I had changed my name, changed my place, and rediscovered my true self

Photo: Esther Tscholkowsky

Ichose the name Beth for you, my father once told me. Elizabeth was out of the question. Beth was perfect: short and sweet.

For his American daughter with a golden future before her, my father didn’t want a name with any heavy associations or allusions to the past; just a pretty name with a nice sound.

But he conceded on one thing: He gave me the middle name Esther in memory of my great-grandmother, the mother of my Grandma Mina.

Grandma Mina had a different view of my middle name; to her it was a connection to the past. “Remember you are a Jew, and be proud of it,” she repeatedly told me throughout my childhood. It took years before I was able to hear and understand that message.

Mina’s brother, my great Uncle Phil in Florida, had inherited a pair of special earrings from his mother. The earrings, which were beautiful rubies surrounded by clusters of diamonds, held even more significance since my great-grandfather had been the jeweler who created them. Uncle Phil converted the earrings to a ring and engraved the inside with the words “Mutter April 1944,” a reference to the year he’d taken leave of his beloved mother.

He hoped to pass it along to his own child, but he remained childless, so he determined to give the ring to the first child named in Esther’s memory. My middle name, apparently, did not qualify, and so Uncle Phil kept the ring.