The Rassas Family: A Narrative

By Harold L. Rassas

Author Harold Buddy Rassas recalls the lives and defining qualities of three generations of a close-knit immigrant Jewish family that settled on the New Jersey shore. The book begins with the authors paternal grandfather Aaron Rassas (who arrived in New York City on July 4, 1890) and his wife Gussie (who selflessly melded two families into one) -- and ends with notable family legends.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Apr 5, 2011
• ISBN: 9781456745073

Harold L. Rassas

Harold Buddy Rassas was born in 1923, and is a first-time author. He hails from Long Branch, NJ where he attended local public schools, and then earned an Industrial Engineering degree at North Carolina State University in 1949. His college career was interrupted by three years of Army service that included eighteen months of duty in the European Theater during World War II. He also earned an MBA at Monmouth University. His career as an engineer for the US Army Electronics Command encompassed 35 years. In retirement he volunteers as a mediator for municipal courts and NJ Superior Courts Small Claims Division. His hobby is gardening, and he is a certified Master Gardener. He and his wife Beverly have been married for fifty-nine years and are proud of their daughter, two sons and four grandchildren.

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DEDICATION

To my Grandfather Aaron Rassas who had the good sense to move his family to the Golden Land 120 years ago, and to my Grandmother Gussie Bubba Rassas who melded two families into one.

Contents

DEDICATION

FOREWORD

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

CHAPTERS

1. Grandparents Aaron, Dena and Gussie Rassas

2. Great Grandparents Abraham Isaac and Frieda Leah Rassas

3. Emmons Street

4. Carmel, NJ

5. Grandparents Harris and Fanny Shils Goldstein

6. Great Uncle Ben and Great Aunt Bess Rassas

7. Aaron’s Other Siblings

8. Joseph Rassas

9. More About Joe

10. Rose Goldstein Rassas

11. Uncle Max and Aunt Rose Rassas Marshall

12. Uncle Alex and Aunt Helen Goldstein Rassas

13. Uncle Herman and Aunt Ruth Rassas Smith

14. Uncle Ben and Aunt Molly Kramer Rassas

15. Uncle Joe and Aunt Sunny Rassas Grossman

16. Family Legends

FOREWORD

"There were things which he stretched, but mainly he told the truth."

- Mark Twain in Huckleberry Finn

In 1990, Archie Bloom, my first cousin once removed, wrote his autobiography. He gave me a copy and frankly I had mixed feelings when I read it. By and large, I agreed with most of the events, just as he related them. However, some were not in agreement with versions told to me by other family members, and many were completely unknown to me. There’s no way for me to know who stretched things, so I’ll assume that mainly they told the truth.

I don’t want to disagree with Cousin Archie, nor do I intend to set the record straight, but the more I thought about his autobiography I realized that a more encompassing book covering more family members was necessary if we were not to lose our family’s history.

Some of my eleven paternal cousins put the onus on me, as the oldest cousin, to write a book about our family. I have always been aware of my status as Oldest Cousin, but I think they were just trying to butter me up into thinking that I have the literary skills necessary to be the author of our family’s history.

This book is intended to be different than Cousin Archie’s. It’s neither an autobiography nor an in-depth biography of everyone who has descended from our original Jewish immigrant families. It’s mostly about vital statistics and the more interesting stories and anecdotes of our past family members. It is limited to only three generations, the Aaron-Dena-Gussie generation and the ones immediately before and after it. The book is written from my perspectives and those of my first cousins. It does not tell about my generation or those that follow.

These stories and anecdotes are, in most cases, the versions that have been told to me over the years by my relatives – mostly older. In other cases they are based on my firsthand knowledge and memory.

Since July 4th in the year of 1890, when my paternal grandfather, Aaron Rassas, arrived in New York, our families have grown so numerous that I have not attempted to write about my cousins and our generation’s children and grandchildren. The generation of cousins who are grandchildren of Aaron, Dena and Gussie Rassas were originally thirteen in number. The next two generations of their great- and great-great-grandchildren presently surpass fifty, and continue to grow.

