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Images Clockwise from Upper Left:
1. Belle (Footlik) Berkelhamer.
2. Sara, Pincus, Bert, Iz, and Lou Berkelhamer
3. Berkelhamer Clan
4. Lou, Bert, and Iz Berkelhamer
5. Lou and Bert Berkelhamer |
Laura Leibman's Family History
Project
Part I: The Great Tide Era, 1881-1924 |
| The Great Tide,
1881-1924.
Between 1883 and 1904, 1.5 million Jews arrived in the United States from
Russia, Poland, and Romania (Norton 109). My relatives made up a scant
dozen or so of this number. On Jan. 13, 1904 ALTER
PINCAS BERKELHAMER, his wife SALI
(SARA) and daughter Chane (Ann) arrived in Ellis island and made the trip
overland to Chicago. The fact that they all arrived together testifies
to their financial resources, as many times the husband came first to
earn money and then sent for the rest of the family. The Berkelhamers
came from Sukanowice in the Wojnicz District of Austria-Hungary, now Poland.
On William Shepard’s 1911 map of the "Distribution
of Races in Austria-Hungary" (The Historical Atlas), my Great
Grandparents lived in the brown ("Poles") area in the very north
near Tarnow. The Ellis Island
ship manifest notes that Pincas (b. 1875) was a butcher by trade;
he continued this trade when he settled in Chicago, where he ran a kosher
butcher shop up until his relatively early death in 1944. Postcards from
Austria-Hungary from this era reveal a latent anti-Semitism and a fear
that Jewish social climbing (Postcard:
Austro-Hungarian circa 1900 Show Jews infiltrating spa at Karlsbad
©Center for Genocide and Holocaust Studies, University of Minnesota).
America may have represented an opportunity for social as well as economic
advancement.
Sara and Pincas had married in December 25, 1900, and as a child I remember
hearing of how romantic their wedding was as snow fell around their outdoor
chuppah. My great aunt, who of course hadn’t been alive at the time,
probably told this story to me. The counter story that was shared with
adults was that Sara had been in love and engaged to another man when
her parents had arranged a match with Pincas and forced her to marry him
(Interview). When or how this story was related is a mystery, since both
my mother and I remember Sara as someone who rarely spoke, though this
may have been either from a lack of fluency in English, a loss of hearing
late in life, or the exuberance of those around her. She lived to be a
hundred and one, and hence was alive up until the time I started high
school. I remember her fondly as a very small woman: even before aging
shrunk her she was well under five feet. She must have been quite brave,
however, as her second child Isadore (Iz) was born barely a month after
they landed in New York. Bertha (1907), LOUIS
(my grandfather; 1912), and Rudolph (Rudy; 1914) followed. In his photos
Pincas is a smiling, handsome, jovial man who closely resembles his son
Iz, one of my favorite uncles. I am sorry that I did not know him.
The Norton suggests that most immigrants in this era "had come from
communities in which their lives were organized by Jewish law, values,
and religious practice as well as the Jewish religious calendar"
(Norton 111). In my family this was true of my grandfather Lou's Berkelhamer
clan, who were orthodox, and whose religious artifacts remain in the family
(menorah, Sabbath candle sticks). The organization of life through the
religious calendar was probably less true of my maternal grandmother BELLE'S
family, the FOOTLIKS who came from
Odessa in
Russia (Ukraine). The influence of the Maskilim (Enlightenment Jews) was
powerful in Odessa and although peasants, the Footliks were relatively
secular--a far cry from the idealized shtetl community of religious fervor
lauded today. There were many pogroms in Odessa,
including one in 1905. My great-grandmother KATE
(GITEL; 1892-1955) was an orphan:
perhaps she had lost her family in this pogrom, or perhaps they died of
natural causes. She was raised in my great grandfather’s household
and married quite young—18 at the latest. My great-grandfather MAX
(1889-1988) left Odessa
to escape the czarist army around 1909-1910. The czarist army was
a terrible threat as it often amounted to a life sentence of servitude
for poorer Jews. We do not know the exact date Max arrived, either because
he did not enter through Ellis Island or because he had changed his name
(which was originally the Yiddish equivalent of Charles). I remember hearing
that he took the name “Max” because he didn’t understand
the questions and merely gave the answer given by the person in front
of him in line. Given that he was dodging the draft, however, the name
change may have been deliberate. As the Norton notes, this migration was
undoubtedly illegal (Norton 113), and I remember vague stories told by
him during my childhood of the dangers he faced as he escaped Russia.
Max immigrated with his brother Louis, later his business
partner. His wife and year-old son Nate joined him on November 12, 1912.
They left from Bremen, one of the port cities mentioned in the Norton
(113). After they settled in Chicago five more children followed: BELLE
(my grandmother), Betty, Molly (“Moe”), Seymour, and Sherwin.
Although my great grandmother Kate died when my mother was still young,
Max lived until I was in college and I have many memories of him pressing
us to eat pickled green tomatoes and cow's tongue. He often presented
himself as a scamp in his stories and spoke with a heavy accent. The Norton
notes that most Jews from Europe were polyglots. My great grandparents
spoke Yiddish at home. My grandparents also spoke some Yiddish, but usually
only when they were being affectionate or when they didn't want their
children and grandchildren to know what they were saying. This was apparently
effective as no one in my mother's generation or mine speaks Yiddish.
When I was a child my two great grandparents couldn’t have seemed
more different: one quiet and unobtrusive and the other noisy and boisterous.
A number of historians point out that German Jews of the Great Tide era
looked down on Central European and Russian Jews as "less cultured"
and less "civilized." This notion was definitely prominent in
my family, even if the “Germans” were really from Austria
Hungary, and the Slavic part of it at that. My grandmother seemed to feel
that she had "married up," and I remember her commenting on
how her in-laws did things such as go to spas that her family could not
afford. While Max had worked in the Steel mills (perhaps in Gary Indiana?)
when he arrived in Chicago, Pincas owned a store. Pincas had religious
as well as economic benefits by owning a butcher shop: while Steel workers
were not allowed the luxury of not working on the Sabbath (even if Max
had wanted to do so), as the owner of a kosher butcher shop, Pincas not
only could have taken the Sabbath off, but probably had to do so in order
to maintain his “kosher” status. In spite of whatever hardships
Max faced, there is no evidence that he was ever enchanted either by socialism
or the labor movements mentioned in the Norton (Interview). |
