Preserving Memory
Genealogy begins with names and dates, but eventually it becomes something much deeper. At some point, I realized I was not simply building a family tree. I was recovering memory.
Many of the people I research are individuals I never met. Some lived in places that no longer exist as they once did. Others left behind almost nothing except a faded photograph, a signature on a document, a Hebrew inscription on stone, or their names spoken quietly through generations of family stories.
And yet, little by little, they begin to feel alive again.
One discovery leads to another. A name appears where I least expect it, a forgotten relationship suddenly makes sense, and a mystery carried for generations slowly begins to unfold.
Sometimes the answers confirm what our families always believed, and sometimes they completely change the story.
That happened while I was researching my great-grandfather, Moshe Mizrachi Sankari, also known as “Musa il Yahudi.” What my father lovingly believed all his life about Musa’s parents turned out to be different from what the records eventually revealed.
At first, that realization felt almost uncomfortable, as if I were questioning my father’s memory.
I think that may be one of the more difficult parts of genealogy that we do not talk about enough. We grow up hearing stories from our parents and grandparents. They become part of our family history and, in some ways, part of us. When a document contradicts one of those stories, following the evidence can almost feel like questioning the person who told it to us.
But over time, I began to understand something important.
Family stories are not necessarily lies simply because every detail is not historically accurate. They are memories carried through migration, loss, language changes, cultural traditions, and generations of people trying their best to remember.
My father had good reason to believe the story he had been told. It fit the Sephardic-Mizrahi naming traditions he knew, and the names within the family seemed to support it. To him, it made perfect sense.
The records eventually told me something different.
Accepting that did not mean my father was wrong to believe what he believed, nor did it make the story he passed down meaningless. Instead, it gave me another question to explore: How did our family come to remember the story this way?
Sometimes that question can be just as important as discovering what actually happened.
There may be explanations involving naming traditions, children who did not survive, migration, or simply details altered as a story passed from one generation to another. I may eventually find the answer. I may not.
And I have learned to be comfortable with that.
Genealogy does not always give us a perfectly finished story. Sometimes the most responsible thing we can say is, This is what the evidence tells me today. This is what my family remembered. And this is what I still do not know.
Records preserve facts, and families preserve meaning. Both matter.
What moves me most is realizing how close some of these stories came to disappearing forever.
A plaque in a synagogue.
An out-of-print Hebrew book.
An old archival source.
A name written in Ottoman-era records.
A photograph sitting unnoticed online for decades.
Without preservation, these fragments could easily have been lost. Instead, they survived long enough for another generation to find them again.
There is something deeply emotional about seeing the names of your ancestors carved into Jerusalem stone nearly a century ago and realizing that, without intending to, they left behind a message for the future:
“We were here.”
And now, because of genealogy, they are here again.
Not only as names in a tree, but as people: parents, siblings, donors, immigrants, community members, storytellers, and survivors of history itself.
This journey has taught me that genealogy is not only about discovering the past. It is also about responsibility: to preserve, to document, to question, to verify, and to remember.
And perhaps most importantly, to make sure the people we love are never truly forgotten.
May their memory be a blessing.
Oral testimony from Moises Shaul Abadi-Balid Mizrachi
La Saga de los Sefarditas del Medio Oriente a Panama, Selly Dayan de Mizrachi y Nadhji Arjona.
Copy of Panamanian naturalization document in the possession of the author.
Across The River Came Our Ancestors [Hebrew], Urfa in Jerusalem, Moshe Mizrachi, Chapter 6; Zion Suleiman, Yigal Moshe Israel, Yigal Baldegreen.
