It was not a “dark and stormy night.” It was a bright and sunny mid-afternoon. 17 May 2015 was Celebrate Israel Day set up once again in Rancho Park, Los Angeles, as has been done for the past several years. That secular date happened to also fall on the Hebrew date of the 28^th of Iyar, “Yom Yerushalayim,” the day when Jerusalem was liberated at the end of Israel’s Six-Day War on June 7, 1967.

The day started with a short communal walk with groups representing their respective places of worship or schools, returning to the park for the festivities of Israeli folk-dancing and singing, carnival-like rides, and food, food, food. It’s a yearly event now that brings out various organizations, Jewish cemetery representatives, artisans, and many booths for not-for-profits. My favorite among the latter is the triple-size booth set up by the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW). Not only have I been a constant donor of sundry items I no longer need to their thrift shops, but puttering around in their shops I have also picked up some goodies there myself. Hopefully, I bring back less clutter to my home than what I have taken out. During the course of a year NCJW amasses a collection of Judaica and brings it here to sell and reap funds for their various charitable projects and people in need. At these yearly celebrations in Rancho Park, I’ve also found some wonderful little treasures, but it takes time to go through everything and you need a good eye for a bargain. It’s a good thing I was on my own that day and could really take my time; my husband, Jerry, not only hates crowds but dislikes shopping even more. He would certainly turn up later to scout out the food booths.

Trying to keep my finds to a minimum, I couldn’t resist going through the multitude of books that lay on tables. There they were, spine-side up for easier scanning of their titles; but three deep so the middle ones required a little stretch no matter which side of the table you happened to be on. One book I picked up had Hebrew idioms sorted by its related English subject, called “Words to the Wise.” As I looked up, across from me a couple was also looking at books, and sporting royal blue baseball caps with the word, “WISE” embroidered in white at the front, no doubt part of a group from Stephen S. Wise Temple. I chuckled and showed them the book I was holding and said, “It must have been beshert [Yiddish for destined or fated] for me to buy this book!” There’s something about these beshert happenings that makes me feel as if I’m doing the “right thing.” So I added that book to my growing collection of “stuff.” Continuing around the tables my fingers found small, brown, cloth-covered books that I recognized as the books Jewish soldiers and sailors in the American and British Armed Forces were given during WW II. I knew these well since I grew up with my father’s and still have them. Then I came across an even smaller booklet, about the size of my cell-phone or a 3 x 5 index card, in stained, dirty khaki-colored cloth, with a cracked front cover; a little book with a long title:

ABRIDGED PRAYER BOOK
FOR
JEWS IN THE ARMY AND NAVY
OF THE
UNITED STATES

It was copyrighted in in 1917, 50 years before the Six-Day War, by The Jewish Publication Society of America. It is heavily abridged to 85 pages, and more than half of these are in English. [fn1] But what was more remarkable and why I decided I must have this tiny booklet, were two penciled records written on the inside front and back covers. Inside the front cover I found an inscription that reads “Private Frank Rubin, Company 19, Recruit Camp 4, Camp Green, N.C., Left Sat. Aug. 31, 1918″.

Figure 1. Inside Front Cover, Frank Rubin’s Prayer Book

And at the back, in the same, beautifully clear Spencerian handwriting, another is mentioned:  “Private Sam Rubin, Co.H 38 Infantry, AEF, France, Killed July 22, 1918

Figure 2 Inside Back Cover

How sad I thought, “They were probably brothers.” But something loose was also at the back. It was a folded newspaper clipping – an obituary with even a photo of poor Samuel Rubin in his uniform. A slight thought crossed my mind that a remote possibility might exist that the family name “Rubin” was an Americanization of a Russian family name, Rubacha. I had seen that name-conversion before. Rubacha was the maiden name of my husband Jerry’s paternal grandmother as well as the one of Paul Venze’s mother’s family. [fn2] Paul had told me that his mother had two brothers who had changed their name to Rubin. Over the years, I’d tried unsuccessfully to find others with that name that might have been related. But in this case I had no illusions that I’d be that lucky to have found a connection.

