I came home to find my (unproofed) book in my mailbox.  It is weird to hold a book I have written.  My mother would tell me that my father would be so proud.  He revered books.  AND THIS WHOLE JOURNEY STARTED RIGHT HERE – on wordpress – in the form of a blog; a blog I started to keep my sanity, or at least the part of it that was left.  So thank you wordpress.com.  Thank you to the people who invented and perfected the computer.  Thank you to Microsoft Words for Word.  Thank you to Apple for the MacBook Pro.  Thank you to Amazon for filling a void.  Thank you to my Oceanside Union School District for providing me with the stories the children told.  Thank you to my friends and colleagues for listening and laughing all these years to my stories.  You encouraged me without knowing it.  Thank you to the School of Hard Knocks for providing me with more than a lifetime of experiences.  Thank you to the Facebook group Belarus Genealogy and Ancestral Travel for your outpouring of comments on a small post I wrote on the website.  After 76 people responded, my husband told me that post should be a chapter.  So, I dedicate chapter 7, JEWISH GENEALOGY to you.   Thank you to the Facebook group Yiddish Shmaltz, Shmooze, and everything Jewish.  When I posted questions about Yiddish words I remembered but was unsure of, you answered my questions, thus, contributing to my book.  They are sprinkled throughout the book as I could not find any good alternatives.  Thank you to Pratt Institute for the training I received as a designer.  I learned that form must follow function and how to organize space.  A book is blank space that needs to be filled and organized.  It must serve a purpose.  Thank you to Yeshiva of Flatbush for the deep, if rather orthodox and rigid, education.  You gave me a fabulous foundation in critical thinking.  Thank you to everyone who has touched my life.  Whether you knew it or not – I WAS listening!