Re: meanwhile, back at Ellis Island . . .

[Ari Davidow <ari...>]

At 11:32 PM 2/28/01 -0500, you wrote:
>Actually a serious question that demands a serious answer.
>In fact, a two-part answer.
>My family name has been Robinson for at least a century, so far as I
>know. I believe I owe a certain level of respect to the family members I
>actually knew, and by maintaining the family name that they grew up
>with, I am paying that respect.

I remember considering this question for several years. Since the name
given my family prior to Ellis Island was imposed by the same Czar they
fled, that didn't seem like a compelling way to honor their memory. I then
considered purely Jewish last names: "Benshlomo" or "Halevy", and realized
that (a) there were already far too many people with those names, and 
(b) those, too, meant nothing to anyone in my family several generations
after my family arrived in this place.

There's a great joke, retold on one of the "You Don't have to be Jewish"
comedy albums about a son of immigrants, on the phone to his mother, 
asking her why she didn't come to his party the night before. "I was 
there," she complains, "but then I looked at the letter boxes in the
apartment foyer and couldn't remember your new last name!"

It may not be worth putting another generation of parents through 
that trauma!

ari


Ari Davidow
ari (at) ivritype(dot)com
list owner, jewish-music (at) shamash(dot)org
the klezmer shack: http://www.klezmershack.com/

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