Moshe Chaim, Czar of Pinsk: #13 Schrödinger's Rabbi

A crucial year
1900 has now become a crucial year for Dora Zaturensky, sister of my great-grandmother Shprintsa (see #9: Dora's Story onwards, for her story so far). The US Census, taken on 2 June, finds her living in Peoria, Illinois, in the house at 108 Gallatin Street that she has been in for a couple of years or more, with her two sons Abraham and Samuel. Her husband Joseph had died in 1897.

Samuel is on the next page:

This is the first US Census that Dora and the boys appear on, so we need to pay attention to what she says. Dora is born in July 1870, she's a widow, and has had 4 children, of whom 2 are living. Abe is born Dec 1888, Samuel Dec 1889. She also says she emigrated in 1888, when by her own account she would have been 18.

Who are the 2 other children that she says are no longer living? They could have been born before she immigrated to the US in 1888. That would imply 2 children born before she was 18, that she left behind in order to emigrate to the USA, where she immediately married Joseph Kawin and had 2 more in quick succession. Or they could be 2 children born with Joseph in Peoria, who did not survive; there is no record of any such births, or deaths, but records from Peoria are quite erratic for this period, so it is still a possibility.

Or at least it would be a possibility, if Benjamin Gitelman hadn't arrived from Pinsk in 1922 acting for all the world like her long lost son, and claiming a brother Hirsz back in Pinsk (see previous post). So I'm going with the 4 births story until I come across evidence to the contrary, even if it implies that she had her first child at 15 or 16, if her stated birth date of 1870 is to be believed. And of course the arrival of Benjamin confirms that, although she said in 1900 that the two sons she had left behind in Pinsk had died, they were in fact still very much alive.

What about the Rabbi?
What about her husband-to-be Ephraim Goldberg, who she married 2 months later in Chicago? Where was he in June, when the Census was taken?

Well, he's in Peoria, at 608 Johnson Street, about a quarter of a mile from Dora's house at 108 Gallatin Street. And he's a Rabbi. So maybe they could have met in the street, or at the synagogue. He's a widower, he immigrated in 1880, and has a son Julius aged 10. And he's down as Efrof, which didn't make him any easier to find.

He also appears in the 1900 Peoria Directory, as Rev. Ephraim Goldberg. He's at a different address, 1509 S Adams Street. Maybe he moved house between the time the Directory was compiled, and 2 June, the date of the Census.

Just a minute. Who's this other Goldberg - Frank, the butcher, boarding at 108 Gallatin? Isn't that our Dora's house?

Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Is this Ephraim the Rabbi, under a different name, and with a different occupation, by any chance? In two places at the same time? Schrödinger's Rabbi?

Ephraim Goldberg: The back-story
At this point I went off for a week or so, looking for Ephraim Goldberg's back-story.  His forward story turned out to be quite interesting, too. I've had to compile a 2-page timeline to try to pin him down. He has a story of his own, what follows is a brief summary of those bits that concern Dora.

Ephraim Goldberg seems to have been born in Suwalki, Poland around 1851. He first appears in the US in the early 1870s, with his wife Rosa and a number of children. In the 1880 Census they're in Chicago, and he's a Hebrew Teacher. He's still a Teacher in Chicago in 1889 and 1891, but he's clearly having problems with his given name, which appears as 'Abe' on the birth record of his son Julian in 1889.

From 1892 to 1895 he's in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, as a Butcher. He has a child there in 1892, Rachel Leah. I may be willing to write up my analysis of her birth registration document, for a reasonable fee.

He does not reappear in Milwaukee, but there is an Ephraim who appears amongst the 200-odd Goldbergs in the Chicago Directories between 1896-99. This Ephraim is a labourer in these listings; there are a few butchers, and one or two teachers, but none of them appear to be our man, and there are no rabbis at all. This one could be him, or he could have spent these years somewhere else entirely, in a place we haven't got the Directories for.

The irregular Schochet
Then this cropped up, thanks to an eagle-eyed member of the Tracing the Tribe Group on Facebook. It's from The Inter Ocean, a Chicago newspaper, dated 8 August 1895:

Halfway down the report, we see this:

Is the schochet - kosher slaughterer - named in this report, 'Mr Goldberg', the same person as the Frank Goldberg, butcher, who 5 years later we find boarding with Dora in Peoria? As I mentioned above, there were a few butchers called Goldberg in Chicago at the time, and the Ephraim listed in the Directories is a 'labourer'. As yet, I have found no other reference to this incident, so for the moment at least I'm agnostic on this one. But it's a lovely story.

Dora with Ephraim
Then in 1900, Ephraim enters Dora's life. His wife Rose dies on 30 April, in Chicago. In the Census, taken on 11 June, he's in Peoria, as above. The 1900 Peoria Directory (above) shows him living in two places at once, with two names and two occupations: Ephraim the Rabbi and Frank the Butcher, boarding with Dora. In the Census he has his son Julius with him; we later find his 7 year-old daughter Rachel Leah (see above), now known as 'Lillie', living with her older sister Emilia, or 'Millie', in Chicago.

He marries Dora in Chicago on 14 August, and within a year their child Sarah is born in the small town of Oskaloosa, in Iowa (see previous post for the delayed birth certificate).

Dora without Ephraim
At this point Ephraim seems to disappear from the records. I can find no further reference to either Ephraim or Dora until the 1910 Census, which brings its own puzzles. As we have seen, Dora and her daughter Sarah are Goldbergs, and her sons Abraham and Sam are Kawins, and they are in Chicago. Dora is 'married', but no husband is listed as living with them.

So what about Ephraim?

He's in Whiting (Indiana), a Rabbi. He has his 17 year-old daughter Lillie living with him. He's been married for 9 years, but there's no wife listed - as we know, Dora is in Chicago at this point. So they are living apart, each with their own children, but both attest to being married, presumably to each other. At the moment I don't know when Dora and the children moved to Chicago, or when or why Ephraim found his way to Whiting.

The Wandering Rabbi
Ephraim then embarks on a series of rabbinical appointments across the mid-West, in places like Fort Wayne (Indiana), where he's a 'Grocer'; Muncie and then Marion (Indiana); and Wausau (Wisconsin). Throughout this period he is with a wife Katie; there is a son Israel aged 9 with them in the 1920 Census. I did start looking into this relationship, but didn't get very far. Life's too short.

Ephraim eventually dies in Chicago in 1926. On his death record, his occupation is shown not as 'Rabbi', but 'Schochet'. So maybe it was him in the Chicago kosher meat scandal of 1895, after all.

I keep asking myself - why am I researching this man? Well, I respond, he's the father of Sarah, one of Dora's children, and Dora is the sister of my great-grandmother. I may one day stumble upon a DNA match with one of Sarah's descendants. And understanding these half-sibling relationships could help us to unravel the story the DNA is trying to tell us. Or it could just tie us up in even more tangled knots, of course.

You never know.