Family Story Finder

The sweep of family history across the generations

Adventures in Israel—Walter and Joanne
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Two of the Ruby offspring went back to Israel for significant periods.

Demise of the cultured Lewi family
  • 1902 - 1942

Five siblings who stayed true to German ideals until the bitter end

Eilertsens by the lake
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Ed was the rector at Saint Martin's By the Lake in Minnetonka Beach, Minn. The family was raised in towns around the lake region west of Minneapolis, including in the church rectory

Green Valley Drive—our exurban childhood
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Our years in Pittsburgh were spent in a tract house in a natural wonderland—backed up against a family farm and an equestrian estate.

Love conquers all as Gerhard marries Ilse
  • 1931 - 1939

Two young Berliners make a modern marriage—with lasting consequences

Our family during the Nazi years in Berlin
  • February 1933 - September 1942

During the first five years of Hitler's reign of terror, Jewish families of Berlin faced one repression after another.

Sputnik in the backyard
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Watching Sputnik at night from our back yard in a suburb of Pittsburgh is one of my earliest memories.

Stan at Brant Lake
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Stan summered at a Jewish summer camp in the Adirondacks.

The Rubys in Israel—1961 sabbatical
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Our family’s amazing year of discovery and connection

Third Generation Rubys
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First came Walter, then Danny and Joanne. They would carry on the Ruby-Ringel genes.

Twyla's childhood
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Outlooks of a pre-millennial

When Ed Eilertsen "crossed the bridge"
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In a dramatic moment while crossing the Mississippi River, he broke with his parents' austere Lutheranism for a more ecumenical approach

Ze'ev and Penina Sharon of Kibbutz Afeq
  • 1935 - 2009

A pioneer to Palestine in 1936, Ze’ev married Penina and they did their part to build the state of Israel as founders of Kibbutz Afek.