The Three Sisters and Bere Gourary
To Dear Nata from Chanah, Musia and Sonia
On the subject of:
Sound No. 7 - Sholem Aleichem: The Counterclaims of Barry S. Gourary
Sound No. 1 - Sholem Aleichem: The Will to Power of Barry Gourary
I will publish this and sort out/translate later. It’s an auction.
“Mushka” is a different person. Not the Rebbetzin. She was never called “Mushka”, not once in her long life.
If you put the letters and the pictures together, assume this archive comes from Nacha Rivkin side of the “family”.
I don't understand why it says on the front Dec. 1928 in blue ink, the same ink as 120% or 150% on the back. Maybe it’s the date Nacha Rivkin received it? And on the back (below) in black ink 26 XI (November) 1928, Warsaw. Something is fishy.
On the auction site, they say the picture was taken in Atelier AlfdPole (Sp?) in RIGA. Which is idiotic. Only one day before the wedding, you will take pictures in a different country? Unless this is somehow a photo after the wedding, not before. But Atelier AlfdPole for sure is not in Riga, if you believe the signature that it was in Warsaw.
There is a band to hold together, what appears in tone like red hair. In the official Chabad publications, this photo gets edited. Modest décolleté always been a problem for Chabad censors of this photo, it’s brushed out. I guess it doesn’t comply with the Hungarian standards. But we are not Hungarian! We are Russian Jews!
There was no custom (or practice) of head covering in that family. That’s why ALL post wedding pictures with Musya remain hidden or destroyed. That’s why the history of the Russian Jews in general and that family in particular was fabricated and corrupted. Same as now, they shamefully crop out Chana, the frumest of the three sisters, from this very picture.
Sonia perished in the Shoa with her husband Mendel and his parents, she was forgotten from the official Chabad history. Her mother, Nechoma Dina erased together with her name! Chana Gourary vilified and beaten at the end of her days, she was buried with Munkach. Barry Gourary was hated, terrorized and erased. Rav Rivkin, Nata’s husband, hounded out in an orchestrate attack by the Ramash. Even Musya had her pronounced name astonishingly changed after her death.
Chana mentioned that Kislovodsk (resort town Mineralnye Vody not far from Kislovodsk) where Mendel and Musya had the first date.
The groom, meaning husband, is our second cousin, and they already know each other since 1923, when he was my guest in Kislovodsk.
I am sick of this subject.
Very interesting Thank you! I never understood how someone who considers himself a chossid would censor pictures of „his rebbe/ rebbe‘s familiy“. Where is the kovod they claim to have. Tznius is a social boundry it has little to do with Halacha. Covering your hair after marriage was a widespread custom among russian peasant class. And probably dropped as people entered higher social classes and cities, naturally jews did too. Litvishe and so on barely practiced it. Among Sfardim head covering had little to do with marriage young girls would cover their hair too. With french colonialism it was dropped as fashion changed. Modern obsession with modesty and sheitelach is very strange, only explanation is sociological. I often wonder what Rebbetzin Mussia held of everything that happened around her. She seemed very humiliated in the court interview.
In the old world of printing photos, they would write for the printer what size they should make the picture. I.e. 120% of the original. That photo was used in the Algemeiner and it is instructions for the printer.