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Why Many Russian Jewish Surnames Derive from the Names of Women

Feb. 26 2018

Among Jews who trace their origins to Eastern Europe, and especially to the Russian empire, substantial numbers have last names deriving from the given names of women. Hence Sorkin, Serkin, and Serkis derive from Sorke and Sirke, which are Yiddish forms of Sarah; Rivkin and Rivkes from Rivka (Rebecca), and so forth. Jewish men generally took these surnames from their mothers, mothers-in-law, or even wives. As Alexander Beider explains, many began as nicknames of sorts, sometimes passed down within prestigious families. He writes:

The tradition of surnames based on female names was surely influenced by the economic and social structure of the East European Jewish community. The surname of [the famed Polish] rabbi Samuel Eidels [1555-1631] was taken after the given name of his mother-in-law Eidel Lifschitz, who for twenty years assumed all the expenses of the yeshiva he led. [Such] Jewish women occupied important commercial roles. Many Jewish men were craftsmen who worked at home, but the women often could be found trading in little shops or in the marketplace. Certain women were better known to the inhabitants of a locality than were their husbands. . . .

The fact that for Jews in Eastern Europe the need for surnames was an artificial requirement imposed by the Tsarist government was of crucial importance for the inception of matronymic surnames. The naming process was administered by the Jewish administration, known as the Kahal and, as such, was greatly affected by the imagination of the Kahal authorities. We know that matronymic surnames were quite common in the Mogilev province in eastern Belarus, where they covered 30-40 percent of the total Jewish population. Almost all of them were created by using the East Slavic possessive suffix -in. . . It seems unlikely that in this region, women had the most honored position or were the most active in commerce. It is more reasonable to assume that such a pattern was decided upon, almost on a random basis, by local Kahal authorities, while in other areas Jewish officials chose different patterns. . . .

[Thus the main] factor that makes Russia different from other areas was [that] only in Russia did the massive adoption of last names take place in a Jewish community where the matronymic tradition was already established. In other provinces, Christian state clerks were directly involved in assigning surnames, [and] the creation of surnames from female given names was almost unknown in various European Christian cultures.

Read more at Forward

More about: History & Ideas, Names, Russian Jewry

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic