Therefore, it is no surprise that a young Jewish girl, raised in Orange County, California,
grew up with a strong sense of family and a yearning to experience the Jewish homeland. I was a
voracious young reader and movie watcher. I gobbled up stories about Jews, the Holocaust, and
Israel. When I did ask my elders what they knew of the old country, I rarely heard more than that
it was like Fiddler on the Roof
. Thus, when I was thirteen and visited Israel, my experience
there only cemented the images in my head, and made me yearn even more for a place to call
home. At one point, when I was a teenager, I began taking Hebrew lessons as preparation for
moving to Israel. Of course, like many passionate teenagers, by the time I finished high school,
my attention had moved from Israel to other things. However, I never lost my interest in all
things Jewish. I must explain here that I am not a religious person. When I speak of being
Jewish, I am referring to my culture, my roots, and my history. While I know that Judaism is
mainly associated with the religion, I relate to the people, the history, and the stories, more than
the religion. This interest in Jewish culture is one of the guiding forces behind my genealogical
research, which has, in essence, taught me much about the challenges involved in said research.
While the majority of Ashkenazi who emigrated went to America, many also went to
Israel, or Palestine as it was called before the State of Israel became official in 1948. Family
researchers of Israeli immigrants have similar issues with multiple names as do American
researchers. The main difference is that instead of anglicizing their names, they took on Hebrew
names that may or may not have any association with their names in Europe.
My favorite book, as a young girl, was Leon Uris’ Exodus
, a fictional story about two
brothers who basically walk from Russia to Palestine in the early twentieth century. Their lives
parallel the history of the time, needing to leave the old country to avoid persecution, the horrors
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