My name is Ella Romm. I was born in 1966, in a southern Russian town of Sholokhovskiy of the Rostov-on-Don region. My paternal grandmother Anna Vaysman, whose maiden name was Meites, immigrated to the United States from Kishinev, Moldova. Our family joined her in 1993. I had been living in New York for 15 years and then moved to San Diego, California in 2007. I am a medical doctor, a poet, a researcher.
The subject of my earlier research that started in 2010 was the Vaysman family heritage (Vaysman was my maiden name). As a result, a book named 'My Jewish Bessarabian roots' was published. Later I decided to write another volume, now about Meites family. Working on the book, I discovered many amazing people, such as a Hebrew poet Eliyahu Meitus, American scientists Doctor Joseph Meites and Doctor Samuel Meites and others.
I hope this book is going to inspire some of you to research further and would appreciate any amendments and additions sent to me by the readers.
My address is queenstory@gmail.com. You can also find me on Facebook as Ella Romm.
How This Project Started
Meites family tree I built on ancestry.com includes around 300 people. More than 130 of them are the blood relatives.
The family research began with my interest in the poet Eliyahu Meitus, my granduncle. His sister and my grandmother Anna left several tape recordings about Meitus family. Then online I found the memoirs written by Mabel Meites, a widow of Professor Joseph Meites, 'The early years of Joseph Meites'. We started writing to each other, and that continued until she passed away just months before her 100 birthday in 2013. I learned about the American branch of the Meites family from her. Mable kindly shared the photos, letters and other information with me. She also led me to Mikhail Meitis from Tolyatti, Russia, and his branch of the family. Finally, my father interviewed his second cousin Frida Pekker who described her side of the family. To summarize, several descendants of the Meites family took part in the research:
- Mable Meites with memoirs of professor Joseph Meites (Zalman's descendant);
- Michel Meitis (Iosif's descendant);
- Frida Pekker (Vitya's descendant);
- Ella Romm with the help of Yuliy Vaysman (Yoil's descendants).
Even though some pieces of information contradicted with the other ones, it was an encouraging start.
Sourcing the Data
There were two directions of this research. One is digging to the past. Another one is discovering the present. Luckily, the Bessarabian archives were available on the Internet, and I managed to find some birthday, marriage and death records of our family members. Moreover, it was not difficult to collect data on the living people. Personal information has become widely available with advent of the Internet. Some websites (such as peoplesmart.com and many others) provide free data about individuals, including birthdays, residences and possible relatives. Obituaries online (those that exist) also provided very useful information. I gathered data from Facebook and other social websites. Traces of those who once stepped on the virtual road are there waiting for an interested party. I copied pictures, learned about family events without asking anybody for information. Building a family tree reminds me of assembling a puzzle: piece by piece, the big picture comes to you.
Concerns and Problems in the Research
After studding Meites' history for a while, I developed a certain picture of their lives and heritage. However, several facts have been puzzling me since. I believe that our earliest known ancestor Baruch and his wife Esther had several children. Most likely, they had three sets of them: Esther's children from the first marriage, Baruch's from the first marriage and children they had together. I am not sure (and most likely will never be) whom of them are siblings by blood vs. by marriage of Baruch and Esther.
The other remaining question is the relation of our branch to Rabbi Leib Sarah's. In the Eliyahu Meitus (Baruch's grandson) biography, I found information that connects his mother Tseytl to Rabbi's family through her maternal branch of Tepper. I was not able to prove the connection though.
The final piece of the puzzle is the name Shoikhet that was mentioned in the letter written from Kishinev to USA in 1972. The oldest of Baruch's sons, Zalman, was called by this name (instead of the name Meites). Was the writer mistaken, or was it the last name of Baruch Meites' first wife? It could also be just Zalman's profession (shoikhet is a religious butcher).
I was unlocking these and other puzzles with the good help from my husband Michael Romm who assisted me in writing and publishing this book.
Geography of the Meites Family
According to relatives and proved by the birth certificates, Meites family came from the town of Balta, Bessarabia (now near Odessa, Ukraine) that was a small outpost on the northern border of the Ottoman Empire (in Turkish Balta means axe). From the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries most of the townspeople were Jews. The city survived two pogroms, plague and major flooding. Very possibly, forced by those disturbances and looking for better quality of life, Meites family moved from Balta to Kishinev in the late 19th century.
