When last we checked, the poor beleaguered David-Solomon Melnik had been saddled with a “not small” mother-in-law who — burned out of her own home — was entirely content to squat in his. Writing in desperation to her son in America — his wife’s brother Yitzkhok-Leib or Isaac Levin — he makes it clear he is not asking for money (or at least, not a smattering of money). In fact he is sending the man fifty rubles. He just wants Isaac to get the woman another place to live.
Names are scattered intriguingly through out: Leybke who is almost burned alive. Israel-Chaim who has offered the woman a home that she has rejected to stay near her daughter. Sherhay in whose stable the fire started (Sonia Khashdan Eisonson’s essay makes it clear that summer lightening often set thatched roofs ablaze. In her translation of this letter, Lena Watson pinpointed the Torah portion Schlach as usually being read in June or early July). Mashe, the unknown Hertzl’s potentially abandoned wife.
There is no date on the letter, beyond the unhelpful Schlach, and yet we know it had to be written before David-Solomon’s death in 1923. Also, given that David-Solomon is adamant he is living comfortably at the mill and in no need of a house or money, it is safe to say the letter was written well before 1916, when 300 troops had taken over Shemezeve and the mill wasn’t in operation. On the other hand, Lena didn’t even get to the US until June, 1908, so the letter had to be written after that.
That leaves the identity of the injured Leybke open to question. My grandmother’s next younger brother had that name. But in the 1908-1916 window when the letter was written, Leibe would have been between 12 and 20 years old. Why would the “not small” Babushka be able to make it safely out of the burning house but a teen-age boy have to rescued through the window? Leibe either had to be a very sound sleeper or not a member of the family at all.
Israel-Chaim is another unknown quantity. I had thought at first he might have been my grandmother’s youngest brother Yitzhak but then realized Yitzhak was 7 years younger than Leibe so somewhere between 5 and 13 at the time of the letter and definitely in no position to be offering his grandmother a home I have to assume Israel-Chaim was another of Chasya’s brothers. As was, perhaps, the infamous Feivel the Millionaire.
But what was their last name? Yitzhok-Leib and all his heirs said the family name was Levin. Yitzhok-Leib’s grave in fact has inscribed in granite that he was the son of Lippe Levin which is also in the Rhode Island official index of deaths.
And yet my grandmother wrote on a government document that her mother’s maiden name was Kavitsky. Plus I had no evidence that any Levins from Shemezeve had ever entered the U.S. of A.
Fortunately, Isaac had been extraordinarily specific on his Naturalization petition. He claimed to have sailed from Liverpool, England aboard the ship Saxonia and arrived in Boston on May 4, 1902. The only problem with this was that even after locating the list of Saxonia arrivals in Boston, it turned out the ship had never approached the city in the month of May. There was, however, a sailing that left Liverpool on the 29th of May and arrived in Boston on June 6th, 1902. And on the fourth page, the 16th line: Isaac Kavitsky, a 40-year old Russian bound for Providence. In fact, as I read farther across the form, I found he was going to his brother-in-law Chas.Helfand (presumably a Bostonian’s mishearing of Joseph) at – yes — 11 Inez Court!
Isaac Kavitsky manifest
With this information, it was easy enough… well, none of this is easy but I am stubborn… to hunt down a female Kavitsky arriving with six kids. It took Bessie over three years to make the trip (presumably Isaac needed the time to accumulate fares for seven) and she didn’t arrive in Boston as I thought she would. Nonetheless, I finally uncovered a manifest for the SS. Rotterdam sailing from Rotterdam September 23, 1905 and arriving in New York October 3, 1905. On it appears Basse Kiewitzky, last resident in Shemezeve and bound for her husband in Providence, with two step-children and four younger children in tow. Two step-children! For the first time I comprehended how – beyond bad math — a 28-year old woman could have a 16-year old daughter. (Elsewhere on the manifest, it was claimed that Isaac was Nechamie’s stepfather but that didn’t make any sense at all)
Basse Kievitsky manifest
Nechamie Kiewitzky became Annie Levin who married Myer Rich and became Annie Rich, aka Cousin Annie. I had known her my whole life and had never realized she truly was my grandmother’s first cousin, or that my mother actually had a great-uncle in town. Isaac died in 1934, when my mother was 10. So I guess she really didn’t know him. But I have no doubt that Kavitsky was the family name, switched by Isaac to Levin as soon as he hit Rhode Island. He arrived in 1902 and by 1903 he appears at 10 Inez Court as Isaac Levin, teacher. Family called him Yitzhok-Leib anyway. Kavitsky was so much harder for the goyim to say.
As to why his grave says his father’s name was Lippe Levin? Well, the stones are ordered by presumably distraught heirs. Maybe they didn’t remember their real name, although at least Annie had been practically an adult when they stopped using it. Or maybe it was an homage to the name their father had chosen of his own free will. The Levites were originally religious royalty, just below the Cohens. He was a religious man. In many of the censuses, he listed his occupation as teacher or Rabbi. So why not call himself a Levin? Surnames in Russia were a fairly newfangled business anyway.1
But now I understood my grandmother’s predicament at Ellis Island. When asked who she’d come to visit, how did she know which name to use? So she blurted out both: Levin…uh.. Kavitsky. And Leon Braicinesky was born.
1Per Bennett Muraskin in Origins and Meanings of Ashkenazic Last Names, Ashkenazic Jews were among the last Europeans to take family names. Some German-speaking Jews took last names as early as the 17th century, but the overwhelming majority of Jews lived in Eastern Europe and did not take last names until compelled to do so. The process began in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1787 and ended in Czarist Russia in 1844. Isaac and Chashya’s father was probably the first to pick a name.