Family talk

My mother was very closeted about her Jewish past, I never really found out she was Jewish until I was in my twenties. I had suspicions but they were never confirmed until I started getting into genealogy and genetic testing.

As you can guess she got pretty pissed about my digging but when the cat was finally out of the bag she eventually gave up the charade. My dad said that her folks read The Forward and spoke yiddish in the home but hey, I wasn't there.

In any case, I never met many of her relatives, whom she had apparently alienated and ostracized, probably thinking that they would give her true identity up. 

Her family was from Yednitz, Moldova, I have written about them before.  The family started out in Providence, joining other cousins in the family business, the Roberts Paper Box Company.

Never met either grandparent to the best of my knowledge, my grandmother died of a cerebral hemorrhage and despondent over both his wife's death and the demise of the fur industry, Martin committed suicide the year after I was born, in 1958.

This is a picture of my mother Adelle, her brother Norman and her father Martin (Mondko) standing behind him, 1930's. 

I had a slightly older uncle but he died falling out a window in the Gashouse district of Manhattan, an event that traumatized my grandparents and probably caused them to move to California. My mother was born in Los Angeles, on Western Ave., next to El Cholo.

My mother is sitting in front of Martin's brother Sam.

In any case, a relative has passed and I wanted to mark his passing as he did great things in this world. 

My second cousin Edward Baer Roberts has passed. Here is his wikipedia entry:

Edward Baer Roberts (November 18, 1935 – February 27, 2024) was an American academic who was faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management. He became the David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology in 1974.

Roberts, the world’s leading authority on entrepreneurship, wrote "Entrepreneurs in High Technology: Lessons from MIT and Beyond" on high-tech business creation and growth. The book won the Association of American Publishers Award for Outstanding Book in Business and Management in 1991. Dr. Roberts was the David Sarnoff Professor of Management of Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Chair of the Sloan School’s Management of Technological Innovation & Entrepreneurship research and education programs, and the founder and chair of the MIT Entrepreneurship Center.

Roberts earned Bachelor’s and Master’s degrees in Engineering, an MBA, and the world’s first Ph.D. in System Dynamics, all from MIT. He has authored over 150 articles and 11 books, most recently Innovation: Driving Product, Process and Market Change.

Entrepreneurial in academia and industry, under the direction of MIT Professor Jay Forrester, Dr. Roberts was a founding member of the System Dynamics field at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the MIT System Dynamics Group in 1958. System Dynamics, formerly known as Industrial Dynamics, was developed from a need to better understand highly complex problems through their feedback systems and how they change over time.

Roberts was a co-founder, director, adviser, mentor, and angel investor in many emerging companies. For 20 years, he co-founded and was a General Partner in the Zero Stage and First Stage Capital Equity Funds, venture capital funds specializing in early-stage technology firms. He co-founded and was CEO of Pugh-Roberts Associates, an international management consulting firm specializing in strategic planning and technology management (now a division of PA Consulting Group). He also co-founded and served as a Director of Sohu.com, a leading Chinese Internet firm.

Roberts served on the board of advisors of Maverick Ventures Israel, a unique venture capital fund composed of private investors which invests in early growth Israeli startups.

In 1996, he helped Charles Zhang found the company ITC, which later became Sohu, one of China's biggest Internet companies.

Roberts died in Boston on February 27, 2024, at the age of 88.

Edward was a very smart guy. I spoke and corresponded with him a handful of times in my life. Obviously there is a lot of brainpower on both sides of my family but this is the only person I could think of who had a chair at MIT. My venture capital friend Rich Levandov was a student of his and knew him very well.

Edward went back to Moldova years ago and did family research, hired a woman who could read Polish and looked for gravestones. We first crossed paths in the 1980's. He was the son of my great uncle Nathan Roberts, son of Moishe. Here is a neat sentence describing him in his obituary:

Ed had infinite energy, never slept, and was a lifelong learner. While known for his storytelling, his ability to listen with immense focus always made you feel loved.

Sounds a lot like my mom. I wish that I could have known him better. He also had a strong physiologic family resemblance to my mother and uncle.

I sent a note of his passing to our mutual cousin Linda Forman last week and got a nice letter back. Linda reads the blog regularly and we have a lot in common, including our love for American roots music.

