Categories
love poems & stories ukraine

Touched Hearts

Just got on a plane from Chernivtsi to Kiev as I am starting my return to the states, and I find that a woman that I met in Chervnitsi has woven a very sweet and tender silk around my heart. The first time I was in Chernivtsi, maybe a month ago now, I met a […]

Categories
family Jewish ukraine

Khotyn – Cultural Longing and Identification

I returned again to Khotyn yesterday evening. I’m not exactly certain as to why, but perhaps that will unfold as I am here. The excuse I told myself in planning to come here was that I wanted to photograph more of the remaining Jewish people here in town. I’ve been itching to put together images […]

Categories
family favorites Jewish ukraine

Ancestral Grief

Once again ancestral grief rears it’s pain again through me. If you’ll recall from a recent post about bringing some of my mother’s ashes to rest with her first husband Joe at a military graveyard in France, I discovered then how much grief I can carry for something that I have not personally suffered, but […]

Categories
family Jewish ukraine

Journey to Khotin

So here I am back at the shtetl. Khotyn, Ukraine, home of my grandfather and his family and who knows how many generations before him. We arrived in Khotyn, interpreter, driver and I, and knocked on the door of Srul (Alexander) and Fonya Weinstein, 2 of the remaining 29 jews in Khotin. Srul is the […]

Categories
Jewish ukraine

Roots Research – Archives Ukraine

Today I hired an interpreter and went off in search of some records which I believed to exist in the town I am in now, Kamyanets – Podilsky, records of the people in the town of Khotin back in the mid/late 1800s. We got to the archives, Iryna and I, only to be told that […]

Categories
family Jewish ukraine

The Burden of my Grandfathers Homeland – Bessarabia

I just read a Wikipedia article on Bessarabia, since no one seems to use the term anymore, yet if you had asked my grandfather, Bessarabia is where he would have claimed to have come from. It’s an area that has been populated since at least 2,000BC. at some point after Maurice left, Bessarabia became part […]

Categories
family Jewish life ukraine

Things We’ve Handed Down – Family Roots

So now I’m off in search of my ancestry, more specifically to find the roots of my paternal grandfather Moise Zeldman who came from a town called Khotin (pronounced around here with more of an implied K rather than a firm one). The photograph you see to the left is one of my grandfather before […]

Categories
ukraine

Ancestral Lands Quest Begins

Hey, I’ve cranked out 100 posts now since I began this blog 2 years ago. Kind of exciting. I’d say that gives me room for a break. Actually I’ll be falling off the face of the earth for a week or so I think starting tomorrow or the next day. I’ll be attending a “Rainbow […]