GOLDBERG VARIATIONS

(This is a Purim-style jocular Interlude, before proceeding with other serious matters…)

My apologies to Bach, this entry has nothing to do with his or anybody else’s music, except for its title. Its subject is the amusing etymology of Jewish surnames in modern times.

Simon Bar Kokhba, Saad Ben Joseph, Moshe Ben Maimon, here are some choice properly Jewish names of yore. And then, of course, we have another set of perfectly Jewish names, such as Cohen, in all possible and impossible variations, and Levi-Levine-Halevi-Levitz, plus Rabin-Rabinowitz and such, plus some less explicit surnames, such as Katz (no relation to the German Puss in Boots), which is just an etymologically misleading anagram for Kohein Tzaddek; or Segal (often deliberately misspelled as Siegel or Seagal) which is yet another anagram, this time for Se Gan Levi, etc. Nor should there be any grounds for a surprise when, say, Bar Mendel becomes Mendelssohn, or Rivka’s son becomes Rivkin…

Of course, today we may be having a “Jewish man with a golden tooth named Smith,” and no one will ever want to ask, What are the names of your other teeth? But in between Ben Hur and Smith there are a host of other German-sounding names, like Stein, Bronstein, and Rubinstein, and where do they all come from?

Unlike Smith and Stephens, these Rosenbaums and Trafficants are easily recognized, often mistakenly, as Jewish names, but they have not existed just like that from the beginning of time. In fact, they are products of the emancipation of the European Jewry, to make their position of being different less striking in at least one area where the rules of Kashrus did not seem to apply.

The story of how the socially emancipated, shtetl-free Jews were getting their new Germanized names, and how much they were paying for them to the proper German authorities is one of the most hilarious episodes in the history of Judenthum.

I have to dig up some examples, mostly out of my head, I am afraid, as I shall never be able to dig up from any other place the price difference between surnames Goldberg and Silverberg or between Perleman and Rubin. But common sense should tell us that, had everyone been able to “afford” the name Diamant, there would have been no Steins… Nor Bergs, where Goldbergs had been equally available.