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Return-Path: Delivered-To: alumni.princeton.edu%david90@alumni.princeton.edu Received: (cpmta 14082 invoked from network); 12 Oct 2001 00:57:43 -0700 Received: from storm.barak.net.il (HELO storm.barak-online.net) (212.150.48.101) by smtp.c007.snv.cp.net (209.228.33.204) with SMTP; 12 Oct 2001 00:57:43 -0700 X-Received: 12 Oct 2001 07:57:43 GMT Received: from barak-online.net ([10.10.11.13]) by storm.barak-online.net (InterMail vK.4.03.00.00 201-232-121 license 42798954b94fcb168b1407e1533853c1) with ESMTP id <20011012075807.HYLC15585.storm@barak-online.net> for ; Fri, 12 Oct 2001 09:58:07 +0200 Message-ID: <3BC6AE7B.4282A572@barak-online.net> Date: Fri, 12 Oct 2001 10:48:59 +0200 From: Schelly Dardashti X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.73 [en] (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en,he MIME-Version: 1.0 To: david90@alumni.princeton.edu Subject: Saving the siddur Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------B9E41C925D6522C29C878FE5" Status: U X-UIDL: O8aiedHkIcw3GAE This is a multi-part message in MIME format. --------------B9E41C925D6522C29C878FE5 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear David, They corrected all the little boxes, but now the sidebar is missing. They are under great pressure and I cannot ask them to do anything else. I will send the hardcopies on Sunday. Shabbat Shalom. Schelly http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/10/11/JewishWorld/JewishWorld.36057.html --------------B9E41C925D6522C29C878FE5 Content-Type: text/html; charset=iso-8859-1; name="JewishWorld.36057.html" Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable Content-Disposition: inline; filename="JewishWorld.36057.html" Content-Base: "http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/10/ 11/JewishWorld/JewishWorld.36057.ht ml" Content-Location: "http://www.jpost.com/Editions/2001/10/ 11/JewishWorld/JewishWorld.36057.ht ml" The Jerusalem Post Newspaper : Online News From Israel - Jewish World Art= icle = =

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25 Tishri 5762 03:10Friday October 12, 2001

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IT'S ALL RELATIVE: Saving the siddur
By = Schelly Talalay Dardashti

= (October 11) - Amid the shock and horror, a minor miracle

'MY world is still upside-down. My office is a wreck," says David Simo= n Bendory of New Jersey. "The windows were blown in by the shock wave fro= m the South Tower collapse. Everything is covered with dust and debris."

When he finally got home to Livingston on Tuesday, September 11, follo= wing the attack on the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center, he posted t= he following to JewishGen:

"I work across the street from the World Trade Center in One Liberty P= laza ...

Thank God I was already on my way home. Thank God I made it home safel= y today, without a scratch ...," wrote the Goldman Sachs vice president.

"Locked in my desk sits my great-grandmother's siddur [prayerbook], pu= blished in Vienna in 1878. I had an appointment to meet with a book conse= rvator tomorrow [Wednesday] to have it properly preserved.

"Inside the cover, my great-grandmother, then my grandmother, listed t= he births, marriages, and deaths in our family from the death of my great= -great-grandmother and great-great-grandfather in 1893 through the marria= ge of Uncle Charlie in 1932 ...

"This siddur survived persecution in Hungary, the journey to America, = and three generations.

"I won't know if it survived today's tragedy until I can get back into= my office, and I don't know when that will be. Thank God I have a scan o= f the writing inside the cover."

ONE Liberty Plaza, immediately adjacent to the WTC, remained standing = and, in his Goldman Sachs office on the 33rd floor, David's office creden= za remained intact, protecting the old brown prayerbook, which a friend w= ould return to him with hardly a speck of dust on it, erev Rosh Hashana.

Earlier, David had said that he had no words to describe the catastrop= he from which he narrowly escaped, "I now have no words to describe the m= iracle which has emerged from that same catastrophe.

"God willing, there are more miracles to come, in the form of survivor= s who emerge from the debris."

The siddur survived pogroms. It survived the journey to America in 190= 4. And it survived September 11. It is a survivor.

