Friday, April 20, 2007

Liviu Librescu's Hebrew name, anyone?

In the old days in certain European countries like Lithuania and Romania, everybody needed their name to end with national suffix. For instance "Shvilli" in the Georgian Repyblic (Gruzye) and "ius" in Independent Lithuania. It seems like in Romania too, every citizen, whether Jew or Gentile, had their name end with "escu," as in Nicolai Caucescu. We see that Liviu Librescu, the Jewish Professor and hero to many at Virginia Tech University, kept his Romanian name, at least on his official documents. Rashag, son in law of the Frierdige Rebbe, signed his name for a while as Samarius Gurarius, in accordance with Lithuanian regulations, but we can easily tell what his real name was. I would imagine that Liviu is the Romanian for Leib, but what would the Jewish equivalent of Librescu

I understand that most of you have more important concerns; but this has the Tzig perplexed for days now.....

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

"Contributions towards the opening of the new Levi Librescu Chabad House can be made through the Chabad of Virginia website at: www.chabadofva.org"

http://www.lubavitch.com/top.html?ixobject=2018042

Looks like the name is LEVI.

Anash said...

"Professor Liviu--Levi ben Isidore--and his wife Marlina emigrated to Israel from Romania in 1978 and had been living in the U.S. for 22 years."

From Chabad's Campus Website
http://www.chabad.edu/templates/articlecco.html?AID=504498

Hirshel Tzig - הירשל ציג said...

Silly me!

Librescu is probably Lieber. So i guess he was Leib or Levi Lieber. That sounds better.

Anonymous said...

i kow of another jewish romanian liviu and he is levi

Mottel said...

Levi Lieber was my guess as well . . .
Does anyone know if the shluchim in the area had any contact with him?

Anonymous said...

When did the rashag live in Lithuania?