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52 Ancestors Week 23 – Going to the Chapel
Jun. 7th, 2018 04:54 pmThe theme for Week 23 (June 4-10) is Going to the Chapel. This isn’t a particularly Jewish theme. But one of the suggested interpretations was to write about a relative who was a clergyman.
My maternal grandfather, Simon LUBOWSKY (originally Szymek CHLEBIOCKY) supposedly had smicha (a rabbinic degree) from a yeshiva in Petach Tikva. I haven’t been able to track down any evidence of this. And, since being a rabbi wasn’t really a way to make a living, he then followed his younger brother to Cuba and learned to become a watchmaker and silversmith.
My paternal grandfather, Leo (originally Leib) NADEL, got a cantorial degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He served as the cantor at our shul on the high holidays some years and also led the services at my brother’s bar mitzvah. I don’t think I appreciated his voice nearly enough when I was a child. I believe he made at least one recording of cantorial music for a landsmanschaft (a society of Jews from a particular community) from Lithuania, possibly specifically from Kovno. My favorite tidbit connected to this topic however is that he had business cards identifying himself as "the Reverend Cantor Leo Nadel" and we used to put one of them on the windshield to get better parking when we were visiting somebody at the hospital.
My maternal grandfather, Simon LUBOWSKY (originally Szymek CHLEBIOCKY) supposedly had smicha (a rabbinic degree) from a yeshiva in Petach Tikva. I haven’t been able to track down any evidence of this. And, since being a rabbi wasn’t really a way to make a living, he then followed his younger brother to Cuba and learned to become a watchmaker and silversmith.
My paternal grandfather, Leo (originally Leib) NADEL, got a cantorial degree from the Jewish Theological Seminary. He served as the cantor at our shul on the high holidays some years and also led the services at my brother’s bar mitzvah. I don’t think I appreciated his voice nearly enough when I was a child. I believe he made at least one recording of cantorial music for a landsmanschaft (a society of Jews from a particular community) from Lithuania, possibly specifically from Kovno. My favorite tidbit connected to this topic however is that he had business cards identifying himself as "the Reverend Cantor Leo Nadel" and we used to put one of them on the windshield to get better parking when we were visiting somebody at the hospital.
