Hi from Paris,
To be sure you are aware of all possible books, Brody's Yiskor Bukh has been translated in English and printed by JewishGen YB project in June 2018.
Full title is :" An Eternal Light : Brody, in Memoriam", ISBN 978-1-939561-619; 712 pages.
Khavershaft
Bernard Flam 
Archives & history of Medem Center - Arbeter Ring (Bund) of France
Searching : FLAM around Olesko & Brody, AGID around Lemberg
ZYSMAN & KRONENBERG around Lodz

Hello John,
This is indeed very interesting. My great-grandparents, Simon Lazarus Lansburgh and his wife Rebecca lived in Panama City. After he died, Rebecca came to San Francisco with her two young sons. According to family lore, the came with their best friends the Delvalles. The Delvalles are not listed in the passenger list with them ("Passengers Arrived," SF Examiner 31 Dec 1881 pg 3, col 5; Newspapers.com). However, Rebecca apparently came on her own about a year earlier, and stayed in the grand old Arlington Hotel in Santa Barbara, to recuperate from tuberculosis. An article about her imminent return also mentions that "Mr. Mrs. and Miss Del Valle of Panama" were heading directly to Santa Barbara (untitled, Morning Press (Santa Barbara CA), 29 Dec 1881, pg 3, col 3; California Digital Newspaper Collection: cdnc.com).

Thanks for your response, but my question was more about them traveling under the name of GROSSMAN, rather than BERKOWITZ. Under what circumstances would that happen. 
And to make it more confusing, they appear (hard to read) to be going to Philadelphia to "husb Abr Grossman", and not to Peppi's husband Abraham Berkowitz. Any thoughts?

Here is another helpful site: https://www.hebrewsurnames.com/search
Semion Sucholutsky

To Mashiach:  Thank you for correctly summarizing the Ellis Island name
situation in your maingroups note below.   As you noted, if someone did
not want to use their name on the manifest or change their name, they
had the option of putting the name they wanted to be their legal name on
their citizenship papers.  This was a standard procedure and did not
cost anything extra. I am mentoring many refugees who have come into
Philadelphia in the last ten years, and they continue to have name
problems for a variety of reasons, including the fact that many
countries have different naming patterns and alphabets. In many of the
Mideastern and African countries husbands and wives do not have the same
last name and have a number of names. These individuals can make name
changes and choices when they get their citizenship papers.  So things
haven't changed that much!

I grew up in NYC hearing an Ellis Island joke.  I just googled it and
found the story as follows:

https://theconversation.com/jewish-americans-changed-their-names-but-not-at-ellis-island-96152
Awell-worn joke in American Jewish culture
<https://books.google.com/books/about/A_Treasury_of_American_Jewish_Folklore.html?id=pWoaAQAAIAAJ>goes
like this. A Jewish immigrant landed at Ellis Island in New York. The
procedures were confusing, and he was overwhelmed by the commotion. When
one of the officials asked him “What is your name?” he replied, “Shayn
fergessen,” which in Yiddish means “I’ve already forgotten.” The
official then recorded his name as Sean Ferguson.

The web site listed above has a full discussion of the name change
stories at Ellis Island, so I hope that this can put the whole matter to
rest on Maingroups.

Avivah Pinski
near Philadelphia

From: Mashiach L. Bjorklund
<mailto:logictheorist@...?subject=Re:%20%22His%20name%20was%20changed%20at%20Ellis%20Island%22>
Date: Thu, 09 Jul 2020 08:56:58 EDT

