Who Was Jicinsky?

Who said “I’m Spartacus”? Trick question, answer below. First, a family note.

Mrs. Buce’s mother was a Jicinsky whose family came to America from Bohemia via Vienna. Family folklore always assigned him to the town of Jičín up on the Polish border, and we made plans to take a side trip up there a couple of years back on our first trip to Prague.

Silly us. If you live in Jičín, you don’t call yourself “Jicinsky,” any more than people in Palookaville would call themselves “Palooka.” You call yourself Jicinsky when you show up someplace else, a stranger. We finally tracked grandpa down to a little town out west of Prague, over towards German border – a places whose Czech name apparently translates, appropriately enough, as “Little Town.” It’s a lovely, tree-shaded village: evidently upscale Praguers are scooping up the old houses as weekend cottages. We found elaborate family records (the Austrian Empire wrote down everything, so it seems). It is fun to think of grandpa trekking down to the Imperial Capital. In time he became a metal basher; maybe he learned his trade at the Skoda works in Plzeň on the way.

You think we might have figured this out before hand. I might have got a clue if I had read this bit from Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, in his marvelous Jewish Literacy:

The Jewish community is commonly divided into Ashenazic and Sephardic Jews. … In practice … most Jews whose families come from Europe are regarded as Ashkenazim, and those whose families come from either Spain or the Arab world are called Shepardim. However, if one meets a Jew whose last name is Ashkenazi, he is almost certainly a Sephardi. Many generations ago, a European ancestor of his undoubtedly went to live among Sephardic Jews …

--Rabbi Joseph Telushkin, Jewish Literacy 215 (1991)
(Emphasis added, but is Spain not in Europe?)

Who said “I’m Spartacus?” Answer: Everyone but Spartacus. But you knew that.

Afterthought: Seeing as how it ends with an "Sky," and seeing is how the town is on the northern border, it strikes me that maybe the ancestors are really Polish. Mrs. Buce is not impressed.

Pocket part: My friend Taxmom at Domestic Economy is a birdwatcher. She says that if you see a bird that belongs on your life list, then that bird is out of its element, and in trouble, and will die. Unless, of course, you belong on the observer’s life list, in which case good luck.