Living in the COVID World ... and Beyond #64: The Markovits Family Story
Last month, I attended conference for Jewish leaders at a Jewish retreat center in Maryland. I was glad to be there, and it was an excellent opportunity for me to reflect on my experience as an Ashkenazi Jew in the United States.
At the conference, I did a lot of reflection about my family of origin, my roots. It could be that I have romanticized the story of my ancestors … but I think I’m relating things that I understand to be true. I’m much more connected to my dad’s family mainly because I grew up with my dad’s parents and uncles and aunts and cousins all living in our local community. Unfortunately. My mom’s parents and extended family were thousands of miles away and even though I have fond memories of time with them, I am less familiar with their personal stories.
My dad’s ancestors were from rural Hungary, and based on birth, wedding, and death certificates that I found back into the early 1800’s that were all identified as peasants. I visited Hungary several times on work trips @ 25 years ago and hired a local historian to research my family’s history. It is not clear what led to their migration to the United States. I could not find any history of pogroms in the area in which they lived. More likely, it was famine conditions and the hope for a better life (they had relatives in the United States).
My grandfather’s older brother was the 1st member of the family to come to the United States and settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. He was a teenager. Later, my grandfather and his 2 younger brothers and their mom all come to New York City also. This was the family that I grew up around. Later, I learned that there were other siblings that had stayed in Hungary or had died in childhood, and their father who had also died relatively young.
Because of some breathing issues that my grandfather had in Manhattan, a doctor advised that he move to the country. So, he and my grandmother moved to Middletown, New York (in the Catskills area). The Markovits clan (the other brothers and their mom) all moved to the Middletown area also. The three older brothers all opened corner grocery stores. And they pooled their financial resources to put their youngest brother through college and law school. The three grocers at one point had a combined total of five corner stores.
One piece of their story that has become clearer to me recently is that these brothers basically operated as a collective. They purchased wholesale groceries together, leveraging their buying power. If one brother ran out of canned tomatoes, another brother would send over a case of canned tomatoes. They were a unit. My grandmother had actually gone out on a double date with my great uncle, while my grandfather was with my future great aunt. After the evening, my grandmother suggested that they swap, and both newly formed couples eventually got married. They were a tight-knit family unit, living in close proximity with each other and helping each other in business. The whole family relied on the baby brother to be their lawyer whenever necessary. The 4 brothers were four of the ten men who came together to form a synagogue in Middletown. I appreciate how the Markovits family functioned as a clan, living near each other and looking out for each other.
All four brothers had families that they raised in the Middletown area. My dad was an only child, but he grew up with his cousins. These cousins all pursued their own careers. My dad expanded his dad’s corner store into a supermarket. Other cousins became lawyers, dentists, professors, or department store buyers. Although they had grown up together, they became more independent from each other than their parents’ generation had been. They still got together for family events. I have pictures of everyone together – the 4 brothers and their wives, their children and their partners – at my grandparents’ 50th wedding anniversary party. And although picture-taking was not allowed in our conservative synagogue, I have memories of everyone being together for Bar-Mitzvah’s and weddings.
My generation also, for the most part, grew up in the Middletown area. There were eight of us Markovits children who grew up together in Middletown itself, all within 10 years of age of each other (and no two in the same grade in school). I was good friends with two of my cousins, playing tennis or golf with them during the summers and visiting at each other’s homes. We all got along and liked each other, and we knew we were all part of the same extended family.
As time went on, each of those in my generation followed their own path. Some rebelled against their parents (it was the 1960’s after all). Others stayed more closely connected, at least with their own parents and siblings.
But the sense of the Markovits clan that my grandparents had is long gone. There are no longer gatherings of extended family. The siblings have maintained their connections, but the extended family has been broken. I have never met most of my cousins’ children. We live all over the country – there is no proximity anymore.
I don’t think this story is unique to my family. Nor is it even unique to Ashkenazi Jewish families. But something happened. We could attribute part of the explanation to a desire for upward mobility. We could potentially attribute part of what happened to anti-Semitism and the desire to assimilate into mainstream culture. And we can look at this as part of a broader trend in the United States of moving to chase jobs and careers.
I feel fortunate that I grew up surrounded by my extended Markovits family.
Whatever the cause or explanation, I am saddened by the sense of loss of what was once the Markovits clan.