Sorry if someone might have alluded to this answer earlier. This is a
long thread and towards the end I just skimmed the posts. As many have
said, names did not change at Castle Garden, Ellis Island, or any of the
many other ports of entry. The name on the manifest is the name they
used - period. So where did the name changes occur? Answer: When they
bought their ticket. Tickets were purchased at ticket offices across the
continent and in the UK. Steamship lines had ticket offices located in
most major cities. At the point they bought their ticket their name had
to be translated/transliterated into the language of the country of
their destination. For the USA that was English. For people from the UK,
Italy, Germany, etc. that translation was minimal if any at all and was
often very similar to their original name. For people from Russia,
Poland, AKA the Pale that meant Cyrillic or Hebrew/Yiddish to English. A
much more difficult translation. To compound the problem many people
were illiterate, so their name was given verbally to the ticket agent.
So how did the ticket agent choose the name they got? Many had postal
directories from New York City, as well as a few other major US cities.
They thumbed through the directories until they found a name they
thought fit the bill. This is often why people like brothers, or other
close family members, ended up in the US with different surnames. They
bought their tickets at different times or different offices or from
different ticket agents. The bottom line is they got their name and then
that name on their ticket had to match the name on the ships manifest in
order for them to board for passage. The manifest was then turned over
to the port of entry (unaltered) on arrival and their name had to match
the manifest in order for them to legally enter the country. Any
discrepancy and back they went, at the steamship companies expense. Now
*after they entered the country and became residents they were free to
change their name again if they so desired. *Many did to Americanize it.
For instance Pinkowitz became Pincourt, Kvint became Quint, etc.. *Many
changed their name upon becoming US citizens. Find their citizenship
documents and you will often find two names. The one they immigrated
with and the one they now choose to be called by which from the point of
citizenship became their legal name.* I hope this clears up some of the
confusion.
--
Avivah R. Z. Pinski ,  near Philadelphia, USA

Hi All, 

My paternal grandfather Einoch Harast arrived in New York (heading to Philadelphia) in 1907. HIAS located him as entering Great Britain in 1917, name now became Emil Harost,  because his father in Russia was dying. I know he wouldn't have needed a passport to come to the U.S., but wouldn't he have needed one to return to Russia? I've looked but can't seem to find one. Any suggestions?

Thanks, Molly Arost Staub

Researching
Harast/Arost,  Shtofman, Berenson, Groffman/Graffman

Dear David,
I found the information you requested and sent it to you. Just wanted others to know so they needn't duplicate. Best of luck with your genealogical research. Stay safe and well.

Sincerely,
Lin Herz
Palm Bay, Florida

With thanks to all the responders.....all indications are that U.S. Columbia refers to Panama.

John Anderson

@Jeffrey Herrmann,

I had to giggle a little when I read your note because I have also undergone that journey ;-)
One thing is for certain: what we think we know today won't be the same as what we think we know tomorrow!
Most likely there are numerous persons on your twig, they just haven't taken the plunge into DNA testing. You are a pioneer into your sub-tree, which surely contains fabulous undiscovered mysteries.
Hopefully those mysteries will be made clear during our lifetimes.

@Jill Whitehead, Please see my next comment. If the Hammer report is correct, then there are some G persons who come from a Cohanic tradition.

@Stephen Weinstein: You raise some interesting points. For purposes of clarity I usually refer to Cohanim  and y-chromosome Aharons as being two distinct categories. Your explanation makes clear that not all y-chromosome Aharons are Cohanim, strictly speaking under Halakhic law. But one needs to be careful here because strictly speaking under Halakhic law, there can be no non-y-chromosome Aharons who are Cohanim, and yet there are apparently many R-M269 Cohanim (according to the Hammer report). I believe there has to be a Rabbinical interpretation of the definition of Cohanim to include also persons who by tradition have become Cohanim, but do not express Aharon's y-chromosome. The purpose of all of this is not to exclude some Cohanim who are not descended from y-chromosome Aharon from the priesthood but to explain and accept how the necessities of how random human reproduction sometimes require cultural adjustment to our ways of thinking.

What I find fascinating about today's discussion landscape is that it is becoming evident that certain parts of the Old Testament are more than postdictional metaphor; certain parts seem to be revealing actual geneaological and social facts which can be merged with DNA, linguistic, and archaeological evidence to build a fuller picture of human history and Jewish history.

Kudos to you and to everyone working in this field!

