Dear Talia, Oliver, Ella, Lola, Luke, Caleb, Asher:
This is a picture of my father's grandmother (that is, my great-grandmother and therefore your great-great-great grandmother) whom I can now identify as Menucha Sheindl Perelman (born Rabinovich) who died in 1908 at the age of 75 or thereabouts. She was born in the shtetl of Radomyshyl and married Yaakov Perelman of Old Constantine in western Ukraine. Menucha is reported to have had 18 children including many twins. Seven daughters and three sons survived to adulthood. The four daughters whose names are known were Rochel Lerner, Reizel Shposhnik, Miriam, and Chaya-Beila, who married Schmul Spector (I remember now that my father had a cousin named Julian Spector). Her sons were Isaiah or Buzya my grandfather, then Chaim, and Meshulam.
My father told once told me story that seems incredible. He said that he had a grandmother in the Ukraine who came from a large family. He said that she had ten children but that all of them died in a week during a cholera epidemic. Then they had five more children. Or perhaps there were five children who died in the epidemic and then they had ten more. Both stories are hard to believe.
What would it be like to lose five or ten children in a week? How could anyone ever recover from the grief? How could you live? It's possible that this story attaches to Menucha Sheindl Perelman, who lost at least eight children. But it might also be a Hessel story (i.e. my father's mother's side of the family, not his father's).
Provenance: I have no idea how this picture came into my possession. It's a drawing, not a photograph. A copy of a drawing, to be more precise, not the original. My father told me that it was done by an itinerant Ukrainian artist (apparently a pre-photography custom). I wish that I could say more about Menucha's costume, especially the scarf. Is it traditional garb? Or about her very dark hair, which might be a sheitel, the wig worn by the orthodox.
Is it possible -- is it truly the case that the woman pictured above bore eighteen children? And Inasmuch as your direct ancestor Isaiah was child number sixteen, if she had said to her husband Yaakov, after birthing number fifteen, "I'm done, Yaakov, no more children" -- which would have been a perfectly understandable sentiment -- then it's obvious that none of us would exist.
Other news of your old country ancestors: here, here, and here.
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