The Rabinowitz Family of Chopovichi

Most of my information about my grandmother's family comes to me from my aunt, who in turn got most of her information from her mother and from other older relatives. Inevitably, a certain amount of family mythology got mixed in with the family history. I've done the best I can to weed the two out from each other.

According to my aunt, the family came from Chepovovitch, which she described as being on the "outskirts" of Kiev. It took some research before I came to realize that she was talking about Chepovichi AKA Chopovichi (Yiddish: Chopovitch, Polish: Czopowicze) 119 km WNW of the city of Kiev. Some of the confusion may have been due to the fact that until 1929, Chopovichi lay within the Kiev gubernia. It's something like the difference between describing a town as a suburb of the city of Quebec vs saying that the town lies within the province of Quebec.

Chopovichi lies in a rural area. According to Michael Chepovetsky (personal communication), it was a village rather than a shtetl. Joshua Rothenberg explains the difference:

In Eastern Europe a shtetl was entirely different from a village; in this country [i.e., the States] the terms are used interchangeably. The historian Bernard Weinryb makes the following distinction:

A village in Eastern Europe differs from its namesake in the U.S. In the U.S. the village serves as a center (shopping, post office, etc.) for the surrounding population, which lives spread out on the farms. In Eastern Europe the agricultural population lives in houses concentrated together in villages, with the fields lying beyond the dwelling area, while a neighboring town serves as the center (shopping, post office, etc.).

Some villages had among their population one or two Jewish families (e.g., Sholem Aleichem's Tevye), others had none. A shtetl was a small town, servicing the surrounding villages, where the Jewish population was of a size permitting everyone to know everyone.

Imagine Chopovichi then as a small collection of houses surrounded by fields, with some of the houses being occupied by Jews and some not. (Michael Chepovetsky noted that in 1854, the village goyim wrote a letter to the governor in Kiev asking him to expel the Jews from Chopovichi.)

According to my aunt the Rabinowitzes were farmers who raised cattle for slaughter as well as raising chickens and growing vegetables and fruit for their own use. Jews were not allowed within the city of Kiev, but according to my aunt, her mother's short stature and good looks allowed her to sneak in to buy things like oranges when someone was sick. Given the distance between Chopovichi and Kiev, I'm not sure how often that happened.

Herschel Rabinowitz and Hinda Rabinowitz were first cousins who married at the age of 14. Given that they had the same last name, I'm assuming that they were first cousins because their fathers were brothers. However, my aunt didn't pass on their fathers' names, only their mothers' first names. Herschel's mother was named Anna and Hinda's, Fagle or Feigl. There's some evidence that Hinda's mother was Feige Rabinowitz of Makarov, whose daughter Sarah Rabinowitz married Eli "Louis" Kedofsky. Furthermore, Hinda and Sarah may have had a brother, Schloime Rabinowitz of Makarov. However, these connections are based on Ellis Island records and other American documents.

The 1897 Census

Until May 2017 I hadn't been able to access any records from the Ukraine. This changed when Michael Chepovetsky kindly had a look at the Chopovichi records for the 1897 census. He discovered two Rabinowitz (Rabinovich) households, apparently living next door to each other:

• Gershko [X]atzkelev Rabinovich, head of household, age 32, married, cattle trader;
• Ginda Avrumova Rabinovich, wife, age 27, married;
• Sura Gershkova Rabinovich, daughter, age 8;
• Avrum Gershkov Rabinovich, son, age 7;
• Braindlya Gershkova Rabinovich, daughter, age 4; and
• [X]atzkel' Gershkov Rabinovich, son, age 1 1/2.

• [X]aim [X]atzkelev Rabinovich, head of household, age 20, single, cattle trader;
• Malka Zeilikova Rabinovich, mother, age 55, widowed;
• Ginda [X]atzkeleva [X]olodenko, sister, age 25, married; and
• [X]atzkel' Meila[x]ob [X]olodenko, nephew, age 1.

The census records are, of course, in Russian rather than Yiddish. Russian doesn't use what an English speaker would call the "H sound" but Yiddish does. Confronted with names containing this sound, Russian substitutes a letter equivalent to G. Thus, Gershko and Ginda are Herschel and Hinda. Herschel's father was named [X]atzkel', where I'm using [X] to represent a sound used in Yiddish, Russian and several other languages - but not English. It's often transcribed into English as either H or Ch, which is why you see both Hanukkah and Chanukah. However, don't confuse [X] with the Ch in Chopovichi. This place name starts with a Russian letter that sounds exactly like Ch in English.

Hinda's father was named Avrum, Abraham. If Hinda and Herschel were indeed first cousins on their fathers' side, then Avrum and [X]atzkel' should have been brothers. However, I don't have any confirmation of this. Judging from the names of Herschel and Hinda's sons, Hinda's father had passed away by 1890 while it appears that Herschel's father didn't pass away until sometime between 1890 and 1895-1896. (I'm guessing that if he'd been dead when their oldest son was born, the oldest son would have been named after him.)

[X]aim and Hinda in the second household are almost certainly Herschel's siblings - or perhaps half-siblings. According to my aunt, Herschel's mother was named Anna (it would actually have been [X]ana), but [X]aim's widowed mother is named Malka. This could be an error in oral transmission, but since Herschel is 12 years older than [X]aim, it could also indicate that Malka was [X]atzkel's second wife.

