Why would a teenager flee his Hassidic rabbinic roots? #galicia #poland #rabbinic


indy.crowley@...
 

The DNA evidence is compelling that my material grandfather, Philip Eisig Effrusi, lineage is one of the Galician Hassidic rabbinic families (Philip appears a name he adopted in the U.S.).  There are good matches with of rabbis with family surnames of Leifer, Rappart, and Rubin, Rosenerger and Euchenstein. It's possible his father may have been a Rabbi Moses Eichenstein of Schodnica, and his mother Sara Rifka Efrusi (perhaps never legitimized). The best evidence is that he immigrated to NYC around 1913 between the ages of 11 and 17. He never appeared to be formally associated with a congregation, had a common law marriage to my grandmother, and worked as a laundryman. My mother was his only child.   I am asking this question to learn if this would be so unusual to preclude Rabbi Moses being his father. 

--
Indy Crowley
Redmond, Washington USA
indy.crowley@...
Gottlieb
Eichenstein
Eisenstein
Allit
Olisky


Israel P
 

No. There were always rebellious children.
Israel Pickholtz


jbonline1111@...
 

I know a Hasidic rabbi whose brother left the fold as a young man a few decades ago.  I would guess this is not unusual. 
--
Barbara Sloan
Conway, SC


Paul Chirlin
 

And there have always been children who find their own path in life, who find their own truths, who may choose a faith different than the subset of a faith believed by a parent.  That does not make them rebellious, it may in fact make them fulfilled. 

Paul Chirlin
Florida


indy.crowley@...
 

Thank you to all that have replied.  This is helping on what's be long journey through sparse and always contradictory documentation.  My takeaway from the comments is my maternal grandfather's actions need not preclude him from being the son of a rabbi or rebbetzin who were part of established Hassidic families.  This despite: being perhaps the oldest son, taking his mother's surname, adding a christian first name (i.e. Philip) while remaining Jewish, immigrating alone to the US while still a teenager, having a common law wife, and always having a manual labor job.
--
Indy Crowley
Redmond, Washington USA
indy.crowley@...
Gottlieb
Eichenstein
Eisenstein
Allit
Olisky


Annette Weiss
 

FYI, Philip is not solely a Christian given name. I had a paternal uncle Philip and his parents were Orthodox.

Also, there were also females from Kohen and Levite families who "broke the mold and left the fold," and my maternal grandmother was one. She came from a long line of Kohens and Levites who intermarried with each other throughout many generations in Lithuania. She came to the US in the early 1900s and married a non-religious Galitzianer, and was disowned by her family.

Annette Weiss
New York City, NY
Searching for:
Cohen, Katz and Segal/Siegel from Lithuania
Teiksler, Zweifler, Kessler and Schwartz from Ukraine
Wajs/Weiss, Pakula and Dziedzinsky from Poland


Albert Braunstein
 

The Rebellion of the Daughters: Jewish Women Runaways in Habsburg Galicia
by Rachel Manekin investigates the flight of young Jewish women from their
Orthodox, mostly Hasidic families, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
 
Albert Braunstein
Melbourne, Australia


Jill Whitehead
 

The Ephrussis were a famous and very rich family who went from Odessa to Vienna and Paris, and they had a fabulous villa near Nice in the south of France, which is a tourist hotspot.  I visited it in 2019, when Vogue magazine were doing a photoshoot there. The Ephrussis married into the Rothschilds in France.  They were made famous in the book, "The Hare with Amber Eyes"  written by a British descendant of the Ephrussis, now a famous ceramacist Edmund de Waal. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edmund_de_Waal.

Jill Whitehead, Surrey, UK


l.a.m.buisman@...
 

If his name was Philip Eisig, wouldn't his fathers name be a variant of Isaac?

--
Loes Buisman, Amsterdam


jbonline1111@...
 

Philip is not a solely "christian" name.  My uncle was born in 1910 to Russian immigrant parents and named Philip. My son is named for him. As for manual labor, many rabbis also had to work at other jobs to support their families. Immigrants often took jobs that involved manual labor, partly because they did not speak English. Why would a son who left Hasidism and emigrated to the USA be different? 
--
Barbara Sloan
Conway, SC


Odeda Zlotnick
 

On Tue, Aug 30, 2022 at 03:49 PM, <l.a.m.buisman@...> wrote:
If his name was Philip Eisig, wouldn't his fathers name be a variant of Isaac?

