Jewish Family Histories
A history your grandchildren will actually read.
Interviews by secure video, anywhere in the world. Photographs, letters, journals and documents you already have. Written into one continuous narrative in your family’s own voice.
Not a pile of dates. Not a transcript with the pauses removed. A piece of writing.
How it works
Four steps, and you are never guessing what happens next.
A free call
Fifteen minutes. You tell me what you have and who it is about. I tell you honestly what can be made from it — including when the answer is not much, or when what you need is a genealogist rather than a writer.
A written proposal
Scope, timeline and a fixed quotation before any work begins and before you pay anything. Nothing starts until you have it in writing.
Interviews and materials
Recorded video conversations at times that suit your family, in English, French or Hebrew. You send photographs, letters, journals and documents. I do the organising.
Writing, revision, delivery
A full draft, then your revisions. Final delivery is a formatted, print-ready file in PDF and Word, with photographs placed and captioned. Yours to print, copy and give away.
The projects
Choose the story you want to preserve.
The same fixed prices apply to family stories. You are choosing the size of the finished story, not paying a different rate because the subject is a family.
Legacy Interview
- Approximately 1,200–1,500 finished words
- One private recorded video conversation, 60-minute
- One complete revision
- About two weeks
One person, event, memory or experience you do not want lost.
One Chapter
- 3,000 finished words
- 1 × 60-minute private video conversation
- 1 complete revision
- 10 days
One important part of a life: childhood, immigration, marriage, work, a parent, a place or a period.
My Life in Brief
- 7,500 finished words
- 2 × 60-minute private video conversations
- 1 complete revision
- 21 days
An entire life, deliberately concise: people, places, turning points and what mattered most.
My Life Story
- 15,000 finished words
- 2 × 60-minute private video conversations
- 2 complete revisions
- 30 days
A substantial chaptered life story with room for the stories behind the facts.
The Full Story
- 25,000 finished words
- 3 × 60-minute private video conversations
- 2 complete revisions
- 45 days
A substantial memoir-length family manuscript with room for a life to unfold.
Pricing rule: projects of 3,000 words and above are priced at 21¢ USD per finished word. The Legacy Interview is $350 USD because the preparation, conversation, writing and revision still have to be done properly.
What is included, and what is not
Every project includes
A written proposal with scope, timeline and quotation before any work begins · all interviews by secure video, anywhere in the world · a formatted, print-ready file in PDF and Word · complete confidentiality unless you give written permission otherwise · writing done by hand, with no part of your family’s story generated by an AI system.
Not included — said plainly
Genealogical research: no archives, no records searches, no family trees, no ancestry databases · historical investigation or fact-verification; your family supplies the names, dates and facts · publishing, ISBN registration, distribution or printing beyond a print-ready file. This is a writing service. If you need a genealogist, I will say so on the call.
Why a writer
Almost everyone offering this is a kind person with a recorder.
I am a writer. That is the entire difference. The interviews matter, the documents matter, but the work is the structure and the sentences — the thing that makes a grandchild keep reading.
My promises
Where your family does not know, the writing says so. No gap is ever quietly filled in.
Your family narrative is written by me — not generated, drafted or paraphrased by AI.
Nothing published, quoted or shown without your written permission. The default is never.
A written proposal with scope, timeline and a fixed quotation before any work begins.
Questions
What if the person has already died?
Then we work from the people who remember them, and from whatever survives on paper. Some of the strongest histories are assembled entirely from the generation below. The one thing that cannot be recovered is the voice, which is why the calls are worth making sooner rather than later.
What if my relative will not talk about the past?
That is the normal case, not the exception. People who will not talk about the hard thing will almost always talk about an ordinary Tuesday — the kitchen, the walk to school, what the street sounded like. The Tuesday usually carries the rest inside it.
Is this only about the Shoah?
No. Immigration, military service, family businesses, boarding houses, neighbourhoods, marriages and ordinary lives all deserve to be remembered, and most of the work I do is about those.
Who owns the finished history?
You do, completely. Nothing is published, quoted or shown to anyone without your written permission, and the default is that it never will be.
What languages?
Interviews in English, French or Hebrew. The finished writing is in English.
Shape it before I write it
Your Story Mixer
Use twelve simple sliders to show me the balance you want: emotion, humour, intimacy, detail, historical context, faith, difficult memories, voice and legacy. Not sure? Leave anything in the middle and ask me to guide you.