Mordechai-Shabat Behmoirav
by Rafael Benaroya
What about me? I was born and lived in Istanbul until my late teens. Although my parents were from Edirne, they moved to Istanbul immediately after they married. That was a lucky move, because some dozen years later, in 1934, the local population ransacked Jewish homes in Edirne. This hooliganism with anti-Semitic overtones, rumored to have been encouraged by some officials, not interfered with by the police, was finally stopped by an order from Atat?rk, the first president and founder of modern day Turkey. He issued this order as soon as he became aware of the horrific actions. This devastating incident, though it lasted but one day, caused a mass emigration of the Jewish population of Edirne. At that time it was 18 thousand strong, almost equal to the unofficial Jewish population of present day Turkey. A steep decline of the city's importance followed. They traveled "light", these immigrants, with no furniture or extra clothing, for they were left with none. The large Jewish population of Istanbul greeted them with open arms. The "Edirnelis" as they were known, were, for the most part, thrifty and hard working. They distinguished themselves from their "Istanbullu" brothers by their distinct and wonderful cooking that I still cherish. This comment can be appreciated even more so when you consider that I have been in the USA for more than 54 years and that my wife of 50 years, Helen, an Ashkenazi, is a good cook. I like to think also that our three daughters, two granddaughters, and five grandsons have acquired some of my culinary tastes.
My maternal grandmother Vida Behmoiras, daughter of Rabbi Shabat Behmoiras and sister of Grand Rabbi Meir, had a tumultuous and extraordinary life. She married my grandfather Raphael Castro when she was barely sixteen. A year later, she had a daughter with him, namely my mother Bella. Then, some ten years later, she contracted a sleeping sickness, a tsetse fly transmitted disease. She would get up once a day, eat something, and go back to sleep. After two years of this, my grandfather felt that he needed another wife. So much for the promise of "in health or in sickness". I am not sure how he was able to divorce and remarry, for there were rabbis on both sides of the family and the religious laws were pretty strict on this subject.
Shabat wanted to go to Jerusalem to spend the last years of his life. He decided to take my grandmother with him, thinking that they might be able to effect a cure. When he got to Istanbul, the captain of the ship that was going to take them to the Holy Land would not accept a sick passenger. So he had to take Vida back to Edirne. She was subsequently sent to Bulgaria for possible cure. There, she not only recovered, but also thrived and got remarried. She had a son and a daughter from that marriage. The son, my uncle Marco Aroyo, became one of the founders of the moshav Kefar Hittim in Tiberias. He is 94 and still leads an active life there. The daughter Bina who lived most of her life in Bulgaria, has recently immigrated to Israel. In 1935 our entire family were able to visit Vida in Banki, a suburb of Sofia. That was the only time that I saw my grandma.
My mother, at 84, after my father passed away, immigrated to the USA. She died when she was 93. My sister Sara and her husband live in Toronto near one of their sons.
Finally, how did this genealogy project get started? Part of the credit goes to my mother, who when she was with us, provided me with a lot of valuable genealogy information. We had an enormous family and it was not that easy to document the data without a genealogy program. I had gotten a Macintosh for home use, and when the shareware Gene became available in the early 90's, I used it to reclassify my hand written notes into the genealogy program. I also registered the names Behmoiras, Castro, Benaroya, and Dannon with Jewish Genealogy. The next turning point came when Fanny Behmoiras appeared on the scene. Fanny is a hard working investigator in her own right and is always on the lookout for links with the family. On Dec. 2, 1998, I got an e-mail from her explaining that she had found me at Jewish Gen. and asking me whether we were related. Yes, we were, and thus was the relationship established. As a result, the tree size increased greatly. The last and most crucial phase came when Raphael Ventura, in mid-Aug. of 1999, looking for Behmoirases on the Internet, found Fanny and through Fanny, me. The rest is here, and now we have the emerging greater Behmoiras family. We are proud of the progress made so far, for the findings have greatly surpassed our expectations.
Chicago, January 17, 2003.
