A screencast (video) is now available for those who were unable to attend the lecture with this title that I delivered at the IAJGS 2016 Conference due to the small capacity of the room, or for those who were unable to go to Seattle.

Since 2013, the field of genealogical genetic testing has advanced from being able to sample the Y-chromosome in a few dozen locations to several million, thanks to “Next Generation Sequencing” (NGS) products like FTDNA’s Big Y and others. Networks of “citizen scientists” have begun mapping out genetic trees that are far more accurate than were ever before possible. This more extensive and accurate data is particularly useful for Jewish genealogists seeking to link groups of men to their common male ancestor farther back in time than the typical 8-10 generations covered by surnames. Because these new tests are costly and not easy to interpret, many genetic genealogists are not making full use of them. Using several ongoing Jewish lineage projects as examples (including one cluster of Ashkenazi men who might actually turn out to be from Portugal), a presentation at the IAJGS 2016 Conference in Seattle discussed real-world examples from two haplogroups not typically associated with Jewish men (I2a and R1b), testing strategies, and available data interpretation tools.

This presentation might also be subtitled, “Before Belarus, my ancestors came from …” because most people don’t have documents to trace their ancestors’ migrations before Eastern Europe. More advanced Y-chromosome sequencing is allowing us to make tentative steps toward understanding migration, particularly for Jewish men in “European” haplogroups. Sometimes we can infer locations by comparing them with their non-Jewish DNA relatives who share an ancestor with them 2,000 or 3,000 years back and who might have stayed relatively stationary over more generations.

The screencast may be viewed on YouTube at this link: https://youtu.be/asSBREbwyz0

The presentation handout that was not included in the conference materials may be downloaded at this link:

https://www.academia.edu/27945374/Handout_Tip_of_the_Iceberg_What_Y-DNA_Lineages_Can_Tell_Us_About_Jewish_History_and_Migration_

Rachel Unkefer

The post Tip of the Iceberg: What Y-DNA Lineages Can Tell Us About Jewish History and Migration appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

As recently as 1992, more than 4,000 Jews were being held against their will in Syria, unable to leave and kept under watch, branded as “Mussawi,” followers of Moses. At that time, 50,000 Jews from Syria lived in Brooklyn’s Flatbush area. The rest of “little Aleppo”  were spread across the United States and Latin America, but little was known of the past of these Sephardic Jews.

[An earlier version of this article appeared in AVOTAYNU, from which current subscriptions and access to back issues can be obtained at www.Avotaynu.com]

For the most part they are descendants of the Spanish-Jewish nobility that at first had settled in Livorno, Italy, after 1492. The noble Jewish families of the Spanish court bore such names as Lumbroso, Laniado, Sason, Blanco, Franco, Athias, Salas, Nunes, Garzon and Lofez.

When ships carrying the best of the Spanish-Jewish nobility—Jewish astronomers, map makers, philosophers and courtiers who had worked their way up into the noble houses of Castile and Aragon — arrived in 15th century Syria, they found only about 400 Jewish families living there. The native Jews, who had lived in Aleppo for thousands of years, introduced the signoreem, as these Italian/Spanish Jews were called, to the Aleppo Codex, or keter (crown) of Aleppo, a famous rabbinical document, well-known in the world of Orthodox Sephardic Jewry.

The Mustarabeen of Aleppo (native Arab Jews, as the Spanish called them) claim direct descent from King David through the Dayyan family of Syria, said to be living there since 70 C.E. These Jews had lived in Syria since the destruction of the second temple and perhaps even earlier. By the time the Spanish emigration was completed, Aleppo Jewry numbered nearly 30,000.

Spanish and Portuguese Jews kept themselves a class apart from the Arab Jews of Syria. This branch of Sephardic Jewry had brought its wealth, gold platters, priceless paintings and banking fortunes with them from Spain and bought up the most elegant homes in Aleppo.

A few of the many wealthy or noble Spanish-Jewish families’ names were surnames such as:

Abigdor (via North Africa)
Anteby
Ashear
Ashkenazie
Attia
Azari
Blanca
Cohen
Douec
Escava
Esses
Franco
Gomez
Grazi
Hanan
Hanona
Hedaya
Hidary
Labaton
Laniado (Spanish Jews from Venice)
Levi
Lofez
Lopez
Matalon
Medina
Meldola (from Toledo, Spain)
Mizrahi
Mosseri
Nunez
Peixotto
Seixas (Portuguese)
Setton
Shalo
Sutton
Terzi
Tuleda
Vigio  (Bigio)

At first, marriage was discouraged between Spanish Jews living in Aleppo and native Arab Jews of the area. By the turn of the 19th century, however, intermarriage between the two groups had been accepted, although Spanish surnames still are common among Syrian Jews from Aleppo and Damascus, Syria, and Alexandria, Egypt. Syrian Jews still maintain a “class of gentility” in which the highest “class” refers to itself as signores — relating to their origins in Venice, Italy, in the 16th century, after having left Spain a century earlier.

Home Life

The Spanish Jews of Aleppo built elegant homes apart from the generally dingy apartments of the native Syrian Jews. By 1900, visitors to Aleppo noted that the residences of the Sephardim from Spain were self-contained villages, each with its own suppliers of food and services, including tailors, bakers and grocers. Each Spanish quarter had its own basita, or administrator.

Native Syrian Jews, in contrast, lived in small apartments or rooms called the “hosh.” Poor families of Arabic-speaking Jews, in contrast to the Ladino-speaking Spanish Jews, shared a communal kitchen and outhouse. A well in the hosh courtyard supplied water, and until 1930, there was no electricity for the less wealthy Jews of Aleppo.

The Aleppo properties of the Ladino-speaking Jews from Spain, Portugal, Italy and Greece were luxurious, with stone carvings of angels on the walls (called the Shemaya). Ladino homes in Damascus were even more elegant. Interior walls of these elite homes were covered with priceless paintings brought from Spain, Italy and other countries, along with hidden wealth. Frescoes covered the walls, and balconies often were decorated with elaborately carved wooden panels. In Aleppo, Damascus and Alexandria, the “court” Jews of Spain set up their own Jewish quarters and synagogues.

Wealthy Syrian Jews never did their own shopping; a trusted business associate was hired to do the bargaining. The custom of having the food delivered to the house was carried over when Sephardic Jews emigrated to Latin America and the United States. In contrast to the life of hardship in Eastern European ghettos, Sephardim had their own servants. They took their families on vacation to resorts in the Lebanese mountains, since there was no Pale of Settlement or travel barrier. Life at the turn of the 20th century was abundant for wealthy Syrian Jews. By contrast, life was very bad for the poor Arab Jews who had to bear the Jew-baiting of poor Moslem and Christian neighbors with whom they shared communal apartments, courtyards, outhouses and kitchens.

Spanish Jews, called Spanioli, were regarded as the franj (foreigners) who retained the Ladino language and their own class status apart from the poor gentiles and Moslems. The wealthier families could buy protection and tolerance in many instances, although life was never truly secure. The higher class Jewish residential area in the 1930s was called the Jamilia.

Until the turn of the 20th century, almost all Jews in Aleppo lived in the center of the ancient city within the confines of the Bahista, a Spanish-culture enclave. The Bahista contained the Spanish (Ladino) synagogue and the Arabic-speaking synagogue, Bet Nassi. Almost all Spanish Jews in Syria spoke fluent Arabic as well as Ladino. Toward the end of the 18th century, Arabic became their everyday language, and Spanish was no longer used, except by the Jews 60 miles to the north in Turkey, and those Sephardim in Greece, the Balkan countries, Holland and Latin America.

At the end of the day, the Sephardim of Aleppo typically went to a Jewish cafe to hear an elaborate Spanish-Jewish musical ensemble called el Nobe in Spanish and a nobeh in Arabic. It is composed of a singer and several players of stringed instruments and drums, derbekcy in Arabic. Songs were either Pismoneem (Hebrew prayers and poems sung to popular Arabic songs), Spanish songs set to Arabic music, or popular Arabic songs in Arabic. Usually the entire family would come to El Nobe to conclude a business deal or act as a matchmaker between families. Often they would partake of a hot orange blossom-flavored mild custard topped with ice cold fruit marinated in raisin wine, called Morena me Ilaman, named after a Sephardic song of 1495.

Anne de Sola-Cardoza, a free-lance writer, lives in San Diego, California.  The descendant of conversos, the story of her return to Judaism appeared in AVOTAYNU, Vol. V, No. 4.

The post Spanish-Jewish `Nobility’ of Aleppo, Syria appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

Tetuan Jewry, founded at the end of the 15th century by Spanish-speaking Jews, is a community apart in Morocco. Most other Moroccan Jewish communities were created much earlier and spoke Arabic. In this article, we review the major genealogical resources for those whose ancestors lived in what was called “a small Jerusalem”, housing as many as 16 synagogues. Among these sources of interest are old photographs and postcards that show several aspects of Jewish life in Tetuan. Many can be seen in the author’s recently published book (in French) Tétouan, cité marocaine aux racines andalouses (Tetuan, a Moroccan city with Andalusian roots).[1]

[Ed. Note: This article was first published in AVOTAYNU, Volume XXVII, Number 3, Fall 2011, page 35. To subscribe to AVOTAYNU or purchase access to back issues, please visit www.Avotaynu.com]

Historical Sketches

Tetuan is one of the two major cities in the north of Morocco, 40 miles southeast of Tangier and only six miles from the Mediterranean. Its name probably comes from the Berber word tittawin (spring) because it was built around many water springs on Mount Dersa, near a river, the Martin. Founded in the 9th century near Tamuda, a former Roman settlement, Tetuan was inhabited primarily by Mediterranean pirates. Attacked and completely destroyed by the Portuguese by 1400, it remained deserted for almost a century.

At the end of the 15th century, Muslims, escaping from Spain which was recaptured by the Catholic kings, built a new city on the site of the ruins of the old Tetuan. Their leader, Sidi Ali al-Mandri, is considered the founder of the modern Tetuan. For more than three centuries, until the middle of the 19th century, the city was ruled by governors who came from the major local families and the city remained relatively independent of the Moroccan government. Tetuan had close links with Spain, first because of the War of Africa (1859–62) when Spain occupied the city for 27 months, and second because of the colonial Spanish Protectorate in the north of Morocco during the years 1913 to 1956.

The city had considerable influence in Morocco during the 17th and 18th centuries. Tetuan had the country’s largest harbor and was its diplomatic capital.[2] Most European countries had a consul in the city until an incident in 1777. During a hunting excursion, a European man shot a bird and accidentally wounded a Muslim woman. As a conse- quence, the Sultan forbade Christians to live in the city and all the foreign consulates moved to Tangier. For many centuries, the population of Tetuan remained at about 20,000 inhabitants. It increased at the beginning of the 20th century, reaching 100,000 in 1956 and today is 300,000.

Jews of Tetuan

Soon after the rebuilding of the city at the end of the 15th century, several Jews expelled from Spain settled in the city and created a new community. They had a special language, a mixture of Hebrew and old Spanish called Judeo-Spanish. For their prayers, they used Ladino, a word-to-word translation from Hebrew to Spanish, written in Hebrew characters. They lived in a separate quarter, the Juderia or Mellah. According to various sources, the Jews of Tetuan numbered 4,000 to 6,000 until the end of the 19th century, representing one-fourth to one-fifth of the entire population of the city.

The first Juderia was built in a quarter known even today as Mellah-el-Bali (“the old Mellah”) in the northeastern quarter of the city. In 1807, the Sultan of Morocco, Mulay Sliman, decided to build a new Great Mosque in the center of the city near the Juderia. Wishing not to have infidels living near the mosque, he ordered the Jews to move to a new quarter in the south of Tetuan which was built at that time. The new Juderia still exists today, inhabited only by Muslims. Sixteen synagogues were active in the Jewish quarter at the beginning of the 20th century. Only one remains and may be visited, the one of Rebbi Isaac Bengualid (1777–1870), the most famous rabbi of Tetuan. Nowadays, some streets of the Juderia still bear their former Jewish names, such as Dr. Angel Pulido, Prado, Bentolila, Isaac Bengualid and Sultana Cohen Streets. Other street names were recently changed to Palestinian names such as Ghazza, Nableuss and Ram-Alah Streets. The doorframes of some houses still have a strange rectangular hole on their right side, a vestige of long-gone mezuzot.

Until the middle of the 19th century, many Tetuan Jews were wealthy traders and had regular business contacts with Europeans countries. The first school of the Alliance Israélite Universelle, a society founded in Paris in order to help the Jews of the Mediterranean Basin, was opened in Tetuan in 1862, just after the Spanish troops left the city. The opening was a great event, supported by Rebbi Isaac Bengualid, and the education of the young Jews improved considerably, enabling them to seek their fortune in other cities or countries.

Emigration of Jews from Tetuan was considerable during the second half of the 19th century, the result of a bad economic situation. More than half of the pupils of the Alliance school between 1862 and 1879 left Tetuan.[3] They immigrated primarily to Algeria (Mascara, Oran, Relizane and Sidi-bel-Abbès), Spain (Canary Islands, Ceuta, Melilla and Seville), Gibraltar, Tangier and the Americas (Brazil and the United States). Beginning at this time, the Jewish community steadily decreased leaving only a few dozen Jewish residents today.

General Genealogical Resources

The 1860 Census. In 1860, during their occupation of Tetuan, the Spanish troops made a census of all the people living in the city. This census is mentioned in at least three sources. According to a local newspaper, El Noticiero de Tetuan, dated January 30, 1861, the census counted 2,358 civilian Spaniards.[4] A few months later, the Spanish consul wrote a letter to the Spanish Foreign Office Ministry dated July 17, 1861, saying that the population of Tetuan was 11,000 inhabitants, including 5,000–6,000 Jews, a few more than 1,000 Muslims, the rest (presumably Christian) Spanish, with a few Italians and French.[5] In 1906, Alexandre Joly, member of the French Mission scientifique du Maroc (Scientific Mission to Morocco), also mentions this census, stating that it included all the inhabitants and giving their names and approximate ages, as well as a count of all the houses, empty or occupied.[6]

It appears, therefore, that between 1860 and 1862, as a result of the Muslims exodus during the Spanish occupation, Tetuan was largely a Jewish city, making this census extremely important to Jewish genealogists. Unfortunately, though we have contacted the main archives in Spain and Morocco, the full detailed census still has not been found.[7]

Directories. Several directories and tourist guides from the beginning of the 20th century list the various business houses of Tetuan along with their owners. Numerous Jewish houses are mentioned in Ortega’s Guide[8] published in 1917, such as bazaars, cafés, or importers of foods, flour or wood.

Old postcards and photographs from the end of the 19th century permit us to imagine the streets and the houses where our ancestors lived as well as their clothing from the end of the 19th century.[9] A dozen different photographs of the Juderia can be found as well as some pictures of the Jewish cemetery. In a few market scenes, Jews can sometimes be distinguished by their clothing, a kippa and a long black dress with buttons on the front side. This article includes some of these photographs, coming from the personal collection of the author.

Jewish Genealogical Resources

The Jewish cemetery, in the northeast of the city is well preserved.[10] From aerial photography, we estimate the number of tombstones at about 10,000. A group of Jews from Madrid currently are constructing a record of all legible tombstones which they intend to post on the web in the year 2012. For information, write to Salomon A. Benatar at sb.atarson@telefonica.net.

A death register exists giving information about deaths from September 4, 1896, until 1971. In addition to the first name, last name and date of death, the register provides the first name of the father, the place of birth, and sometimes a family link with a living person (for instance, “Simha, mother of Shalom Bibas”). The author will search for a single name up to and including 1971. Write to laurphil@wanadoo.fr.

Some circumcision registers have been kept by local rabbis. The register of Rebbi Isaac Haserfaty for the years 1881 to 1940 is preserved at the Sephardi Museum of Toledo, Spain, and has been completely transcribed and published.[11] For each newborn boy, it supplies first name, family name, dates of birth and circumcision, place of birth, first name and occupation of the father, first name of the mother as well as first and family name of the maternal grandfather.

Information about marriages (date, first name and last name of the groom and of the bride with sometimes several generations of the paternal ascendancy) can be found in ketubot (marriage contracts) kept by families or in some Jewish museums.[12] Copies of ketubot often are reproduced in various catalogs of Judaica auctions and books related to ketubot.

The archives of the Alliance Israélite Universelle in Paris hold interesting information from its Tetuan school from 1860 until 1940, the most important of which is a list of the 552 pupils who attended the school for boys between 1862 and 1879.[13] Numerous other lists of pupils are available in the Alliance archives, as well as information about some teachers such as the date of their marriage, the birth of their children or the death of their parents.[14]

Many old documents related to the Jews of Tetuan also are in the recently founded Center of Moroccan Judaism in Brussels.[15] Created by Dr. Paul Dahan, this center holds books, manuscripts, ketubot, pictures and objects related to Moroccan Judaism and can be consulted by appointment. Write to prdahan@gmail. com, with research details.

Because of the emigration of so many Tetuan Jews, traces of their lives may be found in their new homes. Algeria is of importance, especially Mascara, Oran and Sidi-bel- Abbès. Vital statistics records for these cities are available at the French Archives Nationales d’Outre-mer and online for the years 1830 to 1909.[16]

Combining the different sources mentioned above, researchers often may trace Jewish ancestors in Tetuan at least to the middle of the 19th century and sometimes much earlier.

Bibliography

About Tetuan Generally

1. Abensur, Philip. Tétouan, cité marocaine aux racines andalouses (Tetuan, a Moroccan city with Andalusian roots), [in French]. Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, 2010.
2. Tétouan, Reflets souterrains de l’histoire d’une cité (Tetuan, Underground reflection of the history of a city), [in French]. Senso Unico, Mohammedia, 2009.
3. La medina de Tetuán-Guía de arquitectura (The Medina of Tetuan-architecture guide), [in Spanish]. Consejería de Obras Públicas y Transportes, Sevilla and Consejo Municipal de Tetuán Sidi Mandri, Tetuan, 2002.
4. Joly, Alexandre. Archives Marocaines, Tétouan, avec la c
5. ollaboration de MM. Xicluna et L. Mercier, vol. IV (1905); Tétouan 2ème partie: Historique (Tetuan 2nd part, History), [in French], avec la collaboration de MM. Xicluna et L. Mercier, vol. V (1905); vol. VII (1906); vol. VIII (1906); L’industrie à Tétouan (Industry in Tetuan), [in French], vol. VIII (1906); vol. XI (1907) ; vol. XV (1909); vol. XVIII (1912). (Most of these articles are available online in French at http://gallica.bnf.fr).
6. 5, Métalsi, Mohamed. Tétouan entre mémoire et histoire (Tetuan between memory and history), [in French]. Malika, Paris, 2004.
7. Miège Jean-Louis. Benaboud M’hammad, Erzini Nadia. Tétouan, ville andalouse marocaine (Tetuan, Moroccan Andalusian town), [in French]. CNRS, Paris & Kalila wa dimna, Rabat, 1996.
8. Ortega Manuel C. Guía del Norte de Africa y Sur de España (Guide to the North of Africa and South of Spain), [in Spanish]. Guías internacionales Ortega, Madrid, 1917.

About the Jews of Tetuan

1. Abensur, Philip. “Le cimetière juif de Tétouan, hier, aujourd’hui, demain” (The Jewish cemetery of Tetuan, yesterday, today, tomorrow), [in French], in Etsi, Sephardi Genealogical and Historical Review, Vol. 1, no. 1, Spring-Summer 1998.
2. Abensur, Philip. “Les élèves de l’école de l’Alliance de Tétouan de 1862 à 1879.” (The pupils of the Alliance school of Tetuan from 1862 to 1879), [in French], in Etsi, Vol. 12, no. 47, December 2009.
3. Abensur-Hazan, Laurence. “Israélites assassinés à Tétouan et dans les environs entre 1866 et 1880” (Israelites assassinated in Tetuan and its surroundings between 1866 and 1880), [in French], in Etsi, Vol. 8, no. 31, December 2005.
4. Garzón Serfaty, Moisés. Tetuán, relato de una nostalgia (Tetuan, an account of a nostalgia), [in Spanish]. Asociación Israelita de Venezuela & Centro de Estudios Sefardíes de Caracas, Caracas, 2008.
5. Israel Garzón, Jacobo. Los judíos de Tetuán (The Jews of Tetuan), [in Spanish]. Hebraica, Madrid, 2005.
6. Jalfón de Bentolila, Estrella. El Tetuán de los Sefarditas (The Tetuan of the Sephardis), [in Spanish]. Laredo, Beverley Hills, 2008.
7. Leibovici, Sarah. Chronique des Juifs de Tétouan (1860–1896) (Chronicle of the Jews of Tetuan (1860–1896)), [in French]. Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris, 1984.
8. López Álvarez, Ana María. La comunidad judía de Tetuán 1881–1940 (The Jewish Community of Tetuan 1881–1940), [in Spanish]. Museo Sefardí, Toledo, 2003.
9. Macías Kapón, Uriel. La juderia de Tetuán a través de sus postales (The Juderia of Tetuan through its postcards), [in Spanish]. Asociación de Amigos del Museo Sefardí, Toledo, 1995.
10. Vilar, Juan Bautista. Tetuán en el resurgimiento judio contemporaneo (1850–1870) (Tetuan during contemporary Jewish re-emergence (1850–1870)), [in Spanish]. Asociación Israelita de Venezuela & Centro de Estudios Sefardíes de Caracas, Caracas, 1985.

Notes

[1] The book, which costs 21€, can be ordered through the author at laurphil@wanadoo.fr or through the publisher at http://www.editions-sutton.com/.

[2] Morocco did not permit “infidel” Christians to settle in the interior of the country, but only in cities on the coast. Thus, cities on the coast near Europe, such as Tetuan and later, Tangier, were the natural places for the main European and American consulates.

[3] See Philip Abensur, Les élèves de l’école de l’Alliance de Tétouan de 1862 à 1879 (The pupils of the Alliance school of Tetuan from 1862 to 1879), [in French], in Etsi, Sephardi Genealogical and Historical Review, vol. 12, no. 47, December 2009

[4] Sarah Leibovici, Chronique des Juifs de Tétouan (1860-1896) (Chronicle of the Jews of Tetuan [1860-1896]), [in French], Maisonneuve et Larose, Paris, 1984.

[5] Juan Bautista Vilar, Tetuán en el resurgimiento judio contemporaneo (1850–1870) (Tetuan during the Jewish contemporary re-emergence (1850–1870)), [in Spanish], Asociación Israelita de Venezuela & Centro de Estudios Sefardíes de Caracas, Caracas, 1985.

[6] Alexandre Joly, Tétouan 2ème partie, Historique (Tetuan 2nd part, History), [in French], in Archives Marocaines, vol. 8 (1906), p.524.

[7] We have contacted without success the Ministerio de Asuntos Exteriores y Cooperación (Spanish Ministry of Foreign Office Archives), the Archivo Histórico Nacional (National Historical Archives), the Archivo General de la Administración (Administration General Archives) in Madrid and the Archives of the city of Tetuan.

[8] See Manuel C. Ortega, Guía del Norte de Africa y Sur de España (Guide to the North of Africa and South of Spain), [in Spanish], Guías internacionales Ortega, Madrid, 1917.

[9] See Philip Abensur, Tétouan, cité marocaine aux racines andalouses (Tetuan, a Moroccan city with Andalusian roots), [in French], Alan Sutton, Saint-Cyr-sur-Loire, 2010 ; Macías Kapón, Uriel, La Juderia de Tetuán a través de sus postales (The Juderia of Tetuan through its postcards), [in Spanish], Asociación de Amigos del Museo Sefardí, Toledo, 1995.

[10] See Philip Abensur, Le cimetière juif de Tétouan, hier, aujourd’hui, demain (The Jewish cemetery of Tetuan, yesterday, today, tomorrow), [in French], in Etsi, vol. 1, no. 1, Spring-Summer 1998.

[11] Ana María López Álvarez, La comunidad judía de Tetuán 1881–1940 (The Jewish Community of Tetuan 1881–1940), [in Spanish], Museo Sefardí, Toledo, 2003.

[12] The Israel National Library’s database http://jnul.huji.ac.il/dl/ketubbot gives information about 43 ketubot of Tetuan from 1815 to 1957.

[13] Philip Abensur, op. cit. The full list of the pupils is published in this article. The most frequent last names are: Levy (20 pupils), Cohen (18), Bentolila, Hatchuel (14), Benarrosh/Benarroche, Benzaquen, Israel (13), Acriche/Hacriche (12), Coriat, Nahon (11), Benchimol, Bentata (10), Abecassis, Aboudarham, Chocron, Garson, Roffé, Salama, Serfaty (9), Attias, Benoliel, Ben­sadon, Hassan, Lasry (8), Azerrad, Benmergui, Essaya/Essayag, Tobelem (7), Benmiyara, Bennaïm, Bibas, Gabay and Pariente (6).

[14] See http://www.archives-aiu.org/aiu/index.htm

[15] http://users.skynet.be/JMH/index.html and http://www.judaisme-marocain.org

[16] http://anom.archivesnationales.culture.gouv.fr/caomec2/recherche.php?territoire=ALGERIE

The post The Jews of Tetuan, Morocco: Genealogy and Iconography appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

I first become interested in genealogy in 1992 when a cousin jotted down, on a piece of scrap paper, seven names of my paternal ancestors. From that, I discovered my connection to the rabbinic Katzenellenbogen family tree through my great-great-grandmother, who appears in Neil Rosenstein’s book, The Unbroken Chain. A second boost came in 2001, when a Hungarian politician made contact via Saul Issroff in London, resulting in some unusual revelations about my maternal side, including two secular Muslim second cousins living in Istanbul, who actually are halachically Jewish.All I ever knew was that I am named after my great-uncle Moshe. Moshe died in a motor accident, six weeks before his planned wedding. The date of his death is unknown, but it was sometime between the late 1920s and early 30s. That was the sum total of my knowledge of Moshe until a photograph given to me in 2011 changed everything.

My zaide (grandfather) Nachum Mendel Rabinowitz, was born in 1887 in Orla, a small Polish village in the Grodno district near Bialystok. His original family name was Skarasjewski, but he changed it to Rabinowitz to escape being drafted into the Russian army. In the early 1900s, Zaide left for Brest-Litovsk where he studied at the Brisk Yeshiva under Rav Chaim Soloveichik. Nachum Mendel then traveled to Palestine, married Chana Cheshe Miriam Herison in 1905 and migrated in 1911 to Volksrust, a “dorp,” a small rural town in Transvaal, South Africa. My dad, Zvi Hersh (Harry) Rabinowitz, was the first of his family to be born in South Africa in 1914; his two older brothers were born in Palestine. By 1919, the family had moved to Cape Town, where two sisters, Rachel and Sarah, were born: Sarah, the youngest, in 1927. The family was joined by Nachum Mendel’s younger brother, Moshe Zalman in 1921, and later by his sister, Chana.

On November 8, 2010, a Polish researcher, Wojciech Konończuk of Warsaw, made contact after seeing my post on JewishGen’s Family Finder. His family also comes from Orla, the same shtetl as my grandfather. Although not Jewish himself, Wojciech is writing a book about the Jews of Orla. There is no yizkor (Holocaust memorial) book for Orla, so I volunteered to write and manage the Orla KehilaLink (a community site) for JewishGen, 60 websites! In May 2011, I visited Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Poland and Turkey, all for the first time.

On my return trip home to Australia, I visited my last surviving aunt, Sarah Stepansky, in Jerusalem. Sarah gave me a photograph as a reward for my enthusiastic interest in our family history; I was the first of my family to make the journey back to Orla in more than 90 years. It was a school photograph with the words Orla Folk School II in Yiddish on the front and 1920 written on the back. Aunt Sarah identified my great-uncle Moshe as the teacher in the bottom left of the picture.

I scanned the photograph on June 7, 2011, and e-mailed it to family members and to Wojciech. On July 25, 2011, Wojciech wrote that he had received a photograph from “Mary,” a researcher in London. Mary is researching the Lacki and Lichtzier families, also from Orla. She sent him the photograph because it has Orla on a banner in the picture. Mary does not know the names of the people in the photograph but, upon seeing it, Wojciech immediately recognized the teacher in the top left as Moshe Rabinowitz, the same person in the photograph I had sent him the month before.

The puzzle about my great-uncle’s life started to fall into place when Wojciech told Mary that the man’s name is Moshe Rabinowitz. She responded that a Moshe Rabinowitz from Orla was engaged in South Africa to Paula (Polly) Lichtzier from Orla, a member of the families she was researching. Mary added that Moshe was killed in a motor accident six weeks before his planned wedding to Paula.

