A few years ago, my daughter, in her late 20s, bought an apartment in Brooklyn that cost nearly a million dollars. How could a youngster, just six years out of college, afford such a place? The answer is, in part: generational wealth. While initially skeptical of her idea of buying an apartment, I figured it …
Category: Connections: Past and Present
How exploring my past has led to connections in the present
Childhood home revisited
Sometimes the connection between past and present is crystalized in a moment of space and time. You stand before a place where your ancestors lived. You contemplate its history and how the present resonates with the past. I experienced that connection during my recent visit to Israel. I stood before a place, the exact place, …
Immigration (legal/illegal) stories of my ancestors
In this time of vilification of undocumented immigrants, it’s worth examining, from a legal point of view, the immigration stories of my grandfather and great uncle. They were born in Zambrow, a town in the northeast section of present day Poland. My grandfather, his parents’ eldest child, was born in 1899. The area was ruled …
A visit to my Great Uncle
I never met my great uncle. His Hebrew name was Shmuel, his English name Sam, but everyone called him by his Yiddish name, Shmulke. My grandfather’s younger brother, he, along with my grandfather and one younger sister, left his home town of Zambrow, Poland, before the war. Those who remained, their mother, three siblings and …
Rome, through Jewish eyes
On my way back from Israel this summer, I spent three days in Rome. Little did I know how profoundly this part of my trip, designed for pleasure and diversion from the intensity of Israel these days, would affect me. That’s because, when in Rome, you confronted with some basic facts of history. Rome was …
The Search for Roots: Graves in Israel
In these days of war and terror, I’ve been thinking a lot about graves. In particular, graves in Israel. And of Jews dying in and for their country, their land. Too many. The grieving. The gut-wrenching burials of the young who paid for fulfilling their duty to the nation with their lives. I am reminded …
Peeling off layers of the past
I am drawn like a magnet into my family’s past. Not out of nostalgia, but as a way of projecting my own future, a future rooted in deep history. Yet much of that history is clouded and, to my sorrow, mostly unrecoverable. My grandfather’s generation is gone, having died in America or been killed by …
The Lomza Yeshiva: Connections Past and Present
Before I began researching my family history, I had never heard of Lomza. But it turns out that I have connections to this city, connections of the past that stretch into the present, and future. Lomza is located in northeastern Poland. It played an important role in the history of Jews of Poland. Jews first …
Polish citizenship?
I’m looking into applying for Polish citizenship. No, I haven’t lost my mind, though my grandparents, if they could know my mind, would think so. Not only would consider me meshuga (crazy), but they would also recoil at the notion of identifying myself as part of an anti-Semitic nation. For to them, as for many other …
The Yizkor Book Translation: Published!
A few years back, at a meeting of the membership of the United Zembrover Society, I volunteered to take over the job of editing the translation of Sefer Zambrow, the memorial book to the murdered community of the Jews of Zambrow. The project involved working with the translator, Dr. Jakob Berger, and making sure that …