None of my immediate relatives were born in the US so I cannot comment directly. But on the early 20th century census form of my uncle (whose skin color was light brown) his "race" (sic) was listed as

#records

Weddings are not usually performed in synagogues. My European-born parents were married in America, in the early 1930's, in my mother's brother's living room, on a Friday afternoon. My wife's grandpar

#lithuania #warsaw #general #hungary

I was named Idel Berl in Yiddish after both my grandmothers - Esther and Basya. Idel and Esther both begin with an aleph in Yiddish. When I became bar-mitzvah my Cheider teacher said that Idel was act

#names

There is a Hebrew name pronounced Catriel in modern Hebrew and Cosriel [Kosriel] in Ashekenzic Hebrew. Kos could be a nickname for Cosriel. If you know where he is buried, you might be able to see if

#poland #names

I think you mean records of Jewish conversion to Catholicism, not of conversion to Judaism. And if your grandfather adopted an orphaned Jewish child (for example, a baby orphaned in the wake of a pogr

#dna #poland #galicia

Have you searched for baptismal records of your mother in her town of birth? It seems unlikely that before the Second World War Jewish parents would have given up their child for adoption to non-Jews.

#dna #poland #galicia

There is the official name, the one on all the documents, there is the Jewish name, the one their parents gave them and used to be called up to the torah if male and on their ketuba (aka kesiba) [=Jew

#ukraine #yiddish #russia #names

In 1925 my 21 year-old mother, Zelda (Zena) ECHTMAN, came from Odessa (then Russia, now Ukraine) to her brother in Detroit (who spelled his name ACHTMAN). She then worked for a year in New York, while

#russia #usa

I don't know the translation charge from Polish to English but I should imagine that a lot depends on how long it takes to translate a page, and what the cost of living is in a given country. I'm a se

#translation

As far as I know, in Jewish law it is forbidden to name a child after a living parent because it violates the Fourth Commandment, to honor your parents - somebody might mix up a child with their paren

#general

The word is "napach" and it means tinsmith, someone who works with metal (sheet metal worker)

My maternal grandmother (first name unknown) was originally a Kaminsky , from Odessa in what is now Ukraine. When my mother (born Zelda Echtman or Achtman) first came to America in the mid 1920's she