Tag Archives: names

August 10, 2025 · 7:16 am

In His Hands

by Barbara Krasner (Somerset, NJ)

My grandfather once held my grandmother’s hands in his. I never knew her. He held the keys of his wooden register in his hands. Canned goods. Fresh produce. Milk bottles for the 1915 free milk campaign as announced in the Newark Evening Star. He held my infant father in his hands, an American-born baby of a Litvak and a Galitzianer. He held his aging mother’s hands and when I was born, and my mother asked him for a name, he gave me the name of his mother, Bryna, and his eldest sister. Doba, who died in the 1918 flu pandemic. He once held shoelaces that he dipped in leather in his first job at a Newark tannery. He once held pencils and rulers in his work as a joiner in Russia. He once held the parcels of his Russian life as he steamed across the Atlantic at age 19 on the SS Rotterdam in 1899 to join his brother in Newark. He held the fringes of his tallis and the leather straps of his phylacteries that I now keep in a special treasures drawer. My grandfather once held the remote to his Amana television to watch The Lawrence Welk Show and used it to change the channel to The Wonderful World of Disney for me. He once held the lever to vote for Al Smith for American president after he became a US citizen. He once held the keys to a corner lot house after decades of living behind the general store he and my grandmother owned and operated. As he aged, he held the iron-wrought banister of the outdoor stairs to my father’s car. He held my father’s hands for support. He held onto life itself to the age of 93.

But with all that my grandfather held, I don’t think he ever once held me.

Barbara Krasner holds an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts and a PhD in Holocaust & Genocide Studies (HGS) from Gratz College, where she teaches in the HGS graduate programs. The author of two poetry chapbooks and three novels in verse, her work has appeared in Jewish Literary Journal, Tiferet, Minyan, Jewishfiction.net, Michigan Quarterly Review, and elsewhere. She serves as Director, Mercer County (NJ) Holocaust, Genocide & Human Rights Education Center.

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September 4, 2023 · 6:30 am

What’s In A Name                            

by Annette Friend (Del Mar, CA)

Annette.
Yes, that’s right.
Like Annette Funicello
if you are old enough to remember
the most popular Mouseketeer’s
television career.

Yes, named after my grandmother,
Hannah, or, in English, Anna.
A Jewish tradition,
naming for the dead,
so their memory and names are not lost
like forgotten pages in time.
Annette is “little Anna”
but definitely not French.

Ancestors from what is now Ukraine.
Before that Russia.
Before that Poland.
Before that a genetic mutation
hurtles me back in time
to the First Temple
in Jerusalem.

We Jews assimilate
but carry our names and histories
with us where ever troubles
and travels take us.
Our names, reflections
of double or triple identities.
In Hebrew
my name is Channah Bat Shayna
and Bat Lev.
Channah daughter of Shayna
who became Jean,
Lev who became Leo
when they crossed
the Atlantic sick in steerage.

We carry our heavy histories,
sometimes unbearable,
fastened on our backs.

I asked my mother once
why she never named me
for her sister Mae,
killed by the Nazis in Poland.
She said there were too many tears
that soaked that name.

But my new great niece
is named Paisley Mae.
A red-cheeked North Carolina baby
who carries the past
as a piece of her
like a pure white pebble
perhaps smoothed over
by the passage of time
until the rough edges
of history disappear.

Annette Friend, a retired occupational therapist and elementary school teacher, taught both Hebrew and Judaica to a wide range of students. In 2008, she was honored as the Grinspoon-Steinhardt Jewish Educator of the Year from San Diego. Her work has been published in The California Quarterly, Tidepools, Summation, and The San Diego Poetry Annual.

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December 9, 2019 · 7:24 am

Names Matter

by Marden Paru (Sarasota, FL)

All my life I’ve faced two commonly asked questions about the origin of my unusual names: What kind of names are Marden and Paru? And what are their nationality and/or derivation?

Believe it or not, the name Paru came from my Zayde Shlomo, who was a tailor by profession. He was given the concession to custom-make the first fliers’ uniforms—fleece-lined leather jackets and caps. You may have seen them in depictions of dogfights in movies about the early history of aviation and during WWI.

