Dear Family,

First of all please accept our good wishes for the New Year: may it be a year of health, success and prosperity for us and for all the House of Israel.

 We are now entering the 50th year of Israel’s Independence. Our contribution to the Zionist Movement and the establishment of the State of Israel began, as we know, one hundred and forty years ago, with the immigration of our greatgreatgrandfather Rabbi Shmuel Kelmer from Lithuania to Jerusalem in 1858. His son Rabbi Arieh Leib Frumkin and his daughter Frida Yona Ivianski made Aliya one hundred and fifteen years ago, in 1883. They and their descendants made a significant contribution to the settlement of the country and to the never-ending struggle to defend life and property in our land.

 The Frumkin Foundation, whose aim is to document the stories and perpetuate the memories of our ancestors, has managed in its various publications to make known the contribution of members of the family to the Zionist dream. The Foundation encourages research into our family history, including work on the part that Frumkin pioneers have played in the resettlement of Petach Tikva, the Mother of Settlements, after its destruction at the end of the last century.We placed a stone tablet on the site where once stood the Lachman Estate, which was built by Rabbi Arieh Leib Frumkin in the years after 1883, and intend to publish the memoirs of Hannah Lea Segal, Rabbi Frumkin’s daughter, about her childhood on the deserted marshes of the Lachman Estate. If we have sufficient financial resources at our disposal we will do so in the coming year, in commemoration of Petach Tikva’s one hundred and twentieth anniversary.

 Our endeavours to perpetuate our ancestors’ memories have also included the restoration of the tombstones on the Mount of Olives of of Shmuel Kelmer and his wife Fruma (Braude) and of their granddaughter Hannah Lea and her husband Yaakov Yisrael Neviaski (more details in the article which follows).

 The members of the Executive of the Frumkin Foundation will be meeting shortly in order to plan the central event for the coming year, which will mark the family’s part in the Zionist ideal after two thousand years of dispersion.

 We take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy, healthy and peaceful New Year.

Sincerely yours,

The Frumkin Foundation

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Restoration of tombstones on the Mount of Olives

 After much research effort over a period of years, the graves of R. Yaakov Yisrael Neviaski and his wife Hannah Lea were located on the Mount of Olives and restored.

 On June 16th 1997, thirty years after the liberation of Jerusalem, Yaakov Yisrael and Hannah Lea Neviaski ’s descendants visited their graves in Jerusalem. This visit was the culmination of thirty years of effort on the part of many family members and attests to the very strong feelings of attachment to our ancestors.

After the liberation of Jerusalem, members of the Frumkin family searched for and found the tombs of our greatgrandfather R. Shmuel Kelmer and his wife Fruma (Braude), their daughter Frida Yona (Pesha Taube) Ivianski and their granddaughter Hannah Lea. Hannah Lea’s husband’s grave was not located because the tombstone was entirely destroyed by the Arabs. For thirty years we searched for it, wrote letters to Government offices, to the Jerusalem Municipality and to the Chevra Kadisha, but to no avail. In our letters we drew attention to the utter neglect of the cemetery, which is the oldest Jewish cemetery still in use in the world. The tombstones are testimony to the unbroken connection throughout the generations between the Jewish people and its capital Jerusalem.

  We finally managed to locate Yaakov Yisrael Neviaski’s grave on the Mount of Olives, only to discover that there was no tombstone. Three of Yaakov Yisrael’s descendants - Nachum Nevies, Yisrael Craimer and Etti Lubochinski - took upon themselves the task of writing to all family members, both in Israel and abroad, in order to raise money to put up a headstone. Twenty-two families in Israel, ten in England, eleven in America and one in South Africa were approached.

The response was overwhelming. Grandchildren and greatgrandchildren from Israel and abroad wrote heartwarming letters to accompany their cheques. More than NIS6,000 was raised, which covered the expenses of the a new tombstone on Yaakov Yisrael’s grave and restoration of the tombstone on Hannah Lea’s grave. The two graves are only a few feet away from each other. The pleasant and loving - in life and death were not parted.

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The 1997 Annual Family Gathering

 1997 Gathering in the Hall of Independence, Tel Aviv

 This year we met in the Spring, about two weeks before Pesach. Various members of the family from Israel and from abroad - representing four generations -spent a very pleasant afternoon together. On the eve of Israel’s 50th anniversary, and in the impressive setting of the Hall of Independence, where David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel, it was our pleasure to mark our family’s contribution to Zionism and the Jewish State.

The establishment of the State of Israel occurred as a consequence of the Second World War, the most disastrous of all wars, which brought the Holocaust on the Jewish people. Fourteen members of our family volunteered to fight in the war against the Nazis and their allies, the Japanese. Their stories were told in Hebrew in our book “Et Milchama - Time of War”, which was translated into English by Angela Cohen, published by the Frumkin Foundation and launched on this occasion. The book was distributed to all English readers and is now being sent to our relatives abroad.

We saw a film about the birth of the State of Israel and heard David Ben-Gurion proclaim its independence. We also distributed certificates of distinguished membership of the Frumkin Family to the senior members of the family (see list of recipients in the “Mazal Tov” section) in recognition of their lifetime contribution to our family heritage.

In conclusion of our short and pleasant gathering, we visited .the Bible Museum, on the second and third floors of the Hall of Independence, which is situated in the house built by Meir Dizengoff in the early days of Tel Aviv and which he bequeathed in his will to serve as a Museum for the city.

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Visitors from abroad

Among the many relatives who visited Israel during the past year were:

Sonia (Zeitlin) Gottlieb, her son Craig, his wife Nicol and their son Robert from London. With their cousin Margalit Normand they visited the family graves in Petach Tikva (Sonia is named after her greatgrandmother Sheina Frumkin, who is buried there) and were particularly moved to see the wooden hut which Rabbi Frumkin built for his his eldest daughter Sara Riva and her husband Chaim Zvi Zeitlin (Sonia’s grandfather and grandmother) in 1890 and which is miraculously still standing today.

David Zeitlin, his wife Vivienne and their daughter Nina came from New York for the Maccabiah Games. Nina participated in the Youth Tennis Championships.

Harry Zeitlin, his wife Linda and their daughters Deborah and Abigail spent their summer holiday in Israel.

Pauline Craimer and Saul Nevies arrived from England for the funeral of their sister Mina Rabinowitz.

Gila (daughter of Devorah Silverman and sister of Jonathan “The Single Guy” Silverman), her husband Mark and their daughters spent their summer holiday here, visiting with their aunt Aviva Halaban.

Carmela and Martin Kalmanson arrived from New York for the ceremony on the Neviaski graves on the Mountof Olives.

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