From Ukraine to America: 4 Families

The Gilfenbains

From Elfenbeijn to Helfenbein to Gilfenbain

Our earliest record of the Gilfenbains comes in a statement by two men, one from the synagogue and one a town official.  They witnessed the birth of a baby girl. This isn't as sinister as it may sound.  Small towns in Eastern Europe didn't have city halls with registris of birth. Since babies were born at home and without a doctor present, if the custom of the town was to take official note of a birth, then who else to do it except for the police or members of the town's patrol?

Although this is a translation, it apparently does adhere closely to the original. Its original writers were clearly trying to sound official, but were just as clearly not very familiar with legal or formal writing. What the number 109 signifies, I don't know, but note the writer prefaced his words with Fact. We are indebted to Ken Marcus for this document. The baby girl, Tauba-Ryfka, was Ken's great-grandmother.  The baby's mother is my mother's namesake, and Lejzor-Vulf Elfenbeim was my grandfather Abraham's father.

109. Fact in the town of Nowy Dwor on November ten one thousand eight hundred and seventy-three at ten o'clock in the morning. With appeared in person the Jew Lejzor-Vulf Elfenbejm, workman twenty-four year old, regular inhabitant of the town of Nowy Dwor, in the presence of witnesses: Elijash Itsk Sigalowicz, sixty-nine years old and Lejb Junkier, forty-nine years old, both members of the " Pieuse" patrols; [1]; it introduced to us a child of female sex, born in the town of Nowy Dwor on November six from this year, at six o'clock in the morning: his child and that of his wife, Mina née Zlotnicki, twenty-three years old; it was given to this child the name of Tauba-Ryfka. The witnesses signed this act after reading of this one, the father declared that he could not write. Fulfilling the function of Burgomaster of the town of Nowy Dwor, person in charge of the behaviour of the registers of l' Civil statue: XXX E.J. Sigalowicz Lejb Junkier

Interestingly, we know from the tombstone of the Tauba-Rifke whose birth was being recorded that her father's name was Eliezer Le'ev Elfenbein. Her great-grandson, Ken Marcus, a great-great nephew of my grandfather, reconciled the name on the birth certificate with the one on the tombstone by recalling that Lejzor is short for "Eliezer:, and Le'ev m eans 'wolf'  in Yiddish (pronounced, of course, as 'Vulf'). So, Eliezer Le'ev is Lejzor-Vulf. (Note, Wolf Blitzer on CNN must be in Hebrew, Le'ev.)

As already noted, my grandfather was listed on the Ellis Island passenger record as Avrum Helfenbain, 19 years old, occupation printer, and the already mentioned erroneous last residence, Nowy Dwor, Austria    Terry got records from Nowy Dwor, Poland, from a contact on ancestry.com which show a huge number of people named Elfenbein and Helfenbein in various spellings. Undoubtedly, many of these were aunts, uncles, and cousins of my grandfather Avrum's. Many of their descendants are in the U.S. and other places around the world.

In fact, one major problem in researching which Helfenbein is related to our family is the fact that the name is so common. As Terry pointed out to me, she has success with Gilfenbain because so few Helfenbein's adopted the Gilfenbain spelling. We would count a variation like Gilfenbeijn or Gelfenbein a a possible relation, but those with the H in their last name are too numerous to track down. What makes this even sadder is that Nowy Dwor was in the area where Jews were sent to the Camps.  There is a Holocaust site. However, we don't know if the Helfenbeins listed on it are family.

