Mary Wolfers Family Branch

( Part 2)

Philip Benjamin Wolfers (son of Aby & Mary Wolfers)

Philip was the eldest son of Mary and Aby. He was born on 23 July 1925 in London. Little is known about Philip’s childhood but it is clear from his university records that he was bright and capable. Upon graduation, Philip undertook further studies to become an anesthetists. This involved studying at the Central Middlesex Hospital in Acton Lane, London. It was here that he met and fell in love with a young student nurse by the name of Rita Rosa Salmagne. They were married on 5 October 1950.

Philip and Rita had three children, Anne (1951), Jane (1953) and Philip who was born after his father’s death in 1955. Rita spent most of this last pregnancy encased in a large plaster cast as she had broken her back in the car accident that killed Philip.

Rita lives in Sydney where she is very active, spending much time with her grandchildren.

Anne Beatrice Wolfers (daughter of Philip & Rita Wolfers)

Anne was born in London in June 1951, the eldest child of Rita and Philip Wolfers. Anne grew up in Sydney where she was awarded a BA and DipEd from the University of New South Wales, followed by a Masters in Town & Country Planning from the University of Sydney.

In 1974 she married Dr David Huber who is a Vascular Surgeon in Wollongong (to the south of Sydney). They have two daughters, Emma, who was born in 1975 and Jacqueline who was born in 1979.

For a number of years Anne ran a very successful business (with a partner) that made and sold continental cakes. Recently, Anne has undertaken a further degree course in Pilates.

Emma Huber has a degree in Industrial Design from the University of New South Wales. She is currently working on a degree in Fine Arts from the National Arts School in Sydney. Emma married Nicol Matheson in 2002.

Jackie (as she is known) was awarded a degree in Advanced Physics with First Class Honors last year from the University of Sydney. She is currently undertaking a degree in Medicine at the University of Sydney, and hopes to become a Psychiatrist.

Jane Wolfers (daughter of Philip & Rita Wolfers)

Jane was born in Melbourne in 1953, and moved to Sydney not long after her father’s death in a car accident in 1955. Living in Sydney’s Eastern Suburbs where many post-war Jewish immigrants settled, she attended the local school and cheder.

After majoring in Zoology and the University of New South Wales, Jane worked for 25 years in research and clinical cardiac ultrasound. She married John Gallo, a hematologist, in 1981, and they traveled and worked in Baltimore early in their marriage.

In 1983 and 1985 their two daughters, Nina and Rebecca were born. Both are very sporty, Nina competing up to national level, and Rebecca to state level in gymnastics at a young age. Since then both have represented their regions in various other sports. Nina has been studying languages and Rebecca fine arts since completing high school. Both love to travel.

Jane has recently started a new career having returned to university to learn to teach English as a second language. She has been employed at Macquarie University for the last 2 ½ years teaching overseas students in which she finds incredible satisfying.

John and Jane love to go cycling and thrive in the outdoors (or bush, as it is called here in Australia). Native fauna holds special interest for Jane, but she loves all animals. Both Jane and John enjoy the theatre, frequenting productions at the Sydney theatre company whenever possible. Jane’s friendships are a focal point in her life.

“I am grateful for all the wonderful gifts I have in my life – my family, good health and opportunities.”

Philip David Eugene Wolfers (son of Philip & Rita Wolfers)

Named for his late father, his paternal uncle and his maternal grandfather, he was born at St Kilda Hospital, Melbourne, Australia on 14 July 1955. Having been brought to Sydney at the age of 2, Philip has lived there ever since.

Philip commenced schooling at Bellevue Hill Public School, where he remained until 1965. He then moved to Woollahra Demonstration School (OC) until 1967. High School was at Sydney Boys’ High, 1968 to 1973. From about the age of 13 to his early twenties, he was also a member, and Madrich, of Habonim.

In 1974, misguided and unaware of his talents etc, he went to University of New South Wales to study Architecture which was a dismal failure. Philip went to Israel in 1975 for a “Machon” year (Machon L’Madriche Chutz La’aretz in Jerusalem) – half a year studying youth leadership, half a year on Kibbutz (Tel Katzir).

Returning to Australia in 1976 Philip worked in an office (BP) for a year, and then returned to the University of New South Wales, this time to study Psychology (1977–1980), this time successfully. However, he became disenchanted with the course, and despite finishing with an acceptable honors degree, decided not to practice Psychology.

Concurrent with this course Philip became interested in Philosophy, and apart from gaining a second major in Philosophy at University, also became a student at the School of Philosophy, where he is still a student and tutor. This is a school related to the School of Economic Science in England.

