Last of the First

I don't generally discuss much family information here, but this event has some historical interest.

My Great Aunt, Alfreda Moscow (nee Goldman) died yesterday (7 April 2015) at the age of 103.

She was the last, first-generation member on either side of my family alive.* 

In general, this first generation cohort had many of the most interesting and defining experiences of becoming American**.  I believe this is particularly the case for American Jews.

We may all have had such bridges temporary bridges to the past known to us.

Just to remind you, when she was born:

1. The Panama Channel was not completed
2. The Bronx still had dairy farms.
3. More people spoke Yiddish as a first language than any of the Scandinavian languages.
4. There were 46 states in the Union.
5. There were quotas on the number of Jews allowed into major universities.
6. United States as a matter of founding principal chose not to have a large standing military.
7. Women did not have the right to vote in most states of the Union.

She is survived*** by her son, Alan Moscow, and her nephew (my father), Jerome Ronald Saroff, and her neice (my aunt), Nadene Barish (nee Saroff). 

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*    By first-generation, we mean those members of an immigrant family born
      in the United States.
**  Many if, not all, of these challenges and experiences are repeated to day
      in the life the current generation of native born Americans with foreign
      parents. Although from contemporary reporting on the immigration
     experience (particularly NPR), you wouldn't know that.
***At least, I do not have a complete list of all my father's cousins. 
     She had a number of sisters and a brother.