Užventis Families
Faivel and Ida Dora (Sher) Heilig
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Faivel & Ida Dora with children and grandchildren in Pocomoke City, MD in Spring 1912 
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Faivel was a shochet and a chazzan, just as his father before him. Ida Dora Sher was an only child, whose father, Jacob (Yankel) died when she was about 12 years old. Her parents owned and operated a general store in Užventis, but there was no male in her family to assume ownership of the business when Jacob died, so a marriage to Faivel, 6 years her senior, was hastily arranged. The couple lived separately until Ida Dora was physically mature enough to assume a wifely role. The couple produced 16 children, 14 of them born in Užventis. Three of the children died in childhood in Užventis.
A distillation of the various old family stories suggests that Faivel was instrumental in helping to aid young Jewish boys in the town to avoid conscription in the Russian army. When the Russians learned of this, Faivel had to leave town quickly to avoid capture. He carried with him his Talmud, inscribing in Yiddish inside the rear cover the names and birthdates of his then-living children, and in the late spring or early summer of 1899 he made his way to the United States.
List of living children as of 1899
Faivel initially lived with his younger brother, Kalman, and family in Durham, NC. Kalman was born and raised in Užventis, but moved to Kraziai (Krozh) when he married Reba Macht. Faivel's niece, Rebecca Rabinowitz Finkelstein, was then living in the small town of Pocomoke City, MD. The town was becoming a center of Jewish population in the rural DelMarVa Peninsula as families began to migrate there in the late 19th century. There was no rabbi or shochet at the time; the Jewish settlers had to travel to Baltimore or Philadelphia, each several hours away by train, for kosher meats, and there was no formal spiritual leadership for religious services. Rebecca persuaded Faivel to move to Pocomoke City where his many years of experience as a shochet and chazzan became invaluable to that Jewish community, which eventually built the first synagogue on the DelMarVa Peninsula. The Congregation of Israel provided a place of worship and celebration of Jewish life until 2009, at which time there were too few of the Jewish population remaining to support continued operation of the synagogue.
The couple's oldest child, Rebecca (Reba), was married to a rabbi, Moshul Goldberg, in Plungyan (Plunge) and already had several children by the time Faivel went to Pocomoke City. Her husband felt the the United States "was not Kosher enough" for him to move there, so Reba and Moshul remained in Lithuania as Faivel arranged for Ida Dora and the rest of their children to immigrate. The oldest son, Louis, went to Montreal* (probably to follow the Litvak family of the girl who was to become his wife). The next two younger children came together from Užventis to Pocomoke City in 1901. In late 1902 Ida Dora arrived with the remaining 7 children, the youngest having been born in Užventis a few months after Faivel had left. Resuming their family ways after 3+ years of separation, the couple had two more children the next two years.
* Faivel and Louis carried the Sefer Torah from Uzventis on their journey to North America. Pictures of the Torah are in the Photos section.
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© 2013 R. Barry Spinak
Created: Nov
2013 Updated: Aug 2016
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