--
Loes Buisman, Amsterdam
Eisig would certainly lead us to think of Isaac, but there's no reason to assume it's his father's name.  
 --
Odeda Zlotnick
Jerusalem, Israel.


Yaron Pedhazur
 

Do you have a paper trail or family knowledge he was a son of Rabbi Moses Eichenstein of Schodnica, and his mother Sara Rifka Efrusi ? 

If you have, no need to question, life in the shtetle was challenging enough, multiple reasons to leave, from personal to army draft… the name Philip is a non-issue, just Americanized. Jewish name may have been, for example, Feivish. 
Yaron Pedhazur


jbonline1111@...
 

",,the name Philip is a non-issue, just Americanized. Jewish name may have been, for example, Feivish."  This makes sense to me.  My uncle used the name Feivel as his Hebrew name and so does my son. 
--
Barbara Sloan
Conway, SC


indy.crowley@...
 

I wish to again to sincerely thank all who have replied, either directly to my topic or privately. Part of my motivation was gaining references and other insights to the lives and culture of these small Galician communities and Hassidic practices. This is so I may eventually share with my family. My main motivation was to obtain some insights that could assist in providing credibility into very incomplete and contradictory information. Philip is an enigma. There are multiple birthdates and names. There is no solid manifest match and his Government records are few and contradictory. For example, his offical birth year is 1902 as reflected on his naturalization petition.  Yet he registered for the WW1 draft at would be the age of 16.  This is not consistent as he would have been too young.  The records state he immigrated by himself in 1913. He would have been 15. Again, too young for US immigration laws at the time.  I have found a JRIPoland 1897 birth record for an Eisig Eisensten (the record content shows the surname is actually Eichenstein). The index has a Rabbi Moses Eichenstein of Schodnica as the father and Sara Rifke EFRUSI as the mother.  The mother's surname is essentially the same as what Philip used on several official Government documents.  The birth date puts his age much more consistent with traveling alone to the US and registering for the WWI draft.  What I had little insight into is the history, if any, of sons of Hassic rabbinic dynasties making such a clean break from these families. This seemed unusual and cast suspecion on the connections.   
--
Indy Crowley
Redmond, Washington USA
indy.crowley@...
Gottlieb
Eichenstein
Eisenstein
Allit
Olisky


Michele Lock
 

I found Philip/Eisig’s ship manifest list, from information in the index card for his certificate of arrival on Ancestry.com, which showed he arrived in 1913 on the SS Patricia. I looked for anyone born 1900 +/- 5 years, arriving in 1913 on the Patricia, last name starting with E, using SteveMorse.org. No wonder it was hard to find him – his name was mistakenly entered as Efruzim Eisig, with Eisig being the surname. It is him, because it says he is coming from Schodnica, Austria. He is listed as born 1896, occupation of iron dealer, going to his brother-in-law Chaim Arbent (or something similar) on 712 East 5th Str., NYC. His nearest relative back home is father Janos Eisig. Obviously ‘Janos’ is the Hungarian-ized form of a Yiddish first name, but I don’t know enough to speculate about what the first name might be. I’m sure others can offer a more educated guess about what the father’s first name likely was. The manifest also says Eisig paid for his own ticket.

Manifest: https://www.familysearch.org/ark:/61903/1:1:JNY6-PJD

Does the name Chaim Arbent sound familiar? Do you know of any siblings that Eisig/Philip had, who were married to a Chaim (or Hyman, or Herman, or something similar)?

Another useful record would be a photo of Philip’s gravestone, which will give you the Hebrew name of his father.

If Philip/Eisig really was only 15 years old, it wasn’t unusual for persons of that age to add a few years, to appear to the immigration officials as old enough to hold a job and support oneself. Plus, I’ve seen numerous instances of 15 year old persons traveling by themselves, usually to join an older sibling or parent already in the US. I also notice on the second page of Eisig/Philip’s WW I draft card that it says he wasn’t certain of when he was born (not unusual for that time).

--
Michele Lock

Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock and Kalon/Kolon in Zagare/Joniskis/Gruzdziai, Lithuania
Lak/Lok/Liak/Lock in Plunge/Telsiai in Lithuania
Rabinowitz in Papile, Lithuania and Riga, Latvia
Trisinsky/Trushinsky/Sturisky and Leybman in Dotnuva, Lithuania
Olitsky in Alytus, Suwalki, Poland/Lithuania
Gutman/Goodman in Czestochowa, Poland
Lavine/Lev/Lew in Trenton, New Jersey and Lida/Vilna gub., Belarus