I contacted Mary who provided the name and address of Ray Hengy who lives in Freiburg im Breisgau, Germany. Ray is the daughter of Paula and Joe Pinn, the man whom Paula subsequently married, sometime after Moshe’s death. Ray also sent me a series of photographs including several of Paula with her late fiancé’s family. It was somewhat eerie to receive photographs of my family from a stranger in Germany. Ray also provided details of what she knew about Paula and Moshe. Apparently, Ray’s mother, Paula, maintained a close relationship with Moshe’s family in Cape Town after Moshe’s tragic death. Hungry for more details, I accessed the memoir of Paula’s late cousin, Sylvia Kaspin, sent to me by Wojciech, who received it from Mary.

By now, my aunt Sarah has also published her own memoir:

In May 2012, I met Ray and her husband, Heinrich, in Warsaw, and together with Wojciech and my wife, Jill, we traveled to Bialystok, Orla and Treblinka. Ray showed me something she was wearing. It was the engagement ring that Moshe had given to her mother. Ray wears it on special occasions. The ring was treasured by her mother throughout her life as a physical memory of Moshe.

In May 2013, I visited Ray and Heinrich in Freiburg. We looked for more pictures of Moshe and Paula and found a framed photograph of them on the wall. I was, however, still missing dates and details of the circumstances of Moshe’s death. I asked two of my cousins if they had any further information and they provided one clue. They remember that their dad, my uncle Isaac, recited the mourner’s kaddish for his uncle Moshe each year on the second last day of Pesach. I checked the website of the Cape Town Jewish Cemeteries Maintenance Board for any deaths or burials in Cape Town with the name Moshe Rabinowitz or similar. I found a Morris Rabinowitz, but for some strange reason, the date was shown as “-0001.” The information I was seeking was missing.

I called the Cape Town chevra kadisha (burial society) and was given the date of September 4, 1931, which is nowhere near Pesach on the Hebrew calendar. I checked my iPhone’s Pocket Luach, transposed the date to 9/4/31 and voila! It is the second last day of Pesach in 1931.

I called the chevra; they found their error, updated their database and gave me the correct details and the location of the grave: Woltemade/Maitland Cemetery (Gate 8). Those who know Cape Town will tell you that it is not safe to visit this cemetery alone. Accordingly, the chevra assigned a security guard to accompany me. I took photographs and had the inscription interpreted by my cousin, Hadara Boczko, daughter of Sarah. Now armed with a date, I asked Jocelyn and Tammy at the Gitlin Library in Cape Town to be on the lookout for any articles around this date. This library has an excellent collection of old Jewish newspapers bound in folders. Jocelyn found a report in the SA Jewish Chronicle from April 1931.

Jocelyn and Tammy suggested that I visit the National Library to check the microfilms of the two local newspapers, The Argus and The Cape Times. I found the accident reports and also located the death notice and other legal documents at the Western Cape Archives.

In possession of other vital details that allow me to follow up, I visited the scene of the accident, 82 years after it happened.

Knowing that Moshe was a teacher at the Wynberg Talmud Torah at the Wynberg Synagogue, I learned that Moshe was also the secretary at the shul. An excellent source of information on the Wynberg Jewish community is a book written by historian Dr. David Scher and Lionel Sher, a copy of which can be found in the library at the University of Cape Town’s Kaplan Centre.

Wanting to search further and keen to connect with descendants who might have more to contribute, I met Paula’s extended family in New York, Toronto and Israel: Robby Gordon, Glenna Gordon, Rose Kamnitzer and Michal Itzhaki.

Rose Kamnitzer in Toronto has a collection of family photographs from her parents, Berl Lacki and Bella Lichtzier, Paula’s sister. Berl was Moshe’s good friend. They corresponded by postcard after Moshe arrived in South Africa in 1920 until Berl arrived in 1929. These photographs in Rose’s collection were taken in Poland and South Africa and are special in many respects. They were “locked away” in a drawer in Toronto and only came out when I made contact with Rose. Only by being together, were we able to identify our respective families in the photos.

These are the only photos of Moshe and Paula taken together, in Cape Town.

Left to right: Moshe with his nephew Isaac, with niece Sarah, Paula, an unknown man and Moshe’s friend, Berl Lacki

Conclusion

My journey of discovery, starting with a photograph given to me in Israel, has taken me to Germany, South Africa, Poland, the United States, UK, Canada and back to Israel, with updates to my research findings in each destination. It was the subject of my lecture at the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies (IAJGS) conference in Jerusalem in July 2015, and at subsequent venues and presentations in South Africa and Australia. But my search isn’t complete. The details of the driver of the vehicle in the fatal accident are still of interest. The newspaper cutting tells us that Mr. M. Katz, the driver of the vehicle in which Moshe was a passenger, was the manager of the Mowbray Hotel. I have tried accessing the archives of the company that once owned the hotel and the bus company most likely involved in the accident and have consulted various Cape Town historians. So far, I have struck out on these. I am still hopeful that more leads will come my way. And so, to be continued.

Eli Rabinowitz

The post Personal Journeys: From One Photograph to Journeys of Research and Discovery appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

Genealogists not only have been documenting their family histories, but have become the repository of vital medical and genetic history for their families. With the advent of widely available genetic testing, the giant leaps in disease identification, the dramatic growth of DNA databanks, the introduction of umbilical cord blood storage and the new science of gene replacement therapy, genealogists have been given an increased opportunity—and responsibility—to contribute to both their own family’s personal health and that of future generations.U.S. Surgeon General Richard H. Carmona notes that “Knowing your family history can save your life. Millions of dollars in medical research, equipment and knowledge can’t give us the information provided by this simple tool. When a health care professional is equipped with a patient’s family health history, he or she can easily assess the inherent risk factors and, in some instances, begin tests or treatment even before any disease is evident.”*

[Editor’s Note: This article, still fresh in its description, was originally published in the Spring 2007 issue of AVOTAYNU.  To obtain a subscription to AVOTAYNU or obtain access to back issues, visit https://www.avotaynu.com/journal.htm]

The growing mass of genealogically related data available online has expanded and enriched our ability to find and connect with previously unknown family members. With family history research easier than ever, we genealogists now have previously unimagined opportunities to compile our medical and genetic data and, in tandem with our family trees, use this information to enhance the health of the people in our families. We can now use our genealogy and genetics to make a difference in the world.

Jewish Genetic Diseases: Reality and Responsibility

Thousands of known genetic diseases afflict the world’s population. In almost every ethnic or racial group, however, certain genetic diseases occur at higher frequencies among their members than in the general population. Such is the case for the Jewish people. Many of these diseases are severely incapacitating and some are tragically debilitating, leading to death in infancy or early childhood. Tay-Sachs is one of the most notorious of the lot, but other diseases and genetic predispositions to diseases, just as prevalent and just as devastating, shatter the lives of Jewish families.

If called upon, all genealogists have an obligation to play an investigative and advisory role in their families, and when a genetic trait is discovered, we have an obligation to reach out and warn extended family members that they may be at risk. I hope my 15-year quest to document the incidence of the gene for Beta-Thalassemia disease, an inherited blood disorder causing mild to severe anemia, in my extended family will be a model for all genealogists and family historians dedicated to recording their own families’ genetic and medical history.

Even after archive doors open wide for research with life-saving potential, the challenge remains to persuade previously unknown family members to be documented and to convince close family members to cooperate with research. We must combat resistance of whatever cause—embarrassment, fear, laziness or ignorance.

Combining genetic, medical and genealogical research involves different methods and special responsibilities. Defining this philosophy, formulating the message and honing sensitivities are unusual challenges for casual genealogists.

Role of Genetic/Medical Research

Some family historians want to know about all the generations of musicians or scholars, and some want to track every family story that has been passed down through the generations. But today there is growing recognition among genealogists of the need also to provide detailed information in the medical field in your genealogical computer program or use specialized family medical history software such as Geneweaver, produced by Genes & Things, Inc.

The American Medical Association recommends that every family maintain a family health history. Recording one’s personal and family medical history is becoming the norm rather than the exception. The ability to provide ready access to this information to an extended family can be of great and often unanticipated benefit. This is particularly so in the case of recessive disorders, where a single altered copy of a gene inherited from both parents may result in devastating consequences for the next generation, such as Tay Sachs disease and Thalassemia Major, to name two examples.

When a recessive disorder first occurs in a family, it appears to come from nowhere—but that typically is not the case. More likely, the recessive gene had been passed down silently for many generations. What makes recessive conditions appear so obscure is that inheriting a single copy of an altered recessive gene rarely causes medical complications. It typically remains quiet and does not reveal itself until two people, who both carry a single copy of the same altered gene, happen to have a child together. Consequently, once any genetic disorder—particularly a recessive condition is identified, genealogists have an obligation to reach out and caution family members that this gene is hiding in their family.

Fortunately, because of the joint efforts of the medical, genetics and religious communities and the ease and speed of modern-day communications, it now is possible to identify individuals and even pregnancies at risk for a number of recessive conditions. On the other hand, since the majority of recessive conditions are rare, not as well publicized, and are not associated with any specific ethnic group, a routine public health genetic screening network usually does not exist. In this situation, typically vigilant genetic counselors and doctors have no red flag to alert them to the potential danger of a rare recessive gene that, unbeknownst to the family, has been passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, populations not considered at risk for certain disorders do not benefit from routine screening and discovery as is found with the Ashkenazic genetic conditions mentioned above.

In my case, family members either were unaware they carried a single copy of the altered beta-thalassemia gene, also referred to as “trait,” or only learned about it serendipitously later in life, usually when undergoing exhaustive tests for other medical conditions. This has been the norm rather than the exception, and, unfortunately the knowledge often came too late to provide much-needed information to other family members, who in turn might have had a child with the devastating Beta-Thalassemia disease. Carriers often were misdiagnosed as being just plain anemic, without specific differentiation. As a result, these people often inadvertently were prescribed ineffective medication, typically iron, suitable only for other forms of anemia. Recognizing the potential existence of hundreds of unsuspecting carriers in distant branches—and that this trait is virtually unknown among Ashkenazim—is what drives my genealogical/genetic research project.

Genealogists must be aware that genetic science is only approaching the threshold of the re-engineering of disease-causing genes. That is why genetic counseling and prenatal testing have played such an important role in raising awareness and helping people understand their chances of being affected with genetic diseases as well as how to deal with this knowledge. Directing family members to medical professionals who are trained to communicate the appropriate information is the responsibility of every genealogist who charts his or her family’s history for medical or genetic reasons.

Researching Your Family’s Medical/Genetic History

Genealogists who ask medical history-related questions—whether of long-known or recently discovered relatives—soon realize they may be treading on delicate ground. Whether the information sought is general (i.e., just to fill in the cause-of-death field in a genealogical software program) or very specific, one often hears, “Why do you want to know?” While the question “why” may be the first one heard, the researcher’s response must also address “who,” “when,” “where” and “how”—all the while being both cognizant of the sensitive issues and prepared to allay the concerns of a reluctant relative.

Why Do You Want to Know?

Whether it is simply asking for names, dates and places—the staples of genealogical research or medical-related questions, your family members will ask, “Why are you doing this?” Many excellent articles and hundreds of posts on the JewishGen mailing list detail reasons why individuals become fascinated with family history research. Answering the question “why?” when it involves medical matters presents special challenges. It has been said, “Ask the family gossip a medical question and the answer may be never-ending or dead silence.” Therefore, be prepared to give a direct, carefully crafted answer—one that invites cooperation as opposed to a “never bother me again.”

Family historians should:

• Define the objectives of your medical/genetic research project (your “mission statement”)
• Be able to clearly explain what you are doing and why you are asking questions.
• Understand and be able to communicate the basic facts of the medical condition or genetic trait that is the basis for your reaching out. If you are gathering general information, ask questions about common concerns, such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes or Alzheimer’s. Prepare clear and concise documentation that can be used to follow up verbal communications. Provide references to reading material and/or Internet websites for those who want to learn more.
• Outline the benefits of your research to all members of your family and their future generations. Use terms they understand—“life-saving” or “early diagnosis.”
• Detail what you expect to do with the information you gather and how it would be communicated to family members or shared with the medical community which might find the data of scientific value. Explain what you will not do, such as making the information generally available on a website.

Whom To Talk To

Every member of each branch of a target family should be tapped for relevant information. “The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing” may aptly describe what one nuclear family knows and another does not about the circumstances of Zayde’s death. When it involves a genetic trait, not every family member will be comfortable sharing all the details—or even mentioning it. Therefore, researching your family’s medical history and making a genetic tree requires talking to everyone, frequently more than once. Researchers must:

• Focus on those branches and individuals who may be able to provide the key leads for expanding the search.
• Never assume anything! People often do not know or cannot remember their exact medical condition. Check and double-check. Ask for permission to talk to family doctors or anyone who has been involved with the health of the family. This is particularly relevant when tracking genetic traits that can be a potential disaster for future generations, because not everyone will recognize the implications of the trait they carry: Two carriers of a recessive gene have a one-in-four chance of producing an affected child.
• Enlist others in the family, particularly doctors and other medical professionals who understand and support the aims of the research. Ask them to join your team.
• Keep the family up-to-date on your research, breakthroughs and plans. This will keep them involved and encourage them to help.

When to Start; When to Push

We are told time and again, “Interview the living! The documents will be here forever.” The two words genealogists dislike intensely are “if only.” If only I had listened to Bubbe when she talked about her youth…If only I had written down the endless stories my father used to tell about his grandparents…If only mother hadn’t thrown out Zayde’s old address book or diary or ________ (fill in the blank!). It is no different for the family historian who seeks to record his or her family’s medical history. Remember when Mom or Dad came home from visiting Uncle Sam at the hospital and described his strange condition. I wasn’t listening, were you? Talk to the older generations now! Even if a death certificate states “arterial sclerosis,” you should be asking questions: “Was this a heart attack? When did Zayde first get sick? Was it his first heart attack? Did he die suddenly or did he go to the hospital?” Ask about and record the circumstances.

How to Find the Answers

Face-to-face meetings are always best. They inspire confidence. The expressions on your face and the sound of your voice show that you really care. However, genealogists know researching family history entails more than a drive around town. Our ancestors settled all over the world, and our modern families have spread with the winds. It is true that Internet resources, the advent of e-mail and low-cost long-distance rates have significantly simplified the search process and facilitated communications, but unless we are exceptionally skilled, the printed word can seem unfeeling when asking sensitive medical questions. Because your genuine concern and interest may not come through in written material, the telephone call is indeed “the next best thing to being there.”

The first goal must be to gain the confidence of the person you are calling, often someone who may never have heard of you or your branch of the family. Even the words to be left on an answering machine should be considered carefully in advance. The response can be all the way from a demanding “how did you find me?” to “I am so glad you called!” Establishing credibility with someone you are calling or writing for the first time is a must. And after you have spoken to an older member of the family, follow up immediately with a son or daughter. Children are usually protective of the elderly parents and may be suspicious of strangers asking mom and dad many seemingly personal questions.

When phone calls are impractical (because of old family feuds, language barriers, etc.), the reaching-out letter must be clear, concise and effective; having it co-signed by other family members and/or a doctor can enhance its credibility and is recommended. When you have someone make a call for you—to speak to your new-found cousin in his or her native language —try to be next to that person so you can give immediate follow-up answers. This approach makes the call more personal and helps preclude the feeling that the call has left you with more questions instead of the answers you sought.

Short Guide to Interviewing for

Medical/Genetic Family History

• Explain who you are, where you live and how you obtained your family member’s name.
• Convey in a few short sentences why you have an interest in the family’s history.
• Describe your exact relationship or what you think the relationship may be. Articulate it in terms that a non-genealogist can understand. “Third cousin, once removed” is likely to bring silence. But, “My grandfather and your great-grandmother were sister and brother” is far easier to grasp.
• Share your family history: Tell the story of your branch and show a general interest in theirs, where they live and how they got there. Offer to send a “family tree,” but avoid providing details as to whether it will be a graphic tree, a descendant’s list or other report; that can be confusing to non-genealogists. Share a vignette about a common ancestor or living relative, one that will make a person proud or provide a laugh.
• Avoid the turn-off: Most people are flattered to be asked non-leading questions about their history and unique accomplishments, but it could be counterproductive to rush into discussions about college degrees or well-kept family secrets about mental illnesses or suicides. Allow the conversation to evolve. Avoid applying pressure. Do not try to get all the information in one telephone conversation.
• Define your role as the family (medical/genetic) historian: If you are the first person to call about the family, then—in their eyes—you become a special person to be befriended or feared. You will be the family historian by default. People want to be cast in a favorable light. Listen, take notes, ask questions, take more notes!
• Elaborate about yourself as an individual: Describe where your family history studies have taken you, whether it be to ancestral towns, the Family History Library in Salt Lake City or visits with branches you just discovered. Your deep interest and sincere effort will be recognized. If articles about your research have appeared in magazines and newspapers, send copies. If you have a website, suggest that the person look at it and provide the URL; but refrain from put-downs if they are not computerized or don’t have ready access to the Internet!
• Carefully pose the medical/genetic question: How you say it and what you say should be tailored to your own comfort level and the nature of the reaction. One example might be: “You know, because of my study of our family, I hear as many questions as I ask. It seems everyone is curious about one thing or another, and I now seem to be the one with some answers. Health preoccupies all of our older relatives, and that has taught me a lot. For instance, were you aware that Grandma and almost all her siblings had heart disease? That made me curious, and I found that their father’s death certificate showed heart disease, too. I guess that’s a signal for us. What’s the heart situation in your family?”

The question I usually pose is: “Has there been any sign of mild chronic anemia in your family?” By way of follow-up, the comment is: “Well, we seem to be rather special. We are one of only 15 Ashkenazic families carrying a genetic trait called beta-thalassemia or Mediterranean anemia.” Often, by the time I get that out of my mouth, the questions come rapidly: “What does that mean?” or “Is it dangerous?” or “How do I know if I am a carrier?” That’s when the calming words and clear statements are needed. My reply is: “It has no effect on carriers. I know because I am one. But there is a significance to future generations, because two carriers have a one-in-four chance of having an affected child.” The discussion goes on from there, and I quickly point out that I am not a medical person, but merely someone with a deep interest in the medical and genetic history of our family

How a Medical/Genetic Focus Differs

From Typical Family History Project

Several important aspects of genealogical research with a medical/genetic focus set it apart from typical family history projects.

• Potential for networking. There are more receptive ears—everywhere, both within and outside the genealogical community, particularly when it involves potential life-saving situations.
• Response of the genealogical community. Genealogists probably are the most generous individuals one can find in any walk of life. When humanitarian activities are involved, the level of response from fellow researchers eager to help can be astounding.
• Reaction of archival resources. Whether at home or abroad, archivists’ attitudes can vary from being highly cooperative to passionately supportive. Invite the archivist to be part of your research team! As executive director of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, I am learning that many of our fellow genealogists are researching for medical/genetic reasons. In almost every case, support from the Polish State Archives and managers of civil records offices in Polish towns has been exemplary.
• Foundations or organizations with an interest in the medical or genetic condition in your family have the experience and materials to help you convey effectively the importance of your mission. (Example: National Organization for Rare Disorders [NORD], http://www.rarediseases.org).
• Support from the non-genealogical community. Newspapers want stories; doctors and scientists welcome the opportunity to share their expertise or learn from unique studies; universities seek projects that address the need of students to learn while at the same time making meaningful contributions to the outside world. The Jewish Genetic Disease mailing list http://health.groups.yahoo.com/group/gaucherdisease/ is a forum for networking with both medical professionals and those at risk or living with genetic diseases.
• Credibility factor: Because it involves the health of both living family and future generations, your family history project should rightly give your research an enhanced level of credibility. This is not automatic. It takes time, effort and patience to bring all the pieces together.

Documentation, Confidentiality, Perpetuity

Whatever the reasons for charting your family’s medical and genetic history, confidentiality must be respected; permission is necessary to share information. In the U.S., where it often seems that medical insurers are looking over everyone’s shoulder, there is a particular need for prudence. I maintain a separate confidential family tree of carriers of the trait. Finally, decide to whom you will pass on your valuable research and under what conditions.

Recommended Further Reading.

Bennett, Robin L. and M.S. Bennett, The Practical Guide to the Genetic Family History, New York: John Wiley and Sons, Inc., 1999.

McNabb, Luanne, Curtis, Elizabeth Curtis and B.A. Barclay-Rowley, Family Health Trees, Toronto: Ontario Genealogical Society, 1997.

Nelson-Anderson, Danette L., R.N., B.S.N., and Waters, Cynthia V., Genetic Connections: A Guide to Documenting Your Individual and Family Health History, Sonters Publishing, P.O. Box 109, Washington, MO 63090-0109, 1995.

Willard, Jim and Terry, with Jane Wilson, Ancestors: A Beginner’s Guide to Family History and Genealogy, Houghton Mifflin, Boston, 1997 (see chapter 8: Your Medical Heritage, pages 89-102.). [ed. Out of Print]

Note

* Carmona, Richard H, M.D., M.P.H., F.A.C.S., Surgeon General of the United States Public Health Service, U.S. Medicine, January, 2005: “PHS Uses Education As Preventive Medicine.”

The post The Role of the Jewish Genealogist In Medical and Genetic Family History appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

Genealogy as an academic discipline has been much discussed in recent years especially by Neville Lamdan, Daniel Wagner and Tom Jones, all of whom have considered the topic in detail. Lamdan is director of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and Paul Jacobi Center (IIJG) one of whose goals is “developing Jewish genealogy into a recognized field of academic investigation within the realm of Jewish Studies and in association with a broad range of other sciences on an inter-disciplinary basis.”[1] In accordance with this goal, IIJG has developed a proposed syllabus for teaching Jewish genealogy at the university level.[2] Lamdan, who holds a Doctorate in History, places Jewish genealogy under Jewish Studies, i.e., in the Humanities. On the other hand, Wagner, a Professor of Material Science, suggests that genealogy is closely related to the Exact Sciences, and Professor of Education Jones places genealogy under the Social Sciences while indicating that it is related to no fewer than 45 research fields, among which are Animal Husbandry, Cartography, Herbology, Numismatics, and Women’s Studies.[3]

[Ed. Note: This article was first published in AVOTAYNU, Volume XXVII, Number 3, Fall 2011, page 18. To purchase a subscription to AVOTAYNU, or obtain access to back issues, visit http://www.avotaynu.com]

The question of whether genealogy is (or is not) an academic discipline, however, has not yet been discussed under a comprehensive frame­work of “what is an academic discipline?” In this article, we present such a framework and examine the disciplinarity of genealogy within it. We suggest that although genealogy meets most of the prerequisites to become an academic discipline, it fails to meet two crucial ones: a comprehensive and organized body of knowledge and institutional manifestation. Following that, we suggest a bottom-up process of leveraging genealogy to a fully recognized academic discipline, a process that will be initiated by forming an international community of scholars in any discipline who already are affiliated with academic institutions, who are willing to bring genealogy to the front of their research interests, and who will continue to construct the needed body of knowledge for genealogy.

What Is an Academic Discipline?

The question of whether genealogy is (or is not) an academic discipline, however, has not yet been discussed under a comprehensive frame­work of “what is an academic discipline?” In this article, we present such a framework and examine the disciplinarity of genealogy within it. We suggest that although genealogy meets most of the prerequisites to become an academic discipline, it fails to meet two crucial ones: a comprehensive and organized body of knowledge and institutional manifestation. Following that, we suggest a bottom-up process of leveraging genealogy to a fully recognized academic discipline, a process that will be initiated by forming an international community of scholars in any discipline who already are affiliated with academic institutions, who are willing to bring genealogy to the front of their research interests, and who will continue to construct the needed body of knowledge for genealogy.

While considering whether or not Women’s Studies is an academic discipline, Sandra Coyner addresses what an academic discipline is not.[4] According to Coyner, a discipline is not equal to a subject; that is, it is not just the summation of things people want to (or should) know about a certain topic. Related to this is the fact that some topics are treated by more than one discipline. For example, questions about migration patterns might be examined by historians, economists, geographers and/or statisticians. A discipline is not defined by the use of specific research methodologies; interviews, tests, case studies, archival research and other research methodologies are shared by many disciplines. Disciplines are not single, unified structures with regard to the knowledge underlying the subject matter. Different trends within a discipline (e.g., micro-history and macro-history) do not complete each other, but rather compete by suggesting different explanations for the same phenomena. Sometimes dissimilarities in a discipline are at least as great as those between disciplines, and it might be thought that often the grouping of several topics into a discipline is random. Conyer maintains that disciplines are not objective or apolitical, and that all research—starting from its initial questions and ending with its interpretation—rests on values or is narrowed by selective perceptions.

Applying Conyer’s views of what disciplines are not, we may begin to understand what they are. Disciplines are systems that deal with certain bodies of knowledge but also with their construction, concepts, representation, teaching, inquiry, judgment, values, ethics, and much more. Disciplines are not only about knowledge, but also about the people who form this knowledge, use it and discuss it. Those scholars have the sense of belonging, through which they form their identity, and share kudos.[5] Like other professional fields, disciplines use their own forms of organization to link together specialists scattered among institutions, and they also provide culture to the scholars.[6] All in all, disciplines are neither solely about subjects nor are they about people or institutions, as “nothing is more certain in the lives of the disciplines, whatever the field, whatever the institutional setting, than that they are forever changing.”[7] Moreover, academic disciplines are about the organization of learning and the systematic production of new knowledge through research.[8]

Dozens of studies discuss the question of whether or not various fields are academic disciplines but only few include a suggested measure for this examination. One list of conditions that must be met in order for a field of study to be considered a discipline has been constructed by the Council of Graduate Schools (CGS).[9] This list is quoted in an article trying to assess whether statistics is an academic discipline.[10] Another general list is found in a working paper discussing academic disciplines.[11]

Merging the two lists, we have a framework within which we can assess whether or not genealogy is an academic discipline. According to this merged list, an academic discipline should have:

• Particular objects of research
  • Unique research methods
  • Significant market demand
  • Professionals working essentially in the field
  • Specific terminologies or technical language
  • A theory, concepts and a body of literature
  • Professional journals regularly publishing new advances in the subject
  • Institutional manifestation
  • Let us now examine how genealogy fits this list.

Specific Objects of Research.

Obviously, people are the main object of most genealogy research. Genealogists investigate people’s life spans, look for documentation about people, trace migration paths of people, decipher tombstones telling about people, and more. One also can extend the scope of genealogy research to families. Although the definition of the term “family” may be open to debate, as used here it means “a group of people who are related to each other,”[12] a definition that fits families from the 16th century as well as new families from the 21st century, and may also fit other familial configurations genealogists often research, such as groups of individuals who all descend from the same individual (or couple). A research object may extend also to communities, groups of individuals and families who reside(d) in the same place at certain periods. Although communities do not have a birth date and cannot be interviewed in toto, they do have growth and decline patterns, changing borders and collective memory.[13]

Genealogy often deals with other objects as well. Two of the most common are names and family trees. Names borne by people, both given names and surnames have been extensively studied historically;[14] etymologically;[15] culturally;[16] biologically;[17] and from other angles. Family trees which describe the relationships between people and families, also might be treated as research objects in themselves. Genealogists have raised interesting research questions about their visualization,[18] growth rate and more.[19]

Although people, families, communities, names and family trees all are objects of research in other disciplines (for example, people in History, families in Sociology, communities in Economics, names in Linguistics, and family trees in Genetics)—research interests in them in genealogy are different and unique.

Thus, we may conclude that genealogy does have particular objects of research.

Research Methods. Genealogy certainly uses some unique research methodologies to answer potential research questions, although some of the methods are not fully formalized yet, and need to be defined more precisely. Following are two suggested unique research methods for academic genealogy research:

• Docography (or, maybe Document Storytelling). Named after the Ethnography qualitative research methodology, this is a form of research primarily used in the Social Sciences that employs close field observation of sociocultural phenomena to understand them in context. Docography involves the gathering of empirical data on people, families or communities based on various genealogically relevant documents, such as vital statistics and archival records, professional diplomas, immigration doc­uments and other similar records. The story of the subject of the research arises from the examination of such documents, after evaluation of the reliability of the sources and resolution of any contradictions discovered in them.
• Database Merging. As suggested by Wagner, this methodology aims to gather as much information as possible about a given individual through merging data from two or more databases.[20] With this methodology, researchers sometimes may identify instances where a single individual is recorded as if he or she were several different people. The methodology also allows one to discover family relationships otherwise not possible to know.