Both Herschel and [X]aim are listed as cattle traders, a good fit with my aunt's statement that the family raised cattle for slaughter. As Jews, they were not allowed to own land - they rented it instead, apparently from someone named Evdokim Pavlov Poznansky - or, supposedly, to till the soil except to produce goods for their own use. I wonder if raising cattle was a way of getting around this prohibition, since technically it doesn't involve tilling the soil?

Herschel but not [X]aim is listed as being or having been in the military reserves.

The census has a place to list people who normally reside in the household but who are away at the time the census was taken. Hinda [X]atzkeleva's husband Meila[x] [X]olodenko is not listed at all. He's not just away temporarily, he doesn't live there, but Hinda is listed as married rather than divorced (listed as an option on the census form) or widowed. I wondered if he had immigrated with the intention of sending for Hinda and their son [X]atzkel' later, but I couldn't find any evidence of this.

Everyone is listed as being born in Chopovichi. However for tax purposes they're all registered in Malin, 24 km ESE of Chopovichi. Malin was more of a town. According to History of Jewish Communities in Ukraine there were 2,547 Jews living there in 1897, 60% of the total population. By contrast, the Jewish population of Chopovichi in 1897 was 919 per JewishGen. (I haven't been able to find a figure for what percentage this was of the overall population.)

After 1897

According to my aunt Herschel and Hinda had 12 children, of whom eight made it to adulthood. My aunt supplied the number of years between each child's birth. These don't always agree with the years of birth I've been able to find in other records. Some of the birth years on the US records may be false. For example, according to my aunt Chana and Itzhak, who immigrated to the States after the Emergency Quota Act was passed in 1921, told officials they were younger than they actually were in order to boost their chances of getting in. However, there are discrepancies even for the siblings who immigrated before 1921. Make of it what you will.

In order of birth:

• Sarah ("Sura" above). Born 1889;
• Abraham ("Avrum" above) - a year younger than Sarah. Born 1890;
• Brandel ("Braindlya" above) - a year younger than Abraham according to my aunt. Born 1893 per the 1897 cenus;
• Chatzkel ("Hyman" after immigration) - two years younger than Brandel according to my aunt. Born 1895-1896 per the 1897 census;
• a boy who died in a cholera epidemic;
• Chana ("Anna" after immigration) - four years younger than Chatzkel according to my aunt. Born 1902-1905 per US records;
• Itzhak ("Irving" after immigration) - one year younger than Chana according to my aunt. Born 1903-1904 per US records;
• a girl who died in an accident;
• Joseph
• Buzik

If you've read through the list, you might be wondering exactly the same thing I am: what the heck kind of name is Buzik? I started looking into this and ended up writing a whole page about it, so follow the link if you're interested. The name seems to be associated with the area of Ukraine west of Kiev. This might or might not be connected with a particular regional Yiddish usage. Also note that Yuzik can be a Yiddish nickname for Yosef, Joseph. It might have seemed amusing to the Rabinowitz family to refer to the youngest two children as Yuzik and Buzik.

Abraham immigrated to the States in 1913, supplying his "cousin" Eli Kedofsky's name and address in NYC as his contact there. Chatzkel followed the next year, using Abraham as his contact but also using Eli's address. This is why I think there might be a family connection.

Chatzkel arrived in New York on April 1, 1914. World War I started less than four months later, on July 28, and lasted until November 11, 1918. By the time the war ended the Russian Empire was gone, replaced by a civil war between competing factions. The USSR did not come into existence until December 30, 1922. The Rabinowitzes of Chopovichi apparently sat tight and waited the whole mess out.

Meanwhile Americans were dismayed to find that more and more immigrants were coming from southern and eastern Europe. Back in the 19th century, Irish immigrants had been greeted by signs saying that "No Irish Need Apply" for jobs in the States. Now the Irish and other immigrants from western and northern Europe were looking pretty good. As a result, in 1921 the US Congress passed the Emergency Quota Act, which set immigration quotas based on the percentages of each nationality in the US population as recorded in the 1910 Census. The law included the specification that "in the enforcement of this Act preference shall be given so far as possible to the wives, parents, brothers, sisters, children under eighteen years of age, and fiancées, (1) of citizens of the United States, (2) of aliens now in the United States who have applied for citizenship in the manner provided by law..."

Chana and Itzhak both arrived in New York in 1923, Itzhak on July 1 and Chana on August 1. Both of them gave Chatzkel's name and address as their contacts. According to my aunt, they were able to get in because they were both rather short and able to lie about their ages and pass as minors. However, according to their passenger manifests, both were 5'6". That's not particularly short by the standards of the day, especially in Chana's case. Furthermore, Chana gave her age as 18 and Itzhak, as 19. If they were trying to pass as children under 18, they were doing a very poor job of it.

For whatever reason, Chana and Itzhak were able to get into the States, but their older sisters Sarah and Brandel were not. Instead, Sarah and Brandel immigrated to Argentina. According to my aunt, Sarah had three children, Fanny, Juanita and Ernestito. Brandel also had three children, Bernardo, Gregorio and Julio.

Itzhak gave his father "Herz" as his contact at home, as Abraham and Chatzkel had done. However, Chana named her brother "Jozef." I don't know if this indicates that Herschel was in failing health and Joseph was the effective head of the family. In any case, I don't have any more information on Herschel and Hinda. My aunt believed both Joseph and Buzik to have died in WWII.

The report Jewish Cemeteries, Synagogues, and Mass Grave Sites in Ukraine by Samuel D. Gruber, published in 2005, lists one site for Chopovichi, a Jewish cemetery currently in use as such. There are between 21 and 100 graves. The first stone dates from 1916. The cemetery has no sign or marker, no wall or fence. Its gate has no lock.