[Cz-L] Generalizing about the Cz Jewish Experience

My father's personal trajectory from birth to young adulthood in
Czernowitz makes me wonder if there ever truly was a stereotypical
Jewish class profile in Czernowitz, though certainly there could have
been folks both poor and uneducated, and both wealthy and educated,
who remained either poor or wealthy over their lifetimes. But my
father, who moved upward economically and intellectually, and who in
other ways didn't fit Mimi's or Hardy's demographic assumptions,
couldn't have been an isolated case. He was just one generation
earlier than the current Czernowitz-list members, and maybe things
changed after he left. Maybe snobbery and class immobility was more
true of a later time. But my dad's story doesn't fit either Mimi's or
Hardy's sense of Jewish Czernowitz patterns. I more closely identify
with Iris's perspective, which reflects experiences of an earlier time.

My father was born in 1893, the 3rd youngest of ten children in a
family where Yiddish was spoken. They moved from house to house
several times in the area around Dreifaltigskeit, in what Mimi
describes as the poor "lower part" of Czernowitz. Did Yiddish names
and a large family suggest that they were, religious, even orthodox?
I don't know about his parents or his early childhood, but I do know
that my father was not observant at all in America. The only hint
about his early years he ever shared was that he sometimes walked
behind his father's coal cart. These things suggest poverty, and also
lack of formal education if I understand Mimi's framework. However
he was proud to have studied at Gymnasium before leaving for America
in 1911 at age 18, which suggests either a rather swift ascent out of
poverty and illiteracy in the family, or a long-term family reverence
for education despite being poor. One of his nephews became a lawyer
in Czernowitz, a brother became a businessman on one of the main
Czernowitz avenues, so my father wasn't the only child of his family
to move upward economically and socially in a fairly short time
frame. He was literate in both Yiddish and German, It wasn't a case
of either Yiddish or German. He chose to come to America rather than
to Palestine, but after immigrating he soon became an ardent Zionist,
was active in Jewish political organizations, started in the clothing
industry as a labor organizer, then joined a specific trade starting
at the bottom rung, and eventually became a Union official. He served
as a liaison with Histadrut on trips to Israel. So these things also
defy generalization. Jewishness was always a central part of his life
despite the fact that he only attended synagogue services on the High
Holidays and only when I was in Hebrew school, and he never learned
to speak or read Hebrew. But he WANTED to be Jewish, years before,
during, and after the brewing Holocaust made some people choose not
to be obvious about who they were.

Most of his colleagues and friends in America were Jewish and were
similar to my father in all of these things, whether they'd come from
Bukovina or Poland or elsewhere in Eastern Europe. Their stories are
similar to lots of immigrant stories in America, among all ethnic
groups, even today, when so many people are keeping their cultural
roots strong even though they are not mainstream. But there is no one
way to classify their individual stories. I have a feeling that it
must have been the way things were for many Jewish families once upon
a time in Czernowitz, too.

[Jessica Attiyeh]
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Received on 2012-12-12 05:55:43