RE: [Cz-L] Generalizing about the Cz Jewish Experience

 To Jessica and Mimi and others...

Yes,Jessica , there were many poor people in Cz.

Many of them emigrated with the big emigration waves, as people of this
list certainly know.

Czernowitz was a first step Eldorado .

My paternal great parents came in 1908 from Eastern Galicia with 8 boys .
The ninth was on the way, to be born in Czernowitz.

In 1910 the father of the family tried his fortunes in the USA , "in the
sweat-shops of New-York" , my father wrote.

In 1914 he came back, still very poor.

My father and his brothers were hungry through their childhood and youth.
Some went barefoot to school.

ALL finished the Gymnasium ,2 finished the Teachers Seminary , 5 of them
finished Universities !

One, joined the Vilnaer Truppe and had an artistic career as a
German-Yiddish- Hebrew "Rezitator".

The youngest went to Eretz Israel and worked hard to build one of the
biggest and wealthiest Kibbutzim in Israel.

They all spoke and read perfect German and Yiddish and Rumanian and knew
Hebrew.

The Zionists among them spoke and taught Hebrew.

And, yes Cornel , you are right. They were very much politically and
socially engaged.

 My mother told that at a Seder Evening in the 30's at my grand father's (
orthodox ) home, the many sons who were present with their wives, instead of
holding the Haggadah ( they knew it by heart, probably) were reading the
newspapers.

Everyone hold a different newspaper, according to their political
preferences.

And they stopped going to the Synagogues, I guess.

But ,when I learned to know them they and their wives were far from being
snobbish.

 It's true Hardy , I knew them all only AFTER WW2 , in our Bukowinaers
Colony in Bucharest.

By then everyone was poor and modest.

Irene

-----Original Message-----
From: bounce-72511043-3499296_at_list.cornell.edu
[mailto:bounce-72511043-3499296_at_list.cornell.edu] On Behalf Of Attiyeh
Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 11:05 AM
To: czernowitz-l_at_list.cornell.edu
Subject: [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.

[snip]
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Received on 2012-12-12 17:36:55