 

As a person who likes to write, I felt I must get this gem that cried out to be written about and maybe I could also locate some relative who would be happy to have this remembrance of a once-loved member of the family. It made me think of the commandment in the Torah, of Hashavat Aveida [returning lost objects] as referred in Deuteronomy 22:1-4. Would I be able to return this?

So many questions arose in my mind and I didn’t know if I would find answers. I returned home and used my internet search skills to see what genealogical information I could find on the Rubin brothers.

A couple of reliable and useful resources to search historical records are the Family Search page sponsored by the Mormon Church and Ancestry.com. The first is provided freely under the auspices of the Mormon Church; the second requires a yearly subscription that can be quite costly. Often they may both have the same information but sometimes not, so it’s good to check both just in case. Another wonderful resource for specifically Jewish data is JewishGen.org. This too is a free research resource but for a yearly tax-credit donation, you get a few extra benefits. So I do contribute grave information and translations because it is a worthy project. for everyone. Recently Ancestry.com has begun to host JewishGen’s resources on their servers but makes sure to indicate that JewishGen’s data is freely available to researchers.

In this case, FamilySearch just reiterated the death certificate information. So I turned to Ancestry. Since they were soldiers, I found their brief army records online in “The Official Roster of Ohio Soldiers, Sailors, and Marines, Vol. 15, for the years 1917-1918“. [fn3] In alphabetical order, Frank came first:

It’s hard to read these because I don’t understand all the abbreviations in them, but it’s plain to see that Frank survived, having achieved the rank of Sergeant Major and was honorably discharged January 6, 1919. I can’t really tell, but maybe he never actually left continental USA. Samuel, as we already learned was killed in France. It looks like he was barely there with the American Expeditionary Forces, having landed in France a month earlier on June 20, 1918. He became one of the 10 million military fatalities, killed in that more than four years of armed conflict known as “The Great War.” In terms of duration, it’s quite a contrast to the Six-Day War. But every life lost on a battlefield is always a loss to someone’s family. Any souvenir of that person is often greatly cherished.

Digging further in Ancestry.com, I was able to find the family in the 1900 census, with the family name then spelled as Ruben; the father’s name being Sol, mother Bertha, and the list of four daughters and three sons, all living in Cincinnati, OH. They are listed as having come from “Russia, 1892.” But that year has to be wrong since daughter Cecilia was born in Ohio in December of 1891! Those of us who have been involved in research know that many errors appear in census records and we take it all with several grains of salt.

Further, I was intrigued by Samuel’s connection with the Toledo Blade newspaper. In what way was he well known in Cleveland newspaper circles and for a number of years was street sales manager in Toledo for the Toledo Blade? I did manage to find on Samuel’s Draft Registration card something that explained the high-falutin’ title of “street sales manager” since here it noted that he was the “Manager of the Newsboys.” I suppose I could have spent more time on this, but I figured I had probably gone as far as I could go. What I really couldn’t figure out was how this little prayer book came to be in Los Angeles? And whether someone from that Rubin family might want to have it back as a souvenir of their uncle or great-uncle, killed almost 50 years before the liberation of Jerusalem? So on May 20, 2015, I decided to take advantage of one of the JewishGen’s resources known as “ViewMate.” That’s a website where a person can upload an image of a photo or document and request help from the global community for help in translating or recognizing unknown people. So I posted that obituary on ViewMate hoping that someone might recognize or know this family and thereby get some feedback. I also found the contact information for a couple of men with the same RUBIN family name who are “media” personalities in Los Angeles. I sent e-mail and left voice messages to them, but received no response.

I think I satisfied my compulsion to write this up, enjoying the sleuthing to explore what additional information I could discover on the internet and satisfying my curiosity for the most part. I may never learn much more, but it would add a dimension to my satisfaction if I could return this memento to the hands of a blood relative, together with whatever I managed to find about him and his family.

Three Months Later, August 4, 2015

I have an annoying habit, but I may be the only one in my family who is bothered by it. After years of rising early for work, I simply can’t sleep beyond a certain point. Curiously, when I look at my digital clock, so often the time says 6:13. It makes me smile as I realize this is not only the time, but a reminder of the 613 mitzvot [commandments] in the Torah that Jews are supposed to try and keep, as a way of life. So I just get up as quietly as I can so as not to disturb the still-slumbering Jerry. Since I have to keep my meanderings in the house quiet, I can either retrieve the newspaper from in front of the house, or I can sit in front of my computer and keep myself busy.

