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Ancestors
of Miles Hochstein (Great Great Grandfather)
Avram
Yitzhak Leshansky
of Timkovichi
(b. circa/before 1840?, d. ?)
Occupation:
May have been a cloth merchant
"My
darling daughter, I'll never see you again."
Avram
Yitzchak to his teenage granddaughter
Ida Leshansky as she left Timkovichi
for America
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Husband
of Doba Leshansky
Father
of Rafal (Rafael, the older of the two brothers) Leshansky,
Leizer (aka Eliezer)
Leshansky,(b. ca 1860, d. 1911) a sister (name unknown,
older of two sisters) Leshansky, and Fage Riva Leshansky
Grandfather
(through Leizer) of Julius, Joe, Lilly, Ida
(Leshan) Hochstein, Sammie, Abe and Dotty (aka Dorothy Lucy),
and through others, of other children.
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Ida
Leshan, my grandmother, had great affection for her grandfather
Avram Yitzhak. (Dorothy Leshan confirmed that the grandfather
in question was indeed her paternal grandfather.)
Ida told me one story about her beloved grandfather in 1975
when I visited her at her Long Island nursing home. My uncle
Bob Hochstein related a second story, and Dotty Leshan a third
story.
STORY
ONE
by Ida Leshan
Ida told me a story about her grandfather.
~
It
was Shabbos, the holy Sabbath, back in Timkovichi,
in the old country.
Ida
and her grandfather Avram were walking along and passed
a beautiful cherry tree with ripe cherries hanging
from it.
She
so wanted to pick those cherries and eat some.
But
her religiously observant grandfather would not allow
it.
It is forbidden to pick fruit on the holy Shabbos
day, but, he explained, it is permissible to eat the
fruit directly from the tree.
~
The
way Ida told it, I could see his eyes twinkling.
~
And
so, with his glorious approval, she leaned forward
to eat cherry after cherry from the branches of the
tree, with the cherry juice streaming down her chin,
gloriously, deliciously....
~
The
memory and the joy came through all the decades, through
her thick Yiddish accent, to my ears, there on that
porch in the Long Island senior residence where she
lived.
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STORY
TWO
by Bob Hochstein
Ida's
son Bob Hochstein recalled that his mother Ida...
"...had
stories about Timkovich which would always bring tears
to her eyes, particularly the one about her grandfather,
whom she much preferred to her father.
When
she left, he took her in his arms and said:
"My darling daughter, I'll never see you again."
With
that, she'd burst into uncontrollable crying."
STORY
THREE
by Dorothy Leshan
Dorothy
Leshan, Ida's sister and also the daughter of Leizer
Leshansky related the following:
Grandpa
(Avram) bought hand woven cloth from the women of the
town and from peasant women of the surrounding area.
Presumably,
said Dorothy Leshan, he had a way to sell them, and
this may have been his primary business.
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Other
Family Members and Descendants
The
youngest sister (and youngest child, apparently) of Doba and
Avram was Fage Riva. In November 2001 Dorothy Leshan recalled
for me that Fage Riva was a very talented seamstress. The gentry
of the neighborhood in Timkovich went to Paris each year, or
at least fairly often. When they did so they would come back
with many fashion books, filled with pictures of the latest
fashions. Fage Riva earned a very good living copying what she
saw there for them. The money she was able to earn was much
better than might be expected for a seamstress, and she was
able to live quite comfortably as a result.
Dorothy
was not able to recall the names of the other daughter of Doba
and Avram Leshansky. However this daughter (we may infer) married
a man by the name of Shulkin, and had three children, one of
whom was Jacob Shulkin, whom Dorothy recalls as being a good
friend of her father Leizer Leshansky. This other daughter also
had another girl and boy whose names are not recalled. The boy,
as an adult apparently had some difficulty coping with day to
day tasks, and Dorothy recalls her mother Sarah reviewing with
him as an adult instructions for riding the trolley and handling
change.
~
Finally,
may I just record what an amazing memory and what complete presence
of mind my great-aunt Dotty (Dorothy Lucy) Leshan, born in 1905,
has in the year 2001. She's amazing.
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