From this friendly wine valley of Sonoma County, forty miles north of San Francisco, to the gloomy barrens of the Ukraine is no mean leap. For ZichronNote, it was a piece of cake. When you published my article on Bender Hamlet last year, I hoped that you could provide a link to the Ukraine from where my parents emigrated in 1899. Thanks to the painstaking work of my grand-nephew, Eric Segal, who poured over countless passenger lists, he discovered their names, with two infant children, on the S.S. LAKER ONTARIO, an unimposing ship of less than 2,750 tons (I'd hesitate to cross San Francisco Bay on it) that sailed from Liverpool, England, July 22, 1899, arriving nine days later at Quebec City, Canada. They traveled steerage class, of course, hardly a luxury voyage. Later, they homesteaded at Bender Hamlet, near Narcisse, Manitoba, where I was born in 1911.

In my adult years, I returned often to that memory-laden prairie, but could not reach back to Russia. That's when I asked for your help, and the world took a quick turn. Replies came from Brooklyn, Winnipeg, Southern California, Israel, and Mexico, each asking for or giving information on Bender Hamlet. Scarcely a trace is now left of that once-hardy shtetl. A happy diversion was the door you opened to a classroom of eight-year-olds eager to exchange e-mail with a pseudo-pioneer (me). They didn't know my coonskin hat was ersatz fur, that my exploits were hand-me-down tales heard from elders around a kitchen table of a tiny farmhouse shivering under wintry blizzards.

Finally, came the brass ring: an e-mail from Rabbi Eliezer Raphoel Brody-Ludwick in Israel, a young professor in his fifties, a devoted Hasidic scholar of the Torah, teacher at a yeshiva. Most amazing, he is a genuine, close, blood relative I never knew existed-the grandson of my father's younger half-brother, Isaac. Wonder of wonders, Rabbi Eliezer had just returned from a search in the Ukraine, had found the graves of our ancestors, including a great-grandfather, Chatskel, we had in common. The following is from Rabbi Eliezer's own journal, December 1999, describing his six-day intensive trek across the Ukraine:

Highlights included visits to the grave sites of the renowned great of Ukrainian Jewry, the Ba'al Shem Tov at Medziboz, Rabbi Nachman at Uman, Rabbi Nathan at Brezlev, and Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berditchev .... One of the trip's major goals was making a positive identification of the village of Yanov, locating the old Jewish site where Ludwick (Ludwig) grandparents lie in eternal rest...

Miraculously, hidden in a field off the main road was the cemetery, spared from the Nazis. Yanov was once a community of small farmers and artisans, destroyed several times: The pogrom of 1648, the pogrom of 1768, the pogroms of 1905-1909. Nazis invaded Yanov March 30,1942, killing the town's one thousand Jews, who were buried in a communal grave. Rabbi Eliezer prayed for their blessed memory at this awesome site.

Following the emotional high of locating Yanov and the cemetery, the Rabbi moved on to Berditchev, 80 kilometers north, the nearest town with a schul, home of the famed 18th century tzadik, Rabbi Levi Yitschak. He paid the local caretaker to round up a minyan from the twenty-odd Jews left, who for a dollar each, joined in for the afternoon and evening prayers, followed by a L'Chayim with a bottle of Stolichnaya. Among the participants was an 81 -year-old World War II veteran of the Russian tank corps, who bore an amazing resemblance to Isaac Ludwick (Rabbi Eliezer's grandfather). He was Baruch Litwak, the son of Shiomo Litwak, which means that Baruch Litwak and current family patriarch, Jack Ludwick of Maryland (the rabbi's father, only recently deceased) were second cousins, as their grandfathers were brothers. The schul broke loose with 'simcha' while the brawny but gentle Baruch smothered his 50-year-old visiting third cousin with a Russian bearhug and kisses on both cheeks as tears fell at this union of the Ludwicks of Canada, U.S., and Israel with the Litwaks of the Ukraine after a 94-year separation.

Last May, Rabbi Eliezer (now just plain "Larry," I was "Moish") made it to my home in Sonoma. He arrived in full regalia: long, braided payes, prayer shawl under a black coat, black hat. He roared with laughter when I warned him my conservative neighbors would have to be restrained from dialing 911 ("there goes the neighborhood"). If I were to name the most impressive men I'd ever met, Rabbi Larry would be at the top of the list: charismatic, bristling with energy, curious about everything, world-wise, generous, and, most delightful, a truly loveable guy. Being crushed in a bearhug by a man with a beard seemed the most natural thing in the world. My wife, Idee, and I had puzzled how to set a table for him. "Easy," he informed us by e-mail (he corresponds that way with scores of distant relatives) "fruits, nuts, vegetables, off paper plates, thank you." His only other request was for a bit of natural, open country where he could quietly pray and meditate at dawn - easily found here in this blissful area of grapevines, cows, sheep, geese - and serenity, a far cry from what he had found in the Ukraine and the remnants of the village of Yanov, situated northeast of Vinnitsa, a small city when my father, Osher, was a youth.