Getting back to our grandfather, Avrum arrived on a ship which was called Amerika. It arrived  at Ellis Island on April 5, 1908. He was to go to his brother Mendel Helfenbein in Boston, Massachusetts. He listed as his closest relative in Poland his sister Chana, who pretty much raised him after his mother, Rosa Minya (nee Zlotmicki), my mother's namesake, died when he was very young and his father remarried. At what point he decided to rename himself Abraham Gilfenbain, I don't know, but he was already Gilfenbain when he married my grandmother in 1910. What is more intriguing is why his sister Rebecca (Rifka) called herself Rebecca Gilfenbain Marcus. It's most likely that she came to America as either Rifka Elfenbein or Helfenbein. Her brother Mendel came here as Helfenbein and kept that name. They were both here in 1908 when Avrum, later Abraham, arrived. He went to live with his sister. Did she adopt the G spelling because Abraham did? My uncle Norman Gilfenbain told me that his father couldn't read or write. However, he knew enough to change his name, and to tell my mother proudly that his brother called himself Helfenbein, but he called himself Gilfenbain. The g was apparently important to him. I suspect he knew something about the alphabet even if he did sign his name with an X.

I already noted that my grandfather's mother died when he was very young. My mother, Rose, thought he was only 6 when she died. His father remarried, apparently quite soon after he was widowed. Unfortunately, Avrum's stepmother was abusive to him. One story he told my mother was when he was about 7, he heartily ate a dish of boiled beef and kasha, which he loved. His stepmother, seeing how eagerly he ate it, then forced him to eat several more bowls of it. He became very sick and for the rest of his life could not eat food like that. My mother told me he hated his stepmother.

For that reason, undoubtedly, he didn't name his oldest son, Chick, after his father, although he did name his oldest daughter for his mother.  Before we got Ken Marcus's  confirmation of my great grandfather's name, I posited that, perhaps, Chick, my mother's older brother, was named for an Ichek (Yiddish for Isaac) and that since my great grandfather was already dead when Avrum landed in Ellis Island, that Chick was his namesake. Well, that was thown out the window. There is no way that Eliezer or Lezer becomes a Chick. However, Terry told me not to throw that thought away. One of her contacts from a different branch of the Helfenbeins did have a document for an Icheck Helfenbein and Terry is following up that lead. She thinks it might be Abraham's grandfather. If so, it also explains the name on Chick's birth certificate: Israel. The Jewish immigrants often chose an English name on the basis of the first sound of the Yiddish name. Actually, that practice still survives. Israel and Icheck both start with an I, and, of the two names, i my experience, Icheck (Hebrew Yitzak) was a far more common first name than Israel.

Abraham's other sister, Rebecca Gilfenbain Marcus already lived in Boston in 1908, and Avrum stayed with her before he got married.   His name is on the 1910 Boston census  when he was still living with the Marcus family. Chana was the last of the family to come. My mother loved her Mema Chana, but never said much about her beyond how wonderful she was, so I don't even know if she had children. I never knew her or saw a picture of her. The only thing I know is that she was a very freckled redhead, a fact often mentioned because I had a face full of freckles and reddish hair.

The surname, in any of its spelling is interesting. The name was probably originally Elfenbein. although it would have been spelled somewhat differently, as we've seen. It was not, as my mother thought, Elfenbaum, because, in Yiddish, baum means 'tree,' but bein means 'bone.' And, elfen is Yiddish for 'elephant.' (That's the reason that I know the H- form was not the original one, but one appeared later because of pronunciation practices.  Also, helfen means to help' in Yiddish, and there is no 'help' tree) There certainly is no elephant tree, but there is an elephant bone. That is what ivory is called in Yiddish!!

The original Elfenbein was probably a Jewish merchant, trading with Turkish or Greek merchants along the early trade routes along the Black Sea into Ukraine and on up to the Danube. There was so much trading with Turkey, that in the 10th century, Turkish Jewish merchants converted the people in what is now Ukraine to Judaism, and the Khazars founded a Jewish kingdom. Later, of course, St. Cyril converted the Slavs and the resulting Christian church with its superior organization and hierarchy became predominant.

Jenny Butkovitz Gilfenbain

My cousin Ava Terry, my Aunt Ruth Gilfenbain Terry Dillon's younger daughter told me a very romantic story. She said that Granma and Granpa met as they got off their respective boats on Ellis Island, took one look at each other and fell in love. Now that would make a great Hollywood movie. Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons it would have been an impossible scenario. Not only did they embark from different ports, but Jenny (Taibl) was in Boston a full two years before Avrum arrived. She was only 9 in 1906. I don't know how or when the two met, but I do know why they got married in 1910. My mother, Rose Gilfenbain Ostrach, told me.

