do when I am driving! It comforts me somehow to look at the big picture, to search for context and relationships. So, I found myself thinking about the context of Miriam and Sarah.
Actually, I think endlessly about context. I think I have some pathological need to contextualize my life. I remember reading biographies and memoirs when I was younger mainly because they somehow helped me gauge where my own life was going. I know, that seems crazy narcissistic. But what can I say? So, now I am contextualizing my daughters. It was inevitable. But now my contextualizing habit is worse than ever because I am doing the genealogy thing. You see, in the past few months, I have begun to create a family tree for you girls. I know you could not give a fooey (or whatever) about this right now. And maybe you will never give a fooey about it. That's OK because, just between you and me, I am really doing it for myself. Shocking, I know. I am really doing it to explain myself to myself. Somehow, I became an Irish-Scottish-English-Danish-possibly French-Jewish wife, mother, archivist and historian living in the Bay Area of California at the beginning of the 21st century. I really just want to know how the heck that happened. So, bear with me girls as I try to figure it out because it might tell you a lot about yourselves and all the amazing forces that built you. And who knows? In the process, maybe I will figure out the history of everything. I can try anyway.
Love,
Mom
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