For those involved in Jewish genealogy, the fluidity of given names often presents a brick wall. You can't find the record if you don't know the name.  Jewish traditions have unique features, presenting both challenges and valuable clues for family history. Typically, a Jewish child receives a secular name and a Hebrew name. For Ashkenazic Jews, that name is usually after a deceased grandparent or great-grandparent. When several cousins bear the same name, you can assume that a grandparent of similar name probably died shortly before the earliest birthdate.   Our ancestors cam ..read more

Each year I write a summary of some of the books that spoke to me throughout the year. By the end of the year I have a long list, but I am often hard-pressed to resurrect the threads of the books that I rated highly after reading. Instead, it is the ones that had sufficient force to stay with me that remain. This year there are several that met that test.  Tom Lake by Ann Patchett I have always been a fan of Ann Patchett and her latest book Tom Lake did not disappoint. Central to the story is the play Our Town and a theater company in which Lara, in her youth, performed the part of Emil ..read more

It always begins with a phone call, those things that rock your world. My niece, brave soul, had taken on the task of passing on the news of my sister’s death, still in disbelief as we both absorbed this unimaginable event. It was indeed hard to believe. My sister, Andee, was so alive, such a vibrant person. I last saw her at Thanksgiving, the one time of year we gathered in person. We had a good talk. I recall the solidness of her hug. I never expected it was the last time.  I had forgotten the ability of death to strike suddenly, lulled by the lengthy life and gradual demise of my pa ..read more

I learned the news as I drove to a nature center to meet friends for a walk, a phone call telling me that my dear friend Dora Eiger Zaidenweber had passed away. Now this shouldn’t have been a surprise. She was 99 years old and in home hospice, mainly because of her advanced age. While she had many aches and pains that accompanied that age, she had a will that sustained her. Enough so, that even knowing that none of us get out of this alive, her absence still felt like a very strange concept to grasp.  Dora was an unusual and impressive person. A Holocaust survivor and Holocaust educator ..read more

As a genealogist, I am a keeper of stuff. I would hazard a guess that most genealogists are pack rats, as they know that gems are hidden in the materials that others with a less historical bent would blithely discard.  With this orientation at my core, it is not surprising that I have recently become enamored by the Cairo Genizah. In a few days I head off to an international conference on Jewish genealogy in London. They will be showing the film From Cairo to the Cloud and Dr. Ben Outhwaite, the head of the Genizah research at Cambridge will be at the conference. I’ll have ..read more

Each year, Northeast Minneapolis hosts Art-a-Whirl, the largest open studio event in the country. Thousands of people come through  studios over a three-day weekend. For the artists, that means 18 hours, sitting in our studios and interacting with our visitors. This year was the first year that began to feel more normal after Covid. Many of us have begun to unmask as we welcomed visitors. As an introvert who has interacted through a Zoom screen for several years, it felt both exhilarating and exhausting. So much of creating artwork is a solitary pursuit and suddenly there are people, so ..read more

Every Mother's Day, I reflect on the many mothers who have influenced my life. My own mother has been gone now for almost eight years and yet she still feels close to me, embedded in my wiring. We often say, "may her memory be a blessing" and her memory has indeed become one. I have always had strong friendships with women of my mother’s generation, something that becomes more difficult with time as so few of them are left. This year my friend Dora invited me to join her family for her Mother’s Day brunch. Dora is 99 and was born within two years of my mother. We have gotten together weekly si ..read more

  Inside a Burl - Susan Weinberg 2021 Process has always fascinated me. How do we get from here to there? And how does our understanding of process allow us to move forward? To replicate a successful experience? Or to get unstuck and start again when things don't work?  In painting, much of the process occurs long before brush meets canvas. That is especially true of work within the Artists’ Lab where we use Jewish text to identify concepts related to a specific topic. This year the topic is from Brokenness to Wholeness.   As we explore texts I try to organize lea ..read more

In my prior blog, I took a look at my five favorite nonfiction books that I read in 2020. I measure nonfiction and fiction by slightly different yardsticks. While I want both to engage me in story, for non-fiction I measure its worth by whether I learned something I didn’t know or a new way of looking at the world. Fiction needs to engage me in story, but rather than validating or explaining an outer world, it often gives me insight into an inner world. It may open me up to someone else’s experience and perhaps allow me to recognize something that echoes in my experience as well.    ..read more

So here's round two of favorite reading from 2022. Some seemed to pair conceptually even though quite different in content. One story explored the relationship between an island and the people who populate it, another the Covid virus and the lives of the people within a restricted island of safety. One offered a view of the often-untold story of remarkable women in Victorian times, another an all too relevant view of the China-Taiwan history through the experience of two remarkable women. One, of course, was also trapped on an island. I found all of these books remarkable and hope you do too ..read more