My grandfather arrived in Boston two years after my grandmother Jenny did. Her father, Schlomo, caught Abram climbing in my grandmother's bedroom window one night. Shortly thereafter, they were married, apparently at the insistence of her father. Three children, Chick, Rose (my mother), and Harry were born in 1911, 1912, and 1913. My grandmother was a child with children, and my grandfather barely 20.

It seems my great grandfather Scholom Butkovitz caught Abraham climbing in Jenny's bedroom window on night in 1910. Since she was 9 in 1906, that made her all of 13 when she was married in 1910. My Uncle Chick was born in 1911. My mother Rose Minya made her appearance in 1912, and my Uncle Harry made his in 1913. By the time she was 16,my grandmother had her first three children. Apparently, the experience made her feel as if she had aged, because, in the 1920 census, she listed her age as 27.

My grandmothers both were important in making me who I am. I hope, at least, that I match my Bobi Jenny's warm and accepting ways. She was a loving, generous, good-hearted woman who never judges others on their behavior. She accepted everyone for who they were. She was never mean or stingy or unfriendly. She loved to sing bawdy Yiddish songs and to dance and play cards. She delighted in a "freylach," a lively party for a wedding or a bar mitzvah.

Perhaps because she married so young and had children so soon, later on she had love affairs. I know of two. One was with a greengrocer whose store was near my grandfather's in the North End. My mother recalls going to visit this man's store and her mother disappearing in the back room for a while as my mother waited impatiently outside. The more serious affair was with a man whom my grandfather called a "yamhaser," which means 'an ocean pig." He was a fish dealer, and once my grandfather tracked her down with him and beat the fish seller up. My grandfather was very handsome. Beautiful, even features, dark red hair. He never got fat. However, he was not an affectionate person and my grandmother was. She needed a loving man, and although my grandfather may have loved her, he was a distant person. Bobi Jenny was appreciated by her granddaughters because she was a woman well before her time. If they had had discos in the 1920's, my mother once said, her mother would have been the first person on the floor.

She was very lenient with her children. My mother, Rose, said that growing up in her home was like living in the Wild West. Her mother never restrained her children's behavior. Once, the three kids were roughhousing and they grabbed ahold of a heavy bureau and tugged on it until it fell over. In the picture of the three children together, my mother is carrying a doll.

That was the only doll she ever had. In their still Old Country culture, children didn't have toys. They played imaginatively and, in the large extended family, there were always playmates. However, at a Simchas Torah celebration in the synagogue, the children paraded with flags topped with cored apples that had lit candlles in them. (I did the same when I was a child, but I think the custom has died out). In any event, my mother's candle somehow fell out, right onto her new dress, which Jenny had made her. The dress caught on fire and my mother was burned all over her body. The burns couldn't have been deep because she had no scarring on her body. Even so, her parents, on a trip to New York, brought back that gift of a doll.

My mother sought peace in her grandmother Sarah's house, which was right across from theirs. My mother looked like her grandmother and was staid like her. She considered her grandmother the stability of her childhood, although she loved her mother very deeply, and, in later years, appreciated her openness to newer and freer ways.

My Gilfenbain grandparents moved to Los Angeles with my still young Aunt Ruth and Uncle Norman only about 3. The few times Bobi Jenny took a trip from California to visit us, she always brought me a doll. One was a Shirley Temple doll, and the other one, Jenny named Beatrice, for some odd reason. I loved those dolls, literally to pieces.

