Behind
the stories.

Admiration, envy, and pride are the three things that drive me back to the keyboard, week after week, year after year, to tell the story of a figure from the past.

My writing springs from admiration and envy of people's ability to make momentous decisions, rise above every hardship, and achieve great things precisely when the ground is burning beneath their feet. Pride comes later, as an answering echo, in the readers' appreciation when the story finally gets to be heard.

The heroes I write about are not necessarily those who feature most prominently in history books. They are extraordinary people who refused to surrender to their circumstances, took immense risks, sometimes even risking their lives, held fast to their goals, fought for them, and triumphed against all odds. I would have loved to sit with most of them all night in a dimly lit bar, open a bottle of good wine, and listen as they told their own stories.

I am no more than a messenger of a brief moment along an infinite timeline. I have come to bring you the stories of these figures, to enrich your world with a fascinating chapter of history and touch your hearts. If I have moved you or inspired you to think, a little note from you in the comments would be the finest reward of all.

The real challenge had three parts:

The first was deciding how much to include. You could write a whole book about each of these figures, but I limited myself to one to four pages. I sometimes broke that rule when the richness of a person's life refused to fit, and I had to divide the account into several chapters, as I did with the stories of Rachel the Poet, Amnon Shamosh, Brenner, Mania Shohat, and others, whose lives I also had to summarize with a trembling hand.

The second challenge was the structure of the story. How could I capture the reader's heart in the very first sentence? Should I open with a gunshot, "On March 11, 1884, a single shot rang out at the small Bloemendaal Hotel in Rotterdam" (as in the story of Moses Wilhelm Shapira), or with a heroic myth - "Leonidas, King of Sparta, knew he would meet his death in a battle in the summer of 480 BCE" (as in the story of Private Yaakov Ohayon)? After the opening, meant to spark the flame, I always wove in the crowning achievement of their work, and from there delved into the milestones of their lives.

But the greatest obstacle of all was my command of written language, including punctuation, syntax, and spelling - none of which were my strong suits. Without the wonderful group of people who devotedly came to my aid along the way, I doubt I would have dared publish even a single line.

Special thanks to Moshik Porat of the Tlalim Group, where I began my career as an instructor and manager, for producing the first volume and developing the format for each and every chapter.

Special thanks as well to the dear people who opened my eyes to new figures I had not known: my friend Shmulik Kaspi, who introduced me to Dr. Chaim Herman Kallenbach; my friend Drora Beckman, for the stirring story of Rivka Grabovsky; and my friend Yoram Barak, who opened doors for me into the worlds of many figures, above all his mother-in-law, the writer Tamar Lazar-Burstain.

And last but not least, you, the readers, commenters, and critics, and especially the family members of the people I write about who get in touch with me, open their hearts, and share photographs, books, and memories. Thank you to Dr. Günter Friedländer's daughter for the book she gave me, and thank you to the Yoffe family for a treasure trove of historical diaries patiently awaiting my retirement, when I will be able to give them the space they deserve. Thanks to you, these stories continue to live.

The illustrations on the site were created with the help of AI, inspired by archival materials and life stories.