Bell Carol in Moldova

My brother Marshall Fine made this excellent arrangement. And hearing it played by the Moldova National Chamber Orchestra brings a real smile to my genes (if genes could smile). Our maternal grandparents (and their parents, grandparents, and ancestors back to the time of Alexander the Great, when Jews were allowed to live in the Pale) lived in Bessarabia, which is now Moldova.



Marshall certainly knew about our family's connections with Bessarabia.

The whole history of my mother’s side has been supplied to me by Aunt Jeanne, Mom’s younger sister, who is still living in Chicago. My maternal ancestor was Michael Bogrod, a Jew from the Bessarabian region of what is now Romania, whose name the immigration authorities rendered as Bohrod. Like Joseph Fine, he must have been Ashkenazi. He had a brother who went to Israel and ran a military institute, Beersheva Institute of the Negev--he was able to retain the original spelling of his name. Michael himself, on settling in Chicago, quickly deserted the faith of his fathers and became a Socialist, at the time of the Palmer raids no less. From him came several children, including my grandmother, Anne (1906-2004), the famous trompe l’oeil artist Aaron, and Milton, who became a doctor in Rochester. All lived to be well over 90.

And now you do too.

N.B. My grandmother and Aunt Jeanne didn't know that the region that was once part of Romania, and later part of the USSR had become  Moldova after 1991. Also, just for the record, our grandmother told me that the original spelling of Bohrod was something like “Bogorad,” and Marshall wasn’t aware (or didn’t make it clear) that our great grandfather was Michael’s brother George.