From University, he entered the Public Service in 1981, and worked up to a low-management position in the Property area, concurrently studying a degree at Sydney University, Masters of Land Economy. After about 6 years, Philip moved to State Property Manager for a cooked chicken company, Red Rooster, where he remained for 9 years. In this time Philip completed a Masters degree. He was then employed by the parent company, Coles Myer, for another three years, before resigning to take up Psychology again in 1999 (after nearly 20 years away from the area!)

Phillip currently has his own Psychology practice, the Advancement Centre, where he specialises in assessing children, and advising parents and teachers regarding their children’s educational and other needs. He also practices as a career’s advisor for all ages.

Justin Benjamin Wolfers (son of Philip & Laura Wolfers)

Born 26 June 1989, at St Margaret’s Hospital, Darlinghurst, Sydney. Named for no one (Justin) and his paternal Grandfather (middle name was Benjamin).

Justin attended John Colet School at Belrose, and now is in High School, Year 9, at Knox Grammar. His interests are modern music, cricket, football (soccer), drama, and philosophy.

Daniel Alexander Wolfers (son of Philip & Laura Wolfers)

Born 19 March 1991 at Mater Miseracordiae Hospital in Crows Nest, Sydney. He was named for no one.

Daniel attended John Colet School at Belrose and now is in High school (currently Year 8) at Knox Grammar. His interests are Lord of the Rings/Warhammer, modern music, squash, computer games, and philosophy.

David Wolfers (son of Aby & Mary Wolfers)

David followed Philip’s footsteps and attended Sydney University to study medicine. For his final year David worked at Albury Hospital. Hospit

On one of his visits home, he was introduced to a young lady from Melbourne who was visiting a friend of Philip’s. Ruth Hecht was the only child of German migrants who had made it to Australia at the beginning of the War. She was attending Melbourne University and was studying Music. They were married on 16 January 1951 at the Melbourne Synagogue.

David & Ruth had three children, all born in Melbourne. Miriam was born on 1 January 1952, Jonathan on 16 June 1957 and Peter on 15 June 1958.

In 1963 David’s family moved to England so that David could attend the London School of Tropical Health and Hygiene where he topped the class and was awarded the Okeke Prize “as the best student on the course leading to the Academic Postgraduate Diploma in Tropical Public Health, 1963-64”. It was during this year in England, that David and Ruth were divorced. Ruth has since remarried – her husband is Professor Michael McIntyre and they live in Cambridge, England.

David & Helen (whom David had met in 1958 in Melbourne) lived for many years in Singapore where he worked for the Singapore University. They then moved to London, America and finally to Israel, but always spent part of the year in Australia where they owned a number of properties. David and Helen were married on 5 May 1967 and their daughter, Aviva Delilah was born in London on 18 October 1969. Helen lives most of the year in Melbourne where she has a granny flat at the back of her daughter’s house.

When David & Helen moved to Israel, David began to work on a project that had been at the back of his mind for many years. He had been fascinated by the Book of Job since High School and wanted to actually understand the story of a man who had great faith in God.

He worked on his book for about 15 years. In one of those wonderful moments that happen in life, he held a proof copy of his book, “Deep Things Out of Darkness” just days before he died of the complications of cancer in September 1994.

Miriam Wolfers/Pollak (daughter of David & Ruth Wolfers)

Miriam Alice Wolfers was born in Melbourne Australia, the first child of David & Ruth Wolfers. In 1963 she moved with the family to England. After leaving school she spent two years working on a kibbutz in Israel before returning to England, where she attended Secretarial College. Her first job was at Cambridge University in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics.

Miriam decided to return to Australia in October 1975. During 1981 at the instigation of her cousin Jane, she joined B’nai B’rith Unit Ma Nayim in Sydney. During one of the meetings she met her future husband, Fred Pollak. They were married in the same synagogue as John and Jane, on 22 August 1982. In 1987 Fred & Miriam decided to sell their Sydney home and bought a motel in the Blue Mountains to the west of Sydney, at Blackheath. After five years working at the motel, they sold up and moved to Melbourne where they operated a number of small businesses.

In 1996 Miriam decided to see if she could get into University and upgrade her work skills. Prior to the move to Melbourne she had become very interested in family history and as an offshoot of this, had begun a large database project. It was on the basis of her work on the project that she was accepted to RMIT to study Information Management & Library Studies – she graduated in 1999 with Distinction.

In 2001 Miriam and Fred moved back to Sydney to be closer to family and friends. In 2002 Fred began studies in Environmental Health at the University of Western Sydney after spending many years studying through the TAFE system. He completed a three year degree in two years while working full-time.

Miriam & Fred live in Sydney where Fred is an Environmental Health Officer with Woollahra Council (an inner city Council with offices overlooking the harbour) and Miriam is a contract Records Officer. The project that Miriam has been working on since 1992 is nearing completion and Miriam hopes to have the CD-Rom self-published before the reunion.

