Carolisa: The information given to you by Temple Beth EL is totally correct.
If your father was given a Hebrew name at birth only your family would be
aware of it.

Betty Provizer Starkman
Bloomfield Hills, MI

Carol asked for private responses, but I too am interested in this line.
My late MIL, a member of Temple Emanuel (R) of Yonkers, NY also insisted
that she and her sister had no Hebrew names because it was not the custom
at that time.

It would be helpful for many of us to learn how other researchers have
coped with this.

Barbara S. Mannlein
Tucson, AZ

I'm not familiar with Detroit, but I know that when my Mother grew up (the
1910's) the reform temple in Buffalo had services on Sunday and said
nothing in Hebrew. She considered the more recent services at the
temple "Orthodox" (apologies to the real orthodox) because of this and the
cantor.

So my guess would be that he didn't have a Hebrew name which was used in
the temple-perhaps his family had given him one however. Most synagogues
did not at that time keep a lot of records, so if they did have a Hebrew
name for him or a Bar Mitzvah, they probably wouldn't have a record of this
anyway. Your best bet for finding one would be to check with a synagogue
or Jewish nursing home or Jewish funeral parlor which might have records

from later life.

Even when I was born (1940's) children were not given Hebrew names-I think
that Bar/Bat Mitzvahs use them now, but I would guess that many are 'made
up' when the child is 12.

Sally Bruckheimer
Harrison, NY

On Tue, 26 Aug 2003 02:31:15 UTC, bsmannlein@... (Barbara
Mannlein) opined:

Carol asked for private responses, but I too am interested in this
line.
My late MIL, a member of Temple Emanuel (R) of Yonkers, NY also insisted
that she and her sister had no Hebrew names because it was not the
custom at that time.

But that is not the question asked by the original post. For women not
to have a Hebrew name has not been unusual in recent centuries. For
men, it has been a rarity. Alas, our ancestors, for better or worse,
knew nothing of Political Correctness.

To address the original question: The only time anybody in the
gentleman's synagogue would have known his Hebrew name (which he
almost certainly had) would have been upon ascending to the Torah;

from the question, it does not seem that this happened very often, if

at all.

Historically, the graves of virtually all Jews buried under Jewish
auspices would have been marked by a monument inscribed in Hebrew with
the Hebrew name and patronymic of the deceased. One of the least happy
developments in American Jewry has been the abandonment of this
custom, for no visible reason, so that the Jewish identity (name,
father's name, etc.) is lost with the memory of his survivors. That,
precisely, is what makes this moment a historical one for
Jewish-American genealogy: in the absence of the missing data,
genealogy will become difficult or impossible in the community in only
a few years. Witness the question that started this thread.

--
Stan Goodman, Qiryat Tiv'on, Israel

Searching:
NEACHOWICZ/NOACHOWICZ, NEJMAN/NAJMAN, SURALSKI: >from Lomza Gubernia
ISMACH: >from Lomza Gubernia, Galicia, and Ukraina
HERTANU, ABRAMOVICI, LAUER: >from Dorohoi District, Romania
GRISARU, VATARU: >from Iasi, Dorohoi, and Mileanca, Romania

See my interactive family tree (requires Java 1.1.6 or better):
http://www.hashkedim.com

Please remove the CAPITAL LETTERS >from my address in order to send me
email, and include "JEWISHGEN" in the subject line, else your message
will be deleted automatically, unread.