Good Morning, 

I just got back from the gym…and…the usual:  What will all that buy me for dinner tonight?  Anyway, I DID meet Ed Roberts 13 years ago.   Your Uncle Norman had tracked down a number of relatives, and he wanted to meet them.  He decided to come East.  Ed Roberts hosted a dinner at the FOUR SEASONS (abutting Boston Common).  He and his wife lived in a condo right next door.   MY sister and I drove in from Providence.  We loved Norman’s business card.  At bottom it said: “I plan to live forever;  So far, so good.”  There were about 15-18 people;  I overheard Ed say to the servers that they were to keep the wine flowing, to please replace any empties immediately.  This was so sad to me…you must be familiar with the photograph of our great grandparents and a few kids …the kid in the lower right hand corner in the school uniform was Zanvil…He got himself killed in The Great War, and my Father was named for him.  Anyway, a few years ago, I found his name in a database on JewishGen-he was one of the few Jewish landowners in Yednitz. …turns out, Norman was asking everyone if we could identify the people in the photograph…He had NO idea that it was his grandparents.  That made me feel really bad.  If you do not know which photograph I am talking about, I’ll photograph mine and send it to you.

And……….

On another subject…on the way home from the gym, I caught the tail end of an interview with Chris Smither about his new album and his background.  Every year for the past ten years I have posted a YouTube Video of his “LEAVE THE LIGHT ON.” on my birthday.

It is my favorite song by him;  I actually got to meet him some years ago, and, we discussed the song.  He told me he felt it had to been dictated to him from the ether.  He is my age exactly, and, the song meets my bar (as does most things for me):  Has he said anything that is not true?  I think you are probably several years younger than I, but, if you take a listen, I am sure you will get the gist of it.  Okay, got to go into town and avert a cracker crisis and a Pinot Gris, crisis.

This is the photo Linda is referring to, back in Yednitz, my great grandparents Meier Weinrober (b. 1858) and his wife Rivka Solomon on the top step.

She ends her next note like this:

Apparently, all the males had the first or middle name Meyer.  I could not get this photograph out of the frame…it is sealed with one whole piece of brown paper.  Anyway,  Zanvil is in the lower right hand corner.  And, my father as a younger man bore a strong resemblance to him.  I believe the older one on the left is Auntie Hansel.

She would come to Providence to see Grampa Isador…She was very warm and affectionate…we all loved her.  Here is a not widely known family anecdote:  One of the siblings was Frieda (I never met her).  They considered her to be unattractive, so Grampa Isador paid his cousin, Izzy, a thousand dollars to marry her.  When they met, it was love at first sight, so, no money did change hands.

My Cousin, Alan Levine, Aunt Roslyn (my Father’s sister) and Uncle Irving’s son, and I referred to our Grandfather as the “brown eyed handsome man.”…..but…but…but…then again the Wainrober men were ALL brown eyed handsome men.

On her last line, I think we can all agree.

Funny about the Meyer part. When I went back to Israel during Desert Storm I sat next to a Rabbi on the plane. He asked me my Hebrew name and I told him I didn't have one. He said, "I am giving you one, right now. Meyer."

Family stuff

My great grandfather in the black bowler seated next to my great grandmother in the dark dress.
Aunt Hansel on the left, then young Estherzisal and Frieda on the far right.

I was contacted by a second cousin I never knew I had through Ancestry the other day. She lives in New England. We are a strong genetic match on the maternal side, 6% shared DNA: 449 cM across 21 segments.

Linda Roberts Forman sent me a faded picture of our mutual great grandparents Meyer and Riva Solomon Wainrober with their family. I have never seen the picture before of my mother's family that lived in Bessarabia, Moldova or Romania, whichever you chose to call it.

In fact I have never seen any pictures of them whatsoever.

You see, my late mother was very tight lipped about her origins and prone to weaving fantastical webs of fiction. I had no idea she was Jewish until I was in my twenties. I understand that there was enormous pressure on children of immigrants to fit in and guess that she found a role that she felt comfortable in.

In any case, information about my maternal side is very difficult to piece together. There were and are so few survivors. 

I never met either of my mother's parents. Her mother died of a cerebral hemorrhage. Despondent over that and depressed over the state of his business as furs were going out of fashion, my grandfather committed suicide, the year before I was born, in 1956. 

Where there are lots of genetic matches through Ancestry on the paternal side, there are less than half on the maternal.