Have a Splendid Day,
Adam

Hi,
Thanks for your detailed post. 
Following website provides some people search services in Argentina (for a fee). What do you think about this site: Is it worth trying? is it not a scam?
https://www.dateas.com/es/consulta_cuit_cuil?

Semion Sucholutsky

Here's my name change story:

We arrived in the US in NYC on January 20, 1951, under the Displaced Persons Act. "We" means my mother and my two maternal grandparents, my Mom's younger brother Joe, and me. My biological father had died of food poisoning in September 1949, in Frankfurt, a few months before I was born. I was born in Amberg, in the American Zone of Occupation, and my family had been in Germany since 1946, having lived at DP camps at Hof-Saale, Degendorf, Regensberg, and finally in Amberg. 

We arrived aboard the troop ship General C.H. Muir. I caught measles on board, so Mom and I were quarantined for 10 days at Ellis Island, while the rest of the family disembarked normally at the West Side piers in NYC. HIAS housed and fed us for a few weeks in NYC, and then sent us by train to Baltimore, where our sponsor, Mom's Uncle Leo and his family, were waiting for us. 

Anyway, on to the name change: Even as a young child, I heard the name Przedborksi, and somehow knew that it used to be my grandparents' surname, which was now Preston. So I asked my Mom what happened, and she said "the man at Ellis Island changed it." So that was enough to satisfy a 7-year-old, and I didn't think about it for years.

Then, in my late 30's, at some family gathering, I related the story to a friend or relative, and Mom, overhearing me, said, "That's not what happened! I changed it."

So the real story is that we arrived in the US as Przedborski, and Mom, wanting to be a American, knew that this was not a "good American name." She picked up the Baltimore telephone book and looked for names starting with P-R-E (forget the "z", she said!) and once her eyes fixed on "Preston," she knew she had found her new name. So she went to court and had our name legally changed to Preston within the first few months of residing in America. 

In the late 50's, my Uncle Joe (my de facto big brother, just 5 years older than me,) and I used to watch "Sergeant Preston of the Yukon" on our enormous Philco tv with the diminutive screen, and we thought we were somehow related to the heroic title character. 

Would someone be so kind as to do the following look up for me-

Dear Ms. Shamian Grunfeld                                                                                  10th July 2020

My apology, if my memory is not mistaken, we may have exchanged e-mails in the past: re our Grunfeld Ancestors.

I did attempt to contact Eva Grunfeld--in Budapest--unfortunately I was told that sadly she passed away.

Sadly, time and time again I experience 'I am attempting to navigate in a blind alley.

If I am not mistaken--Noach ? Grunfeld may have been a son / or grandson of the Litcheke Rabbi. 

There is a 'sefer' / book about the Litcheke Dynasty--unfortunately  to my knowledge it is not available in English. -- 

I wonder, did you try to contact the Editors of the Paper?  Hirek from the elhurcoltakrol?  News/Information about the Deported.?

If I receive any info, I will update you..

Best wishes

Veronika Pachtinger

I am in need of translation from Yiddish to English of a letter written from my great-grandfather from Russia to my grandfather in the US, written sometime between 1920-1940.
Any help would be appreciated.
Please e-mail me directly: sjrstrauss@...  

My wife and I share 85 cMs of DNA. The likely  MRCA would be someone from Bialystok, where both of our maternal lines resided. I concur with the challenges created by  Ashkenazi endogamy. One of my FTDNA kit reflects more than 30000 "cousin" matches! Unless the match exceeds 175 cMs (and at least a 20 cM longest block] I have never succeeded in connecting the dots to the individual.
Note that GEDMatch has a utility that will "predict" if your parents are "related" .

In Rusian:

 

На память дорогой сестре Иды Шифман от любящего брата Исаака Шифмана.

 

Художественная фотография Розенмана в Бердичеве.

Портреты сохраняются.

Специальное ателье художественных портретов. 

 

Translate into English:

 

In memory of the dear sister of Ida (?) Shifman from the loving brother of Isaac Shifman.

 

Art photo of Rosenman in Berdichev.

Portraits are saved.

Special studio of art portraits.