The first step, and the smallest one
One interview. Written properly. Back to you in about two weeks.
ריאיון אחד מוקלט, נכתב כהלכה
For the person you cannot afford to wait on — and for the family that is not ready to commission a whole book, but is ready to stop losing time.
sixty minutes, recorded. About twelve hundred to fifteen hundred finished words. Not a transcript. A piece of writing.
Why this exists
The interview is the part that cannot be recovered later.
Almost every family history that never gets written dies in the same place: not in the research, and not in the money, but in the six months between deciding to do something and doing it. Somebody means to sit down with their mother. Then there is a summer, and a surgery, and a Yom Tov, and then there is a levayah, and what is left is a name on a stone and four stories that no two cousins tell the same way.
The full family narrative — months of interviews, archival work, photographs placed and captioned — is the right project for a family with time, and the wrong project for a family with a diagnosis. The Legacy Interview is the version that fits inside the time you actually have. One conversation, recorded properly, written up by a writer rather than transcribed by a machine.
It stands entirely on its own. It also happens to make a very good first chapter, if the family later decides there is a book to be made. Nothing about commissioning it obliges you to go further, and I will never suggest that it does.
Who commissions this
Four situations, and it is nearly always one of these.
There is a diagnosis
Or a move into care, or a decline everyone can see and nobody is naming out loud. Say so plainly when you write. I answer the same day and tell you honestly what can be done in the time there is.
There is a date
A ninetieth, a fiftieth anniversary, a bar or bat mitzvah, a yahrzeit, an unveiling. Tell me the date in your first message and you will get a straight yes or no about whether it can be met.
Nobody agrees on the story
The one about the crossing, or the shtetl, or the name that changed at the port and why. One careful interview with the person who was actually there settles more than twenty years of seder-table argument.
You are testing me
Entirely reasonable. Commission one interview, read what comes back, and decide about a larger commission with a finished piece of writing in your hand rather than a promise.
Scope
What is included, in full.
The Legacy Interview
- A short call beforehand, so I arrive knowing who I am speaking to and what matters
- One recorded interview of sixty minutes, by secure video — anywhere in the world
- The audio file, delivered to you unedited and yours to keep permanently
- A written narrative of about 1,200–1,500 words, in continuous prose
- Up to two photographs placed and captioned in the text
- Hebrew names, towns and dates set correctly, including the Hebrew date where it is known
- One round of corrections from the family, on facts and on spellings
- Print-ready PDF and Word, yours to copy, print and give away without limit
- Delivered in roughly two weeks; faster where there is a medical reason, and I will tell you if it cannot be done
Interviews in English or French. Where the person tells it more naturally in Hebrew or Yiddish, say so in advance — sometimes that works with a family member sitting in, and sometimes it does not, and I will tell you which before you pay anything.
Sometimes added
- A second interview, where one person cannot cover it or a sibling should be heard too
- Additional photographs, letters, ketubot or documents worked into the text
- Printed and bound copies for the family, at cost
- Credit toward a full family narrative, if you commission one within the year
What comes back
The difference between a recording and a piece of writing.
Anyone can hold up a telephone. What you cannot do with a telephone is turn ninety minutes of digression, repetition, half-sentences and one extraordinary detail buried at minute sixty-one into something a grandchild will read all the way through. That is the work, and it is the only part worth paying for.
Below is an illustration of the difference. It is not a client’s material and not anyone’s family — it is here to show the shape of the change, nothing more.
As it comes off the recording
“…she brought the candlesticks, that’s the thing, she brought the candlesticks and she didn’t bring — there was a coat, my mother said there was a good coat and she left it. Left the coat, took the candlesticks. And they weren’t even — I don’t think they were silver, were they silver? Somebody said plate. It doesn’t matter. She lit them every Friday of her life, that I know. Every single Friday.”
As it is written
She left the coat and took the candlesticks. The family has argued for sixty years about whether they were silver or only plate, and nobody now living can settle it. What is not in dispute is that they were heavy, that the coat was a good one, and that in the winter of the crossing she made a choice that looks impractical only to people who have never had to make it. She lit them every Friday of her life. Her granddaughter lights them still, and does not know what they are made of, and has stopped needing to know.
Notice what is not there: nothing invented. The disagreement about the silver is written into the text rather than quietly resolved. That is the discipline on every page of everything I write.
The process
Four steps, and you are only involved in two of them.
A fifteen-minute call
Free, and genuinely without obligation. You tell me who the person is and what the urgency is; I tell you whether this is the right thing to commission and what it will cost. You get that in writing before anything begins.
The interview
sixty minutes by secure video, at a time that suits the person rather than the family. Someone may sit in if it helps them settle. I send the questions in advance to whoever is arranging it, so nobody is ambushed.
The writing
About two weeks. I work from the recording, from whatever documents or photographs you send, and from nothing else. Where I cannot verify something, it goes into the text as unverified rather than disappearing.
Corrections and delivery
You read it, correct the facts and the spelling of names, and I return the final files — print-ready PDF, Word, and the original audio. Nothing is published, quoted or shown to anyone without your written permission, and the default is never.
Straight answers
The questions people actually ask.
How quickly can you do it if someone is dying?
Write and say so in the first line. I answer the same day. The interview can usually be arranged within a few days, and the interview is the part that cannot be recovered later — the writing can follow at any pace afterwards. If it cannot be done in the time available, I will tell you that instead of taking the commission.
What if the person is reluctant?
Most are, for about four minutes. It helps enormously if they are told it is a conversation about their life rather than an interview, and if the family does not stage it as a farewell. If someone genuinely does not want to, I will not push, and I will say so after the first attempt rather than billing you for a second.
What if their memory is failing?
Then we work with what is there, and the writing says what is there. Early dementia often leaves the distant memories intact and the recent ones gone, which is painful for the family and, for this particular purpose, workable. I will not fill a gap because a gap is uncomfortable.
What about survivor testimony?
I will take it, carefully, and I will tell you first if I think a formal testimony project is the better home for it. Shoah testimony has its own archival standards and its own trained interviewers, and there is no shame in a family wanting both — the archived testimony, and something written that the grandchildren will actually read.
Can we commission the full book later?
Yes, and a good number of families do exactly that. The interview stands as its own finished piece and folds into a larger narrative without being rewritten. Ask on the call about credit toward a full commission.
Do you use AI to write or transcribe?
No. The family narrative you receive is written by me, not generated, drafted or paraphrased by AI. Software may be used for administrative or technical tasks, but not to author your story.
Begin
Tell me who the person is.
Two or three sentences is enough — who they are, roughly how old, and whether there is a date or a reason to hurry. You will get a straight answer the same day, including an honest one if I think you should be commissioning something else, or nothing at all.
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.
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