Many names are lost to time, I still have major gaps in my mother's mother's family, don't even know her maternal grandparents' names.

What I do know is this. The family lived in Yednitz, a jewish shtetl not far from Kishinev, the scene of many famous pogroms. My grandfather Mardcho (who became Martin Roberts when he arrived in Providence to join two of his brothers) was either and or both, according to lore, a furrier, strong arm man for the union, a lawyer or a wheat smuggler and horse thief. In those days, you did what you had to do to survive. My uncle said that although short, his father was very strong physically.

When he left the area and escaped in the early 1920's he had to sign a letter to the King of Romania promising to never return. The Romanians had occupied the country a few years earlier, in 1918 and things were starting to get hot.

It was a tough place to be a jew. From Wikipedia:

The Kishinev pogrom took place in the capital of Bessarabia on April 6, 1903, after local newspapers published articles inciting the public to act against Jews; 47 or 49 Jews were killed, 92 severely wounded and 700 houses destroyed. The anti-Semitic newspaper Бессарабец (Bessarabetz, meaning "Bessarabian"), published by Pavel Krushevan, insinuated that local Jews killed a Russian boy. Another newspaper, Свет (Lat. Svet, meaning "World" or Russian for "Light"), used the age-old blood libel against the Jews (alleging that the boy had been killed to use his blood in preparation of matzos).

And from the Yizkor book: 

When WWI broke out in 1914, an economic crisis hit all towns in Bessarabia in general, and Yedinitz, in particular. The farmers were drafted by the army. The fields were only partly used due to a lack of workers. Commerce almost stopped and the town returned to sleepy days. There was a serious lack of income. It was only when the army passed through, that the town came to life, and commerce was renewed, for a short time. In addition to economic woes, there was also the problem of the draft. It was an intense situation and our people invented various ways of avoiding it: using sickness and disease excuses. The young people who avoided the draft and were hidden were nicknamed “hares.”

For three years, the town was frozen in its tracks. It was sleepy and almost completely separated from the rest of the world. There were rumors or news items from rare passersby's or a newspaper arriving late. Rumors chased rumors and were distributed everywhere: a military defeat, rebellion in the army, and a revolution in Russia.

Again, the town was inundated with fear and tension. Armies returned from the front, but they were undisciplined and disorderly. Among those who returned were rebels and those devoted to the regime. They meandered throughout Bessarabia. They left scorched earth behind them. Estates were burned down, and their owners were killed. The Jews were not spared. The villagers joined the rebels. They were interested in Jewish property.

These fearful days continued until the end of 1917. Then, without knowing the source of the equalization, a self-defense group was founded in the town. There were rumors that the idea was proposed and supported by the leader of the Cossacks, Pavlyuk. For some reason, he felt sorry for the fearful Jews. When the Cossacks left town, the Jews were left with pistols and guns. The young people, the butchers, and bakers who were known for their courage, organized themselves. They had stopped the attacks by villagers on market days in the past. In charge were the brothers Matityahu and Avraham Koifman. The town was divided into sections and guarding was done carefully. It was enough to dissuade the rioters from touching Jewish property. They were not always successful and there were some days of pogrom, of thievery, burning of Jewish property. I will not give details since others will describe them.

Martin had three brothers apparently, Isador (Asriel), Sam (Shimon) and Zanvul (Zanvil?). I have never heard of Zanvul before, or maybe I had and had forgotten him) but he was sent off to the war and killed in World War I and he is the guy in the spiffy uniform on the right. Not sure which of the other boys are in the shot. There were also three sisters and I think i have identified them correctly. 

Somehow and fortunately the family was able to escape and immigrate to America, residing in either Boston or Providence, where they started or joined other relatives in running the Roberts Paper Box Company, having evidently traded their Jewish sounding surname for something not so conspicuously ethnic. 

I do know that Sam was in New York possibly as early as 1911, being naturalized in 1916. He was born in 1891. How did he come over and with who? Isador came with his father Meyer in 1909. He was 22 at that time.

He traveled on the passenger ship Columbia.

My grandfather Martin was born in 1898. He shows up on our shores in 1920, having departed from Southhampton, England on the Imperator.

He brought my grandmother Sobel with him but they were not as yet married and she insisted that they find a rabbi before they lived together. They did that in short order.

