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  • dB CooperCoolerPseudonym@wandering.shop
    Sep 15, 2026, 9:39 PM

    My great-grandfather left his shtetl in the Pale and came to America for three reasons.

    1) to avoid the pogroms.

    2) to avoid impressment and involuntary service in the Czar's army.

    (I thought that was a hell of a thing. Either the cossacks come and try to kill you, or you could be forced into the military to serve involuntarily for twenty years. Or both!)

    3) To get away from the Rabbi. He was sick of it. Sick of the stifling traditional life.

    #Judaism

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Replies

  • dB CooperCoolerPseudonym@wandering.shop
    Sep 15, 2026, 9:44 PM

    I was very young when he passed away, but I knew him and I remember him. He arrived in the US in 1913. I have his fancy kippah (probably bought in the States not actually all that long ago, but it was his) and a matzoh cloth his wife Bessie, my great-grandmother, embroidered. I knew her too.

    I also have a pair of prayer book covers for siddurim that supposedly belonged to *his* grandfather. I can't verify that, but I'm glad to have those, too.

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  • 4everpushingaboulderboulder@mastodon.social
    Sep 15, 2026, 9:53 PM

    @CoolerPseudonym My great grandfather left Torchyn, Ukraine/Russia in the Pale in the early 1900s. He had cut off his own trigger finger to the first knuckle to avoid being drafted by the czar. Amazing legacy we carry.

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  • dB CooperCoolerPseudonym@wandering.shop
    Sep 15, 2026, 9:55 PM

    @boulder it really is. you'd think the intense antisemitism would have kept the jews out of the czar's draft but nope!

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  • dB CooperCoolerPseudonym@wandering.shop
    Sep 15, 2026, 10:00 PM

    @boulder get impressed into the army and suffer the most awful abuse the whole time. no wonder he left

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  • 4everpushingaboulderboulder@mastodon.social
    Sep 15, 2026, 10:10 PM

    @CoolerPseudonym my 22 yr old son regularly asks me how my greats knew it was time to leave. He’s asking because he sees the way this country is treating immigrants, lgbtq, etc, and he is worried we could wait too long.

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  • dB CooperCoolerPseudonym@wandering.shop
    Sep 15, 2026, 10:13 PM

    @boulder I wish there was actually a way to know. There isn't, and the responsibilities that keep one where one is weigh heavily. And the difficulty of finding anywhere to go. It's not so easy. Incredibly hard now; even harder then.

    When do you uproot and destroy your life?

    I used to try to figure out the "mistake" the ones who stayed made, but now I don't think in those terms.

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