Setting Off

In two days, we set off for an ancestral journey. We'll be traveling to Belarus & Ukraine for my ancestors and Moldova & Romania for my friend's ancestors.

I will be traveling with dear old friend Caroline whom I first met in Nepal, even though we had been neighbors in Boulder - she lived directly upstairs from me then, but we didn't meet until we were in Kathmandu. Nine years and many adventures later, we are finally setting off on a journey which we've been dreaming about together for a very long time. A journey I've been dreaming about my whole life.
When I was very small, I used to ask my dear red-headed Nana (Mildred Gottlieb Zimmerman) to tell me stories about her grandparents. She gave me little scissors her red-haired "Zeida" (Pincas Gottlieb) gave to her, and told me how she used to jump up and grab onto his long, long red beard and swing from it. photo:(Caroline, "a bestie" at y wedding, 2008)
She told me how her mother's sisters (read: my great-grandmother Mary (Miryam
or Merele) Volovelsky-Karzinel Gottlieb) (sisters: Rivka (Rivele) Volovelsky-Karzinel Yellin and Hanna Volovelsky-Karzinel Kolodny) walked from Russia to Palestine. This captivated me for years until I traveled to Israel myself and met Sarah Danin (daughter of Hanna Kolodny and my nana's first cousin) just a year before she died, and she told me the story she remembered of being 5 years old and taking the train to Odessa from Pinsk and then taking a large ship to Palestine. She remembered the Palestinians throwing stones at them as they disembarked from the ship, and they had to hunker down until night-time to cross the dessert to Jerusalem.

These few story-snippets are the seeds of my family identity:

• my great-great-grandfather's strong red beard
• my great-grandmother's escape from Russia to America with her young paramour (Morris Gottlieb)
• the gorgeous silver menorah given to Merele by her mother (my great-great grandmother: Yehudith-Feigeh (Minski) Kartzinel-Volovelsky – 1863-1924, died shortly after arriving to Israel-Palestine; I saw her grave when I was in Tel Aviv) because she was leaving the old country and might never see her daughter again (the menorah that I have since inherited; I believe that the menorah is a few hundred years old and has been handed down the line of women in this family, ending up with me so far)
• the Volovelsky-Kartzinel's were intellectuals, the Gottlieb's were wood cutters (photo of the Lipton family at my wedding, 2008)
• the Lipshitz clan emigrated as a group from Ikatrinislav, they were merchants and upon opening a grocery store in Brooklyn, realized they had to change our name to Lipton (thank goodness); my great-grandparents Sam and Goldie were first cousins, they were 2 and 3 when they came over from Russia
  
• my great-great grandfather died in Russia and his sons and their families were all killed in the Holocaust (my great-great grandfather: Avraham Volovelsky-Kartzinel (-1910); Avraham’s family was Volovelsky, but they changed it into Kartzinel in order to avoid his recruitment to the Tzar’s army; his parents were Meir and Tzirl Volovelsky (Tzirl was the granddaughter of the Gaon from Vilna – 1720-1797, a very famous Rabbi in Jewish history)) (my great-great uncles who were murdered in 1942: Yosef & wife Dvora, daughters Tzirl and Boriya; Iser & wife Duba, sons Avraham (lived his life in Israel) and Chayeem; Avigdor & wife Eidle, daughters Yehudit and Batya
• I am half Russian-Jewish, which does not really mean my religion, it is a cultural identity.
  Click here for a more complete family tree compiled by my 2nd cousin once removed, the famous botanist in Israel, Avinoam Danin.
  

The land of my ancestors is calling me. I hear their voices in my dreams, I feel their presence when I practice (in case you don't know, I am a Shambhala Vajrayana Buddhist practioner (click here to learn what in the world that means - scroll all the way down the page). I must go to meet the land of their birth, the trees of their dreams so that I can lay this burden down. Through my practice and patience, I can let them go, releasing them from their suffering, releasing myself to live my life fully.

This new blog will be a place to chronicle the journey. Thanks for coming along on the ride!