Asriel was two years older than my grandfather. He was single and landed with $15.50 in his pocket. He took the ship Columbia from Glasgow in 1909. He was apparently sponsored by a cousin here named A. Scharter. No idea...

They all apparently landed in Dover, N.H. And they hung out in New England for a time and prospered.

There is also a Keariel or Kesriel Weinrober coming over on the Columbia in 1909. Who is that? Has to be a family member...

Here is a recent note from Linda:

Good Morning, Robert,

I think the person at the very left is Auntie Hansel; We can identify our great grandparents. At the bottom right is Zanvil who died in the GREAT WAR. A few years ago, I found his name in a data base on JewishGen in a list of (the few) Jewish landowners in Yednitz. When I just looked at the photograph again, I remembered a story about my grandfather. Evidently, they had a sister, Frieda (who may be the woman in the upper right). The story went that she was quite unattractive. ( Waaaaaaa????-in the Wainrober family???). My grandfather was going to pay his cousin, Izzy, a thousand dollars to marry her. Well, Frieda and Izzie met and immediately fell in love.

I am going to have to go through my files and find some things for Linda, my newly discovered kin. My late Uncle Norm, who used to regularly comment here at the blast, left a long letter trying to divulge what he knew as best as he could.

I had no idea that Frieda married her cousin Isadore, I guess that used to happen and still does. My uncle supposedly tried to join the FBI in the 1950's and was denied because Esthersizal married Mayer Rakita and one of the Rakita family used to be a Russian general. It was the red scare and people were scared of jews and communists and jewish socialists of which there were plenty.

Anyway, sorry to boor you with family trivia but I throw it all out here on the blast and if you don't like it you don't have to read it. Those that want to dig further into the history of the town can look at the Yizkor book.

My Geni tree, woefully in the need of an update

I am most happy to make the acquaintance of a new cousin and also to fill in a few holes in the family history and to see a picture of my great grandparents for the first time. I believe that she may have intimated a familial relationship with my father's side as well but I may have misunderstood her.

She asked me why the family settled originally in New England and I have no idea but I do know that Martin and Sam, both very handsome men, made their way to Los Angeles and got out of the cold very quickly.

The Wainrober or Weinrober line is very faint in our world. A branch made it to Brazil and South America very early on and still thrives but I have no contact with them. If any of you Weinrobers out there that still exist see this, feel free to drop me a line.

I appreciate the picture, it fills in a gap or two. Ancestry is a big jigsaw puzzle. Interesting to me.

Family Business

Having to hear about another person's genealogy and family history must be a bit like rooting through a stranger's underwear drawer. Extremely personal at times, mostly boring, and not stimulating in the least. Long time readers will hopefully agree that I have tried to keep my personal and commercial business to a minimum on the blog, notwithstanding my usual groans about how sucky the economy is.

On the other hand, the internet allows us to use wondrous communication tools that were undreamed of even a few years ago. It is a treasure trove of information. There is so much information waiting mere keystrokes away. Yesterday, I found two accounts for my late paternal grandfather Israel sitting in the unclaimed catacombs of the Michigan Department of Treasury. Today I found my Maternal Grandfather Mordko Weinrober's (Martin Roberts) entry information from Ellis Island on July 11, 1920. Martin and his brother went on to join the family business, the Roberts Paper Box company in Providence, Rhode Island. He came from a town in Moldova called Yedintsy or Yedinitz.  He and his wife Sobel Steinberg were the parents of my mother, Adelle Rhoda Roberts and her older brother Norman. I never met either maternal grandparent, both leaving their earthly vessels shortly before I was born.

So I put this information out in hopes of snaring a bit of information that I do not have as of yet. I beg for your understanding. Connected with an unfamiliar branch of my mother's family the last several days and Uncle Norm has agreed to get tested so that I can chart the Y - DNA on my mother's side. They don't quite know what to make of this genetic thing.

It was so beautiful today. Had brunch with Renee and Leslie at Le Bistro and then the three of us walked the Farmers Market. Took some hopefully great photographs and bought a few pretty succulents. I got the most interesting calancho. I was talking to Michael and Carmen Maas about Benoit Mandelbrot and his fractal theorems when up pops this calancho with each leaf form fractalizing and then the entire plant mass sweeping around in the same fractal set. Too bizarre. The rains have caused all the weeds to go off and I see heavy yard work in the near future.  Spent the afternoon watching films for the next film festival. Hope that you all have a great week.