Ask A Genius 1464: Baltic Jewish Roots: Family History & Immigrant Tales
Author(s): Rick Rosner and Scott Douglas Jacobsen
Publication (Outlet/Website): Ask A Genius
Publication Date (yyyy/mm/dd): 2025/07/15
In this candid exchange, Rick Rosner reveals his family’s Baltic Jewish heritage—roots in Riga, Latvia, and Eastern Europe—while contrasting modern Vilnius life with ancestral shtetl hardships. He recounts ancestor traumas—a great-grandmother’s fire escape fall and a great-grandfather’s fireworks accident—embodying resilience, timeless immigrant narratives, and legacies across generations. Timeless heritage resonates.
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: Where does your family come from again? You mentioned your grandfather had ties to the Baltic. You have a Baltic family.
Rick Rosner: Baltic? Yeah. My grandfather on my dad’s side was from Riga, Latvia, located in the Baltic region. As for his wife, my grandmother, I have heard Romania mentioned—but that is Eastern Europe, not the Baltic. Carol’s grandmother is also from Riga. Anyway, I am not entirely sure where my mom’s father’s side of the family came from, but we can look it up on Ancestry. A lot of our genealogy is there. We have got a ton of ancestors recorded in those databases. However, yes, at least some of our family is definitely of Baltic descent.
Why do you ask? Besides the apparent reason that you are in Vilnius right now.
Jacobsen: That is it. That is why I am asking.
Rosner: So, the deal is—being both Jewish and of Baltic descent—if you ever watch (which I know you do not have time for), Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates Jr., you would notice something. That show traces the genealogy of famous Americans. Almost everyone on it has ancestors who were either enslaved, enslavers, or both, especially when their families have been in the U.S. for a long time. Because historically, a lot of enslaved people also share ancestry with enslavers, due to generations of exploitation and forced mixing.
Moreover, if their families had been here long enough, those ancestors usually played some role in major American conflicts, such as the Revolutionary War, for example, either on the side of independence or against it. Then, when the guests are Jewish, their roots almost always trace back to Eastern Europe or Western Asia—regions that most Americans do not typically associate with “Europe.” Americans usually picture England, France, Germany, Spain… maybe Italy. But Jews? Their ancestors often came from the Baltic region, specifically from Poland, Ukraine, and Belarus.
Moreover, being Jewish in those places did not mean your life was anything like that of the blonde Christians around you. Jews often lived in shtetls—small, poor, culturally distinct villages or enclaves—economically and socially separate from the surrounding populations. It was a different world. You did not have the same privileges, and you were not part of the dominant culture.
We were darker. Hairier. We spent a great deal of time studying religious texts. As for economic life, there may be similarities. Maybe everyone, regardless of background, was a poor subsistence farmer or tradesperson. There was much struggling. It was rough for most people, whether you were Jewish or not. A significant portion of the economy relied on subsistence-level farming, often characterized by a hand-to-mouth existence.
However, now you are in Vilnius, and it is quite lovely. You can go to coffee shops, get good pastries, and visit museums—it is probably fun. It is a good city now, I would imagine.
Jacobsen: Yes, it is a great place to walk. I went to four or five art museums today.
Rosner: Right. However, if you were Jewish and living in Riga around 1870? It was not so lovely. Maybe it was not absolute misery every single day, but it was a Fiddler on the Roof kind of existence. You were not living in some modern apartment building—you were probably in a wooden or thatch-roofed home. You were farming. Candles lighted your home at night. It was a hard life—basic, traditional, and vulnerable to violence or persecution at any moment.
Anyway, yeah—we are from there. Our family roots are there. However, the way life was then is just unimaginably different from how we live now.
Did I ever tell you about my great-grandmother who had one leg that was six inches shorter than the other?
Jacobsen: No.
Rosner: All right, so—shoot—I do not know if this was my mom’s dad’s family or my mom’s mom’s family, but anyway, one of their parents came to America as a young woman and immediately ended up in a tenement on the Lower East Side. That is where a lot of Jewish immigrants landed after passing through Ellis Island, right? She was living on one of the upper floors—no idea which one—and it was the Fourth of July.
I have two relatives from that generation who had traumatic experiences on the Fourth of July. So, this woman went out on the fire escape to watch the fireworks. Now, fire escapes have gaps between floors, allowing people to descend during emergencies. Someone had laid a rug over the opening between the floors. She stepped on it, did not realize there was no floor underneath, and fell—maybe several stories—through the fire escape. She crushed one of her legs in the fall.
After that, she walked with one regular shoe and one that had a massive platform, like six inches high. You would hear her coming—step, clunk, step, clunk. That image screams “immigrant experience” to me.
Same generation, different person—my great-grandfather came to America and was walking by a fireworks stand. Back then, fireworks were even more volatile than today. He happened to pass just as the whole thing exploded. Moreover, that kind of thing still happens—seven people were killed at a fireworks warehouse just a few weeks ago. Anyway, the blast covered his back in burns, and he carried those scars for the rest of his life.
So happy belated Fourth of July to my great-grandparents.
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