Bobi Jenny was always matchmaking. If a woman she knew was of marriageable age, she would try to find them a husband.   Aunty Ida, my grandmother's younger sister, told me once that Jenny brought a young man as a prospect to her youngest sister Anna, but "she (Jenny) made him on the way over." She also told fortunes using playing cards. One summer, after I divorced my first husband, Bobi Jenny came to visit us in Rhode Island. We were at a beach house. Jenny had bought us a collection of Mumus, bright, gaudy, big tents that we were supposed to wear. She was very insistent that I find a man, and decided to read the cards to see if that was in my future. So she sat me down and dealt. It worked like Tarot, only with regular cards. Sure enough, she saw a nice blond young man, a professional, in my future. Guess who I met a few months later? My nice, blond young man who was in law school. We'll celebrate our 50th anniversary in August 2010.

My Uncle Harry Gilfenbain signed up to fight in World War II. He was exempt from the draft because he had a wife and two children, Sari and Steve. Once I asked him why he signed up, and he said he had gone to see a movie in 1942, and it so fired him up, he ran to the nearest enlistment office when he got out! I've always wondered if the movie he saw was For Me and My Gal. It was a potent flick about why real men had a God given duty to join up . Terry, surfing the net, recently found a blurb in a Boston paper from that time under the listing "Wounded in Action." To her surprise, she saw Harry's name I sent the clipping to Sari who told me her father had a ring given to him by a friend which he considered his lucky ring. It fell off his finger and he bent to pick it up. At that moment, a shell exploded, and he got wounded. I guess he had a problem sitting for a while.

My mother Rose was a strong, intelligent, super hard-working woman. In the days when it was considered a shame for a woman to hold down a job outside of her home, she worked as a salesperson in a department store, and also carried out her housewifely duties, even washing clothes in the bathtub, wringing them out by hand, and going down three flights of stairs to hang them on a clothesline. We didn't have a refrigerator or a telephone. Rugs had to be beaten by hand because we had no vacuum. But she did it all. When life got easier for her and my father, she went back to school, earning a B.A. in history, summa cum laude, when she was 60.

My Uncles Chick and Harry had very successful greengrocer's stores in Boston, but early on they moved on upwards to become produce wholesalers. My Uncle Norman who grew up in Los Angeles, on his own, also became a produce wholesaler.  However, he didn't stop there. He actually bought farmland and raised crops. So far as I know, he was the first Californian who got the idea of growing strawberries in the cooler regions of California, and he was responsible for our being able to satisfy our strawberry yens in wintertime. My Uncle Harry's son Steve also became a produce broker in his own business and now is both father and mother to his young children. My Uncle Harry moved his family to Bakersfield, California in the late 1950's.

Since my Uncle Chick did remain in Boston. Actually, he gave me my first typewriter, helping me embark on my scholarly and writing careers. He had only one daughter, Arlene, who also lived in Boston. We loved to get together to eat and talk. Like me,she had her first child when she was about 20, although she went on to have 5 more, and I only managed 3.  Unfortunately, she died when she was only 63. All my other cousins live on the West Coast. I am, so far as I know, the last of the Gilfenbain line to live in Eastern New England. (So, it's Providence, not Boston, but that's close enough.) My only brother, Herb, who wisely married Teresia Rita Hamel, a powerhouse like my mother and the Terry whose work inspired this website, left New England years ago. He passed away in Florida when he was 71, too young.

My Aunt Ruth Gilfenbain Terry Dillon had two daughters, Lila and Ava, whom I do see infrequently, although Ava and I keep in touch by emails. Norman Gilfenbain is married to Gloria, his high school sweetheart, and lives in Brentwood, California. He has two children, Stuart and Robin Gilfenbain Baker.  Sari Gilfenbain, Harry's daughter was a special education teacher in Bakersfield. She was always the beauty of the family.

Last April, when I visited Los Angeles, we cousins got together. As different as all our lives have been, and all our paths, we found out that we all share a love of dogs. On that trip, for the first time, I met my cousin Robin, Norman's daughter. We talked as if we'd known each other our whole lives. We had never before set eyes on each other, but we discovered that each of us is completely dedicated to alleviating cruelty to animals. As Robin we share a compassion gene. Oh, I forgot to tell you. My Bobi Jenny loved dogs!

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The Gilfenbains