Of course, research methods used in other fields might be easily applied to genealogy research as well, such as conducting statistical analyses to compare patterns of different communities.

Hence, genealogy definitely possesses its own unique research methods and special techniques.

Significant Market Demand. Without a doubt, a huge market demand exists for genealogy, the extent of which is best illustrated by Ancestry.com, the largest online family history resource, which has 1.6 million paying subscribers (as of August 2011) and revenue of more than 300 million dollars in 2010.[21]

Genealogy certainly meets this requirement.

Specific Terminologies or Technical Language. A physician overhearing two genealogists talk about BMD (births, marriages and deaths), might think they are interested in testing their Bone Mineral Density; the genealogists, however, mean something entirely different. When genealogists speak of Ellis Island, they usually have no intention of touring the place, but rather of researching its archives. Every genealogist who ever used genealogy software knows that GEDCOM is Genealogy Data COMmunication, a protocol for exchanging data among genealogy software applications. Many other examples could be given.

Clearly, a specific genealogy jargon is used on a daily basis.

Professionals Working Essentially in the Field. Many genealogists worldwide are self-educated. Currently, no one needs a diploma or any specific studies in order to practice genealogy (either as a hobby or as a profession). Two organizations accredit genealogists: The Board for Certification of Genealogists (BCG) and the International Commission for the Accreditation of Professional Genealogists (ICAPGen). A few manuals describe research in genealogy, the most popular of which is the one published by Board for Certification of Genealogists and the book Professional Genealogy, by Elizabeth Shown Mills.[22]

Most genealogists are not accredited at all and not required to adhere to any standards in practice. Currently, a genealogist is basically anyone who defines himself as such. The same is true of “professional genealogist.”

Overall, genealogy has professionals working in the field.

A Theory, Concepts and a Body of Literature. Psychologists have Freud, Kinsey, Pavlov, and Piaget (and many more); physicists have Einstein, Hertz, Lawrence, and Ohm (and many more); Economists have the Theory of Public Expenditure, Theory of Capital, and Theory of Demand (and many more). But what are the main theories or models of genealogy research? And who are the “ancestors” of this field? As the answers to both questions (and to similar ones) are unclear, it is difficult to ponder a body of literature in genealogy research.

It is awkward to talk about theories of genealogy research when the basic structures needed for any theory still are missing in genealogy. Standards for documenting names, dates and places—the elementary units of any genealogy research—are still not to be found; only in 2008, was such a standard first proposed.[23] A suggested standard for citing sources (a necessary aspect of any genealogical research) was published only a few years before that and was widely accepted.[24]

An example of a genealogy theory—which is not a theory grounded in the discipline of History or in any other discipline—is the one related to the growth rate of family trees, regarding the number of ancestors in each generation. The expected purely mathematical doubling number of ancestors in each generation leads to the Ancestor Paradox, according to which in a certain generation in the past, the number of ancestors was (much) larger than the world population at the time.[25] A theory suggesting a solution to this paradox was suggested by Pears a few years after his original publication.[26] Usually called The Diamond Theory of Ancestors, this theory suggests that at a certain point, through a number of (early) generations, the number of ancestors is actually decreasing and not increasing.

Another example might demonstrate the need for theories in genealogy research. When comparing information from two or more family trees, or when desiring to merge family trees, genealogists must be certain that two persons appearing on the two different trees, who are assumed to be the same individual—are indeed the same person. This problem becomes more difficult if genealogists do not document dates of birth or death, either because of objective limitations such as a lack of such information, or because of a bad habit of not following documentation standards (if such standards exist). For fitting family trees on a time scale and, therefore, allowing a comparison between them, at least two methods, which might be considered theories of family trees synchronization, have been suggested: Paul Jacobi’s Absolute Generations Scale and Michael Honey’s Jewish Historical Clock.[27]

These two examples are an exception and highlight the need for theories and grounded-theories (theories generated from data) of fundamental topics within genealogy research.

Without such theories, and without basic standards, no body of genealogy literature can exist; neither can its academic quality be assured.

Professional Journals Regularly Publishing New Advances in the Subject. Many genealogy journals and magazines have been published for dozens of years, either by local or national genealogical societies or by commercial ventures. How can we measure, however, if a given journal publishes “advances in the subject?” Some topics might seem not to advance the subject, such as, for example, a genealogy of a certain family or a new database useful to only a few researchers; while other topics might definitely be considered advances in the subject, such as new details about the genealogy of a “common” ancestor (e.g., a historical figure from whom many sub-trees descend, e.g., Saul Wahl ), new methods for bypassing the multi-spelling problems of surnames, discovery of new archival resources, or suggestions for tree merging. It might be suggested that a certain publication demonstrates new advances in genealogy if it contributes to the knowledge base of the community. To make sure that studies are worth publishing, academic communities all over the world usually employ peer-review mechanisms and standardize the format of their publications. This standard format is necessary for easily communicating research and research results among members of the community, thereby permitting assimilation of knowledge and enabling fruitful discussions of studies in the field. This is why almost any academic publication—be it a short conference paper, a journal paper, a thesis/­dis­sertation, or a book—is considered a complete unit of research and is brought to the reader as such. It usually includes an Introduction, explaining what is being done; Background, demonstrating what has being done before; Research description, allowing others to carefully review it and maybe to replicate it; Results, communicating the findings; and Conclusion/Discussions, which synthesizes all that has gone before and indicates directions for further research.

It seems that this requirement is implemented only to a limited degree within the genealogy community, with only a few journals making sure their published materials are peer-reviewed and follow certain guidelines.[28]

Institutional Manifestation. Although the libraries of many academic institutions have genealogy divisions, only a few institutions have genealogy as one of its academic branches. The most common library classifications place genealogy as a sub-topic of, or as complimentary to history. “Biography, genealogy, insignia” is number 920 in the Dewey Decimal Classification Class 900; “History, geography and biography,” and “Genealogy” is Subclass CS in the Library of Congress Classification’s Class C, “Auxiliary Sciences of History (General).” Only a handful of U.S. academic programs focus on genealogy: The Institute of Genealogy and History Research at Samford University (Birmingham, Alabama); Boston University’s Center for Professional Education (Boston, Massachusetts); The Center for Family History and Genealogy at Brigham Young University (Provo, Utah); the Genealogy Program at Wallace State College (Hanceville, Alabama); and professional-oriented certificates of genealogy in Akamai University’s Center for Education and Literacy (Hilo, Hawaii) and in University of Washington’s Professional and Continuing Education (Seattle, Washington). The primary focus of these centers and programs is educational and/or practical, however; they are not actively involved in academic research in genealogy.

In short, it appears that no academic genealogy department with a focus on research exists in the United States or outside of the U.S. as far as the author knows.

Is Genealogy an Academic Discipline?

Examining whether genealogy is an academic discipline based on the eight points that form the merged list of characteristics of an academic discipline, suggests that genealogy has the potential to become an academic discipline—as it has a huge market demand, professionals working in the field, many journal papers regularly published, special jargon, specific objects of research, and some unique methodologies—but also highlights the difficulties that must be overcome before such a step can be completed. What genealogy lacks is a comprehensive and organized body of knowledge involving theories and concepts and institutional manifestation—and the former seemingly is a prerequisite to the latter.

Bottom-Up Leveraging Genealogy As an Academic Discipline

Although genealogy is a pursuit being undertaken by many people around the world, and although it heavily involves inquiry, it still lacks an academic facet. According to the analysis described in this article, the fundamental barrier preventing recognition of genealogy as a discipline is its lack of a core body of knowledge involving theories and concepts and its absence from the academic milieu. In addition, the type of milieu in which it might be represented in the near future is not quite obvious. The social structure of the newly suggested field is crucially important, as academic disciplinarity does not only require a curriculum, but also an organized social grouping and network of communications. It is primarily the communication within such networks that plays a major role in a field’s formation and progression.

Moreover, when using the term “Academic Genealogy,” one must wonder what is an example of academic research in this field. Clearly, single family research is not of interest academically, for academic research must have some anchors in previous research, as well as some implications going forward, in order to make it interesting.

• Revealing the truth about one’s great-grandfather’s military service may be interesting family lore to investigate, but if it also is a case study that uses a novel research methodology, this might be of interest also as academic research.
• Compiling a list of a certain tiny farming community population according to census and vital statistics records may indeed be an interesting community research project, but if from these data some knowledge about changes in the population age in that tiny farming community over the years is to be extracted, or some comparable data is to be extracted, this might be inspiring academic research.
• Merging trees according to common information is a practical tool for solving mysteries in family research, but determining the minimum number of trees and the distribution of their sizes (say, within a certain ethnic group) which assure such a merging is a fascinating research question to be resolved (probably with the help of Mathematics).

These are just a few examples of possible research interests that might comfortably fit beneath the “Academic Genealogy” umbrella. It is clear that genealogy is an interdisciplinary research field, and this might promote its formation, as it would be an accessible field for genealogy-interested scholars from across disciplines.

In recent years, genealogy has been discussed in academic studies, either as the main methodology used or as a phenomenon examined. Professor Gur Alroy of the Faculty of Humanities, Haifa University (Israel), has studied the role of Jewish Colonization Association (JCA) and Jewish Territorialism Organization (ITO) in the Jewish emigration from the Pale of Settlement in the Russian Empire in the early 20th century. The results of his research–published in a number of journals enrich knowledge of Jewish immigration from Eastern Europe at the turn of the 20th century. This helps many genealogists, since Alroy constructed a novel resource as part of the study: a database of applications made by Jewish immigrants to JCA and ITO’s information bureaus.[29]

Another example is a History masters thesis submitted by Christine Garrett, entitled: “Genealogical Research, Ancestry.com, and Archives.”[30] The primary conclusion of the research, which was based on surveys taken by professional genealogical researchers, was that while Ancestry.com has made genealogical research easier, it has not replaced the need to visit archives for the participants in the survey. Such a conclusion is important when discussing the extent to which archives are accessible to the public, and it can serve as empirical evidence when negotiating with policymakers about public access to records (since administrators might claim that today, with “everything on the Internet,” people don’t really need access to actual archives).[31]

Another dimension of potential academic genealogical research is visualization. As genealogical data may be quite a complex structure to visualize (think not only about a family tree that holds a few ancestral families, but also about family trees connecting families from the same community), researchers—mainly from Computer Science departments—have suggested novel ways to make the task of browsing this data easier. Recent examples include:

• TimeNets, a visualization that makes temporal relationships—in particular, births and marriages—as important as family structure, with individuals represented using timelines that converge and diverge to indicate marriage and divorce, and directional edges, i.e., arrowed lines connect parents and children;[32]
• PedVis is a new way to arrange family trees visualization, with the root person in the middle and his parents above, below or to the sides of the root individual, with positions of parents alternating between generations;[33]
• GeneaQuilts is a visualization that takes the form of a diagonally filled matrix, where rows are individuals and columns are nuclear families.[34]

The developers of these visualizations suggest that the methods not only assist in genealogical data representation, but also in genealogy research per se and, thus, may be important to both software developers and end-users.

The examples cited above clearly demonstrate the multifaceted nature of possible academic genealogy research. It might be conducted in various departments and its implications may be relevant to many individuals in the genealogy field and beyond. Genealogy is not only about people and families, but also about communities and family trees as objects of research; it is based not only on documents but also on common research methods (e.g., surveys) or on unique methodologies. More than that, these examples demonstrate that genealogy-related research has been conducted in academic institutions for some time. Those interested in making genealogy a bona fide academic discipline might use this fact as part of an attempt to leverage genealogy into its own field of study.

How Genealogy Can Be Academized?

• A first step in the academization of genealogy might be, therefore, the mapping of genealogy-related academic research that already has been conducted, and of affiliated scholars who might be interested in bringing genealogy to the front of their research interests in order to examine it from their academic point of view, be it mathematical, biological, historical, linguistic, sociological, legal, medical, or any other. These scholars might potentially form the core of a new multidisciplinary community the members of which will discuss and promote research in the field, via meetings, journal publishing and other communication. This way, the field will be built bottom-up from within the academic system with a non-empty core. Hopefully, such a community will grow in content (i.e., as more research is undertaken, the more a body of knowledge will grow), size (e.g., by the joining of new generations of researchers into it), and visibility (i.e., by publishing a journal and/or organizing conferences). When that happens, we will know that the journey to the academization of genealogy has ended and that a new journey of the academic genealogy community has started.

Notes

[1] As appears on the Institute’s Mission statement, available at http://www.iijg.org/Mission/Aims.aspx (accessed September 2011),

[2] Neville Lamdan, “The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy: Five Years of Progress,” AVOTAYNU, Vol. XXVII, No. 2, Summer 2011.

[3] See: H. Daniel Wagner, “Genealogy as an Academic Discipline,” AVOTAYNU, Vol XXII, No. 1, Spring 2006, 3–11; T.W. Jones, “Post Secondary Study of Genealogy: Curriculum and its Contexts.” Presented at the IIJG Symposium. Jerusalem, Israel, 2007.

[4] S. Coyner, “Women’s Studies as an Academic Discipline: Why and How to Do It.” In G. Bowles and R. Duelli Klein (Eds.), Theories of Women’s Studies, 46–71. London, UK: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1983.

[5] M. Terras, “Disciplined: Using Educational Studies to Analyze ‘Humanities Computing’.” Literary and Linguistic Computing, 21(2), 2006, 229–246.

[6] B.A. Clark, “Academic Culture.Working Paper No. 42, Yale University Higher Education Research Group, New Haven, CT., 1980

[7] J. Monroe, J. “Introduction: The Shapes of Fields.” In Writing and Revising the Disciplines. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2002, 1–12.

[8] R. Krishnan, “What are academic disciplines?” Working paper, University of Southampton National Center for Research Methods, Southampton, UK. 2009.

[9] American Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) is comprised of more than 500 institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada that are engaged in graduate education, research and the preparation of candidates for advanced degrees. CGS member institutions award 94 percent of the doctoral degrees and 80 percent of the master’s degrees in the United States (as reported in: “Investigating Collaboration in Graduate Education,” University World News, Issue 46, September 28, 2008; available at http://www.university worldnews.com [accessed May 2010])

[10] P.D. Minton, “The Visibility of Statistics as a Discipline.” The American Statistician, 37(4), 1983, 284–289.

[11] R. Krishnan R. “What are Academic Disciplines?” Working paper, University of Southampton National Center for Research Methods, Southampton, UK. 2009

[12] In Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Retrieved August 2011, from http://dictionary.cambridge.org.

[13] Collective Memory is a term from the sociology domain describing the set of information structures shared, passed on and constructed by groups of people or societies. For example, memory of the Holocaust is shared and passed on by all the Jews around the world, including those who were born long after it had ended.

[14] C.M. Yonge, C.M. The History of Christian Names. London, UK: Parker, Son, and Bourn, 1863.

[15] A. Beider,. A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire. Teaneck, NJ: Avotaynu, 1993.

[16] E.S. Azevedo, E.S. “The Anthropological and Cultural Meaning of Family Names in Bahia, Brazil.Current Anthropology, 21(3), 360–363, 1980.

[17] B. Skyes, and C. Irven, “Surnames and the Y Chromosome.” The American Journal of Human Genetics, 66(4), 1417–1419, 2000.

[18] M. J. McGuffin, and R. Balakrishnan, “Interactive Visualization of Genealogical G raphs.” In Proceedings of the 2005 IEEE Symposium on Information Visualization (Minneapolis, MN), 16–23, 2005.

[19] B. Pears, “The Ancestor Paradox Revisited,” Northumberland & Durham Family History Society Journal, 16(3), 60–62, 1991. and information exchange.{M. Vlietstra, “XML – a replacement for GEDCOM?” Computers in Genealogy, 7(7), 302–348, 2001.

[20] D. Wagner, “Tombstone Identification Through Database Merging: A Tool for the Virtual Reconstitution of Vanished Jewish Communities. Roots-key,27(3/4), 32–34, 2007.

[21] According to various press releases by Ancestry.com Inc. as of August 2011, http://corporate.ancestry.com/press/press-releases/ 2011, and based on Ancestry.com 2010 Financial Results (Press Release), http://ir.ancestry.com/releasedetail.cfm?ReleaseID=552742.

[22] Board for Certification of Genealogists, The BCG Genealogical Standards Manual. Orem, UT: Ancestry.com, 2000; Mills, E.S. (Ed.). Professional Genealogy: A Manual for Researchers, Writers, Editors, Lecturers, and Librarians. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company, 2001.

[23] G. Mokotoff, (2008). “A Proposed Standard for Names, Dates and Places in Genealogical Databases,” AVOTAYNU, Vol. XXIV, No. 3, 3–6, 2008.

[24] E.S. Mills. Evidence!: Citation & analysis for the family historian. Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Company, 1997.

[25] B. Pears, “Our Ancestors, Conceptions, Misconceptions and a Paradox, .Northumberland & Durham Family History Society Journal, 11(1), 8–10, 1986.

[26] B. Pears, “The Ancestor Paradox Revisited. Northumberland & Durham Family History Society Journal, 16(3), 60–62, 1991.

[27] Rapaport, C. (2009). Jacobi absolute generations scale. Available online at http://iijg.org/Documents/AbsoluteGenerations.pdf (accessed August 2011); M. Honey, “A Method for Depicting Interconnected Rabbinical Families Simultaneously: The Jewish Historical Clock.” AVOTAYNU, 17, No. 3, 10–15, 2001.

[28] The National Genealogical Society Quarterly is probably the finest example of a journal that meets the highest standards.

[29] The Mass Jewish Migration Database, available at http://mjmd.haifa.ac.il/.

[30] The research was done in Auburn University, Auburn, AL; thesis submitted in 2010.

[31] See, for example, IAJGS’ Public Records Access Monitoring Committee activity, as reported in http://iajgs.org/pramc/legislation.html.

[32]W. Kim, S.K. Card and J. Heer, “Tracing Genealogical Data with TimeNets.” Paper presented in the International Working Conference on Advanced Visual Interfaces, Rome, Italy, May 25–29, 2010.

[33] Tuttle, L.G. Nonato, and C. Silva, “PedVis: A Structured, Space-Efficient Technique for Pedigree Visualization. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 16(6), 1063–1072, 2010.

[34] A. Bezerianos, P. Dragicevic, J-D Fekete, J. Bae and B. Watson, B. IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, 16(6, 1073–1081, 2010.

The post Leveraging Genealogy as an Academic Discipline appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

If you happen to be Jewish, and at least culturally so, then you are probably already familiar with the concept of “Jewish Geography.”

For those who are puzzled by what this is, you can search the internet for various definitions and examples of this.  One example I like, with me having replaced a few words with [factors] is “Jewish Geography, as it’s called, is amongst the greater pastimes of today’s “culturally Jewish” population — a group of people that is at once secular, but has weirdly and proudly maintained their heritage through a strange combination of [factors]. It’s a group that’s very specific, but a group that is all part of one giant inside joke — a joke that gets funnier and funnier the more you play these increasingly predictable mutual friend games.”^[1]

Personally, I would change the notion that it is “funnier” to being rather astounding.

Jewish Geography usually starts when you meet someone for the first time. When you are introduced, if their family name seems like one you have heard before, you might ask,

“Are you related to …?”

If you ask them where they are from and the place also rings a bell, you might ask,

“Do you happen to know …?”

There are so many other types of questions, like

“Where did you go to school?”

All of these types of questions might elicit answers that bring on a connectivity. The result might be just a casual recognition of a mutually familiar person or it might lead to a long term friendship, or possibly marriage. The smiles and head-nodding are some sort of confirmation that there is some global plan to bring people together.

Without any research or proof, I’m going to express my opinion that this is a phenomenon that has existed for millennia wherever Jews found themselves in the world. It helped connect people and make them feel comfortable if and when they were forced to pick up and move. However I believe that it grew and matured so much more after the Holocaust, because after the loss of six million Jews, those that remained world-wide were always looking for the possibility of long-lost family, myself included. The joy of finding some connectivity was a spark of light in a world that had become sad and dark.

Toward the end of the 20^th century, finding the connections among people is very different. While those who engage in genealogical research are looking for their own families they often encounter other like-minded people. Then their family trees might intersect briefly because of some singular event. Or, with the aid of on-line family trees like MyHeritage™ and Geni people discover relationships that are through marriages and not blood-relationships. With DNA projects, you may discover people who range from being somewhat close relatives, i.e., 2-4^th cousins, to those whose relationship is noted as “speculative.”

Social media and networking websites, like Facebook and LinkedIn offer much easier and faster ways of communicating, connecting and sharing worldwide, and not just limited to Jewish people, of course.

However, consider Jewish Geography that is more expansive and goes back in time, spanning some generations, rather than contemporaries.  This involves people who have not only done their own genealogical research, but have lived long enough to remember old family names before they were changed legally, or in the case of towns and cities, through wars and regime changes.

Therein lay my problem: How could I easily demonstrate a complicated multi-family connectivity over space (locations) and time (generations)? As I have done before, I considered some modeling tools I had learned and used when working in aerospace. In this case, a process flow diagram (PFD)[2]. Part of the problem of course, is that I am working on a two dimensional surface of paper, and that means I have to find a way to deal with the dimension of time.

Figure 1.  Sample Jewish Geography Map

I have borrowed from the grid used in a PFD such that horizontal sections represent a single family that I labeled with that family name as it is known and spelled today. I have used vertical lines to separate generations that I have labeled at the bottom as Gen-1, through Gen-5, since I am dealing with five generations, in my example. In the top left, I have labeled this experience as JG (for Jewish Geography) and the date that the triggering incident, in this case, a verbal exchange and the ensuing revelations.  Here is my grid, with the vertical sections not equal. The stretching of these Gen-sections is to accommodate how many individuals might be included in each generation, for the sake of this encounter. I will explain in a bit.

For the family names, I have also given a sort of code comprising the first two letters of the family name. This is so that if I want to refer to a particular person in a particular generation, I might say, person YA-Gen-2, and you can readily locate that person in the grid. Each family row is necessarily only an excerpt from a full family tree and is intended to limit the Jewish Geography connections to ONLY specific individuals. In any case, only partial genealogical data may be known, but enough to explain the connectivity.

Despite limiting an individual to a family and generation, sometimes, more than one person in the same generation needs to be included.  In that case, in each Gen section, the people can be identified in a top-down, or left-to-right manner, depending on the size of the cell. In the example and explanation I will provide below, this can be observed, especially in the MAIMON family row.

Marriages occur between these families, and I have enclosed the marriage of two people with a red, dashed rectangle. Sometimes this works well when two families are closely located on the page; sometimes this rectangle has to stretch vertically to enclose the couple.  Below is the mapping of a complicated Jewish Geography exchange that took place on 4-5^th August 2016.

Figure 2 Jewish Geography Mapping of August 4-5, 2016

I don’t want this to seem like a Russian Novel with a hundred characters, but I do need to provide some backdrop events, the “givens,” that have relevance to what came to light in August 2016.

1. GR-Gen1, Rabbi Leopold GREENWALD, as he was known in Columbus, OH, was born in Sighet, Romania. He was a prolific writer, mostly in Hebrew, but also in Yiddish. He immigrates to the USA in 1924, and becomes Rabbi of Beth Jacob Congregation in Columbus, OH.
2. GO-Gen2, Henri Goldstein, was my father. He visited Rabbi L. GREENWALD, and the Rabbi gave him his singular book in Yiddish, that translates as “1000 Years of Jewish Life in Hungary.” He inscribed it, with words to the effect, “To the son of the man with whom I studied in Huncovce, Slovakia,” and dated corresponding to 9 March 1952.
3. GR-Gen1 is referring to GO-Gen1, Reb Leopold GOLDSTEIN. In this collection of Gen-1 personalities, he is the only one who never immigrated to the USA. He was a victim of the Holocaust, being killed in Majdanek, Poland in 1942.
4. I am GO-Gen3, Madeleine (nee GOLDSTEIN), who marries IS-Gen3, Jerry ISENBERG. I pick up the book mentioned in 2, and try to find out more about GR-GEN1. I locate his son, Jack GREENWALD, identified as GR-Gen2, in 2007. We maintain a correspondence especially as I find more books that have valuable genealogical information about parts of Slovakia in which I am interested.
5. IS-Gen1, Zeleg “Joe” ISENBERG, emigrates from Pinsk, Belarus to the USA in 1910. His wife, daughter, and son, Irving (IS-Gen2), arrive in 1912. They settle in Chicago, IL.
6. IS-Gen3, Jerrold ISENBERG, is born in Chicago, IL. Attends schools in Chicago until family moves to Los Angeles in 1958.  Madeleine and Jerry marry in February 1965 and move to Haifa, Israel for Jerry to study for his PhD. They live in Haifa 1965-1975, and then return to live in Los Angeles, CA.
7. YA-Gen3B, Jean YABLOK meets and marries MA-Gen3A, Albert MAIMON in 1964. They live in Seattle, WA, but move to Haifa, Israel in 1970.  They stay in Haifa until 1972, and then return to live in Seattle.
8. The ISENBERG family meets the MAIMON family in Haifa, and their respective children meet each other when all are very young.
9. Because of a business-related trip the ISENBERGs travel to Seattle and re-establish a connection with the MAIMONs, spending a Shabbat with them in 1986.
10. IS-Gen4, Daphne ISENBERG, meets Menachem MAIMON at a National Council of Synagogue Youth (NCSY) Shabbaton. Parents later explain how families knew each other in Haifa.
11. IS-Gen4, Daphne, marries OR-Gen4, Jonathan ORENSHEIN, in March 1992.
12. OR-Gen5, Derek ORENSHEIN becomes a camp counselor in Camp Moshava, in Wild Rose, WI.

This is what we knew before meeting again in August 2016. This time we were traveling to Seattle, WA, to attend the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies Conference (IAJGS 2016) and I would be presenting two talks, based on my on-going research into findings on tombstones. This particular conference had a focus on Sephardic Jewry and knowing that the MAIMON family has been very involved in Seattle’s Sephardic community since the beginning of the 20^th century, I was looking forward to clarifying some questions with our friends.  Once again, we depended on their hospitality for a Shabbat and arrived Thursday afternoon, August 4.

After settling in, we caught up a bit with current family history and then talked about our hosts’ families. Jean, it turned out was born in Marietta, OH.  She and her brother had been working on their family history and in a couple of weeks, she had her husband Al, were going to travel to Tykotin, Poland, to where her grandfather came from. That led to her telling us about her grandfather, Osher Zev YABLOK (YA-Gen1), who had emigrated from that town and eventually made it to Columbus, OH. He had been multi-talented, having been a cantor, a shochet (ritual slaughterer), and a mohel (one who performs circumcisions).  Ding Ding!  I just had to ask,

“Did your father happen to know Rabbi Leopold Greenwald in Columbus, OH?”

“Know him?  Why he had been the cantor in the same synagogue! “

I parried with, well, “I’m in touch with his son Jack, who lives in Denver, CO.”

Hmm, Jean thought for a moment.

“I think I met Jack in 1973.  My sister Esther and her family were living in Denver, but she died there at a very young age.  I think I met him at her shiva (week of mourning).”

I told Jean I was going to contact Jack and asked him if he remembered her grandfather, Osher Zev Yablok. It was getting late and I figured he would get the e-mail on Friday morning.

In catching up about our children and grandchildren, the Maimons said that two of their granddaughters were currently in a summer camp in Wild Rose, WI.

“Wait a minute,” Jerry and I said, “our grandson Derek is a counselor at the same camp!” We’ll have to call him and ask him if he knows your grand-daughters. That too had to wait until the morning.

On Friday morning, August 5, I found an e-mail from Jack GREENWALD, who likes to sprinkle his e-mails with Yiddish words to challenge my minimal knowledge of that language.

“Yes taaka (indeed) a small world. Yablok was my mohel. And the Wolf girl? I attended minyanim (prayer services) during her shiva and her father was there, also. Yes, a sheinum grus (a warm greeting) to Ms. Maimon. And have a wonderful Shabbos (Sabbath).”

Later Friday morning, we spoke to our grandson Derek, to wish him also a Shabbat Shalom.  This was the last weekend of the six-week summer camp in Wisconsin before everyone flew back to their homes.  We put him on speaker-phone with the Maimon’s in earshot.  We explained that we were in Seattle and asked him if he had met or knew their Maimon’s granddaughters, Lulu and Sophie.

“Well they’re sitting right near me as we speak. They are also counselors.”

