Why I Started Radici: From Tel Aviv to the Archives of Florence
For more than ten years, I had what most people would call a beautiful life.
I ran a private tour agency in Italy. I knew which corner of the Boboli Gardens catches the last light in October. I knew the man at the Rialto market who saves the best artichokes for people who ask in Venetian dialect. I knew how to make a week in Italy feel effortless for families who could afford anything but had no time for anything.
It was good work. I was good at it. And for a long time, I believed that was the whole story: a woman who loved Italy, showing Italy to people who loved it too.
I want to tell you why that stopped being enough and what I found instead.
It was good work. I was good at it. And for a long time, I believed that was the whole story: a woman who loved Italy, showing Italy to people who loved it too.
I want to tell you why that stopped being enough and what I found instead.
The life before
When you spend a decade organizing other people's journeys, you learn something uncomfortable: most travel is forgettable by design. The photographs get taken. The wine gets drunk. The gondola glides exactly where gondolas glide. And six months later, the family that stood in front of the Duomo cannot tell you what they felt there, because they didn't feel anything in particular. They were somewhere beautiful. That's all.
Every so often, though, a trip was different. A client would mention, almost in passing, that their grandmother had been born "somewhere near Venice, we think." And the whole texture of the week would change. Suddenly they weren't looking at Italy. They were looking for something in it. I didn't have the tools then to help them find it. I filed those moments away without understanding what they were.
Every so often, though, a trip was different. A client would mention, almost in passing, that their grandmother had been born "somewhere near Venice, we think." And the whole texture of the week would change. Suddenly they weren't looking at Italy. They were looking for something in it. I didn't have the tools then to help them find it. I filed those moments away without understanding what they were.
October 7
I am Jewish. Ashkenazi, from a family whose migration path reads like a map of Jewish history itself: the long road that led from the Land of Israel through Italy, up into Europe, east into the Russian Empire. For most of my adult life, that fact sat quietly in the background, the way inherited furniture sits in a room: yours, but unexamined.
On October 7, 2023, it stopped being background.
I won't dramatize what that day did to Jews around the world, if you're reading this, you likely don't need it explained. What I can tell you is what it did to me. I understood, with a clarity I had never had before, that I could not keep living at arm's length from my own people, my own history, my own name.
That understanding didn't turn into action overnight. It worked on me for almost two years: through seasons of tours that suddenly felt like someone else's life, through questions I couldn't stop asking. There was a voice, I don't know how else to say it, and the voice kept repeating the same thing: go home first, then figure out the rest.
In September 2025, I finally listened. I moved to Tel Aviv. I left a working business, a settled life, a version of myself I had spent ten years building. My Hebrew name is Miriam, after my great-great-grandmother. In Israel, for the first time, I began introducing myself that way and meaning it.
On October 7, 2023, it stopped being background.
I won't dramatize what that day did to Jews around the world, if you're reading this, you likely don't need it explained. What I can tell you is what it did to me. I understood, with a clarity I had never had before, that I could not keep living at arm's length from my own people, my own history, my own name.
That understanding didn't turn into action overnight. It worked on me for almost two years: through seasons of tours that suddenly felt like someone else's life, through questions I couldn't stop asking. There was a voice, I don't know how else to say it, and the voice kept repeating the same thing: go home first, then figure out the rest.
In September 2025, I finally listened. I moved to Tel Aviv. I left a working business, a settled life, a version of myself I had spent ten years building. My Hebrew name is Miriam, after my great-great-grandmother. In Israel, for the first time, I began introducing myself that way and meaning it.
Bar-Ilan, and the moment everything connected
In Tel Aviv I enrolled in Jewish Studies at Bar-Ilan University. I thought I was there to fill in gaps: history, texts, the things a Jewish education would have given me if I'd had one.
What actually happened was stranger. Sitting in lectures on the history of the Jewish diaspora, I kept encountering Italy. Not the Italy of my tours, the Italy underneath it. The Rome community that has lived continuously in the same city for more than two thousand years, older than the Ashkenazi and Sephardi division itself. Livorno, the port city that never built a ghetto. Venice, where the very word ghetto was born in 1516. The synagogue records, the notarial acts, the community registers — centuries of Jewish life written down and, in many cases, still sitting in Italian archives, waiting.
I realized I had spent ten years walking past doors without knowing what was behind them. I had taken clients down the Portico d'Ottavia and talked about architecture. I had never once helped a Jewish family stand in that street knowing the names of the people who had stood there before them — their people.
The two halves of my life were not two halves. They were one thing, and I had simply never turned it over to see it whole.
What actually happened was stranger. Sitting in lectures on the history of the Jewish diaspora, I kept encountering Italy. Not the Italy of my tours, the Italy underneath it. The Rome community that has lived continuously in the same city for more than two thousand years, older than the Ashkenazi and Sephardi division itself. Livorno, the port city that never built a ghetto. Venice, where the very word ghetto was born in 1516. The synagogue records, the notarial acts, the community registers — centuries of Jewish life written down and, in many cases, still sitting in Italian archives, waiting.