Balta, Jewish hospital (photo from the Internet)
The city of Kishinev was first mentioned in 1436. After the war with Napoleon, Kishinev (Bessarabia) become a part of the Russian Empire until 1918, and after the First World War, it became a part of Romania. In 1940, due to the rearrangement of European territories between Germany and the USSR, Moldavia became the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic, which converted to the independent country (Moldova) in 1991.
(In this book, for the consistency and statistics, I will use Kishinev without mentioning what country it belonged at the time.)
Alexander Street, Kishinev (photo from the Internet)
Life in Kishinev was not easy. The brutality of pogroms, Soviet repressions, the Second World War combined with anti-Semitism forced some Meites to immigrate. Only few families still live in Russia. I was not able to find anyone living in Moldova in our days.
Presently, descendants of our family reside mostly in USA, Israel, Argentina, Russia and Canada.
Distribution of Family Members by Their Country of Birth
Moldova 59
Israel 22
USA 22
Argentina 13
Russia 8
Canada 2
Unknown and other 5
Distribution of Family Members by Their Country of Residence (2015)
Israel 29
USA 23
Argentina 11
Russia 7
Canada 4
Unknown and other 2
(All graphs in this book include only the blood relatives in the family.)
Names and Their Metamorphosis
Jews did not have last names prior to the late 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. The common practice was to call a person by his or her first name plus the father's first name on the ritual occasions. For example, Yoil's son Eliyahu would be called Eliyahu ben-Yoil and his sister Genya would be called Genya bat-Yoil. Such 'last names' were one-generational.
Meites is a metronymic surname based on the Yiddish female name Meita, meaning a girl. Thus, the meaning of the surname Meites is "son of Meita".
The name Meites has several variations of spelling, depending on the country our relatives lived in or immigrated to, the language they spoke, and even a simple clerical error. In this book, as a matter of convenience, I will be using the spelling Meites most of the time. However, I will also use the other two common spellings: Meitis and Meitus.
Due to marriages, our family has expended with other last names. Among them are: Felman, Froimovici, Tamari, Vaysman, Cohen, Gofyzen, Titov, Pekker, Seidenberg, Szajewicz, Yankelevich, Zucker, Morelli and more.
Working on the family tree, I figured that given names were not always corresponding with the birth certificates or the name the person was remembered by.
Jewish given names were often changed due to influences of the diaspora-spoken language. One of the common male names running in our family in the 19th and the first half of the 20th centuries was Baruch. (The other possible spellings are: Boruch, Barukh or Borukh). In Hebrew Baruch means 'blessed'. This name will transform to Boris in Soviet Russia or Ben in The English-speaking world. In the last half of the 20th century the most common male names were Yosef and Moshe.
The most common female name in our tree is Anna (Khanna, Genya).
Many of our relatives who were born in the USSR have Russian, not Jewish, names: Alla, Anna, Mikhail, Arkadiy, Roman, Zhanna and so on.
It was always a tradition not to name children after the living relatives, and name them after the dead relatives. This particular Jewish tradition helped me in my research. I could predict the names of people in different generations or confirm the family relationships by comparing their first names.
The more generations we have, the more variants of names we can see. However, traditional Jewish names are not that common as they were hundred years ago. Even in Israel, there is a tendency to give modern names instead of the traditional ones. The places of birth and mixed marriages also influenced the name choices.
In this book, I will give all possible variations of names that were found in the metric documents or remembered by relatives.
Chapter 2. The Family Tree
Our Early Ancestors
So let us start over.
