Marriage Patterns as Tools for the Transfer of Values
As the daughters of Markus and Sara Schwartzman came of marriageable age, sons-in-law were found in Nayshtot, from the Nissalowitz and Lapidus families, among others. As with migrant communities in general, it was common for Jews to marry individuals from the same geographical area.
In addition, mixed marriages were rare in Eastern Europe, both because of Jewish religion and tradition and because of the strained relationship between Jews and non-Jews in the Pale. Hence, while the communities in the Nordic countries gradually gave up many of the traditions of shtetl life, even those who were less religiously inclined still married fellow Jews. Interfaith marriages certainly happened, but they were condemned by the community.While the main reason for the resistance was the matrilineal definition of Jewishness—a child was only Jewish if born of a Jewish mother—it was also firmly believed that these marriages inevitably led to complete assimilation. For example, a Jewish family in Helsinki declared their daughter dead to them when it turned out she had secretly married her non-Jewish fiance (Smolar 2003, 57). The father called the police when he found out that his daughter had secretly married a non-Jewish man, only to be himself arrested and accused of deprivation of liberty when it transpired that he had tried to prevent the newlyweds from going to Stockholm on their honeymoon. Her brothers also accused her of stealing money to make her stay in Helsinki. According to the interrogation records, the bride’s father did not even try to hide his motives; he simply wanted to bring his favourite daughter back home (Nyberg 2015, 36–37).
In 1919, a Nordic Jewish youth association (SJUF) was established by local Jewish youth organisations in each country. One of its informal goals was to facilitate marriages within the Nordic Jewish community, and the association explicitly stated that intermarriage would lead to expulsion.
Throughout the interwar period, local youth groups alternated in hosting SJUF summer camps and meetings in each of the Nordic countries (Fenno Judaica). In addition, the Helsinki Jewish school made class trips to Tallinn, Estonia, with the informal agenda of letting Jewish youths meet one another (Ekholm 2013, 106). The aim of finding a Jewish spouse, preferably one maintaining Orthodox Jewish traditions and values—the Yiddishkeyt—may have softened class division and income gaps that otherwise would have become obvious within Eastern European Jewish circles.A dominant feature of the Nordic Jews was that many in the first generation found a spouse in the region where they were born. Marriages also illustrate that the first and second generations were closely connected. Marriages of cousins and second cousins was a common practice among Eastern European Jews. In fact, when Harry Koritzinsky went to Nayshtot in 1933 in preparation for writing his family chronicle, an elderly villager confirmed that the Lapidus, Nissalowitz, and Schwartzman families were considered mishpokhe—relatives—who had intermarried for generations while living in Nayshtot (Koritzinsky 1946, 6).
This tradition continued after leaving Eastern Europe. Markus Schwartzman’s four children brought him thirty-three grandchildren, as Table 6.2 demonstrates:
Of the older grandchildren of Markus Schwartzman, the marriage pattern still followed the old traditions. For instance, Salomon Schwartzman, Markus Schwartzman’s oldest son, had nine children together with his wife Dorothea Rosalia, all of whom were born and grew up in Sweden. Seven of Salomon’s children married. They all took spouses who were born in Poland—or as in the case of one son, the daughter of a man from Poland. More so, three of the children were married to a spouse living in Nayshtot at the time (Koritzinsky 1946, 57–67).
Table 6.2 The marriages and number of children of Markus and Sara Schwartzman’s four children
| Name of the spouse | Born in | Married in | Number of children | |
| Salomon Arje | Dorothea Rosalia Friedman | Nayshtot, Lithuania | 1863 | 9 |
| Melina (Malka) | Klone Nissalowitsch | Nayshtot, Lithuania | 1871 | 10 |
| Taube Hanna | Berzik Lapidus | Nayshtot, Lithuania | 1872 | 9 |
| Israel | Rebekka Schelinsky | Hälsingborg, Sweden | 1877 | 5 |
Source: Koritzinsky 1946.
Markus Schwartzman’s oldest daughter (and Salomon Schwartzman’s sister), Malina (Malka), married Klone Nissalowitz. Another daughter, Taube Hanna, married Berzik Lapidus. Both were men from the hometown.
When the daughters of Salomon grew up, two of them married Berzik Lapidus’ brothers, who then moved to Sweden because of their marriages (Table 6.3; Koritzinsky 1946, 45–49). Hence, the chain migration was also a family migration that continued for decades. Salomon’s oldest son, Israel-Wolff, married Taube-Hanna’s and Berzik’s oldest daughter, Maria. One of Salomon’s daughters, Rica Rachel, married Carl Norlander (Nissalowitz) from Nayshtot, who was a relative of Salomon’s brother-in-law.
Table 6.3 The marriages of Salomon and Dorothea Rosalia Schwartzman’s children 1883–1902
Marrying within the community made the maintenance and transfer of Jewish values easier and smoother. It also ensured that traditional gender roles could be upheld, as maintained by Paula Hyman (1995). Rita Bredefeldt (2008) has demonstrated that the same development took place in Sweden; the middle-class values of the time quickly became perceived as Jewish values. As the bourgeois values shared many of the characteristics of traditional ways of being a Jewish wife and mother, the transition was easy.