My great-grandmother came to America from Poland in the 1920s, then just a teenager. She lived to 100, and along the way became a driving force in Conservative Judaism and other institutions of importance to her. These papers detail not her own, but her father's naturalization in America. Down the family line, Bubbe, as my sister and I called her, served as a great inspiration for practicing Judaism with family in a meaningful way, and instilled in me a sense of pride in that heritage. My Bubbe moved to America to escape the pogroms in Poland, and started her new life in Brooklyn, where she learned English in school and worked in her father's grocery store. Throughout her life, my Bubbe (grandmother) lied about her age, often telling people she met that she was just a few years younger than she actually was. The reason she got away with it? Her naturalization and birth certificate papers were lost on the boat from Europe. The papers above are her father, Max Bober's, naturalization papers, and they list my great-grandmother at just 10 years old. My family lineage, as far as I can remember it, begins with Bubbe's trip to America.

– Max Rettig

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