My Grandmother Fannie, a True Lamedvavnik

There is an old Jewish legend that every generation has 36 saints, lamedvavnikim as they are called in Hebrew, on whose piety the fate of the world depends. These 36 individuals, who normally prefer to remain hidden, are fonts of lovingkindness, pouring compassion on the world and using the gifts and talents they were given by God to raise up those around them.

I was lucky enough in my lifetime to meet one of these wholehearted persons, namely, my maternal grandmother Fannie Nosofsky. I was around 13 years of age when she passed away, so I got an all too brief chance to know her because she and my grandfather lived with us for several years. I have written that she would be my unanimous first ballot choice for Grandmother Hall of Fame because she was the kindest and most patient person I ever met. I knew little of her background other than the fact that she raised three daughters and worked side-by-side with her husband on their farm in Canada. I knew she could bake and cook and sew and she always did so with love and a warm smile. The house would fill with the smell of yeast and cinnamon when she baked challah, kneading and braiding it with artful hands. I felt protected and cherished as she looked at me and all her grandchildren with warm eyes full of wonder and love. The fact that all of her daughters grew up to be such strong, independent women was a testament to Bubbe Fannie's resolute but gentle nature. I found in her a living model of the capacity to keep choosing to put love whenever and wherever she could.

 I always regretted that I didn't learn from my mother more about my maternal grandmother, the person who was the biggest influence in her life and in the life of her sisters. I never learned her maiden name or where she came from or whether she had siblings. I didn't know how she came to meet my grandfather or what life was like for them in Saskatchewan, Canada.

 This past year my prayers have been answered. I have been a fan of the genealogy site 23&Me and occasionally the site Ancestry.com. They helped me discover in the past things about my father's side of the family that I didn’t know. This year I got two unexpected messages from two remarkable women whose DNA showed they were related to me. One was Sharleen Penner in Canada and the other was Emma Popek in California.

 From both women I learned that my grandmother’s maiden name was Ostrovsky (Ostraiwsky). From Emma who is a second or third cousin, I learned that I have relatives in California, in Switzerland, and Israel. I have already met Emma twice on her semiannual trips to Lincoln Center in New York (she is a big opera buff). She is a Ph.D. environmental technical manager with over 30 years of experience in environmental data collection for United States government agencies and private sector clients. Despite our different backgrounds and interests, Emma and I had instant rapport; we schmoozed easily as if we were long lost cousins, which is in fact what we are! She gave me a copy of a family tree of her branch of the family along with a book in Russian about the history of the Ostrovsky family.

 It seems that the Ostrovsky family came from a town in the Ukraine called Gorodok near Vitebsk. Emma’s father Zalman was a son of Moshe Krivoy and Emma Ostrovsky from Gorodok. Life was treacherous for Jews in the Ukraine at the end of the 19^th century. This area was under Russian rule; and after the assassination of Czar Alexander II in 1881, for which Jews were wrongly blamed by many, there was a wave of ‘pogroms’ or state sanctioned violent attacks against the Jews. In 1882, Alexander III instigated the infamous “May Laws” expelling Jews from many areas where they had previously been allowed and encouraging and even instigating pogroms. Quotas on the number who could receive higher education, or work in certain professions, as well as additional residence restrictions, were imposed on Jews. This antisemitism marked the beginning of the great wave of Jewish emigration from the empire. Emma’s branch of the family escaped pogroms, repressive governments, and narrow shtetl life and made it to Europe, America and Israel.  She remembers her father telling her that cousins of his emigrated to Canada.

 From Sharleen I learned more about the Canadian emigrants because my grandmother and her great grandmother were sisters! There were four or maybe five Ostrovsky sisters and two brothers, and Fannie was apparently the youngest child, born in 1891 or 1893. The youngest Ostrovsky sisters, Sarah and Fannie, apparently decided to follow the oldest sister Jenny, who was married to Joe Cramer, to find a better life elsewhere. This was around 1908, a few years after the Canadian Department of Immigration had issued pamphlets offering 160 acres of virgin land for $10. The price would be subsidized by the Jewish Colonization Association, founded by the philanthropist Baron de Hirsch. There were other Jewish farm colonies that sprung up in Saskatchewan in the last decades of the 19^th century and the first decade of the 20^th century. But the offer to be one’s own master and to get 160 acres for the low sum of $10 drew groups of Jewish men from Lithuania and South Africa. So, too, the younger Ostrofsky sisters immigrated from Lithuania to marry young Jewish men starting a new life working on farms in a settlement called Edenbridge which meant Jewish Bridge. Somehow the young people wound up on a ship bound for northwest Canada. In 1910, Fannie married Abram Nosofsky and Sarah married Max Solomon.

I have not met Sharleen in person, although we have had a lively exchange of emails. Her great grandparents Jenny and Joe had a daughter Anne who married Ben Freedman. Their son Teddy and his wife Margaret were Sharlene’s parents. The Freedman family was part of the Edenbridge Colony. Sharlene’s brothers still live and farm in the district, close to the synagogue. In 2012, the Freedman Farm, which was established in 1912, received the ‘Century Family Farm’ award. Her dad, older brother and other ancestors are buried in the Jewish cemetery. Sharlene studied at the Saskatchewan Institute of Applied Science and Technology, and she still lives in the same section of Canada.