We all just had to laugh at the coincidence that these kids had crossed paths at yet another generational level.

This could have ended the episode of multi-generational Jewish Geography, but not quite. Since Al Maimon is descended from Sephardic Jews, i.e., those who are known to have been dispersed after the Spanish Inquisition in 1492, we know that Sephardic religious practices vary from those of Ashkenazi Jews (those who are from more northern European countries). While Jean was born into an Ashkenazi family, since marrying she has adopted the Sephardic practices and together they are very involved with Sephardic Bikur Holim synagogue that practices the Sephardic customs. We attended with them and experienced and enjoyed the diversity. At lunch, the Maimons had some guests and table-talk included names of people familiar to the Sephardic community. One name we heard made Jerry and me perk up our ears: BENOLIEL.

Since I have become the de facto family historian, I have pieced together Jerry’s family history and his life before we were married. This included his early school years. While Jerry puts me off these days with, “I don’t remember,” one of the incidents that clearly stood out for him was a school yard event that could have been traumatic but wasn’t. We are talking about the early 1950s, some 60 or so years ago, in Chicago, IL. Exactly four years earlier (Aug 4, 2012), I had added the following paragraph to Jerry’s story:

“The neighborhood was a typical mixture of nationalities and religions. Not far from the Jewish Academy was the St. Mel’s private school”.  At that time, most of the kids who went there were Italian Catholics.  Jerry remembered an incident where for some unknown reason one of the St. Mel’s boys accosted and threatened Jim BENOLIEL with a knife in his hand, just outside of the school. Since school had let out, many kids surrounded this pair. As student body leader of the Academy, Jim said, “Just remember, if you do anything to me, there are a whole lot of witnesses around!” And that was the end of it.  What led to the confrontation is long forgotten, but the threatening behavior is part of Jerry’s memory.

As you can see it had been sufficiently memorable.  What Jerry and I could not know was that Jim BENOLIEL was – Al Maimon’s first cousin!  His aunt Rachel Maimon (MA-Gen-2B) had married Jim’s father. Jim is identified as MA-Gen-3B on the map, and is better known as Rabbi Haim BENOLIEL, who in 1972, established the Yeshivat Mikdash Melech, the first Sephardic Yeshiva Gedolah in the Western Hemisphere.

A few days later, at the IAJGS conference, Al Maimon, who managed an exhibit at the conference, introduced me to his cousin Al BENOLIEL (MA-Gen-3C), who was Jim’s (Haim’s) brother. Al was about to sit down to talk to Adam Brown, who was gathering information and DNA samples for a Sephardic DNA project. I quickly located Jerry and brought him over to meet Al Benoliel.

At this point, possibly I could have included Adam Brown in the mix, because he is also the manager of the avotaynuonline.com.  I met him at the previous IAJGS conference in Jerusalem and he has since published some of my writings.  This too may appear someday.  However, I cannot add Adam to this map, since I have effectively run out of room on this diagram!

In conclusion, I have indicated that this is merely an attempt to convey in a simple manner, complicated interpersonal events that span time and place.  Consider it a strawman and perhaps someone will yet devise a better method.  I for one, would welcome that.

So, where did you go to summer camp?

Notes

[1] http://thoughtcatalog.com/lance-pauker/2014/02/the-10-best-places-in-america-to-play-jewish-geography/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Process_flow_diagram: “A process flow diagram (PFD) is a diagram commonly used in chemical and process engineering to indicate the general flow of plant processes and equipment. The PFD displays the relationship between major equipment of a plant facility and does not show minor details such as piping details and designations. Another commonly used term for a PFD is a flowsheet.”

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Collaboration can improve productivity by combining resources and wisdom to obtain a greater amount of data and construct better-reasoned conclusions. However, collaboration is also a potential source of much anxiety, disagreement, and bad feeling. Significant research has looked at collaborative styles in a variety of settings. These can be combined to offer the following tips for people collaborating on family history research.

[This article is based on a lecture given by the author at RootsTech 2014 in Salt Lake City, Utah]

1. Give and Take

Collaboration is based on the notion that all parties are providing something of value to the joint endeavor. In any sustained collaboration, it is worthwhile for you to evaluate exactly what it is that you and the other collaborators provide to the project:

Try asking yourself the following questions:

• What information am I offering to my collaborators?
• Do they need or want it?
• How am I communicating this information to the collaborators?
• How much work are my collaborators required to undertake to convert what I am providing into a format that is useful to them?
• What are they offering me? 
• How useful is this information, and how useful is the format in which I am receiving this information? 
• Is it less work for me to convert the information that they provide into what I need, or is it easier to simply obtain it myself?
• How likely is it that my collaborators would agree with my answers to these questions?

Often it is the method of communicating work product between collaborators, rather than the work itself, that constitutes the fundamental problem that needs to be resolved.

And most of all, remember the golden rule of collaboration: If you do not feel that you are giving more than your share, than you are probably not giving enough.

Models of Collaboration

Should we “divide and conquer” or share “to-do lists”?

The downside to “divide and conquer” strategies is not in the quality or quantity of results. For example, you may hugely benefit when experts on your team contribute that which they do best. However, if you divide off all research on a particular line of research to others, you should expect a reduction in your emotional attachment and interest in that line. If your goal is to love and feel connected to your ancestors, you need to invest your own ‘time and effort researching them, and a shared to do list may be more effective than divide and conquer. That being said, the distinction between shared to-do lists and divide-and-conquer is somewhat fuzzy

We both do and compare. We each double-check every step of one another’s work.

This rarely results in increased speed, but does result in increased quality and hence more of the work done is of value to the participants.

If the criteria by which a better result is determined are not agreed upon (e.g., I value personal stories more than you do) then this model can result in protracted arguments.

Both do on own. You do your thing, I do mine.

 This is the non-collaborative model, and it isn’t necessarily a bad one. If disagreements are not yielding to shared reasoning, agreeing not to share the contentious content may be the best way to move past the disagreement and on to more productive territory.

The Research Tools We Use Impacts How We Allocate Tasks

Most research tools implicitly assume a particular model of task allocation. Some tools are based around the idea of a single shared conclusion and do-on-own models are explicitly discouraged. Others are based on each person owning their own conclusions and shared to-do models require extensive work to keep both trees in sync.

Collaboration tools in family history are still in their infancy. Developers are actively redesigning and modifying many aspects of these tools, including decisions that impact the underlying collaboration model assumptions. Don’t be afraid to step away from your current tools if they are getting in your way.

Handling Problems

There are many problems that can arise in any collaboration. Here are a few I have seen often in my years teaching teamwork and supervising team projects.

“They just won’t give up on X”.  Clearly, neither will you give up on “X” or you wouldn’t care.  Once you notice this is a problem you’ve already passed the point of diminishing returns: more arguments, bringing in people to side with you, etc., will just create bad feelings. It’s time to split up or compromise.  If you cannot easily each have your own copy of the contested data, try making the shared data fuzzy (e.g., 1854-1857) and add a comment explaining that researchers disagree. (e.g., “might be 1854-05-02 (explanation) or 1857-09-13 (explanation).”

“Their research is of low quality”   First off, don’t try to “fix” them. If you think of them as needing fixed, you’ll get into an unhealthy mindset and collaboration is doomed. How is the quality low?

“It‘s wrong, and they ignore evidence to the contrary.” See “They just won’t give up on X” above.

“It’s wrong, and they admit this when I confront them.”  In this case, you can basically ignore them as they contribute little and are not impeding your research.

“There are no citations.” Treat them like an unreliable source. Once you find your own citations (for or against), move on.

“They make things up” Braggarts, compulsive liars, manipulative liars, and those with a tenuous grasp on reality do exist. If you happen to meet one, know first that confrontation usually doesn’t work: they’ll just spin more lies.   I have not seen effective solutions to liars in family history. In other fields, there are at least three basic approaches:

1. Praise their honesty, act like their lies never happened. This is a long-term practice that can improve honesty, but requires great patience,

2. Ban them from the community (prison, mental hospitals, IP blacklisting, etc.).

3. Ban them from the community without their knowledge (give them their own sandbox to play in).

If your collaboration environment does not support these (many don’t) then you’ll have to just live with it or find a new environment.

“They take but won’t give” See the section “Give More” above. That said, there are people who are “takers” in every community.  At some level, this is not entirely a problem.  After all, sharing with others is a public good, and don’t we all wish we had a larger audience?

Conclusion

In the end, if the value of what they are providing you is worth more than the resources you invest in the collaboration, that is a net win for you. Be polite and gracious and they might collaborate with you more in the future!

But if you are investing more in sharing with your collaborators then they are investing in you, then before this develops into resentment, consider backing off from the collaboration until you have taken steps to make the relationship more reciprocal.

The post Tips for Successful Research Collaboration appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

I believe the first time I even heard about Herbie, my grandmother’s cousin from South Jersey, was the day I asked her to dictate the family tree to me. I was so focused on writing down everything she said – she gave me close to a hundred people in one sitting – that I had very little time to reflect on any of it. I annotated Herbie’s name with her words “killed WWII” and moved on. It wasn’t until a few years after she died that I realized the missed opportunity to ask the right questions. When we cleaned out her apartment, I discovered that of all the letters she must have received over her long life, there were only two sets of correspondence she kept. One was Herbie’s letters to her during his military service. For the first time I realized that Herbie was just a year younger than she, brother to the favorite cousin and son to the favorite aunt she often mentioned. She and Herbie must have been close, too.

This past Veterans Day, Herbie’s niece posted a picture of him on Facebook. It was the first time I saw what he looked like. His cheerful smile raised a lump in my throat. I began to wonder about his death and life. One Google search later, I miraculously had much of what I had hoped to learn: name, short biography, military rank and division, burial, photograph, awards, even newspaper articles, all due to the amazing, volunteer efforts of Phil Cohen in creating his Camden County history site, DVRBS.com. Herbie’s page also contained a couple of surprises about how his path had crossed my own.

[This article first appeared in Chronicles, the Journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia (JGSGP), Volume 31-2, Summer 2014. To learn more about the JGSGP, please visit http://www.jgsgp.org/] 

I knew that I had grown up near where Herbie’s family had lived because my grandmother had sometimes pointed across a busy intersection near my childhood home to tell me she had visited cousins there, back when the area was in the country. Years later, when I began attending a particular local synagogue,she told me I should ask its rabbi emeritus if he remembered the Goldbergs because they had been founding members. I never did. It seemed too remote. But on Herbie’s memorial page I learned it was that rabbi who had buried him, the synagogue’s library was named for him, and its memorial wall contained a plaque with his name. How had I never noticed either?

I was most startled to learn from Phil’s site that Herbie’s name was on two war memorials in our shared hometown, neither of which I had even known existed. One was in the neighborhood where he had grown up and his parents remained after he died (much of which was obliterated by theAshland PATCO station built in the ’60s). It was hard to believe all this family history was just a breath away from where I grew up.

So, in a short period of time, I turned a name and “killed WWII” into a trove of information. Plus, from my uncle I learned the history of the battle in which Herbie was killed, from the synagogue archivist I received a moving account of the library’s dedication, and most importantly, from Herbie’s niece I heard memories of the life he had led. What could I do with all these fragments to share with my family the full story of the person Herbie had been? Enter my own web site, Treelines.com, which I created for just this purpose.

Treelines is a new kind of genealogy web site focusing on the stories of people’s lives. Other genealogy programs help you organize names, dates, relationships, and sources into a tree. In contrast, Treelines uses that tree as a starting point and proceeds to add memories, photographs, anecdotes, and historical context, all of which conveys the true measure of a person’s life. The results are part digital scrapbook, part multimedia story, generating a potentially more enriching, accessible, and fun experience for your entire family.

If you’re an experienced genealogist, you can get started on Treelines by uploading your family tree in the GEDCOM format, which is what I did. When I first looked at Herbie’s page on Treelines, it was very clear that it didn’t do his life justice. That big green plus sign beckoned: there were so many more pages that needed to be added to Herbie’s story.

Using Treelines’ storybuilder (which won the RootsTech Developer Challenge), I started entering the information I had piece-by-piece. Some of it was genealogical, like census and military records, while other parts were a mix of genealogical and narrative, like the newspaper articles and synagogue records. Even more meaningful were photographs of Herbie, his grave, his tombstone, and his memorial in the synagogue. Most important of all, however, were the letters he wrote my grandmother while deployed and the family stories his niece recalled, which had little research value, but immeasurable family worth.

As I watched the timeline of his life emerge from all of these artifacts, I made sure to add what historical context and personal color I could – how he struggled during training to fit in with his raucous fellow soldiers, how his regiment faced fierce, almost non-stop fighting from the moment they arrived in Italy, and, of course, how tragic it was that this cheerful young man, with such love for his fiancée, had to go to war at all. The emerging story also gave me a place to explain to my family what it meant to me to discover that his life resonated so close to home.

Herbie’s story wasn’t only mine to tell, though. My own uncle and Herbie’s niece had family and historical context to share as well. Fortunately, Treelines is designed for just this sort of collaboration. After inviting them to our private family tree and giving them access to edit Herbie’s story, they could add their own pages, too.

The best part of having Herbie’s biography online is that his story will continue to evolve as we learn new things about him. For example, his deceased personnel file is still on order, and the synagogue archivist continues to turn up more information about the family’s involvement for me. Whenever these findings arrive, I can easily add them to the story and alert my family. The relatives whom I’ve invited to edit the story can also add information as they dig up pictures or recall memories. After importing my GEDCOM file, Herbie’s life story on Treelines consisted of just two pages. After adding all of this information, Herbie’s life story begins to take shape in the Treelines story builder. Chronicles – Volume 31-2, Summer 2014 9 In short, Treelines makes your family tree the basis for a digital scrapbook to which you and your relatives can add anything, whether a sourced genealogical fact or a priceless family anecdote.Connecting the details into a story, as we did for Herbie, is optional. It’s enough just to use the site as a gathering place for everything worth remembering. Treelines’ effective tools make it easy for you and your relatives to work together, no matter how far apart you all live, to preserve in one place the most meaningful aspects of your family’s history.

If you’ve already been working on your tree elsewhere, you may question the value of working Treelines-style. The benefits go beyond just collaborating more easily with your relatives and recording information that doesn’t have a place in traditional family tree software. Treelines creates an inviting experience for those relatives who need convincing about why family history is so important. The design is meant to engage them not only so they enjoy perusing the scrapbooks or stories you put together, but also so they can easily add their own contributions.The whole point of making genealogical discoveries is to find a way to pass them down, and Treelines is designed with that primary goal in mind.

On Memorial Day I invited my family to read Herbie’s story to commemorate his service. Whether they read every word or caught the gist from the pictures, they were connecting with the past in a way my original tree with its plain facts and sources would not have permitted. It is gratifying to me as a family historian to know I’ve managed to compile and share an important story. What is even more important is that the life and ultimate sacrifice of our cousin, Staff Sergeant Herbert Goldberg, who grew up just down the road, are still being honored two generations later.

Everything in your tree is private by default on Treelines, but I chose to make Herbie’s story public so you can read it at https://treelines.com/herbie/.

❖ Tammy A. Hepps is the creator of Treelines.com, a family story-sharing website and winner of the RootsTech 2013 Developer Challenge. She has a degree in computer science from Harvard as well as sixteen years of experience in digital media, leading a diverse range of technology initiatives. She has been working on her family tree for more than twenty years and combines the depth of her knowledge in genealogy, technology, and storytelling into her Treelines website. She serves on the boards of directors of JewishGen and the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center (PJAC), and the board of advisors for the Rauh Jewish Archives.

The post Personal Journeys: Remembering Army Staff Sergeant Herbert Goldberg, 1922-1944 appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

Introduction

The authors have considerable experience conducting DNA lineage studies, with a focus on Y-DNA studies of the world’s historic rabbinical lineages.[1]^, [2]^, [3]^, [4]^, [5] Each of these studies presents its own unique challenges. Two of the more challenging aspects that are common to all such studies are the difficulty in finding pedigreed descendants of a rabbinical lineage, and then, once they are identified and located, convincing them to take a DNA test.

In this article, we shall focus on the some of the difficulties that we have encountered in convincing pedigreed descendants to agree to take a DNA test, the predominant reasons why they are reluctant or refuse to test, and some of the strategies that we have found effective in dealing with these difficulties and in encouraging them to test.

Although most pedigreed descendants whom we invite to join our DNA studies and to take a DNA test give us their full cooperation, a significant proportion of them either are reluctant to take a DNA test or simply refuse to do so.[6] This can be a major problem when only a small number of pedigreed descendants of a rabbinical lineage under study can be identified and located.

There are many reasons why pedigreed descendants either are reluctant or refuse to take a DNA test. The various rationales that we have encountered in working with pedigreed descendants fall into the following six main categories:

• Lack of interest in genealogy/genetic testing
• Cost considerations
• Misunderstanding/mistrust of DNA testing
• Fear of what the results of DNA testing will show
• Privacy concerns
• Religious objections

Lack of Interest in Genealogy/Genetic Testing

Although it is often difficult to fathom, especially for a genealogist, some pedigreed descendants have absolutely no interest in genealogy, genetic testing, or learning more about their Jewish heritage. This lack of interest can be attributable to any number of reasons, among which are:

• A pedigreed descendant may believe that he already knows his heritage, and that DNA testing will not add any new information to what he already knows.
• The pedigreed descendant’s family may no longer be Jewish, and he may be uncomfortable exploring his Jewish heritage.
• The pedigreed descendant may have a painful event in his family’s past that he does not care to revisit, or he may be estranged from his family and may have no interest in learning more about his family’s heritage.

Lack of interest in genealogy/genetic testing is one of the more common reasons why some descendants refuse to take a DNA test. This refusal is generally indicated by a polite yet firm declaration that they are not interested in participating in the Y-DNA study. Occasionally, disinterested descendants will not respond to requests for testing, and they simply ignore all attempts at correspondence with them.

In our Y-DNA study of the Katzenellenbogen rabbinical lineage, we were dismayed when the only pedigreed descendant we identified who still bore the Katzenellenbogen surname refused to take a Y-DNA test. His family was no longer Jewish, and, for that reason, his wife harshly refused the test on his behalf, and rejected our efforts to contact him directly.

Some descendants do not understand the genealogical significance of their DNA test.  It took us the better part of a year to convince a pedigreed descendant of the Shpoler Zeida to take a Y-DNA test. When we explained the critical importance of his Y-DNA test to the success of the entire study, he finally relented, and agreed to test.

This is not a simple issue to address, as it is difficult to motivate someone to take a DNA test if he has no personal interest in his family history or heritage, and no encouragement or support from family members to pursue testing.

Cost Considerations

Some pedigreed descendants are interested in learning more about their heritage and are willing to take a DNA test, but only if there is little or no cost involved. We reduce the cost of all Y-DNA tests for all pedigreed descendants by ordering their tests at a negotiated research discount rate, but for many of these descendants, the authors have found it necessary to fully sponsor their Y-DNA tests. Without this financial incentive, these descendants would most likely decline to test.

A potential participant in our forthcoming Y-DNA study on the lineage of Rabbi Raphael of Bershad [7] was not particularly interested in his rabbinical heritage, but was willing to be tested; however, he emphatically declared that he would not pay “one thin dime” for his test kit. Since his surname was a variant of the unique family name of Rabbi Raphael’s descendants, “Friedgant” (peace hand), we offered to pay for his test, and he did prove to match the other tested descendants.

Another candidate for that study, who also bore a variant of the family surname, was quite interested in his ancestry, but, as he explained his current circumstances, it became obvious that paying for the kit would be a financial hardship for him. In this case, our offer to sponsor his test kit changed a reluctant “no” to an enthusiastic “yes.”

This policy of sponsoring DNA tests for pedigreed descendants is consistent with one of the late Rabbi Malcolm Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy: “If verifying data involves costs to others these should be reimbursed.” [8] Once a Y-DNA genetic signature of a rabbinical lineage has been identified, and the findings have been verified and published, it is significantly easier to persuade other descendants of the lineage to take a DNA test, and to cover the cost of the test themselves, as they see a direct benefit in connecting themselves to the lineage through DNA testing.

Misunderstanding/Mistrust of DNA Testing

Some descendants do not understand what DNA testing is, or what type of information it is designed to produce. Some of them have read misinformation about genetic testing, claiming that it is unreliable, and that its results cannot be believed. Other descendants mistakenly believe that a DNA test will reveal personal medical information that their employer or health insurance company can use to discriminate against them. It took us several months to convince one of our pedigreed descendants of Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl to take a Y-DNA test, because he believed that his test would reveal personal medical information that his insurance company would use to raise his health insurance premiums, or to terminate his policy. That descendant has since tested, was found to match the Y-DNA genetic signature of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, and was overjoyed with the results of his test.

Providing basic information on the nature of DNA testing to these descendants, together with links to previously published DNA studies, can help establish credibility and encourage them to test, although some are very intractable in their beliefs.

Fear of What the Results of DNA Testing Will Show

Two of Rabbi Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy state that: “Family traditions must be interpreted with caution and only used as clues,” and “Thou shalt clearly label the questionable and the fairy tale.” [9] Y-DNA genetic testing, which was not available during Rabbi Stern’s lifetime, is very useful for just this purpose – separating fact from the questionable, and the fairy tale.

However, some pedigreed descendants are reluctant to take a DNA test because they are afraid of what the results of the testing might show. They may know that there is a gap or an uncertainty in their line of descent, or they may suspect that their line passes through a maternal ancestor.

This was the case for one potential participant in our forthcoming study on the lineage of Rabbi Raphael of Bershad. His family lore claimed descent from Rabbi Raphael.  There was some uncertainty in the lineage, however, because his great-great-grandfather had changed his surname, and the family did not know the original surname. Although the descendant was very interested in his family history, he decided not to participate in our study because he thought that he might be descended from the rabbi through a maternal ancestor, and he did not want to confirm his suspicion by testing his Y-DNA.

In some cases, descendants of a rabbinical lineage may know, or strongly suspect, that their yichus (pedigree) claims may be exaggerated. There may be a weak link or missing generation in the lineage, and unfounded or unsubstantiated assumptions made regarding who that ancestor was. These descendants generally have an impressive yichus that was passed down through the generations by oral history, and they do not want to place that yichus in danger of being disproved by Y-DNA testing.

We encountered an example of this in our study of a branch of the Savran-Hager family, which claims paternal descent from the Savraner rabbis of the Savran-Bendery Chassidic dynasty.

The Savran-Bendery Chassidic dynasty was founded by the sons of Rabbi Shimon Shlomo I (c. 1750 – 1802) of Savran; Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Giterman of Savran (c. 1775 – 1838), and his brother, Rabbi Aryeh Leib Wertheim of Bendery (c. 1772 – 1854). In our Y-DNA study of the Savran-Bendery Chassidic dynasty, we tested pedigreed descendants of both rabbis and identified the Y-DNA genetic signature of the lineage.[10]

The Savran-Hager dynasty claims that their paternal ancestor, Rabbi Baruch (born c. 1820) was a son of Shimon Shlomo Giterman II (c. 1811–1848), son of Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Giterman of Savran, and a descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, through Shimon Shlomo’s wife, Feyga Yenta (née Vulis.)

It took nearly two years to find two descendants from different branches of the Savran-Hager family who were willing to take a Y-DNA test. They were tested and their Y-DNA was found to match each other. However, their Y-DNA did not match the Y-DNA genetic signature or haplogroup of the pedigreed descendants of the Savraner rabbis, from which their family claims to be paternally descended.

This finding led us to take a closer look at the Hager family tree, and to research the documentation of their descent from the Giterman lineage. We concluded that based upon the Y-DNA evidence, the genealogical evidence, and his year of birth, Rabbi Baruch cannot be a son of Shimon Shlomo II, and a paternal grandson of Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Giterman. He cannot, therefore, be a descendant of the Baal Shem Tov through Shimon Shlomo’s wife, Feyga Yenta Vulis. We believe that Rabbi Boruch was most likely the son of Rabbi Moshe Tzvi’s daughter, Vitya Feyga.

This may explain the difficulty that we encountered in finding Savran-Hager descendants who were willing to take a Y-DNA test. Yichus plays a very important role in determining leadership positions in Chassidic dynasties, and the descendants who refused to test may have known that their paternal descent from the Savraner rabbis was suspect, and that it could be disproven by Y-DNA testing.

Reluctance to take a DNA test due to fear of what the results will show is a difficult issue to overcome, as this trepidation may be very well founded. When this issue arises, we try to counsel descendants that it is always preferable to separate fact from fiction, and to know the truth regarding their lineage, and who they are descended from, rather than to believe in unfounded or exaggerated yichus claims. To quote the fourth of Rabbi Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy: “Thou shalt not hang nobility or royalty on your family tree without verifying with experts.” [11]

Privacy Concerns

Privacy concerns are a big issue for some descendants, especially those who are religious. They are concerned how the results of their DNA tests will be used, and who will have access to them. Some are reluctant to have their results shared with their genetic matches, posted to a genealogy website, or published in a journal article.

One way that we address privacy concerns is to assure our study participants that their DNA results will remain confidential, and that they will not be shared with any outside party or published in a journal article without their written permission. At a descendant’s request, we will also remove personal identifiers from his DNA data to protect his identity.

These strategies are in keeping with another of Rabbi Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy: “Thou shalt credit those who help you and ask permission of those whose work you use.” [12] They help to reassure some descendants, but others remain skeptical and refuse to test because of privacy concerns.

Religious Objections

Because we are testing pedigreed descendants of rabbinical lineages, some of them are quite religious. This can lead to a reluctance to test based on religious beliefs or principles.  Some Chassidic Jewish men will seek the permission of either their fathers or their rabbis before agreeing to take a Y-DNA test. Rabbis are divided on the question of whether DNA testing is compatible with Halachic law (the collective body of Jewish religious laws derived from the written and oral Torah).[13] Some will give their permission to test, and some will not. It is rare for a descendant to override the decision of his father or rabbi.

In these cases, we often enlist a member of the rabbinical or Chassidic community to reach out to these descendants, and to assist in explaining the purpose of taking a Y-DNA test and the procedure involved in obtaining the sample.

Recently, we attempted to contact several pedigreed maternal descendants of Malka Twersky, the daughter of Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky (founder of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty) and his wife, Sarah Shapira, and we invited them to participate in our proposed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) study.

The purpose of this pioneering mitochondrial DNA study was to identify the mtDNA genetic signature of the maternal line of a famed rabbinical dynasty. The maternal descendants were contacted by one of our study investigators, Yitzchak Twersky, who is, himself, a pedigreed descendant of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty.

Unfortunately, none of the maternal descendants who were contacted agreed to test. They indicated that based on religious grounds, it was immodest and inappropriate for a man to contact them for this purpose.

Recently, our co-investigator, Susan Steeble, discussed DNA testing with a Chassidic friend. Her friend indicated that she would be willing to be tested if there was a medical or humanitarian reason for doing so, especially to help others, but that she would not test out of mere curiosity or to find distant relatives.

Summary and Conclusions

Conducting DNA studies of rabbinical lineages presents several unique challenges. Identifying pedigreed descendants of the lineage is only half the battle; the other half is convincing them to take a DNA test. Although most of these descendants are very cooperative with our DNA lineage project goals and testing protocols, a significant proportion of them either are reluctant to take a DNA test or refuse to do so.

The main reasons that descendants refuse to test include: lack of interest, cost considerations, mistrust of DNA testing, fear of what the results of DNA testing will show, privacy concerns, and religious objections. Based on our experience conducting numerous DNA studies, we have implemented a variety of strategies for alleviating some of these objections and concerns. These strategies conform to the IAJGS Ethics/Code of Conduct,[14] which incorporate the late Rabbi Malcolm Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy.

We provide basic DNA testing information and links to previous DNA studies to help educate descendants, alleviate mistrust, and demonstrate the value of DNA testing. We also provide discounted research rates and sponsor Y-DNA tests for those pedigreed descendants who have financial hardships, or who would decline to test if they had to bear the full cost of the test themselves.

We approach all descendants with sensitivity to their privacy concerns, giving them assurances that their data will not be shared or published without their written permission. We also approach religious descendants with respect for their religious principles and beliefs by having rabbis and other members of the religious community contact them and explain the nature and purpose of the DNA testing program to them. Because many of our pedigreed descendants live in other countries, such as Israel or Russia, it is important to communicate with them in their native language.

