My great grandmother, Riketta Menahem was born in Thessaloniki, Greece in 1914. She was the youngest of 9 children, 6 of whom survived childhood. She lived a working-class life in the Jewish quarter of the city. However, in 1917 a huge fire wiped out 2/3 of the city, forcing her family to move out of the city and into the countryside. Before the fire, her oldest sister and her husband had moved to America, and since then they had been saving up to bring the rest of their family to America. In 1923, Riketta and her parents left Greece. They came third class steerage on the USS President Wilson to Ellis Island. While they couldn’t bring much with them, they did bring a very unique frying pan, which has become symbolic of my family’s Greek history. Upon arrival, Riketta’s mother was quarantined because she had an infection and Riketta couldn’t stay with her. Riketta also was separated from her father because males and females could not stay together. For four days Riketta, was cared for by an unknown woman from another country, who did not speak her language, while she waited for her mother to recover. Once they were reunited, they moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan where they lived in a tenement with dozens of other immigrant families. No one in Riketta’s home spoke English; however, Riketta was able to attend school in America and learned English. Assimilation was very important to her; in fact, she changed her name to Betty to help her fit in. Since she was the only one who knew English, a large amount of responsibility fell on her to help her parents adapt to their new life. After 8th grade, she had to leave school to begin working as a seamstress, the occupation she remained in until she retired at 65. In 1936, she got engaged and was married in 1937. She and her husband had three kids, all of whom have achieved personal and finical success Despite all the changes my family had to make to adapt to the US, some parts of their Sephardic culture are still a part of my family today. In fact that frying pan, which is now more than 100 years old has been passed through four generations and I hope to one day pass it onto my own children.