Jonathan Philip Wolfers (aka Sahananda) (son of David & Ruth Wolfers)

After completing Grammar school, Jonathan worked for five years as a lab technician at the Technical College in Cambridge. One day he had a 'vision' of himself as an old man who had spent his life in a Physics lab. He decided to go to university and took the necessary 'A' levels at evening class. He met some Buddhists and got interested in meditation and Buddhism.

From 1981 to 1984 he did a degree in Computer Science with Mathematics at University of Keele, during which time he met and fell in love with Rose Mitchell. Jonathan spent a cold and very unenjoyable year in Manchester working for the Manchester Buddhist Centre as publicity officer, before getting back into gear and acquiring a job at British Airways, working on their reservations system.

Jonathan spent seven years at BA, first as a programmer, then as a trainer of programmers and finally team leader on a 31 million pound project, which a mere 10 years after he left has become obsolete and has been completely scrapped.

He left British Airways to go on a four-month retreat in the mountains of Spain, in the course of which he was ordained into the Western Buddhist Order & given the name Sahananda which means something along the lines of 'the delight of companionship'.

On his return to Britain, Jonathan and some friends started a gift shop - part of a chain run by the trading wing of a charity. Jonathan worked in the shop for several years, but then it became clear that his talents were badly needed at the headquarters of the trading operation, so for the last eight years he has divided his time between London and Cambridge, working in the shop and taking care of all the retail systems in the burgeoning chain.

For three years, out of necessity, he also took on the Chairmanship of the Board of Trustees and the administration of his local Buddhist centre in West London (www.westlondonbuddhistcentre.com). This proved far too much for him, and he retired exhausted in the summer of 2003. This summer (2004) Rose and Sahananda are to be married (on 3 July) and it is their intention to live happily ever after - if that is alright with you.

Peter Benjamin Wolfers (son of David & Ruth Wolfers)

Peter Benjamin Wolfers born in Melbourne, Australia on 15 June 1958 is the third child of Ruth and David Wolfers, and therefore a grandson of Mary Sabel. As a child living in London he had vague memories of Mary's trips to London when she stayed at the White House Hotel (it had a swimming pool). Peter later visited Grandmamma Mary in Sydney when he was a reckless, homeless, wild teenager.

Peter is lucky enough to live in Comberton, a small and prosperous village on the outskirts of Cambridge, generally inhabited by entrepreneurs and management from the local technology companies. He is married to Estelle, and has two boys, Felix and Jeremy, aged ten and seven respectively.

A couple of months ago Peter & Estelle moved from a very large house on outskirts of Ipswich to a much smaller house in Comberton, with an excessively large garden. To keep the garden in order, Estelle has an old Massey Ferguson tractor, and Peter has a ride-on lawn mower. The tractor unfortunately has a seized-on clutch, which means that you really have to mow the meadow in one go without changing gear. We will have to get it fixed!

With the house being much smaller, they have had to store many of our possessions in the attic. Probably, more than half of their thousands of books now act as insulation in the loft space. Peter is proposing to learn how to set up an E-bay shop to dispose of many of the excess items.

Felix & Jeremy are going to the Meridian primary school in the village, which appears to have a somewhat laid-back attitude to education. Peter thinks their education will need a substantial supplement provided back at home. Luckily, the Meridian feeds into the local Village College, which has a very high reputation. Felix will go there next year.

In the time that Peter is not mowing grass, he tends to sleep, work and enjoy his family. Peter goes and has the occasional game of squash to stop him running to seed. He runs a small venture capital fund that invests in technology businesses in the United Kingdom. This keeps him extremely busy and keeps him in touch with the wilder outer reaches of technology in lasers, telecommunications, etc. Luckily for Peter, Estelle and the children like technology as well.

As a family they are not religious, but both Estelle and Peter consider it to be important that the children are brought up as Jews. Accordingly, they celebrate Shabbat, tend to go to synagogue on high days and holidays, and the children attend the local cheder every Sunday (while Peter mows the lawn).

Estelle Rosalie Wolfers, nee Pryce (a Sabel granddaughter-in-law)

Estelle was born in Macclesfield, Cheshire, on the 20^th July 1958, into one of the many ‘ICI families’ - her father Dr Jean-Michel Pryce spent his entire career as a research chemist at ICI Pharmaceuticals Division, and still lives in Macclesfield. Her mother Shirley (McCormack) is a retired antiquarian bookseller who is now doing a PhD on local history. Estelle has one younger sister, Jocelyn, who works in local government. Both her parents have remarried, so she has five stepsiblings and a large extended family.

