Trying to Know You From Your Name
Bubbie, we’ve got the same name. Carol is an Anglicanization of your Yiddish name, Tzirel. It’s unisex. You’d probably associate it with King Carol of Rumania and his Jewish girlfriend, Elena Lupescu. Carol doesn't sound too Jewish, especially around X-Mas time.
Names are important. It’s a Jewish belief that at the moment of naming, parents see into the souls of their newborns. The names parents confer or inflict hints to the offspring’s potential as well as his or her future.
So what is Tzirel? The name is a variation of Sara, the first matriarch whose name translates to princess. In modern Hebrew, a female cabinet minister is called a sara. In Israel’s current bloated government, there are five, not one a royal by birth or temperament. Tzirel also connects to tzirung, which is Yiddish for jewelry. In Israel, Tzirel is hebraicized into Adi, which means jewel and is also unisex.
Bubbie, I suppose you know our family tree is dotted with Tzirels. Your grandma Tzirel was the Rebbetzin of our illustrious ancestors, the Caballist Rabbi Avraham Abba, who assisted the Menuchas Osher in his miracle work. There were likely other Tzirels back to Biblical times.
My cousin Carol Weintraub is a more recent Tzirel. The Tzirel/Carol combo idea must have come from Carol’s Mom, Helen, my mother’s cousin/pal, and Bubbie, your pal. Carol Weintraub says that she is named after her late aunt, Tzirel Friedman Lazar.
Tzirel Friedman Lazar had been your neighbor and most likely in Satmar, the “big” city where you moved following your wedding. Like you, Tzirel Friedman Lazar was a housewife, once a proud and more than full-time occupation now nearly extinct.
Tzirel and her family hid from the Nazis in a barn. How did they set that up, and what was it like? The recently published diary “Written in a Barn,” https://jewishaction.com/holocaust/28079/, recounts the ten months Ruth Engles hid from the Nazis near Vilna—there are probably many similarities except that Ruth had a happy ending—she survived. Tzirel Lazar didn’t. Like you, cousin Tzirel, her husband Pinchas, and their son Tzvi were murdered in Auschwitz.
What does that indicate about our shared name? That we are doomed? The Iranians are on a murderous jihadist spree that might result in us sharing the fate of our namesakes. Or not. Still, your name hints to eternity, to a life beyond this life, lived ostensibly by Rebbetzin Tzirel, the wife of the master of mystical texts, and by you, Bubbie, and cousin Tzirel Lazar, both of you holy martyrs murdered simply because you were Jews.
This is the last picture of you, Bubbie, sitting in someone’s untended backyard, leaning against Helen, who would soon move to New York to reunite with her siblings and mother.