 Life wasn’t easy on the undeveloped expanse of coniferous trees known in northern Canada as “the bush,” and many early pioneers perished from disease and starvation. These were not men and woman who had owned land or been farmers before. Edenbridge was a living example of the courage, enterprise, and adaptability of the Jews. Canada received them with a warm heart and frozen arms (temperatures reached 50 degrees below zero in winter). At its peak in the 1920’s, this farming community numbered 50 families, flourishing despite the hardships of climate, geography, foxes, bears, grasshoppers, the 1918 flu pandemic, and the depression. With their own hands, they cleared their lands, acre by acre. Horses and modern equipment came later, as did livestock and fowl.

 The settlers worked in cooperative fashion to build log shacks and stables for each other, held together with clay and covered with whitewash. They built their beds from spare logs, and the mattresses were made from old potato sacks filled with straw. They did all this with their own resources. The first winters were dreadful. Nobody had prepared them for the dramatic snowfalls, the thunderstorms, and Arctic gales. Their clothing was thin, and their shoes leaked. They would stuff them with straw and wrap them in old sacking. They fashioned clothes from buffalo skins and heated their homes with forest cuttings. The smoke from their fires was not just in the winter, but in summer served to drive away mosquitoes the size of elephants.

 The children from an early age had to attend the country school, and this meant walking 3 miles on rough terrain. But these were people who valued education, culture, and their religion. They built a synagogue, a cemetery, a community hall, a post office, a library with Jewish and English books, and had one and sometimes two teachers instructing Hebrew and Yiddish classes. The synagogue still exists today as the oldest standing shul in all of Saskatchewan. The Jewish Colonization Association provided initial financing for the Edenbridge Jewish Co-operative Credit Union. Edenbridge had a dramatic society, and apparently my grandmother had a reputation as a successful amateur actress. She was also said to be a wonderful gourmet cook, and she mastered the art of milking cows and making her own milk products – cream, butter, and cheese. She raised a garden, cooked, and canned her own original recipes. I also discovered that she liked to write stories and may even have written a book!

In the cities where most Jews emigrated, the men would go out to work and women would stay home and be full-time mothers and housewives. On the farm in Canada, Bubbe Fannie had to pitch in and help with farm chores, especially since there were no sons. Chores could start at 3:30 a.m. If a cow was pregnant, Avram and Fannie had to be on maternity watch and prepared to help a cow give birth. As crop farmers, if they had a major drought, they might have little or no income that year. According to a financial statement for 1916 that I uncovered, my grandfather’s homestead cultivated 40 acres that raised a crop that year of 230 bushels of wheat, 275 bushels of oats, 20 bushels of potatoes, and 25 tons of hay. He had 1 horse, 6 cows, 100 poultry, and 8 head of young stock. His crops that year earned $795. He also sold secondhand clothes from his farmhouse, and he was an interpreter for the courts in Melfort, Prince Albert and Edenbridge.

 My grandparents maintained their farm until the early 1950’s, and then moved first to Winnipeg and later to Madison to stay with us. I remember visiting their farm when I was under 10. How can people live like this, I thought. How could they cope with no heat or running water? And the outhouse? Ugh!

 The Bubbe Fannie whom I remembered later in her life was the epitome of softness and gentleness. The history I learned from Sharleen suggests my grandmother had a steely toughness as suggested by her standing with a hand on her hip in the picture above with her niece Anne, daughter of her sister Jenny. My grandfather and grandmother are on the left side, and Sharleen’s grandmother Anne and her husband on the right. The other lady is Anne’s daughter Sylvia, with her children Sandra and Judy. There’s a sense of pioneer energy brimming beneath Fannie’s modest demeanor. She was a valiant, indomitable woman, who forged ahead in harsh circumstances.

 There is a movie out starring Helen Mirren about another Jewish woman, Golda Meir (nee Golda Mabovitch) born around the same time in Czarist Ukraine as my grandmother. As a little girl, Golda came to America and grew up in Milwaukee, close to where my father’s family had settled. She emigrated to Palestine in 1921 and became a central figure in Israeli politics. When the state of Israel was founded in 1948, Golda signed the Declaration of Independence and was a member of the Knesset. She was Israel's first and only female head of government from 1969-1974, the first female head of government in the Middle East, and the fourth elected female head of government or state in the world. 

 There is a similarity between the "Iron Lady of Israel” and my grandmother. They could both be viewed as quintessential Jewish Bubbes, but they were in fact really tough and astute operatives.  They vibrated at a specific frequency, which I would call a superior Life Force. I have often told my male clients that we are making a big mistake if we think we are the stronger sex. Contrary to cultural assumptions that boys are stronger and sturdier, basic biological weaknesses are built into the male of our species. These frailties leave them more vulnerable than girls to life’s hazards, including environmental pollutants.

 I have come to love and respect my Bubbe Fannie even more. I did not expect to see such strength, determination, and resilience in a mild mannered woman. My grandmother was a true pioneer, defying societal norms of her time. Her example encourages everyone in my family, especially the women, to push past limitations, accept challenges, and embrace their potential. She is even more a luminary in my eyes, a true lamedvavnik.