Although it is not realistic to expect perfect DNA testing compliance from all pedigreed descendants of rabbinical lineages, we have found that by: (1) communicating with pedigreed descendants before broaching the subject of DNA testing, (2) establishing credibility by clearly explaining the purpose of our DNA lineage studies and providing them with appropriate information, and (3) addressing any privacy and religious concerns that they may have, we stand a much better chance of gaining their trust and cooperation.

Notes

[1]  Jeffrey Mark Paull: “Connecting to the Great Rabbinic Families through Y-DNA: A Case Study of the Polonsky Rabbinical Lineage.”  AVOTAYNU: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, Fall, 2013.

[2]  Jeffrey Mark Paull and Jeffrey Briskman: “Connecting to the Great Rabbinic Families through Y-DNA: The Savran-Bendery Chassidic Dynasty.” Surname DNA Journal, May 31, 2015. https://www.academia.edu/7275345/Y-DNA_Genetic_Signature_of_the_Savran-Bendery_Chassidic Dynasty Connecting to_the_Great Rabbinic_Families_through_Y-DNA.

[3]  Jeffrey Mark Paull, Neil Rosenstein, and Jeffrey Briskman: “The Y-DNA Genetic Signature and Ethnic Origin of the Katzenellenbogen Rabbinical Lineage.” Avotaynu Online, March 7, 2016. http://www.avotaynuonline.com/2016/03/y-dna-genetic-signature-ethnic-origin-katzenellenbogen-rabbinical-lineage/.

[4]  Jeffrey Mark Paull and Jeffrey Briskman: “Identifying the Genetic Fingerprint of a Tzaddik that Touched the World: The Shpoler Zeida.” Avotaynu Online, July 1, 2016. http://www.avotaynuonline.com/2016/07/identifying-the-genetic-fingerprint-of-a-tzaddik-that-touched-the-world-the-shpoler-zeida/.

[5]  Jeffrey Mark Paull, Jeffrey Briskman, and Yitzchak Meyer Twersky: “The Y-DNA Genetic Signature of the Twersky Chassidic Dynasty.” Academia.edu: https://jhsph.academia.edu/JeffreyMarkPaull (Pre-publication draft).  Accepted for publication in Avotaynu Online.  Expected date of publication, December, 2016.

[6]  The Y-DNA testing compliance rate varies widely between studies. In some of our smaller lineage studies involving five or fewer pedigreed descendants (e.g., Baal Shem Tov, Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, Polonsky, Rappaport-Cohen, Shpoler Zeida, Wertheim-Giterman), we achieved close to 100 percent compliance.  In some of our larger lineage studies (e.g., Katzenellenbogen, Shapiro, Twersky Chassidic dynasty) the Y-DNA testing compliance rate dropped to as low as 50 percent. In our proposed maternal DNA study of the descendants of Sarah Shapira, the testing compliance rate was effectively zero.

[7]  The Y-DNA study of Rabbi Raphael of Bershad is one of several Y-DNA studies currently underway for which we have tested pedigreed descendants. The others, as mentioned above, include the lineages of the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, Rabbi Yehuda Heller Kahana of Sighet, and the Rappaport-Cohen, and Shapiro rabbinical lineages. For all but one of these lineages (Shapiro), we have also preliminarily identified the Y-DNA genetic signature of the lineage.

[8]  Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack: “Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern (1916-1994), Dean of American-Jewish Genealogy.”  AVOTAYNU: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Vol. IX, No. 4, Winter 1993.

[9]  Ibid.

[10]  Jeffrey Mark Paull and Jeffrey Briskman: “Connecting to the Wertheim-Giterman Rabbinical Lineage through Y-DNA.”  AVOTAYNU: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Vol. XXX, No. 3, Fall, 2014.

[11]  Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack, 1993, Op cit.

[12]  Ibid.

[13]  Shlomo Brody: “Ask the Rabbi: DNA and Paternity Testing: Does Halacha Recognize Paternity Tests?”  The Jerusalem Post, June 11, 2009, http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Judaism/Ask-the-Rabbi-DNA-and-paternity-testing.

[14]  IAJGS: “Ethics/Code of Conduct.” International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, November 2, 2002, http://www.iajgs.org/blog/code-of-conduct/.

The post Challenges Involved in Conducting DNA Tests of Pedigreed Descendants of Rabbinical Lineages appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

The organized Jewish community in Cuba lasted about 50 years during the first half of the 20th century and was composed of three essentially separate groups, the North Americans, the Sephardim and the European Ashkenazim. Together they built a vibrant Jewish community that grew from a parlor meeting of 11 North American Jews in 1906 founding the first synagogue in Cuba, the United Hebrew Congregation, to an extensive network of schools and synagogues throughout the country. During the years between 1906 and 1959, the number of North American Jews residing in Cuba never exceeded 300, representing 70 families. Their presence in Cuba, even though small in number, was a significant one, given their financial and political resources.

[This article first appeared in AVOTAYNU Volume XXII, Number 1, Spring 2006]

In 1959, after the Castro Revolution, all this came to an abrupt end. Today fewer than 2,500 Jews remain in Cuba. More than 10,000 Jews left, most resettling in the Miami Beach, Florida, area, where they re-established their specifically Cuban infrastructure and rebuilt their business fortunes. Many, originally from Europe, had been denied entry to the United States before World War II. As “Cuban refugees” fleeing a Communist Cuba, they now found the haven in the United States they previously were denied.

My grandparents were part of the North American group. In tracing their history, I learned about the Jewish history in Cuba and found resources for tracing it.

History

Jews began to settle on the island not long after Cuba gained independence from Spain, starting with the United States occupation of 1902–09. Primarily Turkish and Syrian Sephardim arrived first. They viewed their migration to Cuba as permanent and sought to establish roots in their new home as quickly as possible.

Large-scale Ashkenazi immigration began in 1920 when thousands of Eastern European Jews started to arrive in Cuba. Initially Cuba was only a transit point on the way to the United States. Most of the immigrants, who arrived between 1920 and 1923, had left Cuba by 1925. Before 1924 many new arrivals emigrated to the United States within a few months of landing in Cuba. Steamship companies, faced with loss of steerage-class revenue, began to publicize in the European Yiddish-language press Cuba’s lack of immigration laws and Cuban officials’ practice of permitting anyone disembarking in Havana to remain. Because U.S. immigration laws did not restrict immigration from Latin America, persons remaining in transit in Cuba could re-emigrate to the United States after a year’s stay. A total of 24,000 Jews, the equivalent of about five percent of the U.S. Jewish population, had passed through Cuba by the end of 1924. Yiddish speakers among them called the island Akhsanie Kuba (Hotel Cuba), considering it a temporary home until they could enter the United States, only 90 miles away.

Although the Sephardim never established lasting relations with the American Ashkenazim in Cuba, they did blend to some extent with the developing Eastern European Ashkenazi community of the 1920s.

In the years my grandparents lived in Cuba (1928–38), the North American Jewish community effectively remained a United States enclave. Many North American Jews saw Cuba as a site of temporary settlement and intended to commute between Cuba and the United States after setting up small factories, retail stores and import-export firms on the island. In the years before World War II, the lives of the small community of English-speaking American Jews paralleled those of other members of the rather large foreign colony of businessmen, entrepreneurs and administrators from the United States, Canada and Europe. As an exporter of agricultural products and a tourist playground, Cuba was a colonial dependency run by an elite, partially Cuban and partially foreign. The American Jews fit comfortably into this elite. They often sent their children to schools in the United States. In Havana their children attended the Ruston Academy. They traveled back and forth with ease.

In the years leading up to World War II, the three Cuban Jewish communities lived largely separate lives, both institutionally and socially, in part because of cultural and linguistic differences. The North American’s common language was English; Sephardim spoke Ladino; and the European Ashkenazim’s mother tongue was Yiddish. In contrast to the wealthy and sophisticated North American Jews whose settlement in Cuba was motivated primarily by business interests, the other Jews arrived in Cuba as poor immigrants with uncertain futures.

At the start of the 1920s, conditions in the non-North American Jewish colony were fluid, with almost all seeking temporary jobs to earn money for food and lodging before emigrating to their intended destination, the United States. Jewish immigrants were left with the choice of either working in Jewish enterprises or engaging in independent trade. Peddling represented the line of least resistance and offered a way of getting into trade. Seeking jobs in a totally alien milieu, the new arrivals also turned to Jewish enterprises. North American Jews, some East European Jews and a handful of Sephardim started workshops and small factories that eventually revolutionized the production of cheap clothing. Among these immigrants, shoemakers were most numerous, with the tailors second. There were also carpenters, painters and other artisans.

Incorporation of Jews into the Cuban economy produced important change. Prior to their arrival on the island, industry and trade had been held mainly in the hands of Spaniards. Competition was insignificant, and consumers, having no choice, were compelled to pay high prices. Merchants saw no challenge to their comfortable and lucrative existence. But the arrival of ambitious young men content with small profits enabling them to build up their own existence shook the assured position of many a merchant. New articles made their appearance on the market and sold at cheaper prices than those previously imported. Even the prices of imported articles were reduced. The former trade leaders had to find ways and means to keep pace with the new developments. The young immigrants proved themselves shrewd competitors. After a comparatively short time, they succeeded in gaining a foothold even in Havana’s main trade thoroughfares, Bernaza and Muralla Streets. Many of the wealthy Jewish businessmen, who came to own the largest stores on Muralla and Bernaza Streets, began their careers peddling cheap wares such as Eskimo ice cream pies, neckties and underwear.

In 1924, thousands of immigrants suddenly found themselves compelled to stay in Cuba. In that year, the U.S. Congress enacted a new Immigration and Naturalization Act, stiffening U. S.immigration laws and closing the Cuban loophole. Thousands continued to arrive in Cuba. Jews who had hoped to live in the United States now found that they had to remain in Latin America permanently. Some in Cuba emigrated to other Latin American countries. Some entered the United States illegally or by marrying United States citizens. The rest chose to make their America in Cuba. In 1925, about 5,200 Ashkenazi, 2,700 Sephardim and approximately 100 North American Jews lived in Cuba.

Immigrants from Eastern Europe who remained in Cuba proved adaptable. Some became successful businessmen in no way inferior to the English-speaking North American Jews. Yet real understanding between the two communities was lacking. The European newcomers had gone through World War I, German occupation and the Russian revolution. To them Jewry was a nationality with its own language (Yiddish) and culture. The Americans were spared by World War I and postwar developments; they tended to perceive Jewry as a religion. The former were dynamic, inspired by (perhaps fanciful) plans for the transformation of the world and of the Jewish people; the latter were conservative with little tolerance for Jewish political activism. The former were eager to solve world problems; they were noisy and dissatisfied. The latter were preoccupied with their flourishing businesses and preferred calm reasonableness and respectability.

North American Jews in Havana were prone to go slow politically, while the younger immigrants from Europe knew no bounds. The North American Jews preferred to avoid the light of publicity and believed in personal contact with influential Cubans, rather than in noisy demonstrations. This resembled the pattern for relations in the United States between the established early 19th-century North American Jewish communities and the arriving Russian Jewish immigrants of the early 20th century.

A leading member of the United Hebrew Congregation contended that relief work for the benefit of the immigrants made extreme restraint and the greatest possible modesty in behavior imperative. In 1937, when plans for a public protest rally against anti-Semitic violence in Poland were under discussion, he opposed the demonstration and wished to confine the protest to the adoption of a resolution. Thus, he maintained, the impression would disappear that Jews were fostering disorder in Cuban public and economic life. The East European Jews, he complained, would not appreciate this viewpoint. The demonstration was held.

Tracing the Epsteins in Cuba

I had always known that my mother’s Epstein family had lived in Havana, that she had gone to an American high school, had commuted part of the way to school by boat and that her father’s company made underwear. But, I knew little else. My mother had long since died before I began my research. As I was to learn, her family was typical of the American Jews in Cuba.

Fortunately, a cousin had a photocopy (clue #1) of an article that had appeared in an English-language Cuban newspaper, The Havana Post, some time in the late 1920s prior to the Epsteins relocation to Cuba:

American Firm to Manufacture Products Here; Aetna Knitted Fabrics Company Will Establish Plant in Guanabacoa.  Samuel Epstein, member of the Aetna Knitted Fabrics Company 446 Broome Street, New York, now is in this city completing plans for the occupying of the premises rented by them near Havana. This factory is located in Guanabacoa, and Mr. Epstein is expecting the arrival of some $75,000 worth of machinery this week. This firm, which is a large and important one with branch factories in Mexico City, Toronto, Canada, and Sydney Australia, will start the manufacturing of men’s and ladies’ underwear, shawls and scarfs [sic]. They also will weave the cloth on some special machines that they are bringing down for the purpose.

Mr. Epstein stated that they planned to be able to give work to some 200 Cuban girls and men in their new factory, and they have located in Guanabacoa on account of its proximity to Havana and the facilities they have there for securing the help they need.

Mr. Epstein and Mr. Beers, of Beers & Company [a Havana realty company founded in 1906 that handled both residential and commercial properties] called upon the mayor of Guanabacoa, and he assured them of all the help and encouragement in his power, including several years free of taxation, with the promise that the majority of his help would be Cuban people, whom Mr. Epstein assured him would be employed. They expect to have the factory under way and working about the middle of October. Mr. Epstein’s brother and two sons are joining him this week and every effort will be made to get the plant going with as little delay as possible.

So my grandfather, Samuel, and a brother were in Cuba together.

In addition, my brother had a playbill (clue #2) from the Ruston Academy in Havana that listed my mother as one of the students helping with the scenery. With these two clues and an old partial family tree, I started to unravel the entire story. I connected with several Epstein relatives all over the world and came to a better understanding of what Cuba was like for Jews during the pre-Castro era.

Here is how I did it and some of what I found. The New York City Archives has the incorporation certificates for many businesses, including that of my own family. In the 1910s and 1920s, before relocating to Havana, Samuel Epstein and his brother, Philip, were in business together in New York City. A 1924 County of New York business certificate gives Aetna Knitted Fabrics partners as Samuel and his brother Philip Epstein. They also were in business earlier as the Aetna Yarn Company.

I wrote e-mails to trade associations in Mexico City, Toronto and Sydney, asking about a company called Aetna, but learned nothing. Next I tried another path in Toronto. From an old handwritten partial family tree, I knew that one of my grandfather’s nieces had relocated to Toronto after 1920. According to the 1920 U.S. census, her husband Ben Gitter had been in the hat business in New York City. The Toronto Public Library will answer up to three simple research questions a day at no cost. In spring 2004, I asked, “Starting in 1920, is there a so-and-so in the Toronto City Directory?” For several successive days I asked this question (three years at a time), always getting positive responses. A Ben Gitter was still in Toronto. Then after of few days of such inquiry I learned that he was now in business again (clue #3) and that his business, Majestic Laces, had existed until the 1960s.

The library said that was the only information they would provide for free, so I returned to the Internet. I tried business telephone listings for hats in Toronto. No luck. I tried again searching for millinery businesses and found the names of two companies. Neither had the name I was seeking, but I called one of them just the same. The receptionist volunteered that her firm had been in business for more than 50 years, and possibly someone there might know of my company. I faxed them what I knew. That very afternoon, I received an e-mail with clue #4—the current name of the company and its website URL. Back to the Internet. The website said the president had the family cousin’s name. I immediately called him at work.

Success! He was indeed my relative. There is a large Epstein presence in Toronto, and, best of all, he told me that he planned to visit Boston, where I live, the next week. One week later my relative from Toronto arrived. He brought a valuable gift. My cousin had made a new videotape interview of his Toronto family telling about their early days and about the family businesses.

This is some of what I now learned: The family’s worldwide businesses started from Hub Knitting Mills, incorporated in 1916 by my grandfather’s elder brother James Epstein and his son, Morris Epstein. Hub Knitting Mills operating in New York did business with Canadian manufacturers, which were slow to pay their bills. Morris went to Toronto to collect the money owed his father. Morris saw that there was a large, excellent and untapped opportunity for knitted fabrics manufacturing. He convinced his father to back him, and they created Ontario Silknit. James closed Hub Knitting Mills, transferring equipment to Toronto, and retired. Ontario Silknit became the first of a worldwide network of family-owned and operated knitted goods manufacturers. By 1925, Morris had relocated his family permanently to Toronto. In 2005, the family is still there.

Clue #5. The family worldwide business name was Silknit, not Aetna. What could I learn about the Cuban operations? Well, maybe my grandfather or his brother Philip needed passports. Although travel between Cuba and New York in those days did not require a passport, maybe….

Clue #6. I located no passport application for Sam, but did find one for Philip. By the date it was made, the U.S. State Department was the keeper of these archival records. After payment of a $45 fee, they sent me a copy of the application. What a copy—a 50-page file on Philip! The file explained in detail that as a naturalized citizen, Philip Epstein needed permission from the United States Consul in Havana to remain in Cuba after November 1933. He had been in Cuba since 1928. According to a 1907 United States naturalization law then in effect, naturalized citizens could not reside continuously for more than five years outside the United States without risk of losing their citizenship (called expatriation) unless a State Department officer waived the requirement. The law stipulated the conditions. Philip and the United States consul in Havana had difficulty in agreeing to a waiver. For this reason Philip’s case caused a significant amount of correspondence, which is still on file at the State Department office. Philip wanted to sell his business share to a buyer outside the family. In 1933 a revolution was waging against the Machado dictatorship. Philip needed extra time to sell his business shares.

Initially refused, an extension eventually was granted. In the file, supporting the extension were letters—most importantly the clue of clues, a letter on my grandfather’s company stationery to the U.S. consul. My Uncle Saul was company president and Philip Epstein’s son was treasurer. Moreover, the family company was incorporated in Cuba under the name Sedanita de Cuba, S. A. not Aetna (Seda, Spanish for silk, and the Spanish nita ending which sounds like knit). I saw the addresses where Philip lived; the factory was located to the east of Havana across the bay in Guanabacoa.

This started me on a reading spree to find out more about the Cuba of my family. Early in March 2005, I visited the Cuban-American Synagogue in Miami Beach. They had sponsored a 1996 book by Margalit Bejarano based on her doctoral thesis. In Spanish, it contains a wealth of oral histories. Several of the people interviewed attended Ruston Academy and were close in age to my mother (younger) and most importantly, still alive.

Again back to the Internet.

Clue #7: One of the persons interviewed, Jim Knopke, was living in Miami Beach. Margalit Bejarano’s book mentions that he went to Ruston Academy and in 1996 he was still living in Miami. Using Internet white pages, I found his telephone number and called Jim.

He vaguely remembered a Jeanne Epstein, “Did she have red hair?” My mother had auburn hair when she was young. He was the first person I ever knew who had known my mother as a kid! Unfortunately he did not remember Sedanita (he was in the sugar business), but he put me in touch with another Jewish Cuban expatriate living in Houston, Texas, who might know something.

I called. “Yes, I know the name.” She asked, “Do you know the Brandon family?”

“No.”

She suggested, “Try contacting my Brandon classmate living in Florida. The Brandons owned Sedanita.”

Final and Confirming Clues

Earl Brandon in Florida was born in 1918 in New York City and moved to Havana in 1924. Brandon’s elder brother David, born in 1907, was a squash buddy of my Uncle Saul (also born in 1907). When he lived in Havana, my uncle, like my mother, was a redhead. His nickname was Eppy. Brandon recalls them both.

I cannot confirm my grandfather’s original business plans. The Epstein family’s Silknit business model means it is probable that my grandfather would have remained in Cuba indefinitely had he not become so seriously ill that he was forced to sell his business interests and return permanently to New York in 1935 or 1936. My grandfather died a few years after his return. His son, my Uncle Saul, apparently remained in Havana in the business until 1938.

When my grandparents returned to the United States, Sedanita was sold to the Brandon family. My wife and I visited Brandon in May 2005. Brandon showed us his family tree and accompanying memoir written by his father. In the memoir his father wrote:

The chairman of D. I. Stern, New York City financier, helped Brandons take over a going underwear knitting plant in Guanabacoa called Sedanita de Cuba, the proprietors being various members of the Eppstein [sic] family. This business held forth excellent possibilities. Mike [Brandon] was given charge of Sedanita in which he invested a nominal sum which multiplied handsomely when he needed it.

Brandon is the anglicized version of the Portuguese surname Brandao. The Brandons and their Maduro cousins are linked to Sephardic families with the same name throughout the Caribbean. Originally from Portugal, they escaped the Inquisition to safety in northern Europe and later to the New World. The Maduros came to the Americas from Holland; the Brandons came from England. The Brandon or Brandao family name has figured prominently in the annals of Spanish and Portuguese Jewry in Amsterdam, Curacao, Jamaica, London and Panama.

David Henry Brandon was born on September 26, 1855, in Philadelphia and died on August 10, 1903, in Panama City, Panama. In 1879, he married Judith Maduro, daughter of Solomon Maduro and Esther Piza Maduro in Panama City, Panama. Judith Maduro Brandon was born August 9, 1862, in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and died on March 1, 1940, in Havana.

After the death of David Henry Brandon and the marriages of his eldest daughter and eldest son, his widow moved to New York City with her 10 younger children to live close to her late husband’s relatives. Ellis Island records for the Brandon family, dated May 30, 1906, list Judith Maduro Brandon (widow, age 43) and several children en route to her brother-in-law Isaac Brandon’s residence in Manhattan. Because she was born in St. Thomas, Judith Brandon’s nationality is listed as Danish. Her family had lived in the Virgin Islands for many years before her marriage. Although the children all were listed as Panamanian citizens, they were entitled to United States citizenship because their father had been born in Philadelphia. In the 1700 and 1800s, many Brandons had moved about the Caribbean—to Barbados, Curacao and Jamaica—and to cities in the United States (Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia). In later years, many of David Henry Brandon’s sons carefully ensured that their children would be U.S. citizens by residing for a time in the United States, particularly at the time their children were born.

The Brandon’s Cuban connection began in the 1920s with Earl’s father, Jacob, son of David and Judith Brandon. Jacob suggested to this brothers that Cuba offered good business opportunities. They agreed and moved to the island where the family prospered. The Brandon brothers created a holding company called Standard Mills of Cuba. Many of the Cuban businesses of this period were based on family connections, which meant reliable partners in other cities and countries. Among the four textile plants owned by the Brandon family were Robrand, Sedanita, Textilera Corona, and General de Tejidos. Stockholders included family members and Cuban nationals.

They purchased Sedanita from the Epstein family sometime after 1933. After Brandon’s uncles purchased Sedanita, they moved the factory to the small town of San Jose de las Lajas, 17 miles southeast of Havana. The town is a commercial center in the dairying and sugar-growing region. Initially, Mike Brandon managed Sedanita. The Sedanita name was still in use in 1960. Sedanita did about $500,000 business per year in 1960, when it was closed down by the Castro regime. Another Brandon brother later took Sedanita over from Mike, who sold his shares and moved from Cuba to Long Island, New York. In the last pre-Castro 1958 Havana telephone book, there are entries for Brandon and Company and Sedanita Textile in the clothing business at 213 Muralla Street. In 1958, this street was the location of many retail shops, so possibly this was a retail shop or outlet for Sedanita clothing.

The small American Jewish group almost completely segregated itself from other sectors of Cuba’s Jewish community. The Brandons were notable exceptions. They played major roles in institutional Cuban-Jewish communal affairs. Earl’s father, Jacob Brandon, was the most active family member. He headed the Cuban branch of the Joint Relief Committee that aided the hundreds of Jewish refugees in Havana fleeing the Nazis. Jacob Brandon also served as president of the Havana B’nai B’rith Lodge. On February 24, 1940, President Laredo Bru knighted Jacob Brandon with the Order of Merit Carlos Manuel de Cespedes. President Bru cited Brandon’s services to the entire Cuban community as executive director of the Joint Relief Committee that enabled Cuba to accept extraordinarily large numbers of Jewish refugees within a short time with no serious problems. According to Bru, “The Joint Relief Committee had brought great honor to the Cuban nation.” The Brandons are also distant relatives of Noble Brandon Judah, United States ambassador to Cuba from 1926 to 1930.

Brandons served as officers in the United Hebrew Congregation. Always an English-speaking congregation and identified with North American Jews, United Hebrew officially joined the [Reform] Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1951. In September 1956, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its founding, their Anniversary Journal assessed the future:

English-speaking Jews in Cuba are still a minority, but it is evident that a considerable number of youthful co-religionists, especially those who have had a bilingual education, favor our services and are likely prospects for future membership. Moreover, the Jewish population in Cuba is steadily increasing, and the constant influx of the new industries, many of which are operated by Jewish investors, betokens a bright future for the United Hebrew Congregation.

The United Hebrew Congregation did not survive. The entire Havana Jewish colony became virtually extinct after 1959 when Castro assumed power. By 1961, most of the congregation’s membership had fled Cuba. Jews who lived in Cuba during the decades before Castro had come to regard the island as a friendly harbor in which they could build comfortable lives for their families without the pressures faced by Jews in Latin American countries where traditional Roman Catholicism was stronger or where there were too few Jews for communal life.

Cuba’s live-and-let live atmosphere rewarded persons willing to work hard and accommodate to society’s unwritten rules. Jews rarely experienced anti-Semitism in Cuba, and they found their non-Jewish neighbors to be friendly. They did not aspire to political or bureaucratic offices, and they did not seek to enter the professions or universities, banks, corporations, or the government. Rather, virtually all Jews in Cuba engaged in commerce. They socialized with other Jews, supported Jewish community organizations and encouraged their children to do the same. Before 1959, they supported whatever government was in power. Whenever problems arose, they dealt privately through emissaries or through spokesmen for Jewish organizations. Earl Brandon says:

Those of us who lived in Havana before Castro will remember with pride and joy the great ambiance of that city. And after 45 years, many of us laugh and cry, remembering what was then the Paris of the New World.

Additional Reading About the Cuban Jewish Community

The following four books tell a much more detailed story of the Ashkenazim and Sephardim fleeing persecution who found refuge in Cuba, and the small but influential, business-oriented North American Jewish colony.

1.  Robert M. Levine, Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Experience in Cuba (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993). This was the first detailed book to chronicle the successive waves of Jews from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Germany that flowed into and through Cuba during the 20th century. The book focuses on the interwar years when Cuban visa officials permitted thousands of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and Germany to enter Cuba, even against the wishes of the U.S. State Department. Levine not only surveys the history of an immigrant group, he also illuminates the nature of the tropical society to which they came.

2.  Margalit Bejarano, La Comunidad Hebrea de Cuba: La Memoria y la Historia [in Spanish] (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1996). This book is based upon Bejarano’s doctoral dissertation, oral histories of Jewish refugees from Castro’s Cuba living in the Miami, Florida, area. Substantiated by research, the book recounts the collective memories of Cuban Jews from the beginning of the 20th century until the Castro revolution. The main subjects are immigration and economic adjustment, organizational patterns, Holocaust refugees (including the St. Louis affair), establishment of the State of Israel, years of economic and communal prosperity under Batista and the trauma of the Castro revolution.

3.  Maritza Corrales Capestany, The Chosen Island: Jews in Cuba (Chicago: Salsedo Press, 2005). This book about the nature and functioning of Jewish life in Cuba during the past four decades recounts the lives of 36 men and women who did not leave Cuba. They explain their motives for remaining. Three sets of interviews are presented: The first emphasizes the ideological leanings of the pioneer immigrants and their descendants as Communists, Zionists and/or revolutionaries. The second chronicles primarily Sephardic Jews living outside Havana. The third portrays the immigrants and the first generation born in Cuba, whose permanence has been decisive in the continuation of Jewish life on the island after 1959.

4.  Jay Levinson, The Jewish Community of Cuba (Nashville, Tenn.: Westview, 2006). Levinson describes the Cuban Jewish community in its Golden Age—how Jews fleeing from persecution abroad found refuge in Cuba, adjusted to a new country and built a vibrant Jewish presence in Cuba; how there were essentially three Jewish communities in Cuba; and how sociological, linguistic and cultural differences changed at different periods of time, but always separated them.

For a general overview, see the section on Cuba in “Caribbean Basin,” Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy, (Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2004), pp. 261–78. Much of the economic and political information in this article comes from “Jews in Cuba,” by Boris Sapir, published in the Jewish Review, July-September 1946, pp. 109–44.

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At my home, we refer to Hillary Rodham Clinton as Cousin Hillary. More precisely, the correct term would be step-cousin. Detailed research demonstrates that Hillary’s grandmother married my father’s fifth cousin. But let’s start at the beginning.

