Miriam Silver

I am 85 years old and the first girl in the family to be born in the United States. My grandfather lived in a small town outside of Balta, Russia, about an hour away from the bustling intellectual hub of Odessa on the Black Sea. He owned a Gourmet grocery store and often came to Odessa to replenish his supplies. He was cultured and sophisticated, but married an uneducated woman who came from a family of Rabbis. She bore him six children. My mother was the third child and second daughter. Her mother, my great-grandmother was, however, very educated and became the Reader in the synagogue for the women as they prayed separately from the men. She was also a resourceful and charitable person. And before Shabbos she would go to her brothers’ pottery factory and collect imperfect items that she then sold in the market. She used the money to bring to the prisoners just before Shabbos. I am named for her, my Bubba Mema.

For reasons that are not clear, my grandfather, Frank Siegel (known in Balta as Froika Shabsis) suddenly heeded the call of a cousin in America who lived in the tiny town of South River in New Jersey. He left his entire family in Balta, and worked in the cousin’s factory for seven years before he could safely send for his family. Pogroms in Russia were playing havoc with the lives of Jews in Russia, and the Cossacks were ravaging and raping young girls and pillaging villages there. During that time period, it was impossible to get the family safely to the U.S. However, my grandfather apparently was so successful working for his cousin, that eventually he bought the factory from him, as well as the former Mayor’s grand house, and succeeded in sending first class tickets to his family who arrived to a waiting chauffered driven Packard. They went directly to South River, where my grandfather became the leading Jewish citizen in town; building a huge synagogue there, hiring the first Rabbi, and employing hundreds of non Jewish immigrants from Hungary, Poland, and Russia to work in two other factories he had also acquired. His home was always opened on Shabbos for young Jewish immigrants in the area to come and socialize. It was at one of the gatherings that my mother, Rebecca, an outgoing lively beauty who was sixteen when she arrived in the U.S. met my father, Leon Goodman (Lazar Gutman) who had just immigrated from Kishinev, Romania on Thanksgiving Day, 1921. He was 21 and was still mourning the death of his father when he arrived in New York with his widowed mother and younger sister. He was well educated and had graduated from the gymnasium in Kishinev. His joined his older sister and brothers who had come before them and who had settled in a large apartment building in Brooklyn, New York in the Brownsville section. But my Dad found a job in Englishtown, New Jersey, in a shoe factory doing their bookkeeping, and boarded in nearby South River. Within a year he fell in love with my mother, Rebecca, a lively, outgoing beauty, and wanted to marry her. But my grandfather said he had to wait until the older sister, Anna, was married before he would consent. After five years, Anna was married. And my Father and Mother were married at the Park Central Hotel in New York City in a splendid December wedding in 1927.

I was born in May, 1929 in Brooklyn and we lived in the same building near my Dad’s mother and sister.A few years later, my grandfather decided to hire my Dad as a foreman in one of his factories in South River. So we moved to a town in N.J. near South River about half hour away, to Highland Park. All the rest of the family married and bought homes in South River and raised their family there. We continued to go each Shabbos to my Grandmother’s house where my grandfather played host to his growing family. Finally my Dad bought the factory he had managed from my grandfather, who had decided to retire .My grandfather was a dapper retiree, spent his time traveling to Havana and to Atlantic City for many years where he died suddenly while visiting there. My grandmother remained in the same home for the rest of her days near her family.

I lived in New Jersey for the next 65 years. Upon retirement I moved with my husband to Naples, Florida. After he died in 2005, I moved to Bennington, Vermont where my oldest son lived with his wife and two daughters. I am now living nearby my son in my own home. One granddaughter will be moving from Seattle to the Boston area after her marriage this summer. My other granddaughter is a college student. My other son moved to Los Angeles where he moved shortly after graduating from college. He has two sons, still in school; one is in college and one in high school.

So my family originated in the Ukraine, Russia as well as Kishnev, Romania and migrated to New Jersey, finally ending up in the small town of Bennington, Vermont. And the journey will continue . . . from generation to generation, l’dor v dor.