“Israel Joseph (Friedman)  was an unusual Jew for the backward Ukrainian shtetls in the late 1800’s. He was neither merchant, artisan nor rabbi. Furthermore, he evidently came from somewhere in northern Russia where he received a more modern education than the essentially religious education available in the Ukraine. He earned a certificate as an accountant from the University of Warsaw by correspondence, had taught himself to play the violin, and had subscribed to a French magazine. He also was well versed in religious material. A small man, he dressed in more fastidious fashion than his neighbors, wearing a  well-pressed suit and a derby hat like the Western Europeans, undoubtedly ridiculous for an impoverished bookkeeper and tutor for children of wealthy Jews in the area.” (JF)

Israel Joseph Friedman (1870-1928)  married Leah Skolnick (1861-1911), Isaac Maltzer (1855-1921)  married Rachel Skolnick (1854-1914). Rachel and Leah were sisters, so Isaac and Israel became brother-in-laws.

Leah nee Calic was Israel Joseph's 2nd wife. His first wife was a sister of Leah, she died in 1911.  Leah's mother is Olga Calic. Leah and Olga came from Lechinitrz, Ukraine to Chernivitsi, Ukraine. Their life in Chernivitsi is well documented in the  History by Sol Friedman (see Background, Source Material on this site).

Leah’s sister Dora Skolnck married David Lieb Tabachnick, and some of the Tabachnick family immigrated to New York. There is a brother David Skolnick.

Isaac Maltzer, (Maltzer is name assumed from Calic),  has a brother Yakov Calic, who has a son Don Calic who married Shayna Shifer. Don and Shayna, immigrated to San Francisco, and their children lived in the SF Bay Area and Israel.

Israel Joseph Friedman has 9 children, eight sons and one daughter. The two sons, who emigrated to the U.S., are Moishe (Morris) Friedman and Sol Friedman. Morris was the seventh, and Sol the last, of these children. (JF)

Israel Joseph Friedman and his children lived in Chernevitzi, about 20 miles from the Dniester River, which was the border between Ukraine and Romania.  Sol Friedman wrote that the town was Chervoze, Chernevitz in Yiddish. Israel Joseph Friedman taught Hebrew, Yiddish, and later Russian. There were about 350 families, all Jews, in Chernevitzi. There were wine businesses, grocery stores, piece goods stores, carpenters, and no farmers. (SF)

Moishe Friedman, the son of Israel Joseph Friedman, went to Heder, and his formal education ended at age 13. He then went to work for a grocer in a nearby town. He was big, strong, and fast, skilled in athletics. He visited the Maltze and Lechtus relatives in their nearby Kopaigerod. Two of the Maltzer cousins, and two of the Lechtus children, were about his age. An attraction that kept him returning was his cousin. Rifka (Becky) Maltzer. Rifka was a tall, quiet, dignified girl, who had been well educated for the resources of her town. Her sister Bassya ( Betty) , remembered seeing Rifka taking dancing lessons in the Maltzer home in Kopaigerod. (JF)

Before leaving Russia for the United States, Moishe asked Isaac's permission to marry Rifka, and Isaac agreed. Moishe promised to send money for her trip, so Rifka could go to the United States, to be married there. (JF) They were 18 or 19 at the time.

Moishe left when he did to avoid conscription into the Czar's army. Joe Friedman wrote why so many relative were doing  the same. “The  Russian Army mistreated its Jews,  unless their parents were wealthy enough to buy their sons's way into elite units, or the sons were doctors. The service was for long periods, there was no chance for advancement, and usually was in labor units under oppressive corporals and sergeants. The Russians were not grateful to their Jewish veterans. One of Moishe’s brothers, a survivor of the badly defeated Russian Army in the Russo-Japanese War, was severely beaten in a pogrom in Kiev. The Russian government’s policy and practice was very anti-Semitic.” (JF)

Joe Friedman continued: "In the summer of 1913, Moishe left by a common method, sneaking across the Dniester River at night into Roumania. From there he acquired travel papers to the United States through the Hebrew Immigrant Society (HIAS), going by train to Hamburg and from there to Ellis Island in  the steerage of a German ship. Morris recalled that the trip was very unpleasant. Moishe  was the first of the clan to arrive in the United States before World War 1. Moisha entered the U.S. October 5, 1913. Moishe (Morris) was sponsored  by his Uncle Morris, in Chester, Pennsylvania. "Rifka left Odessa in August 1914, reportedly on the last ship to leave the Black Sea before the Turks closed the Dardanellas at the start of World War I. Soon thereafter they were married in New Jersey, Pennsylvania prohibiting marriages between parallel cousins". Uncle Morris helped Morris and Rifka (Becky), who lived and worked in Chester before they moved to San Francisco. Morris Maltzer, cousin of Morris Friedman, also immigrated and lived in Chester, before he moved to San Francisco.” (JF)

Morris Zalman was the uncle in Chester, he owned a furniture store, and he had three daughters. . He sent money to Morris Friedman to go to the U.S. in 1913. In 1964 Sol and Faye Friedman went to visit Chester, and met with about 18 cousins, the Zalmans, and the Tabachniks and Tobins from New York. (SF)

Nevet Basker’s family tree states that Morris Zalman is the half-brother of Rachel and Dor-D’vasha Skolnik, he married Mintsa. His daughters are Ann who married Mark Weissman, Dorothy who married Charles Winn, and Rose who married Nathan Tolin.

Sol wrote that the relationship between the Jews in town Chernovitz) and the gentiles in the surrounding villages was not good at all. Whenever they wanted to have a little holiday, they used to have a progrom. When the Russian Revolution broke out, the Cossacks passed through their town and killed and robbed. Once the Austrian army came through town, on the way to Odessa. They were defeated, and coming back through town, the Russian army picked up eight Jewish boys from the Austrian army, and forced Sol and other Jews to dance on them in the town square, until they were dead. They were buried in one grave. Sol and the others knew one was still alive, and they uncovered the grave and got him out. Another time there was a progrom, Sol got caught in the street, and one villager pulled off his boots and pants.

After the revolution, a group of Jews, including Sol, organized to fight back, with black market rifles. In 1919 they heard and expected Vladimir Jabotinsky to come to town and the defense group would join him and go to Palestine. But he never came.

During the revolution, in 1917, Sy Maltzer in Kopaigerod, was tied up by the Cossaks. His mother paid to release him. (SM) 

Abraham Gannes wrote: “The Civil War (1917-1921) which wrought radical social and political changes in the Ukraine and which brought in its wake unprecedented violence and atrocities"... "On November 2, 1917, the British Government issued the Balfour Declaration, viewing with favor the establishment of a Jewish national homeland in Palestine". "The Balfour Declaration motivated many families to emigrate to Palestine, mostly after World War I".

Sol wrote “everything was scarce, even bread and water. In 1920 Israel Joseph Friedman died of starvation, and I saw there was no future for me in Russia.”