name choices, family history, murder
My chosen last name is a somewhat bitter and brave joke by my ancestors.
I hope to take my grandparents’ name because they were both artists, and I feel I’m very much theirs. Before he passed, my Grampa gave me the okay to use their name.
My family has only been Ascher for a few centuries. As Kohenim, they unsurprisingly were named Kohen until Bogdan Khelmnitsky’s revolt, when the Cossacks caught an ancestor, wrapped him in a Torah scroll, and burned both.
name choices, family history, murder
Right about then my family decided that highlighting their priestly ancestry was a bad idea. Someone far too clever settled on one of the lost tribes, Asher. But also in German or Yiddish, my family comes from ashes.
I hope I’m worthy of claiming that name.
name choices, family history, murder
(My grandparents were amateur artists; neither were ever professional with it. My Gramma painted opaquely, but my Grampa preferred watercolors. The choice of media fit them both somehow. Apparently his family could be very left brained; my great grandfather was a stonemason and supposedly could freehand perfect circles, before this got him drafted into the Tsar’s army to put fuses in shells.)