Being human, I have devoted more verbiage to the relatives closest to me. This may not be fair to others in the family, but it does leave the door open for a future revised edition. I invite my cousins to give me additional information about their immediate families for later publication. It is my hope that this edition is only a beginning, and that growth in the family will necessitate continuous revisions.

Since most of the cities and towns mentioned in this book are located in New Jersey, (i.e., Asbury Park, Carmel, Little Silver, Long Branch, Red Bank, West Long Branch, etc.), please assume that is the case unless otherwise indicated.

I hope that you will find this book to be interesting and informative. Please don’t be too critical. Just remember that I never attempted to write a book before, and I may never try again.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Even writing a book such as this, small as it is, requires the help of others.

I thank the following cousins for sharing information contained in the bios, vital statistics, and various anecdotes: Florence Resnick, Dan Marshall, Evelyn Woolf, Beth Jacob, Aaron Rassas, Aarone Kawut, Alan Grossman, and also my niece, Alise Schlosser Ford.

I couldn’t have had a better person proofread this book than my wonderful wife. Her experience in grading papers at Monmouth University fully qualified her for the job, and she didn’t charge. Thank you, Beverly!

Many thanks to my daughter Ellen Rassas Cohn. Using her experiences of writing her own books, she was invaluable as my advisor.

And finally a great big thanks to my sons Richard and Glen, and, once again, to my daughter Ellen, for their generous birthday gift to me that financed the initial publication of this book.

Chapter 1

Grandparents Aaron, Dena and Gussie Rassas

Behold, how good and how pleasant it is for brethren to dwell together in unity!

- Psalm 133

Grandfather Aaron (1865-1934) was born in Konotop in the province of Chernigov which is in the Russian Ukraine. He was the second child and oldest son of Abraham Isaac and Frieda Leah Rassas. (At that time the family name was Khnutin). From the stories that we have been told, and from the evidence that we have, he was an intelligent man and very well-educated considering the era and his place of birth. And most of all, we knew him to be a gentleman with an extreme sense of honesty.

He served in the army of Czar Alexander III, drafted I’m sure, and being the only soldier in his whole company who could read and write, he was given the job of Scribe, or what we might now call Company Clerk. This earned him a rank that was designated by drei baindlach, or three stripes—a rank which was practically unheard of for a Jew in the time of Czarist Russia. An attic cleaning in the old Long Branch, NJ homestead at 36 Emmons Street yielded his diary, and his old moth eaten uniform with the drei baindlach. This gave us solid evidence to back up what heretofore had been hearsay.

But all good things come to an end. Russian anti-semitism, or perhaps just pure jealousy of his rank, led to his being falsely accused of a minor theft. For this, I was told, he served 30 days in the guardhouse, or whatever it was called in Russia. This was bad for Aaron, but good for all of us. He decided that his soldiering days for Czar Alexander III were at an end, he left the army, and more importantly, he left Russia and headed for the Golden Land, the good old US of A.

He made the voyage with his older sister Ida. Boarding an English ship named Etruria on June 4, 1890, in Hamburg, Germany, they traveled to Liverpool and then on to New York. They arrived at the Castle Garden (the predecessor of Ellis Island) immigration center in New York on the 4th of July in 1890, a very appropriate date to celebrate an act of independence. And so, the next time you see a 4th of July fireworks display, just remember that it’s also in celebration of the first time a Rassas came to America. The family was made whole when the mother and father, brothers Ben and Morris, sisters Rose and Sadie, and Cousin Dena arrived on November 12, 1891.

Sometime prior to leaving the old country the family name was changed to Rassas, and there are a few versions as to how this name was chosen. The most popular is that Aaron wanted to Americanize his name. He chose Rassas because at one time he had an employer with that name who was the last member of his family. He