The German-Hebrew siddur arrived in New York in 1904 with David's grea= t-grandmother Helen Kohn, who brought her daughter Fanny, age 2, to join = her husband Aron Kohn.

They originally came from Anina, (then Hungary, now Romania), and trav= elled on the Patricia from Hamburg, Germany, to Ellis Island.

Fanny (David's grandmother) gave the siddur to her oldest daughter, Ka= y Simon Levine, who passed it to David, who plans on inscribing his story= inside to add a literal page to its history.

His family had been secular for so long that "everyone called this boo= k the family Bible," says David.

When he received it, he realized it was a prayerbook, not a Bible.

"I davened [prayed] from it on the day of my son's bris [circumcision]= ," he says, and he brings it each time he visits his Uncle Leo, who is si= ck, to say a prayer for good health with him.

Fluent in Hebrew, his undergraduate degree is in Near Eastern Studies = (Princeton 1990) and his MA (Jewish Theological Seminary, NY 1994) is in = Jewish Studies. He lived in Israel for about three years, and he and his = wife Yafitte (whose parents are from Rishon Lezion) visit frequently. Mar= ried for nearly seven years, they have a daughter, 5, and a son, 3.

ALWAYS interested in his roots, David has tape recordings and notes of= interviews with his grandparents, great-aunts and uncles going back two = decades. He asked his grandmother and her generation where they came from= in Hungary. No one knew.

One day, when his Alzheimer's-stricken grandmother was 89, David asked= her once more where the family was from.

"She blurted out, clear as day, "Resciza - R-E-S-C-I-Z-A. It's near Te= mesvar - T-E-M-E-S-V-A-R. It was a mining town in Hungary."

He now has her parents' wedding pictures in Temesvar, (today Timisoara= , Romania); Resita (Resicabanya) is nearby.

Great-grandmother Helen's father, Rabbi Philip Brauch, was supposedly = the rabbi in Temesvar, but David has not yet been able to find any detail= s.

"I have some 400 relatives in my family tree now," he says, of whom 99= are direct descendents or married to direct descendents of Helen and Aro= n.

DAVID'S great-grandparents on the other side, Leib and Ruchel Schwartz= , were clearly religious when they arrived in 1902 from Romania with thei= r children, Avraham ("my grandfather) and Itzchok.

Like many turn-of-the-century immigrants, says David, they worked to a= ssimilate into their new country, throwing off much of their Jewish ident= ity in the process.

Over the next three generations, Jewish observance decreased until in = David's generation, all the young people intermarried "except me. I am th= e first observant Jew in four generations on both sides of my family," he= says. As an observant Jew, it troubled him for years that his parents ne= ver gave him a Hebrew name and didn't name him after anyone. So as an adu= lt, he took on the Hebrew name Dovid to go with his English name, and he = has gone by the Hebrew version for years.

This year, he decided to visit the historic Grove Street Cemetery in N= ewark on the one day it is safe - September 16 - when older people go to = visit family graves before the holidays, and when there are plenty of pol= ice.

"As a genealogist, I ventured out to see my great-grandparents on both= sides to see what I could learn," says David.

"As a Jew, I went to pay appropriate respect before the holidays. Imag= ine my surprise and joy to find Leib's Hebrew name on his tombstone: Leib= ben Dovid."

In their efforts to assimilate, to give their son a nice American Jewi= sh name, unknown to anyone alive, after four generations, David's parents= gave him the name of his great-great-grandfather.

"I will no longer say I was not named after anyone," says David. "God = works in mysterious ways."

David Simon Bendory: d= avid90@alumni.princeton.edu

For a scan of the siddur's inscription: <http://www.members.home.net/dbendo= ry/siddur/cover.jpg>.

For more information on his research, <http://www.fam= ilytreemaker.genealogy.com/users/s/i/m/David-E-Simon/index.html>

It's All Relative welcomes readers' inquiries. Write:

City Lights/Jerusalem Post, PO Box 28398,Tel Aviv 61283; fax: 03-639-0= 277; email: <dardasht@jpost.co.il= >

Se= arch The Jerusalem Post:

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