I realized I had spent ten years walking past doors without knowing what was behind them. I had taken clients down the Portico d'Ottavia and talked about architecture. I had never once helped a Jewish family stand in that street knowing the names of the people who had stood there before them — their people.
The two halves of my life were not two halves. They were one thing, and I had simply never turned it over to see it whole.
What I saw in Poland — and didn't see in Italy
Here is the observation that turned a private awakening into Radici.
If your family came from Poland, an entire world exists to help you return. Heritage tours, shtetl researchers, archive specialists, guides who will stand with you in the town your great-grandfather fled. It is an established path, walked by thousands of American Jewish families every year, and having watched it from the outside, I understand why. Those journeys change people. They give a family back its own story.
Now try to do the same thing for Italy.
You will find genealogists who don't organize travel. You will find tour companies who don't read archives. You will find no one, truly, when I searched, no one, who could take an American family from "our name was Levi, and there's a story about Ferrara" all the way to standing in the actual street, holding a copy of the actual record, in front of the actual synagogue where their family davened.
The need exists. The archives exist. The communities exist, I already had working relationships with Jewish communities in Rome, Florence, and Venice from my years in Italy. What didn't exist was the bridge. So I decided to build it.
If your family came from Poland, an entire world exists to help you return. Heritage tours, shtetl researchers, archive specialists, guides who will stand with you in the town your great-grandfather fled. It is an established path, walked by thousands of American Jewish families every year, and having watched it from the outside, I understand why. Those journeys change people. They give a family back its own story.
Now try to do the same thing for Italy.
You will find genealogists who don't organize travel. You will find tour companies who don't read archives. You will find no one, truly, when I searched, no one, who could take an American family from "our name was Levi, and there's a story about Ferrara" all the way to standing in the actual street, holding a copy of the actual record, in front of the actual synagogue where their family davened.
The need exists. The archives exist. The communities exist, I already had working relationships with Jewish communities in Rome, Florence, and Venice from my years in Italy. What didn't exist was the bridge. So I decided to build it.
The first family
Radici stopped being an idea and became real because of one family.
Elena G., from Biloxi, came to us with almost nothing: a surname, a story that the family had once traded cloth in a city with water. It was the kind of lead most people assume is too thin to follow.
Our archivist in Venice began with the civil registers and the community archives. Within 4 months, she found a name in a community register. Then another. Then the address.
In 6 months, I stood with Elena G. in Treviso, holding a reproduction of that record. That is the moment Radici was founded, not the day I registered the name, but that one.
Elena G., from Biloxi, came to us with almost nothing: a surname, a story that the family had once traded cloth in a city with water. It was the kind of lead most people assume is too thin to follow.
Our archivist in Venice began with the civil registers and the community archives. Within 4 months, she found a name in a community register. Then another. Then the address.
In 6 months, I stood with Elena G. in Treviso, holding a reproduction of that record. That is the moment Radici was founded, not the day I registered the name, but that one.
What Radici is and what it is not
I want to end honestly, because honesty is the entire currency of this work.
Radici is not a tour company. I ran a tour company for ten years; I know exactly what one is, and this isn't it. We don't sell itineraries with a heritage theme painted on top.
Radici is not a DNA service. A test can tell you percentages. It cannot tell you your great-grandmother's street.
Radici does not promise findings. Archives are what they are. Some records survived the centuries and the war; some did not. When we take on a family's research, we tell you what is realistically findable before you commit and if we find nothing, we tell you that too, plainly. A surname or a family story is a direction for research, never proof of ancestry, and we will never pretend otherwise.
What Radici is, is simpler: it is the bridge I couldn't find when I looked for one. Professional archivists in Florence and Venice who read the old hands and know the collections. Partnerships with the living Jewish communities of Rome, Florence, and Venice. And, when the research is done, the journey itself organized by someone who spent a decade making Italy effortless, and who now understands what these particular journeys are actually for.
I started Radici because on October 7 I learned that a person cannot be whole at arm's length from their own story. I went home to mine. This is the work of helping you return to yours.
Radici is not a tour company. I ran a tour company for ten years; I know exactly what one is, and this isn't it. We don't sell itineraries with a heritage theme painted on top.
Radici is not a DNA service. A test can tell you percentages. It cannot tell you your great-grandmother's street.
Radici does not promise findings. Archives are what they are. Some records survived the centuries and the war; some did not. When we take on a family's research, we tell you what is realistically findable before you commit and if we find nothing, we tell you that too, plainly. A surname or a family story is a direction for research, never proof of ancestry, and we will never pretend otherwise.
What Radici is, is simpler: it is the bridge I couldn't find when I looked for one. Professional archivists in Florence and Venice who read the old hands and know the collections. Partnerships with the living Jewish communities of Rome, Florence, and Venice. And, when the research is done, the journey itself organized by someone who spent a decade making Italy effortless, and who now understands what these particular journeys are actually for.
I started Radici because on October 7 I learned that a person cannot be whole at arm's length from their own story. I went home to mine. This is the work of helping you return to yours.
If your family's road once passed through Italy, I'd be glad to hear the story, even a fragment.
A complimentary 30-minute video call. Bring what you remember — names, places, stories, fragments. We listen. Then, in time, we propose what we believe is possible.
