REVIEWS

“Playing Detective with Family Lore takes the reader on a fascinating journey of discovery into the world of the author’s Jewish immigrant ancestors. Anyone with roots in Eastern Europe will learn not only the types of records that could reveal a family’s background, but also the reasons why an individual would leave their home and travel across an ocean to a new land.”

— Diana Elder, AG
Professional genealogist and author of the best-seller
Research Like A Pro: A Genealogist’s Guide

*****

“Daniella Weiss Ashkenazy’s insightful and engaging book is proof that the study of genealogy can often produce excellent history. Her family’s story sheds light on the Jewish immigrant experience, from the transatlantic passage down to postwar suburbanization. A delightful read.”

— Prof. Vincent J. Cannato
University of Massachusetts History Department
Scholar of U.S. immigration and author of American Passage

*****

“Combining her outstanding investigative journalistic skills (‘playing detective’) with her deep emotional connections to the ‘lore’ of her Jewish family, Daniella Weiss Ashkenazy transmits to her readers a vivid multigenerational story, predicated on love. Begun as a ‘promise’ at her father Gil’s funeral (at which I officiated), it blossomed into a rich compendium of facts and creative narrative, touching all the main themes of American Jewish history, including immigration, anti-Semitism, climbing professional ladders.

“Weiss Ashkenazy, American-born, but a 50-year citizen of Israel, expertly weaves together the strands of a complex, yet deeply rooted identity. Gil’s and Pearl’s daughter fulfills her promise, while shining a spotlight on the multiple paths which led her to personal and professional fruition.”

— Rabbi Mindy Avra Portnoy
Rabbi emerita, Temple Sinai
Washington, D.C

*****

“Daniella Weiss Ashkenazy has produced a book with three ‘faces’: a personal memoir of her grandparents’ life as immigrants to the US; a detailed ‘sociological’ look at what assimilation into America entailed in the mid-20th century for their American-born offspring; and a sort of ‘how-to’ go about doing familial research (less genealogy and more documentary).

“While the specific family story is interesting in itself, the real contributions here are the last two aspects. First, to paraphrase Stalin’s awful aphorism (“One death is a tragedy, a million deaths a statistic”), in this case, one life is a world unto itself that can elucidate the immigrant experience far better than a narrative of a whole people (actually, two for the price of one – both her parents). This book is not just sprinkled with, but rather fully awash in, the fascinating minutiae of an upward mobile immigrant family, with accompanying visuals of numerous old documents (e.g., a certificate of merit from summer camp, old newspaper comic strip, WW2 ration book, mom Pearl standing in front of a biplane, air raid signal poster, and so on). These numerous photos alone are worth the read.

“Second, with a journalistic background, Ashkenazy wasn’t going to simply throw any and all slips of paper and other memorabilia into the narrative without checking their veracity, also filling in holes where no documentation was at hand. But in my opinion, the real ‘added value’ is her explaining the ins and outs (plus pitfalls) of such family sleuthing. Anyone thinking of writing or even researching their family’s past will come away with several nuggets of how to do what.

“In short, this is far from being the usual pedestrian, family biography. Definitely worth the read – and fun too!”

— Prof. Sam Lehman-Wilzig
Former Chair of the Political Studies Dept., and School of Communication
Bar-Ilan University – Israel

*****

“This family’s story, or as the author labels it – ‘playing detective’ with her family’s history – is not just a narrative of the author Weiss Ashkenazy’s private family over the past century and more. In many respects it is a window to the history of medicine, written from the perspective of the average person.

“A lot of passages in this family history share how people grappled with illnesses, pandemics and other health crises over the past century or more in the face of limited health services. Furthermore, the book reveals just how limited medical knowledge was at the time (and narrow outlooks, even ignorance, no longer acceptable among health professionals today).

“Thus, one encounters the story of Yossel, the brother of the author’s maternal grandmother, who in 1902 was barred from boarding the ship to America with his three younger sisters by a shipping company official who suspected Yossel had trachoma. Indeed, American immigration policy at the time barred entrance of anyone suspected of having a contagious disease – primarily trachoma, ringworm and tuberculosis (or any visible physical defect).

“Similarly, Joni (the elder brother of the author’s mother Pearl), who died of polio just before his fifth birthday: Polio epidemics threatened the lives of children (and adults, FDR being a case in point) for five decades prior to the arrival of the Salk vaccine in the 1950s. The helplessness of medicine prior to this was genuine; not only limited knowledge of the disease, but also how to address epidemics that involve a limited population such as polio children. The family saga doesn’t end here. It includes the fate of the author’s grandfather (Joni’s father) who died two years later in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918; 41-year-old Michael Schwarzer was only one of 50 million persons worldwide who died in the pandemic.

“Even the premature birth of the author herself much later appears in the family narrative as a medical episode: Daniella speaks of how due to a shortage of equipment in the hospital where she was born in 1945, how fortunate she was not to be put in an incubator. Due to lack of knowledge at the time, thousands of other preemies lost their sight when their retinas were damaged by overexposure to unregulated supplemental oxygen piped into incubators (a new practice introduced to assist such infants’ lungs mature).

“Such events in the author’s family legacy illuminate just how much apprehension and uncertainty over health matters were present in the lives of those born in the first half of the 20th Century. Anyone who wants to learn about the history of medicine during this period should read Playing Detective with Family Lore, a narrative written from the perspective of one Jewish immigrant family – where mysteries unfold that not only reveal the story of the author’s family. They faithfully reflect the history of medicine.”

— Prof. Shifra Shvarts
Ben-Gurion University Faculty of Health Sciences
Deputy General Secretary, International Society for the History of Medicine