Miriam Book Project: Why This Name for the Project
After I started the book donation project for the sustainability of the Jewish people and then after Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, I decided to name the book project after an ancestor of mine whose memory I want to sustain.
The problem is that until recently I had no idea what her name actually was — this great-great grandmother of mine killed by a pogrom in Romania. Then I did research – and here is the story:
I had been reading Daniel Mendelsohn’s book THE LOST about searching for relatives murdered in the Holocaust. It was then I finally realized I might be able to figure out my great-great-grandmother’s name.
According to notes made years ago by my speaking with my maternal grandfather Max Fishman …
The names of his parents were Velvel (Wolf) Fishman and Chaye Shifra.
The only known information about Chaye Shifra is that her mother was murdered in a pogrom in Romania, and Chaye Shifra and her older sister Rivka survived hidden in a haystack.
Then their father Yankel, a melamed (teacher), brought the two girls to the Tiraspol area (now in Eastern Moldova) where the Fishmans lived. According to Max, the rabbis there rented Yankel a place and made a cheder (Jewish school) for Yankel.
Velvel, who married Chaye Shifra, was the oldest (or second oldest – my notes differ on this point) of the children of Adelaine Hoffman and Albe Fishman (candlemaker), who shared a house with Albe’s sister and her husband, a baker, from whom Velvel learned to bake (Velvel’s job in the czar’s army).
Now let’s look at Velvel and Chaye Shifra’s children: Baruch, Yankel, Elimelech (Max), Joseph, Miriam, Adelaine
And there is the probable answer – it has been there all along as Ashkenazi Jews name their children for deceased relatives!
Miriam is almost surely the name of Chaye Shifra’s mother, just as Adelaine is clearly named for Velvel’s mother Adelaine Hoffman Fishman.
(My notes say Max’s brother Yankel was named for Chaye Shifra’s father. We can assume that Albe was still alive when Max and his brothers were born.)
Thus I am reasonably confident that Miriam is the name of my great-great-grandmother murdered in a pogrom in Romania. And if her name was not actually Miriam, the Miriam Project is still named in her memory.
ADDITIONAL RESEARCH:
In the marriage record for Fannie Dumes (b. 1895) and Max Fishman (b. 1889):
Max’s mother’s maiden name is given as Sarah Jacobs. Assuming that Chaye Shifrah took the name of Sarah in America, then Jacobs may be the last name of her father Yankel. Thus her mother’s married name may have been Miriam Jacobs.
FURTHER REFLECTION:
Yankel is a Yiddish variation of the Hebrew name Yaakov, which in English is Jacob. Perhaps Max didn’t know his mother’s maiden name, although he would have presumably known her father’s first name — Yankel — especially as that was the name of one of Max’s brothers.
So, if Max didn’t know his mother’s maiden name, for Max and Fannie’s marriage license Max may have put Jacobs as his mother’s maiden name as she was the daughter of Jacob. (And he may have just put Sarah for Chaye Shifra as an easier name for an American to understand.)
Photo of Max Fishman’s family of origin:
Back row: Miriam (Mary), Yankel (Jacob), Elimelech (Max), Joseph
Seated: Adelaine, mother Chaye Shifra, father Wolf Samuel, Baruch (Boris) and his wife and daughters