Soccer Dad

Arrival day

#3 child is preparing for his class's Bar Mitzvah dinner. The assignment they have been given is to present a piece of his family's history and write about it.

I suggested that he present the manifest marking the arrival of my great grandfather, Benjamin Paul Gerstman to America. (or Benjamin Gersztmann as the manifest and certificate read.) That day was Dec 19, 1908, 97 year ago today.

I can't imagine what must have motivated a 24 year old man to leave his family and start a new life accross the ocean. I guess what I find even more astonishing is that my great-grandfather wasn't just leaving a wife and a child. His wife was pregnant at the time he left as is evidenced by the manifest nearly 4 years later on Nov 26, 1912, which shows the arrival of Benjamin's wife, five year old son and three year old daughter. (See lines 11-13 that show them going to 339 Henry Street in Brooklyn to join their husband and father.)

My great grandparents Benjamin and Anna would have two more children. Moshe and Grace - who is, thank God, still alive. Moshe though died in childhood and his mother - my great grandmother - a few years later.

I have no idea what their life was like. And given the early deaths of his child and wife I can't imagine that Benjamin had an extremely joyful life. He did however have a life. Something that may not have happened had he not brought his family out of Eastern Europe a quarter century prior to Hitler's rise. But my great grandfather probably thought that his family's wandering had reached an end. He would have been wrong.

His son, my Grandpa Max made Aliyah in 1971. A retired business executive, he had built a house for himself and his second wife in Herziliya. Unfortunately, my grandfather did not enjoy his retirement for very long as he died nearly six months after arriving in Israel that final time.

My great grandfather's namesake, Benjamin Paul Gerstman - my brother - arrived in Israel in 1984 to learn in Yeshiva. That year he not only acquired knowledge. He acquired a wife and settled with her in Israel where they are raising their seven sons.

Hopefully too, in a few years, my father and mother will retire and move to the apartment they have bought in Israel.

That would leave two of Benjamin Paul Gerstman's great grandsons and their families in America. In another century will their journey have continued too? Time will tell.

Posted by SoccerDad at December 19, 2005 12:34 AM