A dusty sefer in a Boca genizah connected me to ancestors in a way I’d never imagined

From a dusty stack of yellowed letters that somehow found their way into a Boca Raton genizah, I was able to connect with my ancestors in a way I’d never imagined. Who would have known that my great-great-grandfather was the confidant of Rebbe Mordchele of Nadvorna?

L

ast summer, for the first time, I fulfilled a long-held dream to visit my grandparents’ hometown in Europe. By the time the plane touched down in Budapest, I felt like I was carrying generations on my back.

My grandparents, both Holocaust survivors, had long since passed away, but their stories were etched onto my soul. I knew that they’d had happy childhoods surrounded by loving grandparents, siblings, and cousins. I knew that they were first cousins who married after the war, after each had lost their first spouse and children.

But there was so much that was hidden, too painful to share. And I was desperate to learn more, to fill in some of the missing gaps.

For years, I had dreamed of visiting their hometown of Bushtyno. I had always imagined standing where they once stood, breathing in the same air, walking those same cobblestone streets.

But life gets in the way; children, community, responsibility. The timing was never right.

Until now.

This past summer, my husband and I found ourselves in a new stage of life: temporary empty nesters. Our children were either married or away at camp, and for the first time in decades, the horizon stretched wide open. That’s when our friend Josh reached out. Again.

Josh, a self-declared kevarim enthusiast, had been trying for years to convince us to join him on one of his whirlwind cemetery tours across Europe. Now, hoping to finally find the answers I sought, we accepted his invitation.

“We’ll join him,” I told my husband, “But we have to stop in Bushtyno.”

As it turned out, Bushtyno, Ukraine, wasn’t just my grandparents’ hometown — it was also the resting place of the great tzaddik Rav Mordechai of Nadvorna. His kever was already one of the stops on Josh’s itinerary. Hashem was clearly orchestrating something.

We mapped it all out: We’d start in Budapest, at the kever of Rav Shimon Oppenheim in Óbuda, then head northeast through the Hungarian countryside, visiting the burial sites of tzaddikim along the way — the Liska Rav, the Kaliver Rebbe, the Yismach Moshe in Újhely, the Komarna Rav and more. The following day we would cross the Ukrainian border to Bushtyno, Munkacs, Chust, and return to Hungary to visit Reb Shayele in Kerestir. We’d also stop in Mád, another town with Jewish roots, and then head back to Budapest. It was going to be a trip of memory and meaning.

I prepared for the trip extensively. I was determined to find out more about my ancestors before stepping foot on European soil. I needed names, addresses, dates, details — something more than just gravestones and faded memories.