Estelle was educated at Macclesfield High School (where she was a relative failure, being a short-sighted rabbit in a tennis-mad environment), King’s College, Cambridge (which she loved) and Imperial College, London (which she did not), ending up with an MA in Geology. Estelle is also a part-qualified accountant, for reasons too complicated to explain, and until Felix was born, was a management accountant at P&O Ferries in Felixstowe. Once Jeremy started school, Estelle did voluntary work, becoming a bookkeeper for Ipswich Dial-A-Ride, as well as Chair of Governors at the boys’ primary school. Once the house and garden at Comberton is sorted out, she’ll probably find another bookkeeping job - of course Estelle would really like to work at the Sedgwick Museum in Cambridge.

Estelle met Peter when she was working for a small computer company in Cambridge - he was laying out a printed circuit board for one of their products, fortified by endless cups of black coffee. Estelle was attracted to his cheerful temperament and his bright yellow Piper sports car! Unfortunately the Piper was sold to help pay the builders after they finished their first house - converting a derelict village primary school. By then, though, Peter had bought his dream car, an Iso Grifo, which has been progressing slowly over the years and is now waiting in the garage for its next phase of restoration – perhaps they’ll actually have driven it by the time the children leave home…

Peter & Estelle have two sons, Felix David John (named for both grandfathers) and Jeremy Philip Jacques (named for Peter’s late Uncle Philip and Estelle’s late Uncle Jacques). Although unlike each other in looks, at the moment they are proving to have similar skills and interests, even to the point of managing near-identical school reports – both are interested in maths, science and chess, moderately musical and with execrable handwriting (more doctors in the making maybe?). Felix is a good swimmer and has been scuba diving for two years; Jeremy likes horses and would probably prefer to be a vet.

After Felix was born, Estelle started to investigate conversion to Judaism, encouraged by Peter’s father. The leader of Ipswich’s tiny Jewish community eventually recommended that Peter & Estelle join Beth Shalom Reform Synagogue in Cambridge, which proved to be very welcoming, though rather a high standard of intellectual attainment is expected of candidates! Estelle taught herself to read Hebrew, and drove to Southend once a week for classes with a delightful lady who spent half the lesson worrying that she wasn’t eating enough. After two years, Estelle was interrogated by her sponsoring rabbi, Henry Goldstein of South-West Essex and Settlement Reform Synagogue in Ilford. Then she was put forward to the Beth Din, which she attended on a freezing cold June day. It was so cold that she wasn’t sure if she was shivering from nerves or cold in front of three very magisterial rabbis. The boys had to accompany her into the mikvah, which Jeremy (still a baby) in particular did not appreciate. They then visited the Sternberg Centre’s bookshop, where the proprietor explained that he enjoyed serving customers with their hair wet from the mikvah, as they tended to spend a lot out of sheer relief. Which Estelle did!

Estelle is a compulsive book-buyer (whether or not she has been to a mikvah) and interested in history in general, family history in particular, and also natural history, travel and education. She will admit to being a bit of a petrol-head, or perhaps a diesel-head since she owns a vintage tractor.

Aviva Delilah Wolfers/Barazani (daughter of David & Helen Wolfers)

Aviva Delilah was born in London. She was raised between the U.K., the U.S. and Australia until 1978, when she migrated to Israel with her parents. She has been living there, in Jerusalem, ever since.

Aviva received most of her elementary school education in Jerusalem, and graduated from the Rubin Academy High School of Music and Dance in 1987, majoring in piano studies and literature. In 1988 she was drafted, in accordance with Israeli law, into the Israeli Defense Force, where she served for two years as personnel coordinator for the Central Command, and archived the rank of sergeant. After the completion of her military service, she undertook a B.A. degree in English Literature from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, while working at the Jewish Agency’s Foreign Press Spokesman’s Department.

In 1995, Aviva began working at her current workplace, the Abraham Fund Initiatives, a non-profit organisation that aims to promote constructive coexistence and equality between Israel’s Jewish and Arab Citizens. Recently Aviva received her M.A. degree in Conflict Research, Management and Resolution, also from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. With a full-time job and two children, she doesn’t have time for hobbies, but if she did, they would be piano, singing and reading.

Aviva met her husband, Gil, in 1988 through a mutual friend. They knew each other for 7 years before they began to date. They were married in 1994. Gil is a computer expert for the “Israeli Prime Minister’s'’ office. Gil enjoys camping and hiking and dreaming of motorcycles, that Aviva will not allow him to buy. Their son, Jotham, was born in 1996. He is now finishing 2^nd grade. He loves mathematics, computers and dogs, hates Bible studies, football and carrots, and his hobbies include swimming and piano. Their daughter, Haggar, was born in 1999. She is about to begin pre-school this September. She loves singing, dancing, dressing-up and generally anything to do with performing for her adoring audience. She hates being told what to do and would be happy if we were to allow her to exist on an exclusive diet of chocolate milk. Aviva and Gil are expecting their third child, another boy, in early July.