The Story of Our Family

By Yoav and Orit Schwartz

It is hard to decide where to begin a story of a family, because everyone has parents. It is also hard because every family has a lot of people all remotely related. So who to begin with? In our family some of the most remote people were Julius and Rosa Pregel. Their son Boris was the cousin of Orit’s grandfather. Why start with them, you may wonder. Well, it was actually Boris’s wife, Alexandra Pregel, who inspired us to begin this story in the first place. She was an artist and her beautiful paintings are hanging on the walls in Yoav’s grandparent’s house and in some museums around the world.

Rosa Pregel had a brother named Joseph. They grew up in a small town in the Ukraine. Most people in that town were Jewish and poor. When Joseph married Bronia, they hoped that their children would have etter and easier lives then them. Their son Vladimir was smart and he got to go to school and become an engineer. He also moved to Moscow, a big city which is also Russia’s capital.

Vladimir fell in love with a great beauty, a young woman named Chara. Afer they married, they lived in Moscow and were joined by Vladimir’s sister Sima, who never married. Chara and Vladimir had two charming daughters, Masha the older and Julia the younger. The two sisters were close in age and close in their hearts. Masha grew up to become a painter. Julia became an engineer, like her father.

Julia married Hillel, a young and talented mathematician, when she was very young. Her sister Masha married a fello painter Igor. Unfortunately, their marriage did not last. After they had their daughter Tania, they divorced and Masha never married again. Hille also had a sister, Marina who became a doctor. Her marriage to Meld did not last long either. She remained on her own with her son Goshik.

Julia and Hillel, on the other hand, have been married for almost 50 years. Their three children, Orit, Ruti and Eitan are now grown up. Eitan lives in Texas and works as an accountant. He hasn’t married yet. Ruti became a professor of behavioral science and married Doron (a very tall dude). They now have Tamar, Erez and a new baby on the way. Orit (one of the authors of this story) became an occupational therapist and married a sweet (and a little shorter than Doron) dude named Ezra. They’ve been married about 25 years and managed to have two boys, Ben and Yoav (the other author of this tale).

And just imagine that this long story started with one picture by Alexandra Pregel.

The End