An Insight into Family History

My appreciation of history began when I lived in Israel as a child between the ages of eight and ten. My father had joined the Foreign Service eight years prior and had served in Lima, Peru and La Paz, Bolivia when the State Department assigned him to a post at the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv. We arrived sometime in January of 1980, and I remember that my limited knowledge of the world led me to believe that Israel existed only in a biblical sense…as an ancient place from a bygone era. For the next two and a half years, we visited many historic sites and ancient fortifications (Jerusalem, Nazareth, Bethlehem, Masada and many Crusader castles), and had the opportunity to also visit Egypt and a few ancient wonders of the world – the Great Pyramids and Sphinx of Giza along with ancient museums with relics, artifacts, and a lot of mummies. The experience opened my eyes to the vastness of the world and a diverse international community and their cultures. When I received my first communion in Nazareth, I felt a kinship with the past and the significance of that holy location which would stay with me for years to come.

In the years that followed, I continued to live and travel abroad, always appreciating every new location from a historical perspective before finally settling in the Washington, D.C. area. This influenced my studies in high school and college as well and various business and personal ventures later in life. But it wasn’t until I read “Guns, Germs and Steel” by Jared Diamond in 2007 that I fully appreciated the synergies between the various cultures and their respective histories. Then, in 2009, I watched Niall Ferguson’s documentary on “The History of Money“, and I finally made the link between the social and cultural history of the world that Jared Diamond had explored with the economic history of the world proposed by Ferguson. If my personal experience living abroad and experiencing different cultures and learning about their histories from an isolated perspective provided me with answers to “who, what and when things happened”, then “Guns, Germs and Steel” and “The History of Money” provided answers to “why” and “how” each country’s histories came to interact with each other and the impact that world events had on each respective culture.

This revelation instilled in me a new sense of wonder, and prompted me to approach the complex tapestry of life from a personal perspective by asking: Who were my ancestors? What did my ancestors do in their lives and what events impacted them? Why did they take certain actions that defined their lives? When did they undertake these activities? Where did their actions lead them? And how did world and social events impact their lives and the lives of their descendants? The responses to these questions, of course, require extensive research and may never find a definitive resolution. Nevertheless, the idea of approaching my family history from this perspective excites me and gives me the sense that I am embarking on a life-long quest to solve a series of mysteries…and hopefully discover unique stories and the impact world events had on my ancestors during their life and times. However, I hope to go beyond reciting mere facts about each relative, and to do so, I’ll need to understand the backdrop of history. So, to not get overwhelmed by it all, I’ll breakdown each project component into smaller chunks with the understanding that I will eventually weave all the discovered information into a nuanced narrative.

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