from lockdown to reunion – updating a six-century family legacy

By Tasha Ackerman

Amid the 2020 COVID-19 lockdowns, David Druce’s choir group, the London Cantorial Singers, found themselves looking for new ways to connect. Since singing together was no longer possible, group members created virtual game nights and led informal lectures on various topics of interest. It wasn’t until a fellow chorus member suggested that David share his extensive family tree dating back to 1408 that David began to invest not only in understanding his family’s past but also in bringing together the current generation.

David invited a few of his known cousins to the presentation, but was surprised when he opened the Zoom chat and saw double the typical number of participants. Usually, about fifteen to twenty chorus members joined the calls, but that evening, nearly fifty people had signed on, including cousins he knew as well as cousins he had never met before. After the presentation, David stayed on to continue chatting. That conversation marked the beginning of his journey to update the family tree, which hadn’t been revised since 1996.

The family’s history had already been carefully documented decades earlier by another David—David Sheinbaum—whose memoir preserved not just names and dates, but the essence of daily life. “It’s written so beautifully,” cousin Karen Welch reflected. “The book really brings it to life; it’s like time travel in a way.” It was through her outreach to the Together Plan that she first shared part of the family story, and in the process, brought David Druce into the conversation as well.

This memoir is one of several works that make up the family archive: a 1927 booklet originally printed in Tel Aviv, a 1960 update, and Sheinbaum’s memoir published in 1996 with the updated trees addendum. When David decided to update the family tree, it wasn’t simply a look back at the past two decades since the last edition, it was an acknowledgement of the family that continues to live, grow, and remain connected across the world.

The Sheinbaum family lineage traces its roots back over six centuries to Padua, Italy, around 1408. The genealogy charts an unbroken line through rabbinic dynasties and distinguished scholars, with branches spreading across Europe, including Italy, Germany, Poland, Belarus, and Lithuania before reaching England, Israel, and the United States, and expanding with each generation. 

The lineage consists of generations of respected rabbis, legal scholars, and community leaders. Because of this, there are photographs dating back to the 1800s, when photography was in its infancy.  The lineage includes notable figures like Judah Mintz of Padua and Meir Katzenellenbogen, known as the Maharam of Padua. These early ancestors set a foundation of scholarship, Torah leadership, and community service that would echo through generations.

The Rabbinowitz branch, particularly, is highlighted for its enduring rabbinic leadership. Among its most venerated figures is Rabbi Itzchak Eisik Chover of Grodno and later Suwalki, celebrated as a Gaon and Tzaddik, who was a leader of both halachic law and kabbalistic learning. His prolific writings on Talmud, Kabbalah, and Jewish law, including the respected Binyan Olam, continue to be recognised as important contributions to Jewish thought. His descendants, including Rabbi Joseph Chover, Rabbi Moses Rabbinowitz, and others, upheld these traditions, serving communities across Poland and Lithuania as spiritual leaders and judges.

David Druce and Karen Welch are second cousins, linked through their shared Scheinbaum lineage. Midway through the interview, the two were still connecting pieces of their shared history. At one point, David asked if Karen had ever met his grandmother. Karen paused, then replied, “Your grandmother was Hetty? I’m named after Hetty, she must have passed before I was born.”

David had grown up with a large extended family nearby. But it wasn’t until his father brought home the 1996 family tree book after attending a family reunion that he fully grasped the breadth of the Scheinbaum network. The book, along with the earlier family records, helped turn familiar names into part of a much larger story.

Karen, by contrast, came to this project from a very different starting point. She had grown up with little extended family around her. About fourteen years ago, when her daughter brought a siddur to school for show-and-tell, a teacher helper recognised the engraved name inside and helped make the connection that their families were related. Through that encounter, Karen was given a copy of the family history book and was introduced to the writing of David Sheinbaum. “To actually see your background and where you’ve come from and your ancestors: It’s very meaningful to me,” Karen shared. Discovering this wider network of relatives and learning the details of the family’s story has become a way of stepping into a history she hadn’t grown up with but is now claiming as her own.

