With the recent passing of Aunt Miriam Mermelstein (wife of my grandfather's half-brother Armin/Shmuel Aharon Mermelstein), I decided to do some more work on the archives of my grandfather's letters that I was recently given. I spent a large part of today scanning some of the correspondence at my neighbor's office. As I mentioned in previous updates, most of the letters are written in Hungarian or German/Yiddish (in Hebrew or Latin characters). Some letters are written in English or Hebrew. Many of the rough letters are actually rough drafts that he wrote before writing the actual letter. I didn't have a chance to scan everything yet, but most of what I scanned were the postcards. There's still a whole bunch of long-form letters that I still haven't scanned (they are a bit trickier to scan, so I left them for last). Also, some of the scans didn't come out so good, so I left them out for now.
Most of the correspondence is between RCK and his brother-in-law Armin, but there's also correspondence with RCK's sister Aunt Faige (Steg) and other half-brother Bob (Dov) Mermelstein. There's also letters between the siblings that do not involve RCK.
Today's episode focuses on two wedding invitations found in RCK's archives that happened in Israel during his stay:
The first invitation is for the wedding of Yosef Meir Glicksburg and Hinda Ayala Frankel, which occurred in Tel Aviv on January 11, 1955. The chosson Yosef Meir Glicksburg was the son of Rabbi Shmuel Yaakov Glicksburg (d. 1974), who was the Chief Rabbi of Buenos Aires, Argentina. The chosson was born in 1933, making him about 22 years old when he got married. Since 1967, Rav Yosef Meir Glicksburg has been the Chief Rabbi of the Givatayim, a city near Tel Aviv. There's even a page about him on the
Hebrew Wikipedia. But what does this fellow have to do with RCK? The answer is actually the Kallah, Dr. Ayala Gliksberg (who also has a page on the
Hebrew Wiki), she was RCK's second cousin! RCK's grandfather Binyamin Eliezer Klein and her grandfather Yerucham Klein were brothers (sons of the Shenos Chaim). Yerucham Klein had a daughter named Miriam (probably named after the Shenos Chaim's wife) who married one Naftali Frankel from Košice, and they in turn were the parents of Hinda Ayala Frankel. (As you might know, I'm obsessed with onomastics, but I will just point out that Hinda is the Yiddish version of Ayala which refers to an animal that its quick on its hind legs). By the way, Naftali Frankel and Miriam Klein had another daughter named Esther Freidy, who married the famous Rav Mordechai Breuer (1921-2007), a great-grandson of Rav Samson Raphael Hirsch, who was one of the leading experts in Tanach and especially the Aleppo Codex. (He also developed a sort of Kabbalistic approach to dealing with Biblical Criticism, but we're getting off topic.) Going back to Rav Yosef Meir Glicksburg, he and his wife are mechutanim with Rav Moshe Finkel (one of the Rosh Yeshivas in the Mir until his passing in 2001 and author of בני חיל, he was the son of Rav Chaim Zev Finkel, also known as Chazap Finkel), because their daughter Tzipa Tziorah Glicksburg married Rav Aharon Finkel.
The second invitation is for the wedding of Uncle Bob (Dov) and his wife Chava (whom I believe is still alive?). It happened in Tel Aviv on June 25, 1956. Notice on the invitation that instead of listing the Chosson's parents, it mentions the Chosson's brother Mordechai Mermelstein.
If you have any questions, comments, suggestions, please email me!
Gut Moyed,
