Family Story Finder
The sweep of family history across the generations
Green Valley Drive—our exurban childhood
Our years in Pittsburgh were spent in a tract house in a natural wonderland—backed up against a family farm and an equestrian estate.
Just so—how the Rubys got their name
When and why did Walter Rabinowitz take on our abbreviated last name? He may have gotten the idea during intermission at a Bronx nickelodeon
Rabbi Spektor's true genealogy
Most of what we discovered about Rabbi Spektor's genealogy was entirely true. All but the myth of our family's connection to it
Ratner family passage to America
Abe Blokh became Abe Ratner to avoid conscription and get out of Russia. With his young wife and her mother, they voyaged from Bremen to Leeds to New York
Stan at Brant Lake
Stan summered at a Jewish summer camp in the Adirondacks.
Yichus and our relation to the famous rabbi
Walter thought he had proved the family legend of descent from the celebrated Kovno Rav, Rabbi Yitchak Elchanon Spektor. Later facts emerged that suggested a more tenuous connection.