Winged heads (soul effigy, angel or other)

By Ruth Ellen Gruber Yesterday I posted about my visit to Jewish cemeteries in Rhode Island — and I included a photo of the tombstone of a woman (Rebecca Polock) who died in 1764, aged 65. It bears the image of a winged head –  very similar to the images found in Christian tombstones on [...]

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Candlesticks in Rhode Island (and a non-candlesticked woman of valor)

  By Ruth Ellen Gruber Over the weekend, I visited friends in Rhode Island who took me to look at several Jewish cemeteries. I was interested in seeing whether, and if so how, the iconography of candlesticks marking the graves of women was found in America as well as eastern and central Europe. I had [...]

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Braided Candlesticks on a Great-Great-Grandmother’s Stone

At the tomb of my great-great grandmother (my Grandma Becky’s grandmother) Chaya Dvoira Herer Halpern, in the Radauti Jewish cemetery. She died Feb. 22, 1905 at the age of 69) (This is a duplicate of a post to my Jewish Heritage blog) By Ruth Ellen Gruber Sept. 8, 2009 My cousins all left, but I [...]

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The “Women’s Commandments” in Epitaphs

In the “articles” section of the sidebar, I have posted a link to a fascinating article by Evyatar Marienberg from Tel Aviv University called “A Mystery on the Tombstones: ‘Women’s Commandments’ in Early-Modern Ashkenazi Culture.” It focuses on the inscriptions on women’s tombstones in the Jewish cemetery in Rosenwiller, in Alsace in eastern France. The [...]

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Rosa Susnitsky — No Candles

Rosa Susnitsky, my step-great-grandmother, was the daughter-in-law of Celia Susnetzky. Born in 1872, she was the second wife of Pesach Susnitsky and died in 1948. (Pesach’s first wife, Gillie, was my grandmother’s mother.) I think I was given my name, Ruth, in Rosa’s honor. I uploaded a photo of Celia’s tombstone showing that it bore [...]

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Shirley Moskowitz web site

My latest “Ruthless Cosmopolitan” column for JTA.org is about the web site we have set up to honor my mother, the artist Shirley Moskowitz Gruber, who died two years ago. Mom is buried in a municipal cemetery shaded by palm trees. Like most of the other grave markers there, a simple, flat plaque rather than [...]

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Candlesticks on my great-great-grandmother’s tombstone

On this web site and blog, I am focusing on the representation of women in the Jewish cemetery in Radauti, Romania — where my paternal great-grandmother, Ettel Gruber, the mother of my father’s father, is buried. She died in 1947, well into her 90s, and having survived deportation to Shargorod, in Transnistria during World War [...]

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