In August 1999, the Forward newspaper included an article titled: “Meet Hillary Clinton’s Grandmother, Della Rosenberg – the Feisty Wife of a Yiddish-Speaking Jewish Immigrant”. Born as Della Murray in 1902 in Aurora, IL, Hillary’s grandmother married Edwin Howell in 1918 in Chicago; Dorothy Emma Howell, Hillary’s mother, arrived in 1919. In her autobiography, Living History, Hillary wrote: “Della essentially abandoned my mother when she was only three or four, leaving her alone all day for days on end with meal tickets to use at a restaurant near their five-story walk-up apartment on Chicago’s South Side.”

Della and Edwin Howell divorced in 1926. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Howell sent Hillary’s mother Dorothy, along with her younger sister Isabelle, on a train to Los Angeles to live with his parents. In 1933, Della remarried to Max Rosenberg, a Jewish immigrant from Poland.

When the Forward article appeared, this Max Rosenberg was already present on my family tree. Max was on my Tzvi Hirsh Chrabołowski branch, initially “discovered” by the author in 1978 and expanded through efforts of several cousins. So, in 1999, I became aware right away that my family connected directly to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s family – a major discovery. To begin the story, let’s focus next on Max’s background.

Who was Max Rosenberg?

Max had changed both of his names, so let’s start with his birth. He was born as Moshek Chrabołowski in Ostrów Mazowiecka, Poland on October 14, 1901. Ostrów was then part of Congress Poland in the 19^th Century and continues today as part of Poland. Max’s birth record, which is being indexed, was provided by Stanley Diamond, Executive Director of Jewish Records Indexing – Poland (JRI-Poland) and coincidentally also their town coordinator for this community.

The birth record below shows that Moshek was the son of Yankel Chrobolowski (Chrabołowski) and Michla Rozenberg (Rosenberg). The couple was married in 1897. Yankel was registered in Orla, Bielsk County, located south of Białystok. In the 19^th Century, Orla was part of Grodno Gubernia in the Russian Empire; it became part of Poland by 1920.

When Max came to the USA aboard the S.S. Finland in September 1911, the passenger arrival manifest stated his name was Menaze (Menashe) Rosenberg, using his mother’s maiden name. His age was understated, which was common at the time to assist families in paying a lower steamship fare.

In Chicago, Max worked in real estate property management.

Max’s Father

Now, let’s turn our attention to Max’s father, Yankel Chrabołowski, who also changed both his names. Yankel was born in Zambrow, Poland in 1877 as shown in the following birth record originally located in the Mormon Church microfilms.

When his wife and children arrived in 1911, the passenger manifest stated they were going to live with their husband and father then called Yankel Rosenberg and who became known as Joseph later in that decade.

Note that Joseph Rosenberg’s gravestone in an Ostrow plot at Chicago’s Waldheim Cemetery also reflects his original name Yankel (Yaakov in Hebrew), the son of Yosef Yitzhak.

Max’s Nuclear Family

Here is a photo of Max’s nuclear family in Chicago.

Move to Los Angeles

Della and Max Rosenberg had one daughter, Adeline who was born in 1934. Adeline later married Clarence Friedman and converted to Judaism.

Max separated from Della and moved to Los Angeles. At the time of his death in 1984, Max lived with Adeline in an apartment complex adjacent to Universal City in the San Fernando Valley. He was cremated at Grandview Memorial Park in Glendale. Adeline was buried at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Her marker is shown here. According to Adeline’s stepson, she stayed in contact with both Hillary and her mother Dorothy.

Max’s Ancestry

Max’s mother, Michla/Mollie Rosenberg, was born in Ostrów Mazowiecka in 1873 subsequent to her parents’ marriage in 1862.  Max’s paternal ancestral line ties to the author’s family:

Moshek Chrabołowski AKA Max Rosenberg (1901-1984)
Yankel Chrabołowski AKA Joseph Rosenberg (1877-1947)
Yosef Yitzhak Chrabołowski (1851-1923)
Tzvi Hirsh Chrabołowski (1823-1913)
Elkon Chrabołowski (1787-   )
Yosel (1767-    )

Shown below are two supporting documents from the Belarus Archives in Grodno, the location of many surviving documents from Polish areas formerly within Grodno Gubernia of the Russian Empire.

This excerpt from the 1868 Additional Revision List for Bielsk Podlaski, Poland shows that Girsh (Tzvi Hirsh), son of Elkon Chrabołowski, lived here along with his son Itzko (Yosef Yitzhak). Bielsk is 8 miles from Orla where Yankel was registered in 1901. Please note that virtually all vital records (births, marriages, deaths) for Bielsk and Orla disappeared either in World War I or World War II, so they are not available for corroborating information.

This is an unusual document from the 1817 Revision List for Ryboły, which had no Jewish community and only one Jewish family. Elkon is shown as son of Yosel Chrabolski, likely an early version of the name Chrabołowski. This is possibly the first time the new surname was written down. Chraboły is a tiny municipality, south of the Narew River from Ryboły, with only about 35 houses in 2016. The 1817 Revision List gives examples of numerous small hamlets with only a few Jews. In most of these, the authorities apparently named the Jewish residents after their town.

Oral history written down by one of Elkon’s descendants in the Częstochowa memorial book notes that his son Tzvi Hirsh was an inn-keeper and fisherman. Inn-keeper was a likely occupation in a hamlet with one Jewish family along a main road.

The Author’s Ancestry

The author’s great-grandfather, Phineas Chrabołowski, changed his name to Gordon after arriving in the USA in 1889. As a peddler, his customers had difficulty pronouncing and remembering his name. Phineas recalled to his daughter Rose that in Białystok, where he lived beginning in the early 1880s, one of the richest Jews, a banker, had the surname Gordon. He stated, “If the name was good enough for him, it is good enough for me.” Also, note that Gordon is linguistically equivalent to Grodno, the Russian Empire gubernia that included Białystok and his birthplace Bielsk.

My paternal ancestral line is as follows:

Jack E. Gordon (1918-1996)
Herbert Gordon (1889-1975)
Phineas Chrabołowski Gordon (1856-1954)
Eli Yankel Chrabołowski (1930-1909)
Yosel Chrabołowski (1784-     )
Boruch Chrabołowski

The ancestral tree which connects my ancestry to Cousin Hillary appears as follows:

Epilogue

The author’s grandfather Herbert and Hillary’s step-grandfather Max were both born with the same surname – Chrabołowski. Herbert’s father and Max’s grandfather both lived in Bielsk Podlaski, Poland, and their ancestors came from either Chraboły or Ryboły on opposite sides of the Narew River.

Based on a thorough analysis of the 1817 Revision Lists for Bielsk County (poviat, district) along with the 1855 list of Jewish heads of household for the city of Bielsk, the most likely relationship between these families – displayed in the tree above – is that Tzvi Hirsh Chrabołowski in Max Rosenberg’s family was a second cousin to Eli Yankel Chrabołowski in my family.  That would make Max Rosenberg and my father Jack Gordon fifth cousins. Della and Max’s daughter Adeline would then be a blood relative of both Hillary and the author.

In conclusion, Hillary Rodham Clinton and I are indeed step-cousins, and I am proud to document and share this relationship.

________________

Mark W. Gordon has been constructing his family’s ancestry since 1975, with a focus on northeastern Poland, Galicia, Latvia, Lithuania, and the Nordhessen region of Germany.  Family tree branches reach back to c.1600.  He has completed six ancestral trips to Europe since 2003.

The post Personal Journeys: Cousin Hillary Rodham Clinton appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

This article is a sequel to my earlier article in Avotaynu Online, entitled “From One Photograph to Journeys of Research and Discovery,”,  in which I described how I uncovered and researched the romance of my great uncle Moshe and Paula Lichtzier, starting with a single photograph taken in Orla, Poland in 1920. But my search wasn’t complete: details about the driver of the vehicle in the fatal accident that resulted in the death of my Uncle Moshe were still a mystery. The 1931 Argus newspaper article reported that Mr. Katz, the driver of the vehicle in which Moshe (Morris) was a passenger, was the manager of the Mowbray Hotel. I tried accessing the archives of the company that once owned the hotel and the bus company most likely involved in the accident, consulted some Cape Town historians, and struck out on all of them, but still hoped for other leads.

 The Cape Argus, April 8, 1931, National Archives, Cape Town

In June 2016, I met Professor Colin Tatz and Vernon Katz in Sydney, Australia. Vernon, a Katz from Cape Town, was interested in the mystery of Mr. Katz, the driver. We started a correspondence and on September 3, 2016, Vernon wrote this to his database:

This is a stab in the dark but can you help Eli Rabinowitz (who has lived in Perth since 1986, ex-Cape Town) trace family of the Mr Katz who drove the car in 1931 in which Eli’s great uncle Moishe Rabinowitz was killed in Woodstock / Salt River? – see (the article in Avotaynu) below. Please let Eli and me know if you have any information.

On the same day, a reply came from Selwyn Katz of West Harrison, New York. He wrote:

SA Breweries had a company called Retco, the holding company for its one and two star hotels.  At the end of the sixties they started to offload these hotels and my (Katz) family picked up six of them, including the Mowbray. It is not impossible that this Mr Katz was family of mine but I have no way of finding out. My oldest living relation was born around 1931 so she would not know.

On September 2016, I was in the process of replying to an email from Solly Epstein in Cape Town who explained that his friend and author, Ivan Kapelus in London, had suggested I make contact with the National Library and Western Cape Archives to further my research. I decided to go online and do a quick search. One can see only the titles of the documents online and then one must follow up with a visit to the reading room to see the actual document.

I entered “Katz” and “1931” in the database search. The following was the last of four results:

The accident had occurred on April 8, 1931. Although this citation was not definitive., it did sound like the Mr. Katz I was seeking. Until I saw the court document itself four weeks later, I had no proof that this court case related to the death of Morris Rabinowitz. It might have been a death caused by Leo Katz in another set of circumstances, This court case was in July.

That same day, I sent email messages to several people, telling them about the archival record. Ann Rabinowitz of Miami replied:

If the Leo Katz in the Archives is the correct one, there is also a record in the South African Jewish Rootsbank that lists a Leo Katz who was born 1902 and died May 3, 1961, and is buried in Pinelands #1.  He would have been 29 in 1931.  His tombstone has his name as Yahudah Leib ben Reuvain HaKohain Katz.

On the Cape Town Jewish Cemeteries Maintenance Board website, http://www.jewishcemetery.co.za I found this photograph

Taking the two names Leo and Lily Katz from the tombstones I searched and found the family details on the Geni.com website http://www.geni.com/people/Leo-Katz/6000000011738063296. Geni enabled me to track down Mr. Katz’s grandson, Leo Fainsinger in Sydney. I called, asked if his grandfather was Leo Katz (“yes”) and what his grandfather had done for a living. When the grandson said “in the hotel business” I asked, “the Mowbray Hotel?” He answered “yes.” I had found my man.

Fainsinger was quite cooperative. He knew that his grandfather had been involved in an accident in which, he said, a hitchhiker had been killed. That was the first I had heard of a hitchhiker and I was puzzled. Fainsinger sent me a photograph of Mr. Katz. My brother-in-law, Anthony Reitstein, visited the Western Cape Archives and Records Service in Cape Town on my behalf and called for the document, Rex vs Leo Katz. He sent me two emails, totaling 33 pages, of the court proceedings of Rex versus Mr. Leo Katz.

There were many technical details in the evidence given, but the following grabbed my attention and shocked me:

My great uncle, Morris Rabinowitz, had missed the last bus; he had hitchhiked to get home to (the Coghills Hotel in) Wynberg; Katz stopped to give him a lift in the city outside the Opera House; it was raining; Katz was only going as far as Mowbray; Katz and Morris did not know each other; the distance from where Morris was picked up to the accident was about 4km; they hit a bus that was turning to go down Durham Rd; the time from which Morris was picked up until his death was at most 10 minutes; this was the total time that they were together. Such was their fate!  Katz was found guilty of culpable homicide, fined 40 pounds sterling and lost his driver’s license for a year. Morris was dead! Morris’s fiancée Paula Lichtzier’s life was in turmoil just a few weeks before her planned wedding. This is the sad conclusion to the mystery of Katz, the driver, and the accident, which killed Morris Rabinowitz, but something special is developing. I called Leo Fainstein to tell him the outcome of the case and to arrange to send him the emails of the court proceedings. He told me that as his grandfather, Leo, was a good- natured and genteel man and that by giving my great uncle Morris a lift, Leo was performing a mitzvah (good deed) but had turned it into a tragedy. Fainsinger and I have realized that the discovery of this tragic event has forged a meaningful connection between us we have committed ourselves to creating a positive outcome, a completion of the mitzvah Leo begun 85 years ago. We have several ideas to discuss between now and when Brian and I meet for the first time in Sydney in February 2017. Whatever project we choose, we will name in honor of Leo and Morris.

Leo Katz’s motorcar at the scene of the accident in Salt River.  (Supreme Court documents from Western Cape Archives and Records Services, Cape Town)

Leo Katz  = – photo from his grandson, Brian Fainsinger

Morris Rabinowitz. Family Photo.

The post Personal Journeys: Finding Mr. Katz appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

Throughout the centuries, the Jewish people have always prided themselves on their yichus (lineage, distinguished birth, or pedigree). Yichus was especially important for rabbinical families, and many of them have created genealogy charts or family trees in which they have traced their lineage to King David, Maimonides, and other great Jews of the past.

If, as professed by Arthur Kurzweil, the “royal families” of the Jewish people have been those of the illustrious rabbis, then the Twersky Chassidic dynasty of Chernobyl surely merits an exalted place on the royal throne. It is known as a family with an unblemished yichus, as the Twersky Grand Rabbis married only within their immediate family for almost 200 years. Within the rabbinical Chassidic world, a Chernobyler Ainikle, a descendant of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, is highly sought after for marriage, due to the purity of the blood line. Leaders of virtually every major Chassidic dynasty today (e.g., Belz, Bobov, Lubavitch, Ruzhin, Satmar, Savran-Bendery, Stolin, and Vishnitz) are blood descendants of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl.

For centuries, Jewish men and women have sought to connect themselves and their descendants to this renowned family, either through marriage, or by paper trail. With recent advances in genetic genealogy, this is now possible to do for more individuals of Jewish descent than ever before, as demonstrated by the authors’ identification of the Y-DNA genetic signatures of some of the world’s most prominent rabbinical lineages., , , In this study, we identify the Y-DNA genetic signature and ethnic origin of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty.

[Editor’s Note: A copy of this article containing images and footnotes can be found at https://www.academia.edu/26048275/The_Y-DNA_Genetic_Signature_and_Ethnic_Origin_of_the_Twersky_Chassidic_Dynasty]

The Twersky Chassidic Dynasty of Chernobyl

The Twersky Chassidic dynasty was founded by Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky (1730–1797), known by the title of his book, Me’or Einayim (“Light of the Eyes”). Per family lore, the name “Twersky” was chosen to remember the holy city of Tveria (Tiberius) in Israel. The dynasty is named after the Ukrainian town of Chernobyl, where Rabbi Menachem Nachum served as the maggid (preacher).,

Grand Rabbi Twersky was a student of the Baal Shem Tov (the founder of Chassidism), and later, of his pupil and chief disciple, the Maggid of Mezritch. He lived a life of great piety and asceticism and is considered one of the pioneers of the Chassidic movement. His book, Me’or Einayim, published in Slavuta in 1798, was one of the first scholarly works on Chassidic thought, and it gained widespread acceptance as one of the major works and foundations of Chassidic ideology.

Me’or Einayim, Slavuta, 1798

According to rabbinical sources, Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky had two sons and one daughter. Although a rabbi of great scholarship, his eldest son, Moshe (b. circa 1750 – d. before 1792), did not found a rabbinical dynasty. Rabbinical sources and tombstone inscriptions, in addition to Chernobyl censuses, list many of his descendants as being scribes and sextons of the rabbinical Twersky family, as well as rabbis, Talmud teachers and mohels. Moshe’s descendants were an integral part of the inner workings of the Twersky rabbinical court, although they did not marry among the descendants of the rabbinical family.

Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum’s second son, Mordechai (1770–1837), took over his father’s position in Chernobyl, and unlike his father, he lived a life of great opulence. His thoughts, sermons, and discourses were published in his book, Likutei Torah, which was praised for its holiness by other Chassidic leaders.

Likutei Torah, Chernovitz, 1860

FIGURE 1

MAIN BRANCHES OF THE TWERSKY CHASSIDIC

DYNASTY

Grand Rabbi Mordechai Twersky had three daughters and eight sons. The sons carried on the traditions of their father and became Grand Rabbis in towns throughout Ukraine. Each of them established his own branch of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty in the towns of Chernobyl, Korostichev, Cherkasy, Makarov, Trisk, Tolna, Skvira, and Rachmastrivka (see Figure 1).

The Twersky Chassidic dynasty produced a long line of distinguished rabbis and notable personalities over the centuries and is tightly interwoven with many of the most renowned Ashkenazi rabbinical families of Europe. There have been 140 Twersky Grand Rabbis between 1730 and the present, more than any other Chassidic dynasty, as sons became Grand Rabbis (Admurs) in their fathers’ lifetimes, and lived in cities and towns around the world.

Presently, nine of these Twersky Grand Rabbis live in Israel, seven in the United States, two in the United Kingdom, and one in Canada. There are many scions of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty alive today, and the genealogy of the family has been maintained through meticulously kept family records.

The Twersky Chassidic dynasty has many tens of thousands of documented descendants throughout the world. The family has been well-documented due to the numerous genealogies studies that have been published., , Thanks to the genealogical research efforts of co-author Yitzchak Meyer Twersky in locating, translating, and compiling abundant source material in his book, Grand Rabbis of the Chernobyl Dynasty, the genealogical information on the Twersky lineage is extensive and highly accessible.,

Grand Rabbis of the Twersky Chassidic Dynasty

Left photo: Modest brick ohel of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky, in Chernobyl, Ukraine.

Right photo: More elaborate ohel of his son, Grand Rabbi Mordechai Twersky, Anatevka, Ukraine.

1795 Chernobyl Census – The Family of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky

The 1795 census was the first census that was taken after the final partition of Poland, during which the Russian Empire acquired approximately two million Polish Jews, who did not use surnames. Listed in this census, in both Polish and Russian, are Nochim, son of Hirsh, age 66, and his wife Feyga, daughter of Yudko, age 50. Also listed are Morduch, son of Nochim, age 22, and his wife Sora, daughter of Aharon, age 21.

The 1795 Chernobyl census is extremely important for several reasons:

1. It is the first official document that mentions Nochim (Menachem Nachum) of Chernobyl.

1. It mentions him as being a preacher.

1. It mentions his father, Gershko (Zvi Hersh).

1. It mentions Menachem Nachum’s wife, Feyga, daughter of Yudko. Feyga represents a previously unknown second or third wife of Menachem Nachum, not mentioned in any rabbinical sources.

1. It mentions Menachem Nachum’s son, Morduch (Mordechai) of Chernobyl.

1. It mentions Mordechai’s wife Sara, the daughter of Aharon [Grand Rabbi Aharon the Great of Karlin (1736–1772), founder of the Karlin-Stolin rabbinical dynasty].

The Twersky Chassidic dynasty is a particularly noteworthy lineage from a genealogical research perspective, due to its distinguished ancestry, its many marriage connections to other iconic rabbinical lineages and dynasties throughout the Russian Empire, its large number of descendants, and its well-documented paper trail., , ,

The Twersky Chassidic dynasty traces its ancestry back to Rashi (1040–1105) through the Katzenellenbogen-Luria and the Shapiro-Treves rabbinical lineages., , Members of the family intermarried with other prominent Jewish families and produced many notable rabbis, many of whom founded their own rabbinical dynasties (e.g., the Ruzhin and Savran-Bendery Chassidic dynasties):

• Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky’s daughter Malka married Rabbi Avraham Hirsch of Korostichev. Their daughter, Chava, was the mother of Grand Rabbi Yisrael Friedman (1796–1850), founder of the Ruzhin rabbinical dynasty.

• Malka and Avraham’s other daughter, Leah, married Rabbi Aryeh Leib Wertheim of Bendery (c. 1772–1854), co-founder of the Savran-Bendery rabbinical dynasty. Their daughter, Sima Wertheim, married Rabbi Eliyahu Pinchas Polonsky, Av Beit Din of Ekaterinopol (c. 1803–1855), and a great-grandson of Rabbi Pinchas Shapira of Koretz.

The ancestral links and notable descendants of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl are summarized in Figure 2.

Identifying Pedigreed Descendants of the Twersky Chassidic Dynasty

Genetic tests, including Y-DNA tests, are not a substitute for traditional genealogical research, and a substantial knowledge of the genealogical background is required before Y-DNA tests can make a significant contribution. This is particularly true since Jewish surnames, most of which were adopted in the early 1800s, do not necessarily imply relatedness, and are notoriously unreliable for genealogical surname studies.,

The Twersky Chassidic dynasty extends over nearly three centuries, and identifying living paternal descendants, descending solely from father to son, who are willing and able to take a Y-DNA test, presents unique genealogical challenges. Extensive genealogical research of the Twersky family conducted by Yitzchak Meyer Twersky, culminating in the publication of Grand Rabbis of the Chernobyl Dynasty, laid the necessary groundwork for identification of living descendants for this Y-DNA study.

From the many branches of the Twersky family documented in the book, we identified eight pedigreed descendants as potential study participants and candidates for Y-DNA testing. Two of these study participants descend from Rabbi Moshe, the elder son of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nahum Twersky of Chernobyl, and six of them descend from his younger son, Grand Rabbi Mordechai of Chernobyl. These latter study participants represent six of the eight Chassidic dynasties that were established by the sons of Grand Rabbi Mordechai of Chernobyl, including the Chernobyl, Makarov, Trisk, Tolna, Skvira, and Rachmastrivka branches.

The paper trail for these eight pedigreed descendants was validated by an extensive search of Chernobyl census and vital records. Each of the eight descendants identified and selected for Y-DNA testing, and the branches of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty from which they descend, are described below.

FIGURE 2

ANCESTRAL LINKS AND MARRIAGE CONNECTIONS OF THE TWERSKY CHASSIDIC DYNASTY

The Main Branches of the Twersky Chassidic Dynasty

The Chernobyl Branch

Yitzchak Meyer Twersky (b. 1965) is an 8th-generation direct paternal descendant of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730–1797) through his grandson, Grand Rabbi Aharon Twersky of Chernobyl (1784–1871), portrayed here. Yitzchak Meyer Twersky was initially contacted by lead author Dr. Jeffrey Mark Paull, and in addition to taking a Y-DNA test, he agreed to serve as a member of the Twersky Y-DNA research team and as a co-author of this study.

The Korostichev Branch

Grand Rabbi Moshe Twersky of Korostichev (1789–1866) was the father of Grand Rabbi Mordechai Twersky of Korostichev (1841–1916), shown here. His son, Grand Rabbi David Yaakov Twersky of Korostichev-Zhitomir (d. 1940), had a son, Grand Rabbi Yitzchak Avraham Moshe Twersky of Korostichev (d. 1982, Jerusalem), who was the last known male descendant of the Korostichev branch of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty.

The Cherkasy Branch

Grand Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Twerski (1794–1876) had only daughters. His grandson, Grand Rabbi Mordechai Dov Auerbach, adopted his mother’s surname of Twerski. Grand Rabbi Mordechai Dov Twerski of Hornistaiple, pictured here, was the son of Sterna Rachel Auerbach, who was the daughter of Grand Rabbi Yaakov Yisrael Twerski of Cherkasy (1794–1876). Hence, like the Korostichev branch, the Cherkasy branch has no son-after-son descendants.

The Makarov Branch

Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Tversky (b. 1975) is an 8th-generation paternal descendant of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730–1797), through his grandson, Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Makarov (1804–1851), whose son, Grand Rabbi Yaakov Yitzchak Twersky of Makarov (1828–1891), is portrayed here.

The Trisk Branch

Rabbi Yitzchak David Twersky (b. 1977) is a 9th-generation paternal descendant of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730–1797), through his grandson, Grand Rabbi Avraham Twersky of Trisk (1806–1889), portrayed here.

The Tolna Branch

Rabbi Neal (Menachem Nachum) Twersky (b. 1947) is a 7th-generation paternal descendant of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730–1797), through his grandson, Grand Rabbi David Twersky of Tolna (1808–1882), depicted here.

The Skvira Branch

Menachem Nachum Twersky (b. 1994) is an 8th-generation paternal descendant of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730–1797), through his grandson, Grand Rabbi Yitzchak Twersky of Skvira (1812–1885). His son, Grand Rabbi David Twersky of Skvira (1845–1919), is shown here.

The Rachmastrivka Branch

Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Twersky (b. 1993) is a 9th-generation paternal descendant of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730–1797), through his grandson, Grand Rabbi Yochanan Twersky of Rachmastrivka (1816–1895), pictured here.

Rabbi Moshe Twersky of Chernobyl Branch

Until recently it was thought that the only living son-after-son descendants of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky were the paternal descendants of his younger son, Grand Rabbi Mordechai Twersky of Chernobyl (1770–1837). While there were known descendants of his elder son, Rabbi Moshe (b. circa 1750 – d. before 1792), they were descendants of one of his daughters. In various rabbinical sources, we found mention of descendants of Rabbi Moshe, including one that was a gabbai of Rabbi Aharon Twersky of Chernobyl (1784–1871), but it was unclear whether he was a descendant of a son or a daughter.

Based on census records obtained from the Chernobyl archives, we discovered that Rabbi Moshe had at least three sons (Mechel, Yisrael Yitzchak, and Yosef Naftali), and a son-in-law (Hirsh) from a previously unknown daughter. We also succeeded in identifying two pedigreed descendants of Rabbi Moshe as potential candidates for Y-DNA testing. These two Twersky descendants, Yisrael Tverskoy and Jonathan Tversky, were previously unaware of their exact line of descent from Rabbi Moshe, or of their connection to one another.

Yisrael Tverskoy

Yisrael Tverskoy (b. 1937, in Kiev) is an 8th-generation paternal descendant of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730–1797), through his son, Rabbi Moshe Twersky (b. circa 1750 – d. before 1792), his grandson, Rabbi Mechel Twersky (1772–1845), his great-grandson, Rabbi Moshe Twersky (b. 1792), his 2nd-great-grandson, Rabbi Aharon Twersky (1828–1901), and his 3rd-great-grandson, Rabbi Mordechai Yisrael Twersky (1868–1908). Rabbi David Twersky (1859–1915), pictured here, was the brother of Rabbi Mordechai Yisrael Twersky.

Jonathan Tversky

Jonathan Tversky (b. 1956, in Australia) is an 8th-generation paternal descendant of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl (1730–1797), through his son, Rabbi Moshe Twersky (b. circa 1750 – d. before 1792), his grandson, Rabbi Mechel Twersky (1772–1845), his great-grandson, Rabbi Abraham Twersky (b. 1822), and his 2nd-great grandson, Rabbi Mordechai Twersky (b. 1846), pictured here.

The Y-DNA results of these two descendants of Rabbi Moshe genetically matched to each other, and they also genetically matched the Y-DNA results of the pedigreed descendants from Grand Rabbi Mordechai of Chernobyl’s branch, thereby proving that they were, indeed, son-after-son descendants of Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl. This was an astounding discovery to the Chassidic world, as expressed in articles which appeared in the Yiddish publications Oros and Yiddishe Zeit, as well as in the English version of the publication Hamodia.

The paternal lines of descent for all eight pedigreed paternal descendants of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty are summarized in Table 1.

Methods

The Y-DNA tests were conducted by Family Tree DNA (FTDNA) of Houston, Texas. The standard DNA Y-chromosome segment (DYS) markers, also referred to in genetic testing as short-tandem repeat (STR) markers, for the eight pedigreed Twersky paternal descendants are presented in Table 2.

The value of testing Y-DNA STR markers comes from creating a Y-DNA signature (haplotype) and comparing that Y-DNA signature to others in a database. They are useful for genetic genealogy because a unique Y-DNA signature distinguishes one paternal lineage from another. They can then be used in conjunction with Family Tree DNA’s Y-DNA comparative database to discover genealogical connections or historical ancestry.

Y-DNA mutates very slowly and passes down from father to son without recombination, except for the rare mutations that occur along the hereditary line; therefore, the Y-DNA genetic signature of a male descendant represents that of his entire paternal lineage. For the purpose of Y-DNA testing, all descendants of the studied lineage must be son-after-son; if there is even one maternal ancestor interposed in the lineage, the Y-DNA results of her descendants will reflect her husband’s lineage, and not the Y-DNA genetic signature of the lineage of interest.