In Rabbi Larry's own words, told from the heart in his gripping, sadly poetic style:

In the middle of winter, the geese walk down the 200-year-old cobblestone streets, and in the spring and summer the cows take over. Surrounded by forests and wheat plains, you can pull 20-pound carp out of Lake Yanov. In the winter, when the peasants are idle, they spend their days with a bottle of vodka, ice-fishing on the lake. There are no more Yidden - alive, that is - but one feels a strange, almost holy, presence of their souls. The Jews of Yanov were simple, G-d-fearing, good people with an uncomplicated, pure belief in their Creator. I felt a Holiness like the Western Wall there, because everywhere one walks you step on Jewish blood, as if one needs to remove one's shoes because of the sanctity of the place. There's not a potato or an apple in Yanov, or in most of the Ukraine, for that matter, that's not fertilized by the iron of our ancestors' blood and the calcium and phosphorus of their bones. During the first visit, when we discovered the old Yanov cemetery and the mass grave from the Holocaust, my brain knew that I'd never been there before, but my heart kept telling me "welcome home, yingele," as if any minute Alte Zaidie Chatskel would give me a call: "Laizerkie, kim essen, ma gait shoin leren," to come have a piece of herring and kartoffel kugel before we sit and learn a page of Gemmora together. Chaskel came to me in a dream once since, and gave me a fiery warning to devote all of my energies to Torah and to serving Hashem because I'm the only one of his offspring who is keeping the candle of old-time Torah Yiddishkeit burning, that is to say, together with my son and grandsons, G-d willing, 'til the end of time.

Rabbi Larry's determination to honor the memory of our forebears goes on. To quote again from a recent letter: "I haven't even scratched the surface of what has to be done. I'm trying to locate ancestors' (Litwak) property in Yanov and reclaim it from the government. It seems a ninety-seven percent hopeless task, but I must try. The two mass graves of the Holocaust -one of 60 Yanov Jews buried at the end of the cemetery, and another of 1,000 Jews on the eastern outskirts by the railway crossing - must be fenced and maintained." Each time he returns after a months-long absence, he finds new desecrations by nearby villagers (once, an attempt to plow the cemetery and plant potatoes).

I have discussed with Rabbi Larry the possibility of a permanent maintenance fund, perhaps building a small stone cairn or monument similar to that which the hard-working Joe Lavitt of Winnipeg did at Bender Hamlet, donations coming from descendants of the pioneers. It was a gala celebration that June day of 1986 when several hundred, from many corners of the U.S. and Canada, showed up for the unveiling, sponsored in part, by the Province of Manitoba. But Ukraine is not Manitoba, hostility is still rampant where our ancestors are buried; strangers, especially Jews, are not welcome. By any standards, the journey is laborious, unsafe, and expensive, far beyond the limited means of a struggling teacher in Israel. Always, he must be accompanied by some of his compassionate fellow religionists, whose muscles are as strong as their faith.

Still, young cousin Rabbi Larry holds to his dream. He will have my help, of course, in the spirit and financially, and that of the relatives who will join our cherished venture into learning about the good, and bad, of our past. The purpose is to maintain, in perpetuity, a caretaker fund to memorialize the heritage. We are searching the Internet for any charitable associations already in existence. Since so much has been destroyed by the Nazi invasion and by local, non-Jewish inhabitants, records and archives are almost non-existent.

So almost ends my vicarious journey to trace roots in Ukraine. My next birthday will be ninety, G-d willing, and it's nigh time to circle the wagons. My paternal line seems quite clear - an indomitable grandfather Chaskel, a sturdy believer and student of the Torah, who survived to 104 years, married twice, sired 27 children (my father, Osher, was the eldest by his first wife). The maternal line is still unclear. My mother's maiden name in Yanov was Sonya SCHATZ. The belief is that, somehow, she was related to the first wife of my remarkable grandfather Chaskel. Some Schatzes emigrated to the United States, possibly to California and, of all places, the Bay Area. Is it possible? Will my wife, Idee, and I perhaps one day share lunch and a cool Chardonnay with a newly found third cousin? Come on. ZichronNote! Now that I have provided you with a sequel to "Success Story, Bender Hamlet" can you find me another brass ring? A new hunt is on!

P.S. As I write this (December 15, 2000) I've just received a startling e-mail from a "Schatzi" to a "Jake Schatz" that begins: "Jake, I've received a letter from Bea about someone who sounds as if he is a distant and interesting relative living in Sonoma. He is ninety years old and is a half-brother of Isaac Ludwig, who was my father's first cousin" (actually, he is referring to my father, Osher). But, no matter - my lines are open to "Jake," wherever he is. Let's get it on!

Our heartfelt condolences to Morrie, who lost his beloved wife Idee only one day after submitting this article. May her mernory be a blessing.