Baruch Meites was our earliest known ancestor. Hi lived in Balta, Bessarabia, and was born in about 1823, considering the birth year of his first known son Zalman. Most likely Baruch died and was buried in Balta. I believe that all his children also were born in Balta but later moved to Kishinev. Baruch was married to Esther (last name unknown). Probably, Esther was his second wife and, very possible, Esther was married before as well. How many children Baruch and Esther had, remains a question. Professor Meites named four brothers: Zalman, Joel (Yoil), Jacob and Joseph (Iosif), but did not mention any sisters. My father to the contrary named several sisters, including Vitya, Brucha and Ene, and only two brothers, Yoil and Iosif. Iosif, according to my father, was called Yosil (probably it was a nickname from his birth name Yos). He also said that Iosif was Yoil's half-brother. I was able to find records of all four brothers as well as Vitya's and Brucha's. I did not find any data about Ene, but I found Khaya Sura instead. I am struggling to explain the age difference (22 years) between Baruch's first son Zalman and his next child. This fact may have two explanations: Zalman is a son from Baruch's previous marriage, or that there were some children in between but they died or records and memories are missing (especially for females who get married and become a part of their husbands' families).
I do not know what Baruch did for living. He belonged to a middle-class ('petty bourgeois') group of the city population. According to some sources, he could have been a rabbi or came from a family of rabbis. I believe he died somewhere before 1881(age 58) because at that time one of his grandsons was named after him. After Baruch's death Esther had to support her family and was involved in her own small business, trading oil tar. Esther died after about 1914 (age 86) of pneumonia. Baruch Meites had at least seven children (taken from all sources): ZALMAN, KHAYA SURA, VITYA, YANKEL, YOIL, BRUKHA and YOSEF.
Descendants of Zalman Meites
1. ZALMAN (ZELMAN, SOLOMON) MEITES was born in Balta, Bessarabia in about 1843. His descendants who immigrated to USA called him Solomon. In 1907, he was residing in Kishinev (according to Russian Duma Voters List).
Name: Zelman Meytis
Patronym: Borokh.
Age at Vote: at least 24
Year of Record: 1907
Gender: Male
Country: Moldova
Gubernia (District): Bessarabia
Uyezd (Region): Kishinev
Town: Kishinev
[Chisinau]
Voting Qualification: Tenant (rents and apartment and pays apartment tax)
Data Source: Romania - Bessarabia Duma Voters List
Bessarabia (now Moldova) Marriage and Divorce Records, 1879-1915
In 1863, Zalman (age 20) married Rachel (Rukhlya) Averbuch (1843-?), daughter of Mordko.
Zalman was petty bourgeois. He died sometime after 1920 (77 years old), in Kishinev. Zalman Meites and Rachel Averbuch had four children: SHMUL, MOISHE, SHEVA and BARUCH.
SHMUL (SHMUEL, SHMIL) MEITES was born in Balta, Bessarabia in about 1865, to Zalman Meites and Rachel Averbuch. He was called Samuel by the English speaking relatives. In 1906, he resided in Kishinev, as you can see it in Russian Duma Voters List.
Name: Shmul Meytes
Patronym: Zelmanov
Age at Vote: at least 24
Year of Record: 1906
Gender: Male
Country: Moldova
Gubernia (District): Bessarabia
Uyezd (Region): Kishinev
Town: Kishinev
[Chisinau]
Voting Qualification: Tenant (rents and apartment and pays apartment tax)
Data Source: Romania - Bessarabia Duma Voters List
Voter List Number: D-1676
In 1885 (age 20) Shmul married Bassya-Rukhlya (last name unknown), daughter of Shabsa. They had six children: Ikhiel, Nusin, Berel, Yosef, Aron and Sima.
1.1.1. Ikhiel Mikhel (Yekhiel Mikhael) Meites was born in Kishinev on May 16, 1886 to Shmul Meites and Bassya-Rukhlya.
Name: Ikhiel Mikhel / Yekhiel Mikhael Meytis
Gender: Male
Birth Date: 16 May 1886
Hebrew Date: 23 Iyar
Birth Town: Kishinev
Birth Uyezd (District): Kishinev
Birth Guberniya (Province): Bessarabia
Father's name: Shmul / Shmuel
Father's Father's Name: Zelman / Zalman
Mother's name: Bassya-Rukhlya / Batya
Mother's Father's Name: Shabsa / Shabtay
Registration Number: M319
Registration Place: Kishinev
Registration Year: 1886
Film: 2255344 / 1
Image: 52
Comments: Mohel Moishe BRIMMER. Father from Balta
Archive Information: NARM/211/11/161
Other Towns Mentioned: Balta
Ikhiel married Gitlya (last name unknown) on March 6, 1915 (at age 28).