To establish the Y-DNA genetic signature of a given rabbinical lineage, the Y-DNA of pedigreed descendants of that lineage must genetically match one another. Ideally, these pedigreed descendants should be from different branches of the lineage, with each descendant representing a different cousinly paternal line. Matching Y-DNA results from three or more different paternal lines provide additional confirmation and validation of the Y-DNA genetic signature.

Y-DNA tests of the eight pedigreed Twersky paternal descendants were reported at the 37 STR marker level. Because the pedigrees of all eight descendants were well-documented, and the identity of their common ancestor was known, testing at an increased number of markers above the 37 STR marker level (e.g., 67, 111) was considered unnecessary for identifying the haplotype and establishing a genetic match. The initial haplogroup for the eight descendants was predicted by FTDNA based upon their haplotype. Additional single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) genotyping was conducted for all eight pedigreed descendants to further refine the initial haplogroup classification.

Y-DNA Test Results

The Twersky Haplotype

Table 2 presents the Y-DNA test results for the eight pedigreed Twersky paternal descendants. The Y-DNA results showed a close genetic match among all eight descendants. The allele values of one of the pedigreed descendants (Rabbi Neal Twersky) represented modal values at all 37 STR marker locations, indicating that he had no mutations; his allele values therefore most likely represent ancestral values, or the modal haplotype. This also makes genetic sense, as he had the fewest number of generations back to the common ancestor and founder of the lineage, Grand Rabbi Menachem Nahum Twersky, of any of the descendants (Table 1).

All six pedigreed descendants of Grand Rabbi Mordechai Twersky matched each other quite closely, matching the modal haplotype on either 35/37 or 36/37 STR marker locations. Non-matching allele values, representing possible mutations at the STR marker locations tested, are indicated by the blue-shaded cells in Table 3.

The two pedigreed descendants of Rabbi Moshe Twersky matched each other’s allele values at 34/37 STR marker locations. They also matched the allele values of the pedigreed descendants of Moshe’s brother, Grand Rabbi Mordechai Twersky, quite closely, with Yisrael Tverskoy matching the modal haplotype at 35/37 STR marker locations and Jonathan Tversky matching it at 36/37 STR marker locations.

An interesting finding was the uniqueness of the Twersky haplotype, as indicated by the relatively small number of Y-DNA matches on the Twersky descendants’ genetic match lists. Yitzchak Meyer Twersky and Yisrael Tverskoy had only the other seven pedigreed Twersky descendants on their Y-DNA37 match lists. Including these seven pedigreed descendants, Rabbi Moshe Yehuda Twersky had eight genetic matches; Rabbi Zvi Hirsch Twersky and Rabbi Neal Twersky had twenty, Menachem Nachum Twersky had twenty-one, and Jonathan Tversky and Rabbi Yitzchak David Twersky had thirty-nine (Table 2).

Based on their haplotype, all eight pedigreed descendants were initially classified as belonging to the R1b-M173 haplogroup. Additional SNP testing of all eight pedigreed descendants’ Y-DNA revealed that they belong to the R-V88 subclade of the R1b-M173 haplogroup. This haplogroup/subclade designation, together with the lineage-specific haplotype, comprises the Y-DNA genetic signature for the Twersky Chassidic dynasty.

The close Y-DNA genetic match among all eight pedigreed Twersky descendants, representing two different ancestral lines, validates their pedigree back to their common ancestor and founder of the lineage, Grand Rabbi Menachem Nahum Twersky of Chernobyl.

TABLE 2

NUMBER OF Y-DNA GENETIC MATCHES AMONG PEDIGREED TWERSKY PATERNAL DESCENDANTS

A possible explanation for the larger number of genetic matches for Jonathan Tversky and Rabbi Yitzchak David Twersky is a back-mutation of the Y-GATA-H4 STR marker allele value from 13 to 12 that occurred twice separately in the Twersky line (Table 3). An allele value of 13 for this marker represents a mutation that is distinctive of the Twersky lineage; an allele value of 12 represents a R1b-V88 modal ancestral value.,

TABLE 3

Y-DNA TEST RESULTS FOR PEDIGREED DESCENDANTS OF THE TWERSKY CHASSIDIC DYNASTY

Time-to-Most Recent Common Ancestor (TMRCA) Predictions

In this Y-DNA study of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, as in our previous studies of rabbinical lineages, the common ancestor of all pedigreed descendants is known, and therefore, each descendant’s generation or place in the lineage does not need to be estimated. However, conducting Y-DNA testing of pedigreed descendants with well-documented paper trails provides the opportunity to evaluate and assess the accuracy of current predictive models for estimating the time-to-most recent common ancestor (TMRCA).

FTDNA’s time predictor (TiP) model was used to predict the TMRCA probabilities for the eight pedigreed Twersky descendants. In comparing Y-DNA results for estimating the probability of the TMRCA, each pedigreed Twersky descendant’s Y-DNA results, at 37 STR markers, were compared to those of the modal haplotype, represented by Rabbi Neal Twersky, because: (1) He represents the closest descendant to the common ancestor (see Table 1), and because: (2) His modal allele values most likely represent ancestral values (see Table 3). These probability predictions are presented numerically in Table 4 and graphically in Figure 3.

TABLE 4

TIME-TO-MOST-RECENT COMMON ANCESTOR (TMRCA) PREDICTIONS FOR PEDIGREED PATERNAL DESCENDANTS OF THE TWERSKY CHASSIDIC DYNASTY

The most recent common ancestor (MRCA) for all pedigreed Twersky descendants is Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky (1730–1797). He preceded 7th-generation descendant Rabbi Neal Twersky in the lineage by six generations, 8th-generation descendants Yisrael Tverskoy, Jonathan Tversky, Yitzchak Meyer Twersky, Rabbi Zvi Hirsh Tversky, and Menachem Nachum Twersky by seven generations, and 9th-generation descendants Rabbis Yitzchak David Twersky and Moshe Yehuda Twersky by eight generations (see Table 1). These are known, documented TMRCAs.

As shown by the mean probability values in Table 4, the known TMRCAs fell between the 75.3 and the 86.2 percent probability predictions for this study. These probability predictions were most accurate for the 9th-generation descendants (86.2%), less accurate for the 8th-generation descendants (81.4%), and least accurate for the 7th-generation descendant (75.3%).

These results are consistent with those of our previous Y-DNA studies of rabbinical lineages, which showed that the FTDNA time predictor model consistently overestimates the TMRCA in the range of 4 to 46 percent using the FTDNA time predictor model, and that the degree of overestimation is inversely related to the distance to the MRCA (i.e., the closer to the MRCA, the less accurate the TiP model predictions are, and the further from the MRCA, the more accurate they are)., , ,

To say this another way, the known TMRCAs in these rabbinical lineage studies generally fall between the 54 percent and 96 percent probability predictions, depending on the distance to the most recent common ancestor, with a mean value of about 75 percent. Similar findings were reported by Unkefer, who indicated that the actual documented TMRCA generally falls between the 50 percent and the 95 percent probability predictions.

Figure 3

Mean Probability Predictions of the Common Ancestor Living within a Specified Number of Generations for Pedigreed Paternal Descendants of the Twersky Chassidic Dynasty

The Twersky Haplogroup

A haplogroup is a group of similar haplotypes that share a common ancestor having the same single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) mutation in all haplotypes. Simply put, a haplogroup is a genetic population group of people who share a common ancestor on the patrilineal or matrilineal line. Because a haplogroup consists of similar haplotypes, it is possible to predict a haplogroup from the haplotype, but a SNP test is required to confirm the haplogroup prediction.

Y-chromosome DNA (Y-DNA) haplogroups are determined by SNP tests. SNPs are locations on the DNA where one nucleotide has mutated to a different nucleotide. Haplogroup classifications and the SNPs within them are organized within branches on the Y-chromosome phylogenetic tree. The defining SNP for a haplogroup is generally the furthest downstream SNP that has been identified on the phylogenic tree. This defining SNP of the latest subclade known by current research is referred to as the terminal SNP.

The International Society of Genetic Genealogy (ISOGG), Family Tree DNA (FTDNA), and YFull maintain phylogenetic or Y-SNP trees. These trees are generally updated as new branch-defining SNPs are discovered, with the YFull tree currently being relied upon as the most up-to-date version. Other regularly updated haplogroup-specific trees, such as the R1b Basal Subclades Phylogenetic Trees, are also available.

Based on their Y-DNA37 STR markers, all eight pedigreed descendants of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty were initially classified as belonging to the R-M173 haplogroup. Men from this lineage share a common paternal ancestor, which is defined by the presence of the SNP mutation referred to as M173, also known as R1. The R1 haplogroup is very common throughout Europe and western Eurasia. Its main subgroups are R1a (M420) and R1b (M343).

Haplogroup R1b, also known as haplogroup R-M343, is an offshoot of M173. It is the most frequently occurring Y chromosome haplogroup in Western Europe, as well as some parts of Russia, Central Asia, and Central Africa. It is also present at lower frequencies throughout Eastern Europe, Western Asia, as well as parts of North Africa and South Asia.

To further delineate the haplogroup of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, we ordered FTDNA’s R1b-M343 “Backbone SNP Pack,” which tests for 140 SNPs downstream of M343. The Y-DNA of pedigreed descendant Rabbi Neal Twersky was the first to be tested; he was found to belong to the R1b-V88 subclade of the R1b-M343 haplogroup. Following receipt of these results, the R1b-V88 SNP marker was tested for and confirmed for the other seven pedigreed Twersky descendants.

The discovery of the R1b-V88 SNP marker was announced in 2010 by Cruciani et al. Apart from individuals in southern Europe and Western Asia, the preponderance of R1b-V88 was found in northern and central Africa. Small percentages (1 to 4%) of R1b-V88 were also found in the Levant, among the Lebanese, the Druze, and the Jews, and in almost every country in Africa north of the equator.

The Yfull tree shows that the ancestral R1b-V88 haplogroup has many branches, of which two large branches are known. One branch is the Arab-African branch; the other branch has a split at 3400 years-before-present (ybp), before the start of Judaism. One sub-branch at 3400 ybp leads to a person from Saudi Arabia and the other sub-branch leads to another split at 900 ybp into the Jewish Ashkenazi branch.

This last split fits the idea that a Jewish group left the Middle East and lived in Iberia as part of the Sephardic Jewish community there. One of the Ashkenazi descendants, after living in Iberia, migrated to the Ashkenazi countries, where the population grew.

Penninx and Akaha (2016) analyzed the STR values among five different groups belonging to different branches of the R1b-V88 haplogroup in their FTDNA project. From this analysis, they reported that: “The Spanish group and the Ashkenazi group share a relatively recent common ancestor, with a TMRCA distance of 450–2100 ybp.”

Based on their findings, the authors concluded that: “The scenario that best fits the observation with the historic knowledge is a migration of a Jewish person from the Middle East to Iberia, and a later migration from Iberia to the Ashkenazi countries in the early Middle Ages and later migrations to the Ottoman Empire and the New World.”

Their conclusions are supported by the results of recent research studies which make a strong case for the Iberian origins of R1b-V88 and its parent SNP, R1b-L278., Maglio (2014) used biogeographical analysis to determine origins and migration patterns of a data set of individuals who tested positive for the R1b-V88 SNP marker. The author concluded: “The resulting phylogenetic relationships for R1b-V88 support an Iberian origin, a Mediterranean expansion, and a Europe to Africa back migration.” ,

In addition to the phylogenetic evidence supporting Iberian ancestry based upon the R1b-V88 haplogroup marker, the STR results for the pedigreed Twersky descendants provide additional supporting evidence of Iberian ancestry. Five pedigreed Twersky descendants – Jonathan Tversky, Zvi Hirsch Tversky, Menachum Nachum Twersky, Rabbi Neal Twersky, and Rabbi Yitzchak David Twersky – have an individual with the surname “Zamora” on their genetic match lists. He matches them on 33 to 34 of 37 STR markers.

Recorded in the spellings of Zamora, Zamorrann, and Zamorrano, this famous Spanish surname derives from the ancient city of Zamora in Northwest Spain, a city founded by the invading Moors in the 12th century. The Zamora surname also appears on several different lists of Sephardic Jewish surnames., ,

According to Professor Avraham Gross of Ben-Gurion University, Zamora, the capital of the northwestern province of the same name, was the most important center of Jewish learning in Spain during the 15th century. He discussed the Yeshiva of Zamora’s founder, Rabbi and Gaon of Castile Isaac Campantón (1360–1463), and emphasized Zamora’s position at the peak of Jewish learning right before the Expulsion.

These intriguing research findings suggest that the Twersky Chassidic dynasty most likely descends from a common Sephardic Iberian ancestor. Current research suggests that this Iberian ancestor lived approximately 450–2100 years ago, and that he most likely migrated to Iberia from Africa or the Middle East. During the early Middle Ages, this Iberian ancestor migrated from Iberia to the Ashkenazi countries, in which the Twersky Chassidic dynasty arose.

The Iberian ethnic origin of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, while intriguing, is not entirely unexpected, or without historical precedent. Sephardic Jewry, having been expelled from Spain, found different homes throughout Europe.

With the expulsion of Jews from Spain in 1492, as well as expulsion from Austria, Hungary, and Germany, Poland became the recognized haven for exiles from the rest of Europe, and the resulting accession to the ranks of Polish Jewry made it the cultural and spiritual center of the Jewish people in Europe until the 1600s.

It is also well-known that many major rabbinical families have a long-standing tradition that they descend from pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal. The prominent Ashkenazi rabbinical Epstein family, for instance, claims descent from Spain., , In this regard, the results of our previous Y-DNA study of the Katzenellenbogen rabbinical dynasty provided compelling genetic evidence that it, too, was most likely Sephardic in origin.

The Twersky Y-DNA Genetic Signature

As previously stated, the lineage-specific haplotype, together with the haplogroup/subclade designation, comprises the Y-DNA genetic signature for the Twersky Chassidic dynasty; both are essential and complementary components of the Y-DNA genetic signature of a paternal lineage. We have utilized this approach in our previous Y-DNA studies of rabbinical lineages,, the benefits of which have recently been summarized.

For the lineage descending from the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, the allele values at the 37 STR marker locations presented in “Y-DNA Test Results for Pedigreed Descendants of the Twersky Chassidic Dynasty” (Table 3) represent the haplotype of the lineage. The modal allele values, which correspond to the allele values for Rabbi Neal Twersky, are most likely to represent ancestral values.

This distinctive pattern of allele values distinguishes the Twersky lineage from other paternal lineages; even those that belong to the same parent haplogroup and subclade. This is also evidenced by the fact that there are so few genetic matches to pedigreed Twersky descendants in the FTDNA database; two of the pedigreed Twersky descendants match only the other seven pedigreed descendants, and a third has only one other non-Twersky genetic match (see Table 2).

The parent haplogroup to which the Twersky lineage belongs is the R1b-M343 haplogroup, which is an offshoot of R1-M173. Following identification of the R-V88 SNP marker in all eight pedigreed descendants, we tested Rabbi Neal Twersky’s Y-DNA for three additional SNPs downstream of R-V88: PF6289, FGC20973, and FGC21049. His Y-DNA tested positive for all three SNPs. The TMRCA for the terminal FGC21049 SNP is approximately 100–650 ybp, with an average of about 350 ybp. This mean TMRCA (350 ybp) is in the range of the actual TMRCA for the founder of Twersky Chassidic dynasty (287 ybp).

Based on their positive R-V88 SNP marker results, and closely matching STR allele values, it can be safely presumed that the other seven pedigreed Twersky descendants would test positive for the three downstream SNPs as well. Hence, the full phylogenetic path for the Twersky haplogroup is:

R-M173 > P25, M343 > V88 > FGC21015 > FGC21027 > FGC20970 > FGC20973 > FGC20980 > FGC21049

Taken together, these STR haplotype and SNP haplogroup results define the Y-DNA genetic signature for the Twersky Chassidic dynasty.

Recommendations for Future Study

The identification of the Twersky Y-DNA genetic signature is a significant research finding with many implications for the field of genetic genealogy, particularly for individuals of Jewish descent. Like most pioneering genetic genealogy studies, the Twersky Y-DNA study raises many new research questions and opens many new promising research avenues to exploration.

Based upon the matching Y-DNA results of eight pedigreed paternal descendants of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, we have succeeded in identifying the haplotype and haplogroup that characterize the Y-DNA signature of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, back to their most recent common ancestor and founder of the dynasty, Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky (1730–1797).

There are tens of thousands of Twersky descendants widely dispersed throughout the world. Many of them are patrilineal descendants of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, but many may have independently acquired the Twersky surname and bear no genetic relationship to descendants of the Twersky rabbinical family.

We are currently conducting a worldwide surname-lineage study to compare the Y-DNA test results of Twersky descendants from all families having the Twersky surname to the Y-DNA genetic signature of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty to either confirm or disprove paternal descent from the Twersky rabbinical family.

For those descendants who do not match the Twersky Y-DNA genetic signature, we are attempting to identify their haplotype and haplogroup, determine how they may relate to the Twersky Chassidic dynasty (e.g., such as by descent through a son-in-law who adopted the Twersky surname), and investigate possible sources of errors in the paper trail.

The haplotype classification for the eight pedigreed Twersky descendants was based on the testing of 37 STR markers. We compared known TMRCAs to predicted values using FTDNA’s STR mutation rate-based time predictor model, and found that the model overestimated the TMRCA by approximately 14 to 25 percent. This finding was consistent with the results of our previous Y-DNA studies of rabbinical lineages. , , , Such research studies provide useful validation data for evaluating the accuracy and reliability of current STR mutation rate-based models.

The predicted R-M173 haplogroup classification was further refined by the testing of downstream SNPs for all eight pedigreed Twersky descendants. From this additional SNP testing, all eight descendants were found to belong to the R-V88 subclade of the R1b haplogroup, which yielded fresh insights into the likely Sephardic origin of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty.

Additional SNP testing confirmed that one pedigreed descendant of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty belongs to the FGC20149 subclade of the R-V88 haplogroup. Based on their positive R-V88 SNP marker results, and closely matching STR allele values, it can be safely presumed that the other seven pedigreed Twersky descendants belong to this subclade as well. There are five SNPs (FGC21047, FGC21053, FGC21054, FGC21055, FGC21065) at or near the same phylogenetic level as FGC21049. Additional SNP testing will be required to confirm them and establish their branching sequence.

Current research suggests that the Iberian ancestor of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty lived approximately 450–2100 years ago, and that he most likely migrated to Iberia from Africa or the Middle East. However, current phylogenetic-based TMRCA calculations are imprecise, and give only a relative indication of chronological magnitude. The possible Twersky Sephardic ancestral connection to the Spanish town of Zamora provides yet another intriguing clue which merits further investigation.

Future research employing next-generation sequence (NGS)-based methods, such as FTDNA’s Big Y test, will permit the identification of novel SNPs that are further downstream of the FGC21049 SNP marker, and help to elucidate where they fit on the phylogenetic tree. This phylogenetic data, when coupled with appropriate population genetics and biogeographical methods, will permit more accurate age estimates of haplogroup clusters. Advancements in STR methodologies may also make more accurate determinations of mutation rates, TMRCAs, and ethnic origins possible.,

Undoubtedly, as such NGS-based methods become more widely available and used, and the full genome database grows, the Twersky Y-DNA genetic signature, like the genetic signature of other rabbinical lineages, will be further extended and refined.

Summary and Conclusions

The Twersky Chassidic dynasty dates back nearly three centuries. Thanks to the numerous published genealogies of the Twersky family in rabbinical sources, family trees, and yichus letters, the authenticity and validity of the lineage has been well-established. Extensive genealogical research of the Twersky family laid the necessary groundwork for identification of eight son-after-son descendants of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty for participation in this Y-DNA study.

Based upon the closely matching Y-DNA results of these eight pedigreed paternal descendants, we have succeeded in identifying the haplotype and haplogroup that characterize the Y-DNA signature of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, back to their most recent common ancestor and founder of the rabbinical dynasty, Grand Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky (1730–1797).

The findings and conclusions that are drawn from a Y-DNA study are only as strong as the genealogical evidence upon which they are based. In this Y-DNA research study, we were very fortunate to have had eight pedigreed son-after-son descendants with well-documented lines of descent from the Twersky Chassidic dynasty. This provided us with a very robust data set and a strong foundation of genealogical evidence upon which our findings and conclusions are based.

The closeness of the genetic match among these eight pedigreed Twersky descendants, taken together with their well-documented paper trail, provides a high degree of confidence that their distinct allele pattern at 37 STR marker locations, which defines their haplotype, in addition to the R1b-V88 and FGC21049 SNP markers, which define their haplogroup and subclade, accurately represents the Y-DNA genetic signature of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty and its various branches (Chernobyl, Makarov, Trisk, Tolna, Skvira, and Rachmastrivka).

In a recent Y-DNA rabbinical lineage study, we reported that the Katzenellenbogen rabbinical dynasty, long considered to be a classic Ashkenazic lineage, had a Sephardic ethnic origin. In a study of forty-five men in their Family Tree DNA FGC20747 SNP project, Rachel Unkefer et al. also recently presented Y-DNA evidence for an Ashkenazi lineage’s Iberian origin.

These current research findings suggest that the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, too, most likely descends from a Sephardic Iberian ancestor. Current research makes a strong case for the Iberian origins of the R1b-V88 SNP marker and suggests that the most recent common ancestor lived approximately 450–2100 years ago. This ancestor most likely migrated to Iberia from Africa or the Middle East, and during the early Middle Ages, his paternal descendant(s) migrated from Iberia to the Ashkenazi countries, where, several centuries later, the Twersky Chassidic dynasty arose.

In addition to the phylogenetic-based evidence of Iberian origin, this study provides an intriguing clue which suggests that the Twersky Chassidic dynasty may have an ancient connection to the town of Zamora, an important center of Jewish learning in Spain during the 15th century.

The application of DNA to genealogy has made great strides since its beginnings just over a decade ago, and the benefits of combining DNA and traditional paper-trail methodologies are evident. The Twersky Y-DNA research study represents a model example of how traditional genealogy and genetic genealogy work together to validate the paper trail for the pedigreed descendants of a lineage, and identify and characterize the Y-DNA genetic signature of the rabbinical lineage under study.

Several of our Twersky Y-DNA study participants were unsure of their precise line of descent from the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, and through their participation in our research study, they rediscovered their roots. As more individuals of Jewish descent turn to genetic testing as a way of discovering their roots, it is becoming increasingly clear that identifying the unique Y-DNA genetic signature of the world’s historically significant rabbinical lineages will play an important role in Jewish genealogy.

Y-DNA research studies of rabbinical lineages such as Polonsky, Bacharach, Wertheim-Giterman,, Katzenellenbogen, and the Shpoler Zeida have demonstrated the intrinsic value of identifying the Y-DNA genetic signature of these lineages for bridging major gaps in the paper trail for both Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews. As Y-DNA genetic signatures are identified for a growing number of rabbinical lineages, and the size of the DNA database increases, the likelihood of finding a genetic match to a well-documented rabbinical line increases.

With the successful identification and characterization of the Y-DNA genetic signature of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, we hope to enable many more current and future generations of newly discovered Twersky descendants to connect themselves and their families to this illustrious rabbinical lineage, and to rediscover their remarkable heritage.

Acknowledgments

The authors wish to thank our Twersky Y-DNA study participants for their outstanding cooperation, patience, and permission to present their names and Y-DNA data in our study.

We also offer our sincere thanks to Susan K. Steeble for her invaluable editing assistance, and to Janet Billstein Akaha, Wim Penninx, Zach Gordon, and Schelly Talalay Dardashti for their helpful comments and suggestions regarding the haplogroup and ethnic origin discussion.

The post The Y-DNA Genetic Signature and Ethnic Origin of the Twersky Chassidic Dynasty [AB-069] appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

My father, Max (Mordechai Menahem) Knisbacher was born during 1913 in Berlin and died in the U.S. on June 2, 1995. Amazingly, he preserved various pictures, letters and documents from the stops on his odyssey that began with his flight from Germany in 1933 through France, Palestine, England and ended in the U.S. These documents were in a variety of languages, including German, French, Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish. Since I had the good fortune to have worked as a translator and analyst for most of my career, I felt a duty to preserve my father’s memory and the memory of his immediate forebears, most of whom he never knew.

[Editor’s Note: The Knisbacher paternal line falls within AvotaynuDNA Project  lineage AB-033.  Contact AvotaynuDNA@gmail.com for details or visit www.AvotaynuOnline.com/DNA.]

I grew up with an early memory from age six when my family gathered around the radio and cheered in late 1947 when the United Nations announced the partition of Palestine and the recreation of the first sovereign Jewish state in 2,000 years. At that young age, all I knew of my father’s history was that he had been in the war and that members of both my father’s and mother’s families had perished. In later years, the horror of the Holocaust became something I felt compelled to come to terms with, and fueled what became my “genealogical imperative.”

How did I begin researching his family history?  Apart from the pictures and documents, my father also left behind the name of his own father’s birthplace, a shtetl called Lysiec. Since my job sometimes required morning meetings in Washington, D.C., I took those afternoons off to visit the National Archives, the Holocaust Memorial Museum, or the Library of Congress (LC). At the Library of Congress, in 1995, I finally found a reference to Lysiec on a printed map, written in Cyrillic. The place existed!

Why had my father himself never mentioned Lysiec to me? The answer may be that his father, Isak Moses (Yitzkhaq Moshe) Knisbacher, had died in the 1918 flu pandemic when my father was only five years old. Dad was thereafter raised among his mother’s large family, and had little contact with his father’s relatives aside from brief contact with a paternal uncle Hermann (Hirsch) who arrived once from Königsberg to present my father with a red bicycle for his 11th birthday. Aside from that one contact, he only had a couple of photographs and the recollections of his mother (who was from the big city of Tarnow, not the shtetl of Lysiec) and even her knowledge was second hand. Still, when Dad was in his last days with a terminal illness, it became important to him that we know where all of his folks had come from.

I have acquired numerous other maps locating Lysiec, a village on the right bank of the Bystritsa Solotvinska river (a tributary of the Dniester), at the foot of the Carpathian Mountains. The shtetl is 10 km south-west to Ivano-Frankivs’k and 8 km north-east from Bohorodchany.” [http://jgaliciabukovina.net/110665/community/lysiec?page=101]

Several other nearby towns that I discoved during my research also contained other branches of the Knisbacher family memers or in-laws, including Nadvirna, Mykulychyn, Kolomyya, Otyniya, and Tlumach. Collectively, I refer to this cluster of communicaties as “Knisbacher land.” The closest big city, formerly Stanislawow, Poland, is now known as Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine.

My father possessed two pictures of his father: one of his father and mother together, and another of his father, his father’s sister Sarah, and their parents, Dov and Cirl (née Bonner or Banner, taken in Stanislawow, as indicated on the back.

Dad had once told me that his parents were married in London. He never said why, and after his death I began to wonder if this was true. Searching for a British records source, I came upon a Family Records Center; Myddleton Place; Myddleton St.; London, EC 1, England. On July 1, 1997, I wrote to them with my request, and they forwarded to me their official “Application for Marriage Certificate.” After I filled it out and sent it back, I received the results later that year.

The marriage record described the groom as Isak Moses Knisbacher, a bachelor aged 23 and the bride as Cilli Szydlow, a spinster aged 24.  They were married in London on February 27, 1911 and resided at 27 Tredegar Square.. His occupation is listed as “general dealer.” His father is Berl Knisbacher, a “hotel keeper.” Hers is Meier Szydlow, a “fishmonger.” Suddenly I had basic information on the family, in fact, much more than I had anticipated.

They did not remain in London for long. Their eldest child Mali (murdered in the Holocaust) was born in Berlin merely nine months later, my father was born there in 1913.

The initial map, two photographs and the marriage certificate were the only physical evidence I had at that point. Where to go from there? As I pondered, old memories came flooding back. Dad had once mentioned a very old “Aunt Shoshana” in Israel who was the widow of one of his father’s brothers.  On another occasion, he enthralled us with the tale that one of his uncles, unnamed at the time, was in China, which sounded very exotic when we first heard it as young kids. In a childhood fantasy I imagined that my father had a pigtailed Chinaman for an uncle (During the course of this research, I learned that this was the same uncle Hirsch (Hermann) who had come from Königsberg to Berlin for Dad’s birthday in 1924).

