Speaking Out
There was a time in the not too distant past, when those born Jewish would eschew their religious identity, shedding "ethnic" names to hide behind Anglican ones. Thus Romanowitz would become the more Italian "Roman" and Greenburg the standard "Green." My own grandmother, of blessed memory, named her son Burton, though what she really had in mind was Benjamin. In the early 1930's, when anti-semitism would fan the flames of the Holocaust-to-come, Benjamin sounded "too Jewish" and possibly... Sign in to see full entry.