Nana Dora was a widow, living alone, about an hour away from us. So she loved the idea – it provided her company and an audience for her stories. I didn’t plan it this way but those tapes have become a priceless treasure in our family. We don’t have Nana Dora anymore but we have her voice and her stories. Dora was born in 1893 in Russia. When she was just a year and a half old her mother died of cholera – a bacterial disease common in those days and caused by contaminated water. Dora was left with her father and two brothers. A few days later the oldest brother died of appendicitis. They dug up his mother’s grave and placed him next to her. ONE OF DORA’S STORIES: HOW IT BEGAN After a few weeks the neighbors were trying to match up Dora’s father with a new wife. He had
Dora Shooster
something else in mind. Dora’s mother had four sisters, the youngest was named, Devorah. She was engaged to a young man whom she loved very much. But in those days if a married sister died it was customary for an unmarried sister to marry her
We don’t have Nana Dora any more but we have her voice and her stories.
sister’s widower. Devorah didn’t like her brother- in-law, Dora’s father, and she certainly didn’t want him as a husband. Devorah’s family didn’t care that she was in love and engaged. Her duty was clear, she was to marry Dora’s father. Her mother told her she didn’t want her sister’s wealth to go to someone outside the family. Devorah still refused and said she would rather die than submit. The family went to their rabbi for advice. He told them to lock her up in a room for three or four weeks. So they did. Devorah refused to eat but her sweetheart would come at night and throw food to her. After she was in the room for four weeks she finally gave in and agreed to marry her brother- in-law. He was not a poor man – he had a nice house and a maid. But her family had hardened her heart; she told her mother that she would not be a good stepmother to Dora and her brother, Baruch Emmett, that she would be a mean stepmother to them – and she was.
Herman’s oldest brother, Izzy, provides a good example of how the circle of life and death keeps going around. One early morning we got a telephone call saying someone had died – since Dora had remar- ried an older man we assumed it was him, Joseph Levinsky. It wasn’t, it was Izzy’s wife, Sylvia. We were stunned, she was such an important part of
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THE CIRCLE OF LIFE
Baruch Emmett
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