So this morning, out of frustration of not getting anywhere with identifying any living relatives of this WWI casualty I decided I must try and dig deeper. What else could my “investigative techniques” discover? Per his obituary, with both brothers and sisters in his family, I thought I’d try to locate possible family members for the brother who survived, Frank Rubin. A very reasonable hypothesis is that a male would have retained the family name.

The FamilySearch page unfortunately couldn’t provide me with more than Frank’s birth and death information, the latter indicating that he died in January 1983. So then onto Ancestry.com. Just putting in a first name of “Frank” and a family name of “Rubin” yields – can you believe? – almost ¾ million records! So I refined my search with his place of birth: “Cuyahoga County, Ohio, USA.” That came down significantly to about 2,000 records. 8^th on the list of 2000 plus, I found a marriage record for Frank that revealed his wife’s name as Sarah Maxine Lustig and they had married in Ohio in 1924. Among the first things that showed up were various census records. Since he was born in 1894, potentially I should have been able to find him in the US Federal census records, conducted on the decades of 1900, 1910, 1920, 1930, and 1940. So now I had some potential sources to check in the census records to see if they had any children.

I could find no census record for him in 1910. But that would have been before he was married anyway. The 1930 census, showed that by then Frank and Sarah had a daughter, Celina, almost five at the time, and also living with them, was Frank’s brother Robert. Frank’s occupation was “Fruit Merchant.”

In the 1940 census, the most recent one available to the general public, he is listed as a senior clerk, for the “Cuyahoga County’s Soldiers and Sailor’s Com.” [fn4] He still has only the one daughter, and his brother Robert, now 50 years old is still with them. I would have to assume Robert never married and then had no family. I was making some progress.

With an unusual name of Celina, I was hoping I might find out what happened to her. Had she married? Did she have any children? And what more was to be found about Frank? Ancestry provided the actual day of death as January 28, 1983. Another feature of JewishGen is the JOWBR [fn5] database and there I found he had been buried in the Beth Olam Cemetery, in Beachwood, OH. Could I also find an obituary for him somewhere?

The Jewish community of Ohio has a great resource: The Cleveland Jewish News with its on-line archives. You can type in the name you are looking for and select a period of time, e.g. 1980-1989, and several possibilities might turn up. Fortunately in the issue of February 4, 1983, just a few days after his passing, I found the obituary that matched everything I had found out, but gave me the added treasure of his daughter, Celine’s, married name: Krashin. Wow! I thought. Celine would have been about 90 years old now. Could she still be alive? If so, could I manage to contact her?

I transcribed the tiny print from the obituary:

---

FRANK RUBIN

Chief clerk of the Soldiers Relief Commission, Frank Rubin retired seven years ago after working for the commission for 39 years. Mr. Rubin died on Jan. 28 at the age 88.

Among the oldest living veterans of World War I Rubin was a battalion sergeant major.

Mr. Rubin previously was co-owner of the Center and Vegetable Market on E. 105^th St. for 20 years before joining the Soldiers Relief Commission.

He was a past commander of American Legion Post 2, Jewish War Veterans Post 14 and the American Legion posts 40 and 8. His first wife, Sarah (nee Lustig) died in 1956.

Mr. Rubin is survived by his wife, the former Frances Vincent; a daughter Celine Krashin; two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.

---

Some more digging in Ancestry.com provided me with the name of the man she married: Bernard R. Krashin and that they lived in Shaker Heights, OH. This was still in 1993. That was 22 years ago. Was she still living there?

More Google-sleuthing and I even found a phone number. (In actuality, I could have found a simpler way straight from FamilySearch, and the public records. It gave me her actual birthdate; that she was living in Shaker Heights; and a phone number as recent as 2004.) I managed to do all of this between the hours of 6:00 AM and almost 8:30. I wondered if I dared to call the phone number. Would the 90-year old woman still be there? If so, would she understand what I was trying to do: All this work, just to return a little prayer book? Three time-zones difference, 8:30 AM here would be 11:30 there. At least I probably wouldn’t be waking her up if I tried. And so I did and had more than one wonderful surprise: Not only was she so alert, she had lots of information. But more remarkable, she said her son Jeffrey had just flown out the night before to Los Angeles, where his wife’s family lives! So within those few hours I had realized the potential of turning over that little item from my hand to that of a descendant’s! “It’s so little,” I told her, “it’s about the size of a cell-phone.” Celine and I exchanged e-mails and telephone numbers, and she also gave me her son’s e-mail.

