Batya Lossos nee Yoffe (first from the right) and Mina Lossos with Genia Akabas, Pervaya Savetzkaya St. No. 18, Irkutsk, Siberia, Russia, February 1957
The Oster Visual Documentation Center, ANU – Museum of the Jewish People, courtesy of Tuvia Yoffe-Artist Photographer and Yoffe-Lossos family
YOFFE
(Family Name)Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a patronymic or matronymic surname based on a male or female ancestor's personal name.
Yoffe is a variant of Jaffe, the masculine Hebrew for "beautiful". As a family name, it sometimes derives from the Hebrew female name Jaffa ("beautiful"). It has also beenderived from the male Greek name Kalonymos, which means "beautiful name" and became widespread during the Hellenistic period among Jews who adopted the Greek way of life, being used as a secular addition to the Hebrew Shem Tov ("good name"). This practice continued until well into the Middle Ages.
Distinguished 20th century bearers of the Jewish family name Yoffe include the Australian manufacturer Joseph Yoffe and the Lithuanian-born American Yiddish poet, translator and literary critic Mordecai Yoffe (1889-1961).
JOFFE
(Family Name)Surnames derive from one of many different origins. Sometimes there may be more than one explanation for the same name. This family name is a matronymic (derived from a female ancestor's personal name).
J(I)offe is a spelling variant of Yaffe, which is a masculine Hebrew adjective meaning "beautiful". As a Jewish family name Joffe may be a matronymic based on the popular female first name Yaffa ("beautiful"). In some cases Jaffe and Yaffe are also associated with Kalonymus, the Greek for "beautiful name", which became widespread during the Hellenistic period among Jews who adopted the Greek way of life, being used as a secular addition to the Hebrew name Shem Tov ("good name"). This practice continued until well into the Middle Ages. In the 15th century, Jaffe is recorded as a Jewish surname with the scribe and bookbinder Meir Jaffe of Ulm, Germany. In Lublin, Poland, there was a well-known 16th/17th century family of Hebrew printers called Jaffe, founded by Kalonymus Ben Mordechai Jaffe, who died in 1603.
Distinguished bearers of the Jewish family name Joffe include the Ukrainian-born pioneer in Eretz Israel and malaria specialist, Hillel Joffe (1864-1936); the Bessarabian-born founder of the agricultural smallholders' co-operative 'Moshav Ovdim', Eliezer Lipa Joffe (1882-1944), and the Ukrainian-born Soviet physicist, Abraham Feodorovich Joffe (1880-1960), who was a member of the presidium of the U.S.S.R. Academy of Sciences.
Irkutsk
(Place)Irkutsk
Иркутск
City and administrative center of Irkutsk Oblast, Russia
Several Jews settled in Irkutsk at the beginning of the 19th century, of whom the majority were sent there as prisoners or exiles.
Subsequently, Jewish soldiers discharged from the army of Nicholas I settled in the city. The Jewish population grew from 1,000 in 1875, to 3,610 in 1897 (7.1% of the total), and 6,100 in 1909 (5.6%). Jews played a considerable role in the city's commerce and industry and in the development of the gold mines in the vicinity. After the 1917 revolution, a Jewish political exile, P. M. Rubinstein, was appointed president of the newly founded Irkutsk University. There were 7,159 Jews in Irkutsk in 1926 (7.2% of the total population) and 10,313 in Irkutsk oblast in 1959. In 1970 the city's Jewish population was estimated at about 15,000. There was one synagogue, but no rabbi or cantor. In the early 21st century, there were an estimated 5,000 Jews still in the city, with community life revolving around the synagogue