For institutions
Community memory, written to last.
Synagogues, historical societies, genealogy groups, rabbis and Jewish institutions that want family and communal stories preserved at the standard of literature — not as transcripts, scrapbooks or AI summaries.
I write interview-based narratives from living memory, photographs, letters and the documents families already hold. The work is archival in discipline and readable in form. Gaps stay visible. Nothing is invented. The commissioned narrative is written by me — not generated, drafted or paraphrased by AI.
Who this is for
When an institution becomes the steward of memory.
Member family histories, founding narratives, rabbinic transitions, community milestones, and oral-history projects that can be presented, archived or given back to families.
Complementary narrative work alongside formal archival collections — turning recorded interviews and surviving papers into continuous, citable prose that the public will actually read.
A writing partner for members who have trees and documents but no finished narrative. Clear boundary: I do not do genealogical research; I write what the evidence and the living voices support.
Workshops on how to elicit and structure family narrative; model projects that demonstrate what honest, non-inventive writing looks like when the record is incomplete.
What institutions receive
Standards that travel into the archive.
Discipline
Nothing invented
Where the family or the record does not know, the text says so. No quiet filling of gaps. This is the difference between a readable story and a trustworthy one.
Method
No AI writing
Every sentence is written by hand. In an era when large firms draft with models, this is a deliberate institutional choice about provenance and voice.
Delivery
Print-ready & owned
PDF and Word, photographs placed and captioned. Full ownership remains with the family or the commissioning institution. Nothing published without written permission.
Ways to work together
Models that fit institutional reality.
Referred family commissions
The institution refers members or donors. I handle the free consultation, proposal and delivery. The institution can be acknowledged (or not) according to the family’s wishes. Cleanest path for most congregations and societies.
Community or thematic projects
A defined set of interviews and narratives around a shared theme — founding families, a particular decade, a closing of a building, a wave of immigration, a rabbinate. Scoped and quoted as a single project with a written schedule.
Workshops & professional development
Sessions for rabbis, educators, archivists and volunteer interviewers on eliciting usable narrative, handling incomplete memory, and writing without invention. Can be paired with a model family history produced for the institution.
Manuscript assessment for existing collections
For institutions that already hold draft family or communal histories: a close reading and written assessment of structure, voice, gaps and readiness for archival or public use.
Every engagement begins with a short conversation. I will tell you plainly whether the material and the timeline support the work, and when what you need is a genealogist or an archivist rather than a writer.
Boundary, stated clearly
What this service is — and is not.
This is a writing service grounded in interview and the documents the family or institution already possesses. It is not genealogical research, not records searching, not family-tree construction, and not historical investigation that goes beyond the materials supplied and the living witnesses.
When a project requires archives, databases or professional genealogy, I say so on the first call and, where appropriate, point toward people who do that work. The finished narrative can sit alongside a proper genealogical file; it does not replace one.
The same discipline that refuses to invent a missing fact in a family history is the one that refuses to smooth over uncertainty in any institutional record. Both are forms of not filling the gap.
Next step
A short conversation is enough to begin.
Write and say you are approaching on behalf of an institution, society, synagogue or genealogy group. Include the rough scale (one family, a small set, a community project) and any hard dates. I reply myself, usually within two working days, and we can schedule a fifteen-minute call at no obligation.
Direct: markpaull56@gmail.com · WhatsApp +1 438 346 2476 · Montréal, Québec