I e-mailed him at once but my expectation of a quick response was not met. I was beginning to be disappointed because at this climactic point he hadn’t responded. Hours passed that kept me wondering and worrying if he would contact me at all. Apparently, her son was leery of contacting me. But thankfully he finally did call and we arranged to meet at my home two days later.

August 6, 2015: Mission completed with a photo as proof!

Figure 5. The prayer book is returned to the family

Right after Jeffrey walked in, I jokingly told him how I had sized the little prayer book as comparable to a cell-phone. But after I had hung up with Celine, I thought about it some more. Two little items of communication: One a high-tech one that lets you communicate with other people and the other definitely low-tech that let you communicate with the Divine Presence.

My mission to find a descendant was fulfilled but my curiosity was still there – how did this prayer book get from Ohio to Los Angeles and then wind up in a Jewish thrift shop? Jeffrey, in conferring with his mother surmised that a family member, Selma Amlin, who had lived at 9501 Oakmore Road, in Los Angeles, had brought it with her to Los Angeles. Selma and her husband have since passed away, and in their heirs in preparing their home for sale, probably donated many items to the thrift shop. Selma was the daughter of Celia Rubin and Theo Green, thereby being the niece of Frank and Samuel Rubin.

From the Oakmore address, I wondered if the Amlins had known that directly across the street from them lived Orthodox rabbi, Rabbi Elazar Muskin and his family? Rabbi Muskin is also a native of Cleveland, OH!

Since it seems there is no end to my curiosity, and I’m constantly amazed at how things are beshert, I learned something else. In Ancestry.com, I discovered from a list of California voters, that before the Oakmore home, at some time during the mid-1950s Selma was living at 1137 South Hayworth Avenue. Well, at roughly the same time, as a young child or teenager, I lived consecutively on the 1200 block and then the 1000 block of that same street, thereby bracketing her block. I could have passed her house any number of times as I walked to school or synagogues, or even seen her at local shops and businesses on Fairfax Avenue, the street just one block east of Hayworth.

August 21, 2015: An Answered Question

A couple of weeks later, on Friday afternoon, August 21, Rabbi Muskin happened to call to wish us a Mazal Tov for our 50^th wedding anniversary. Some unknown person had notified his synagogue, Young Israel of Century City, that we had celebrated the event on the previous Sunday. The celebration had been deferred from our actual date in February since we wanted all of our children and families to be there to celebrate with us, and that’s why it took until the summer to do that. But Rabbi Muskin had not known of the half-year delay. Since we had him on-line, I couldn’t resist and asked him if he had known the Amlins.

“Yes,” he said, “lovely people.” But being a rabbi who knows who his members are, he added, “but they were members of Temple Beth Am.” So that completed that query.

So that’s enough for this pursuit and having brought this to a good conclusion, I must stop here – at least until someone or something else spurs me on!

Notes

[1] Regular prayer books have prayers for all kinds of special events, daily week-day worship, Shabbat and holiday variations. They are often several hundred pages in length. They may be in Hebrew alone or a combination of Hebrew and the language of the country a person is living in.

[2] Paul is our daughter-in-law Shira’s grandfather. We have never established whether this family name indicates any former family connections between our families.

[3] From: https://familysearch.org/learn/wiki/en/World_War_I_United_States_Military_Records,_1917_to_1918: The United States entered World War I in April 1917. Over 4.7 million men and women served in the regular U.S. forces, national guard units, and draft units. There were 53,402 killed in action, 63,114 deaths from disease and other causes, and about 205,000 wounded. New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and Ohio furnished the most soldiers.

[4] Census records become available to the public only after 72 years. The 1940 census became available then in 2012. The 1950 census will presumably become available in 2022.

[5] JOWBR=Jewish On-line World-wide Burial Registry, pronounced “Joe-bar.”