David Scheinbaum’s memoir, My Family: The Story of an Immigrant Family, was completed between 1947 and 1966. Sheinbaum’s writing does more than trace names and dates; it offers the intimate rhythms of everyday life, from his childhood living in the Pale of Settlement to his journey to London and eventual emigration to America. Despite the fact that Shenibaum’s memoir wasn’t published until after his death, he wrote his story so that “future generations will have some knowledge of their ancestral heritage.” Over many years, he compiled hundreds of pages of typed reflections, providing a first-person account of family life, work, migration, and memory. After his death in 1975, his nephew Cyril Sherwood shaped these volumes into the 300-page narrative. 

The first portion of Sheinbaum’s memoir,  “Der Heim” or The Homeland shows village life between 1891-1904 along the Pripet Marshes, located in modern-day Belarus, where he lived until age 13. The second part shares his next 12 years of life in London’s East End, before immigrating to New York in 1916. 

For David Druce, it was especially profound to see his grandmother, Hetty, portrayed in Scheinbaum’s memoir, allowing him to view her life in an era long before he was born. 

The oldest daughter was Hetty, reserved, inwardly withdrawn and shy. At an age when girls of her age usually begin to assert themselves and start to make demands on the world around them, Hetty, I think never did a naughty thing or ever had to be reprimanded. She went to work whether she liked it or not, did what she was told, never complained… Dear Hetty, I could not help mentioning you in my writing, for you are one of the most colourful pieces that fit into that jigsaw puzzle, which was my life in London. 

Certain anecdotes remain with Karen, offering an insight into the past. In one scene, Sheinbaum describes standing beside his father as a child, watching a train pass through town for the first time and asking where the horses were that pulled it. His father explained, gently but without certainty, that they were invisible. Later, Sheinbaum realises that since it was his father’s first time seeing a train, he truthfully hadn’t known the answer. In another part, he shares the story of Karen’s great-great-grandmother hiding bottles of alcohol in her bed to avoid the taxes imposed by Russian soldiers. These stories stand out to Karen, offering an insight into the daily lives of her ancestors, what life as a Jew living in the Pale of Settlement would have been like.

When David Druce took on the 2022 project, he collaborated with David Scheinbaum’s grandson, Mitchel Schoenbrun, whose skills as a computer programmer were a valuable resource to the project. In the 2022 “Update to My Family”, several family members, including David and Mitchel, included essays as a tribute to their ancestors which reflect on the meaning of this shared heritage.  Schoenbrun offers an intimate dedication to his grandfather. Growing up in New Jersey, Schoenbrun knew Scheinbaum simply as “Dave”: soft-spoken, dignified, warm. His memories paint the picture of a man who never went to college but spoke effortlessly about astronomy, politics, and history; who led Passover seders with quiet authority and entertained his grandchildren with sleight-of-hand magic tricks and handkerchief bunnies. He concludes, “I hope that the legacy he left us with in his writings will endure.”

As David reached out to cousins around the world, most were eager to take part, and he was able to bring the family lines up to date to 2022. That year, David arranged a family reunion, which was held at the same venue as the 1996 gathering: the Croft Court Hotel in London. Over a hundred cousins attended, including many who had only ever met through emails or knew from family charts. At the reunion, David had instructed the videographer to capture every face that attended, having learned the value of these images for archival work. At the reunion, David and several family members gave speeches, and David’s choir even put on a 15-minute performance.  For David, the event was a chance to not only share the updated book, but meeting face-to-face was an incredibly special experience. 

For David, the work of tracing and updating the family tree has been a way to honour a history that feels both rare and remarkable. “Not many of us can say we can trace our ancestry back to the 1400s,” he reflected. The pride he feels in this lineage is not only in the names or dates, but in how the stories, charts, and gatherings have kept the threads of connection alive across centuries and continents.

Karen reflected on this current moment in history and how many young Jewish people don’t know their story and may find it more difficult to connect to their heritage amidst the rise of antisemitism. “I think it’s important to know where you come from and where you fit in the world,” Karen explained. She has loved learning the stories, the timeline, and the history, all of which have strengthened her sense of identity and belonging. 

Together, their efforts connecting with family and sharing their story, along with the efforts of past generations, serve as an act of preservation and of reaching forward. The updated family tree, the booklets, the reunion, and the memories shared are as much of a record of the past as they are an invitation for future generations to know these stories, to carry them, and to keep finding each other.

If you are working on your own family story and/or doing your genealogy and would like assistance to look for ancestral records in the Belarus archives, The Together Plan can assist. Click here to find out more about our Archive Services programme.