Zayde Shlomo worked outside of Vilna at the first Lithuanian airdrome in a town called Parubanic. When in the early part of the 20th century Jews were still adopting surnames, my paternal grandfather took on the name of the airport site, Parubanic, and added the Polish-Russian “sky.” 

My father was a mohel and, therefore, compelled to circumcise his old European, Polish-Russian-sounding surname from Parubansky to Paru.

As it turns out, Paru is the first commandment that God gave to Adam and Eve—“Be Fruitful and multiply—Paru Urvoo”—in the opening chapters of the Bible.

So, it was always easy to spell my legally-changed last name.

My name, Marden, came to me in a slightly different way. When Mom was pregnant with me, she passed a large neon sign on the Palisades of New Jersey—Ben Marden’s Riviera—the famous night club where the “mob” allegedly hung out in the 30s and 40s. 

As it turned out, Marden is an old English surname. 

Mother reasoned that if I were to be born a male, I would be given the name of my maternal great grandfather—her Zayde Mordechai. But being a young American, she considered English “M’ names such as Martin or Maurice, and finally settled on Marden as an unusual appellation for her first-born male child.

So, in answer to those two questions, I’m named after an airport and a nightclub. That is the emes—Hebrew for the naked truth!

But the story about my name continues. As a boy growing up in Phoenix, Arizona, I answered to a front porch geshrei (a yell) of “Mordechai”—my Hebrew name and the hero of the Purim story in Megillat Esther. When Mom would call me home for dinner (I was playing ball across the street at my new school), the kids heard “motorcar,” and that became my playground handle. “Motorcar” was not far-fetched since Phoenix had trolleys or street cars running on 5th Avenue perpendicular to our street in those days.

And when Dad called me Mordechai, some kids heard “Mortify” and that became my nickname on the block. 

I finally settled on Mordy, which I used until I met my future father-in-law—Milton Milan Kemeny—who took a liking to me and my legal name, Marden. 

Upon his advice—and for professional reasons—I have gone by the name Marden ever since, with the exception of my family and friends from my childhood who still refer to me as Mordy.

Marden Paru is currently the Dean, Rosh Yeshiva and co-founder of the Sarasota Liberal Yeshiva, an adult Jewish studies institute, and a  former instructor at the Sarasota-Manatee Jewish Federation’s Melton Adult Mini-School. He attended Yeshiva University, the University of Tulsa, and the University of Chicago, and was a doctoral fellow and faculty member at Brandeis University. Marden and his wife Joan are members of Temple Beth Sholom and Congregation Kol HaNeshama. To read more about Marden and Joan, visit: https://www.brandeis.edu/hornstein/news/newsletter/Hornstein-alumni-articles/My-1966-Computer-Arranged-Jewish-Marriage-by-Marden-Paru.html

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February 1, 2016 · 7:13 am

Ruth Leah

by Ruthie Stolovitz (Atlanta, GA)

Regularly, I am told of the weight of my namesake. People tell the beauty of my name, the history and the reason behind my name.

Unfortunately, you died before my birth at age 68, but you continue to impact my life as if I always knew you. I hope this means our souls are connected.

The rings on my mother’s hands each hold a story of my mother’s mother and her mother, a story that will forever repeat itself with the help of my descendants.

Her Spanish-style home near the water in Larchmont, NY was where my mom and her four siblings grew up. The home can be compared to my grandmother; my grandmother no longer inhabits the home, but it is still standing tall. My grandmother’s memory will always last.

Living in Florida for the end of her life, my brother visited her as a young boy and sang “Fly Me to The Moon” during the last stretch of her life.

Eternally her spirit will guide my decisions and daily actions.

A wonderful woman and great role model, my uncle tells me. I am honored to share a name with such a remarkable woman.

Hands that are gentle, my mom would tell me the similarities between me and my grandmother.

Ruthie Stolovitz is a 9th grader at The Weber School in Atlanta, GA. She wrote this poem for an assignment in Jewish Literature class, in which students discussed how biblical poetry can function as a tribute or eulogy. Students then wrote acrostic poems, in the style of biblical poetry, in memory of family members who influenced them.

 

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