Much more recently, the evidence of that journey has become available on the Web, via a Bremen passenger index [provided by Ancestry.com. The original data apparently from http://www.passengerlists.de/ where we have three of the four family members as follows:

Search results for knisbacher in the passenger names:

From the 1939 Shanghai business directory, on yet another valuable new source, the Genealogy Indexer, I found the exact address for Hermann in that city, 43 Chusan, where he is listed as a merchant (kfm. for kaufman).

Last year, I received this email from Judith Elam, [another researcher of Holocaust victims and survivors whom I had encountered on the GENI website.] It provides the exact death dates for Hermann and his wife Hanni from yet another source I had not known, the H. Richter collection on the Center for Jewish History website (Atara, their granddaughter in Israel, has since learned that graveyard in China where deceased Shanghai immigrants had been buried was destroyed decades ago in one of the Chinese Communist upheavals.) Hanni Knisbacher (Wartelski’s) birthdate on this record shows her a year younger than the date given on her Bremen passenger list (which I have not included here); i.e., this record has her born in 1882 rather than 1881.

Since I  had compiled considerable information about Uncle Hirsch, I now set my sights on locating Aunt Shoshana, the very elderly aunt in Israel that my father had met on a trip there in his later years who proved to be the mother lode of information. During a telephone call with her, she provided an outline of almost the entire family. Although she was in her 90s, she followed up with a typed letter.

Shoshana (née Schreier) was the widow of my father’s uncle Eliezer, and she listed six of his siblings as follows: Frieda, Sarah, Tova, Shikl, Hirsch, and Isaac, my grandfather. Just this year, I learned that he had left a brief listing of his father’s family with my brother back in 1995, but I had never seen it. Apparently my father knew all the names except for Tova. Interestingly, Shoshana omitted Leib, but, as I discovered later, that was probably because he had been living in Berlin since 1922 and she must never have met him.

Shoshana’s family lived in Stanislawow, but her father worked in Lysiec, in a shoe leather factory that he owned, from Monday through Thursday, returning home only on Friday. He would regularly eat at the Knisbacher restaurant (presumably an actual inn since father Berl’s occupation on Isak Moses’ marriage certificate was listed as “hotel keeper”). Shoshana tells the delightful story how, at age 16, she came to a party in Lysiec and Sarah Knisbacher was so taken with her that she told Shoshana’s father she should marry Shikl (then 18) in two years, when Shoshana turned 18. But her father David Schreier became ill, closed his Lysiec factory, and contact with the Knisbachers ended.

Shoshana’s actual husband-to-be, Eliezer, whom she hadn’t mentioned, was in the Austrian army in World War I and then went to live with his brother Hirsch in Berlin. When he returned home for Passover in 1931, still a bachelor, his sister Sarah remembered Shoshana and sent someone to find out if Shoshana was still unmarried. Eliezer and Shoshana were engaged within the week and three weeks later, on August 2, 1931, were married. They moved to Königsberg and opened a restaurant. When Hitler came to power in 1933, they closed the restaurant and returned to Stanislawow and from there immigrated to Israel in 1935.

All of these details were completely new to me and opened up new avenues to pursue—especially to try and learn more about Tova and Shikl, about whom I had never heard before, to learn the birth order and to acquire pictures of them if any had survived. Since I knew that my father had been in Palestine from late 1934 through mid-1937, I was curious to know if he had met Eliezer at that time. Of course, I also had not known that Hirsch and Eliezer had been in Berlin when my father was still there. Again, had they met? It’s a question that still has no answer. My father never mentioned Eliezer in my presence and his only mention of Hirsch was that trip from Königsberg in 1924. Just how long Hirsch was in Berlin also still is unknown.

Amazingly, all this detail from Shoshana came after she said she didn’t know a lot about the Knisbachers because Eliezer didn’t speak much about the family! The rest of the letter dealt with her own family and the enormous losses it suffered during the Holocaust. She also believed that she and I had met in 1964 at Aunt Frieda’s house in New York. I was at Aunt Frieda’s house on a couple of occasions in 1963 when I worked that summer for IBM in Yorktown Heights, NY. It is possible that I simply don’t remember meeting her, or even being there in 1964, but it seems more likely that the meeting took place in 1963 or that she confused my father for me.

I wrote back to Aunt Shoshana asking for more details about dates, maiden names and the like; the reply came in the form of a handwritten three-page note and included a couple of very nice photographs of her and her family. The note was written by her son Dov (who had Hebraized his surname from Knisbacher to Eliaz, in honor of their father Eliezer) who explained that his mother really knew nothing more except to say that her own mother’s maiden name was Weidler.

I had recently acquired an email account and had created a family list with which I shared all this information as it developed. My next break came in a trip to the [US Holocaust Memorial Museum—thanks for catching that!!!  in Washington, D.C. around that same time, in the Soviet Extraordinary Commission report on the Nazi atrocities in the areas that the German army had occupied. A search of often hard-to-read microfilm yielded a report of a Knizbakher family from Lysiec. The entries in this list are written in the Ukrainian language (although there are other lists in Russian) in a Cyrillic alphabet similar to Russian. Although findings of the Extraordinary Commission have since been digitized and are searchable on the Web, this document does not show up on-line. Those who can read Cyrillic may want to check out the original microfilm to be sure nothing has been missed.

Only a bare minimum of information appears, just names and the relationships, but it is enough to reveal something my family otherwise would not have known. It says: 79 Tsirlya, grandmother (stara matya in Ukrainian); 80 Simon,    head; 81 Sura, wife; 82 Genka, daughter; 83 Montzya,  daughter  (very faded, name uncertain).

This was clearly one family, and part of my father’s family since Tsirl (or Cirl) was the name of my father’s grandmother. At the time, I was trying to get as much information as fast as I could because I wanted to memorialize [the Nazi murder victims]  of Dad’s family  on the back of his own tombstone. Since the unveiling would be about a year from the date of his death, I had no time to lose. Unfortunately this information caused some confusion, which found its way onto that stone. The name Simon here was new to me and I considered that he possibly was a Knisbacher son about whom neither Dad nor Shoshana knew. Consequently, these people are listed as such on Dad’s tombstone. In fact, I later learned that Sura was Dad’s Aunt Sarah. She was the Knisbacher, not Simon, whose real surname, we later learned, was Goldstein (via Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony submitted by a Meshullam Goldstein, as well as by Uncle Eliezer).

Though I did not know it at the time, I later learned that it was common, especially in Galicia, for Jewish children to carry their mother’s family name. Jews there were encouraged by their rabbis to marry only in religious ceremonies, which the authorities did not recognize. Consequently, the children bore the mother’s surname. I believe that my own grandfather Yitzkhaq Moshe decided to marry in London, where the religious ceremony was legally recognized by the government, precisely to make sure that his children carried his name and not his wife’s. Why do I think that?

A couple of years after the conversation and correspondence with Shoshana, I made contact with Dina Kahan, one of the twin daughters of my father’s Uncle Hirsch (aka Hermann) who had died in Shanghai. After a telephone conversation, she, too, sent me some documentation that turned out, over a decade later, to have amazing information that initially I had completely overlooked. Dina had sent a handwritten note and then a picture postcard from 1917 of my grandfather sitting in a chair in a hospital. The opposite side contained a faded note from my grandfather to his brother Hirsch, who was serving in the Austro-Hungarian army at the time, as was Eliezer. Dina refers to both her father Hermann (Hirsch) as Bonner, as well as my grandfather, Hermann’s brother.

I was so excited to get only the third picture I had ever seen of my grandfather that I largely neglected the reverse side of the postcard. Although I could read most of the message text on one part, I had substantial difficulty with the faded Gothic script on the rest of the card, and sent the enhanced version to the Jewishgen Viewmate service. Several people responded that the message was simply “Your brother Isak Knisbacher sends you his best greetings as a memento.” No only was his brother addressed as Private H. Bonner, but in the return address at the top right, Isak, my grandfather, also calls himself Private Bonner. So he clearly identified himself as Knisbacher, but the army knew him as Bonner (or Banner).

The real shocker, however, was that this card showed something we never knew, that my grandfather had served in the German army. The return address is to the Berlin military hospital (Lazaret); the pajamas are those of military patients; the postcard bore no stamp and only military personnel had free franking privileges. Three of the Lysiec brothers, Eliezer, Hirsch (Hermann) and Isak (Yitzkhaq Moshe) served in World War I, Eliezer and Hirsch in the army of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and Isak, in the army of its stronger ally, the German Empire.

We know a bit more about Eliezer from another serendipitous event. Because I had set up a family Internet group and now had an Internet presence of my own, a distant cousin found me on her computer at about the same time that I received my grandfather’s postcard from Dina in California. Before my father died, he had been contacted by a blind attorney in Washington, D.C., Paul Kay (may his name be for a blessing), originally from Vienna and originally a Knisbacher. Dad and his mother knew relatives in Vienna had owned a large tallis (Jewish prayer shawl) factory, but they did not know the exact relationship, which remains unknown as I write this. Nevertheless there is no doubt that we are all related, based on our many given names in common, but of more consequence, on a twelve-point FTDNA match between me and a Knisbacher male descendant from the Vienna branch.

Another member of this Vienna family, Bettina Knisbacher Graf, unaware of the contact that had previously been made with Paul and later with some of his other relatives, sent me an email in 1998 asking if we were related. After that initial contact, the next email was more substantive and included many photographs of her family from Vienna (originally from the area around Kolomea, in the same part of eastern Galicia as Lysiec) and then a wonderful find from the military section of the Austrian State Archives. Her family members, also had served in the Austrian army in World War I and Bettina was searching for the details.

The document showed Eliezer’s German name Leiser; his birth date, 1899—hence 18 years old on April 19, 1917, the date at the bottom, so he was of draft age; and documentary proof of his birth place, Lysiec, with the further details that it was in the district of Bohorodczany in the province of Galicia. One more very important detail was his father Berl, listed as point of contact. We know that Berl’s oldest child, Dad’s aunt Frieda was born in 1885, so it is likely that Berl was born in the 1860s. Bettina’s grandfather was born in 1860; this was the common forename no, Bettina’s grandfather- this sentence. Bettina’s grandfather and my father’s grandfather were both Berls, two early members of the same generation who, presumably, were named for the common ancestor of what became the German and Austrian branches of the family.

In addition, we learned that in 1917, Berl was not in Lysiec but in Teplitz-Türn, today Teplice in the Czech Republic, but back then just another town in the huge Austro-Hungarian Empire. Checking into the history of World War I in that area, I was able to find the reason for the move. The area around Lysiec was on the front lines at the beginning of the war, so many Jews headed west toward safer ground, and chose Teplitz because it had an established Jewish community and a large synagogue.

In 1998 I was also corresponding with a Stuart Levine in Israel. He, too, had found me on Web, and was researching his own family members in the States. We agreed to trade research. I would look up information for him in the U.S. and he would search Yad Vashem archives, which had not yet been digitized. One of his first and most important finds was this one, just as he forwarded it to me, with typos and other errors that I will explain:

Name Yitschak

Parents Natan and Taube

Birthplace/year Horen?, Chekeslovakia/1914

Residence/Profession

Death site/year (or age)

Spouse/Children  Single

Witness/relation Alexander Knisbacher/Uncle

Witness address

Shoshana had mentioned a sister named Tova who married someone named Groch. Clearly this was the family, with Taube being the Germanized version of Tova, and the husband’s name, Natan, now known. Most interestingly was the son Yitschak born in 1914, at the start of World War I, in Czechoslovakia. (it only became Czechoslovakia at the end of the war). I suspected that “Horen” was a misreading of Türn, the second half of  Teplitz-Türn mentioned in Eliezer’s hospital record. Since the Page of Testimony had been submitted by a Knisbacher uncle, that meant that Tova was a Knishbacher just as Shoshana had indicated, and suggested that Stuart’s “Alexander” was a misreading of the Hebrew signature of none other than Eliezer. The actual record that I downloaded at the Yad Vashem website more than a decade later, showed that guess to be correct. On that document, Yitschak’s mother’s name is given as the Yiddishized Toiva

The name of Natan Groch later led, through Ancestry and further Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony (mostly from Eliezer and Shoshana), to the discovery of a total of three children, all murdered in the Holocaust, along with their parents, Menahem (b. 1909), Yitschak (b. 1914) and Dvora (b. 1935). Sadly, I have no pictures of most of them. Nor do I have any of Leib, but I know that his wife, Fannie Spira, also murdered during the Holocaust, has living relatives, as does my father’s Aunt Frieda. I still hope to find pictures for both one day.

Those additional Pages of Testimony, now easily accessible on the Web, led to another discovery. It turns out that Shimon Goldstein, who married Sura Knisbacher (the couple from the Soviet Extraordinary Commission report), came from the town of Mikulyczyn, at the very south of “Knisbacher land.” What is interesting about it is that Shikl Knisbacher, again from newly accessible Yad Vashem pages of testimony, was married to a Sima Goldstein, from that same town. My guess is that Sima and Shimon Goldstein were sister and brother who married brother and sister Shikl and Sura Knisbacher, respectively. This pattern was repeated in the next generation when two of my father’s sisters, Mali and Friedchen Knisbacher married two brothers, Louis (Israel) and Luser (El’azar)) Strassberg.

One of the greatest of our family Holocaust tragedies occurred when El’azar was unable to save his brother and sister-in-law while they were all in France desperately trying to avoid Hitler’s Vichy allies. All he could do was save his niece, Gisele, and watch in horror as the others were kept from him, shortly thereafter to be shipped off to Auschwitz.

These new documents have finally shown me the ultimate fates and likely birth dates of the members of my paternal grandfather’s generation. Of the eight siblings, only two had the opportunity to live reasonably full lives, the oldest Frieda (b. 1885), who married her first cousin Saul and lived in New York, and Eliezer (b. 1899). Frieda and Saul had four children and several living grandchildren and great grandchildren.  Eliezer had  served in the Austro-Hungarian army and later made his way to Palestine. He and his wife Shoshana Schreier had two sons Dov and Moshe, living with their own children and grandchildren in Israel.

The lives of the other six were cut short. My grandfather died in 1918 at age 30 in the worldwide influenza epidemic. He left behind a wife and three daughters in addition to my father.  Hermann (b. 1890), died in Shanghai at the age of 53, an indirect victim of the Holocaust as he was not murdered outright by the Nazis but perished, along with his wife Hannah Wartelski, from disease induced by the privations of the war that their flight from the Nazis had forced upon them. Their twin daughters are now both deceased but there are grandchildren and great- grandchildren both in the U.S. and in Israel. Sister Tova (Groch), her husband Natan and their three children: Menahem, Yitschak and Dvora were all victims of Hitler. One of the sources for Tova says she was born in 1887. If so, she would have been a twin of my grandfather, something about which we never heard, but then we never knew he was in the German army either.

Uncle Leib (b. 1896) and his wife, Fannie Spira, were childless and were both murdered in the Holocaust. Leib would have been of draft age at the start of World War I, but we have no record to show if he ever served. If he served in the Austro-Hungarian army it would likely have been under the name Banner, as did his brother Hirsch, since Bettina’s search for Knisbacher in the Vienna military archives only turned up her immediate relative and Eliezer. If Leib served in the German army we will probably never know, since those World War I enlistment records were destroyed in allied raids on Potsdam near the end of the war.

Aunt Sura Knisbacher (b. 1893) with her husband, Shimon Goldstein, and their two daughters, now known to be Henya and Bronya (not Genya and Montsya as shown on the Soviet Extraordinary Commission report), all were murdered by the Nazis or their Ukrainian henchmen. Uncle Szykl (Yehoshua) Knisbacher (b. 1902), aka Shia and Osias, was murdered during the Holocaust with his wife, Sima Goldstein, and their son Dov (b. 1927). Because we assume Dov was named for his grandfather, Dov Berl, and because Eliezer, who submitted Pages of Testimony for all his relatives that he knew had perished in the Holocaust, did not submit any page for his father, we assume that grandfather Berl died before the Nazi invasion of Poland, between 1918, the last record of him showing up on his son Yitzkhaq Moshe”s death report, and 1927, the year of grandson Dov’s birth.

The story is not quite complete. Just this year, 2016, Hirsch’s granddaughter, Atara in Israel, was going through her mother Dina’s effects when she came across a trove of pictures. Apparently, Uncle Hirsch had sent his daughters, Dina and Frieda, on summer vacations back to Hirsch’s hometown of Lysiec.  We found a picture of Uncle Szykl and his son Dov and a later picture of Dov alone. We still have no picture of Tova Knisbacher, but now we do have one of her son Yitschak, the one born in “Czechoslovakia” in 1914. From notations on the back of the photo we know that he went by the nickname Izo, pronounced Eetso. Finally, we also have a picture of Hermann’s twin daughters Dina and Frieda with their first cousins, Aunt Sura’s daughters Henya (the older) and Bronya (the younger) And there is one more picture, apparently taken at the same time and similarly posed shows the girls with Henya and Bronya’s mother, my father’s Aunt Sura.

Though my research into my father’s family is far from done (I have yet to pin down the origin of our surname or to establish the exact link between the various branches of the family that were previously unknown), I have learned an enormous amount about where they lived, how they lived, and all kinds of new sources to pursue that will likely continue to increase as time goes on.  Although most genealogists do not have the language skills to tackle the documents that I have discovered, it is important to understand that discovered documents must be translated.

But, for me the greatest satisfaction comes from being able to provide a memorial of sorts for those human beings, members of my own family, created in the image of God, who were so savagely slaughtered that they never even had the right to a proper burial. I now know not just the names but at least a little bit about who they were, what some of them looked like, and an even greater appreciation for what was lost through their loss.

The post Personal Journey: Who Were The Knisbachers of Lysiec? [AB-033] appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

I have known about my family history since childhood, but only segments of it.  My parents, Lothar and Irma Gärtner (nee Badrian) migrated to Australia from Nazi Germany in 1938, the only passengers on a German cargo boat out of Hamburg. My father recorded in his scrapbook that they were treated decently during the voyage by the captain and crew. Soon after arriving in Melbourne, they anglicised their surname to Gardner.  It’s the name on my birth certificate. I was born the following year.  World War II had just begun.  My parents were among the fortunate minority of European Jews to escape.

My father brought with him a Stammbaum, a pictorial representation of the Gärtner family tree.  Now hanging on my dining-room wall, it stimulated my interest as a young adult in my family history, but it was too small and densely packed with information to allow me to add new names.  My father died in 1961. After my wife (Helen) and I were married in 1963, I bought an artist’s sketch book and began to expand my family tree by adding my mother’s and my wife’s families, together with new information about my father’s side. Decades later, the tree was transferred to our computer and the Web.

Helen became interested in genealogy years before I did.  A friend’s father had found on the Internet that he had two half-brothers. Helen then searched JewishGen’s Family Finder for her parents’ and grandparents’ surnames and discovered a distant cousin in the U.S. who told Helen that she had three generations of cousins living in Russia. (We met most of them there, years later.)

My interest developed more recently.  I didn’t suddenly sit down one day and think, “Now, I really must investigate my ancestry.”  Rather, it followed three unexpected events:

• Helen’s U.S. cousin, after a correspondence gap of several years, emailed that he was no longer in the States. He had divorced his wife, re-married, moved to Paris and fathered a daughter.  Helen opened her computer to enter the new information on our Ancestry tree.
• Then a message appeared via Ancestry, from Werner Hirsch, a distant American cousin. He was descended from one of my paternal grandfather’s siblings. I had not known of his existence.  Werner had left Germany as a child, with his parents, before the war. He was a keen genealogist who was able to push back my Gärtner ancestry by another generation and tell me about relatives in the U.S. and South America.
• Another message soon followed, this time from a German lady named Elke Kehrmann. Another newfound relative? (As it turned out, no.)  Elke noticed on my family tree that a man surnamed Kehrmann had married a Hedy Kronheimer, a distant relative on my father’s side.  What did I know about him?  Actually, not much:  his first name was Ernst.

These events unleashed my current passion for genealogy and I learned much.  I learned that there is an invisible college of altruistic people around the world who make extraordinary efforts to be helpful.  Although my pre-retirement career as an educational researcher had given me a useful skill set, genealogy provided an opportunity to learn some new ways of thinking.  I gradually changed from an amateur, a passive recipient, into someone who could question doubtful data and seek out information for myself.

I learned, too, that genealogy is not just about recording family history. Although the Nazis and their collaborators murdered a large proportion of our people, a minority managed to scatter to the ends of the earth, either by escaping in time or by miraculously surviving in Europe. Genealogical findings can sometimes unite scattered families.  Helen and I have both experienced the joy of meeting relatives for the first time, from several different parts of the world (including a third cousin living in my own city). One truly astonishing example of such an outcome serves as the climax and finale to this article.

Elke  

I might have expected that my short reply to her query would have ended our correspondence.  It didn’t. Elke now did something extraordinary.  She noticed my mother’s maiden name on my family tree.  Without any prompting, she started sending me information about the Badrians of Oberschlesien.  She still does.

Elke was the first member of my invisible college. Others followed. Roger Lustig, an expert from Princeton, New Jersey, told me about the earliest Badrians of Upper Silesia. After I contacted Claire Gamston, a Badrian descendant in England who sought information about her father’s ancestry, she put me in touch with a remarkable young Dutch woman, Frieda Voorhorst, who provided information of major importance about a branch of my family that fled Germany for the Netherlands before the war. Frieda also visited Bytom in Poland and discovered crucial information about my great-grandmother. I discovered an apparently trivial error in a record on the Jewish Records Indexing-Poland website and sent in a correction. This little episode of academic pedantry led to correspondence with Stephen Falk, who sent me selected pages from the Pless Land Registry of 1817-47 about my Badrian ancestors’ families along with an Excel file of the entire Pless data compiled by Roger Lustig.

In mid-2015, Helen and I travelled to Europe. As well as getting together with newfound relatives, another special pleasure of that trip was meeting some of my helpers, Elke in Dresden and Frieda in Amsterdam. Claire (with her husband and father) came from England especially to join us in Amsterdam. Although emailing is good, face-to-face is special.

My Mother’s Family

I can now trace my mother’s family back to the first man (whom I call Menachem-Mendel) to adopt the Badrian surname, in the late 1700s.  This article focuses on the first three Badrian generations, but will conclude with a story about what happened to just one branch in modern times.

Prior knowledge.   My mother was born in Beuthen, Germany in 1907.  Centuries earlier, called Bitom, it belonged to the Kingdom of Poland.  Ruled in turn by various dukes, kings and emperors, it later became part of Prussia, and then Germany.  After World War II, Silesia was returned to Poland, and Beuthen is now Bytom, a reversion to its original name.

Long before my genealogical research began, I knew that Irma’s parents were Louis Badrian and Emma (nee Freund).  Louis was born on September 2, 1871, and was a highly skilled specialist shoemaker who crafted individually designed footwear for people with crippled or deformed feet.  He suffered from diabetes in the days before insulin and died, aged only 45, on February 1, 1917.  Emma was born in 1873; her birthplace was not entered in my family tree, but I later found that it was Königshütte (now Chorzow), near Kattowitz.  She perished in the Holocaust, in Thereseinstadt according to the sketch-book entry. (Not correct: the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum informed me that the Gestapo had put her on a train heading for Auschwitz.)

Louis and Emma’s first child was a stillborn daughter. Irma was one of six living children. Their birthplace was not recorded in my sketch-book, but I assumed (correctly) that it was Beuthen. Oldest son Walter (b. 1900) began to train as an apprentice shoemaker in his father’s workshop, but the training ceased due to his father’s early death.  He then worked in a shoe-store, at first in Beuthen and then Berlin, where he married, had a son, lost his job during the Nazi period and died of cancer in 1941.

Second son Herbert (born 1903 in the sketch-book, but 1904 in German records) moved to Breslau and married. The couple and their little daughter were Holocaust victims.  (In 2015, I visited the Fort IX concentration camp in Lithuania, where they were shot to death in November 1941.)

Third son Rudolf (born 1906) was the first to recognise the Nazi threat, and left for Palestine in 1933.  He married and the couple had a son and a daughter, my Israeli first cousins.  My uncle Reuven (his name in Israel) died in Haifa in 1985.  Fourth son Felix (born 1910) is mentioned on the family tree as married and divorced, together with the fact of his death in a concentration camp. At first a slave labourer in an Auschwitz camp, he died in Buchenwald in 1945.

Louis’ death prevented Irma from receiving an advanced education.  As a teenager, she worked in Beuthen as a sales clerk and moved to Berlin as a young woman to advance her career. Early in the Nazi period, she went to Karlsruhe to work in a Jewish-owned department store. In that town, she met and married my father. Lothar had an uncle in Melbourne, who was long-established, wealthy and willing to sponsor my parents’ entry to Australia.  My mother, the longest-living of her siblings, died in Melbourne in 1992.

In 1939, my parents sponsored the immigration of the youngest sibling, Herta (born 1914).  She stayed in Melbourne for a while and then moved to Sydney, where she married. It was her husband’s second marriage; they had no children.  My aunt died in Sydney in 1984.

Also in 1939, Walter’s son, my other first cousin, now known as Laurie (born 1932), was placed on a kindertransport by his parents, whom he never saw again. A ship took him to England, where he was immediately transferred to another ship bound for Australia. Today, he is the father and grandfather of the only Australian descendants still carrying the Badrian surname.

The extended family. Irma’s aunt and uncle were neighbors in Beuthen. They are mentioned in my mother’s handwritten memoirs, compiled a few years before her death.  Minna, unmarried, worked as a kindergarten teacher. In the sketch-book, Uncle Hermann is listed as married to Frieda (maiden name unrecorded). Their daughter Erna was married and divorced. The ex-husband’s surname was unknown. A blank box underneath Erna’s name represents my mother’s recollection that Erna had a child, name and gender unknown.  Hermann and Frieda also had a son, Gerhardt.  My mother knew that all four had died during the war, but there was a complete absence of any biographical data about this family, except for a note that Erna and Gerhardt both died (true) in Holland (only partly true).

My mother knew about her maternal ancestry. In her memoirs, she records childhood memories of her maternal grandfather, Hermann Freund, who died in 1910 when she was only three years old. But about her father Louis’ ancestry there was nothing.  Who was my great-grandfather?  My great-grandmother?  My mother didn’t know. This is where the story of my Badrian research really begins.

Elke’s 150-List.  I quickly learned something important. One may receive vital information, but not recognize it at the time, because other crucial information is missing.  Elke sent me a list of 150 Badrians, individuals and family groups.  It included a couple, Joseph and Handel Badrian (nee Freund) and three children, Hermann, Minna and Adolf.  Joseph and Handel were my Badrian great-grandparents.

Only I didn’t know that at the time.  How could I?  No flashing neon lights announced, “Hey, Paul, here are your great-grandparents.”  I was, naturally, looking for Louis’ parents and he wasn’t listed among Joseph and Handel’s children.  There were two Louis Badrians in the 150-list, but their birthdates didn’t match my grandfather’s. Joseph and Handel lived in Ornontowitz. I had never heard of it (it’s a village in the Gleiwitz/Kattowitz region). Yes, there was a Hermann and a Minna.  So what?  These are common German forenames. And a son called Adolf. I’d never heard of him. Not on our family tree; mother never mentioned him.  My feelings were mixed. I was deeply impressed by the willingness of a complete stranger to be so helpful, yet disappointed that the information wasn’t (apparently) relevant.

Ryan’s question.  Sometimes help comes from completely unexpected sources. Nine-year-old Ryan is the youngest Badrian in Australia, the grandson of cousin Laurie, the kindertransport emigre. His teacher assigned the children a project to investigate the origins of their surname. Ryan’s request for information was relayed via his father and grandfather to me.  I didn’t know. I knew that family-based surnames were adopted in Napoleonic times, and that Jews often chose names based on their town of origin, or occupation, or tacked sohn onto the name of their father.  Badrian didn’t fit any of these categories.  I couldn’t help—but Helen could. She had recently joined JewishGen’s Discussion Group, and posted the question on the web.  Promptly, several people responded.

The most helpful answer came from Roger Lustig. He quoted Menk’s Dictionary of German-Jewish Surnames. The name was derived from baldrian, the German name for valerian, a medicinal plant used to prepare sleeping medicine.  Roger explained that family-based surnames were adopted in Upper Silesia around 1791, earlier than elsewhere. He told me that in 1812, the citizenship list for Silesia shows one Baldrian family in Sohrau (today, Zory) and one Badrian family in Baranowitz. Later, Baldrian tended to disappear.

The earliest person to adopt the Badrian surname, said Roger, was probably called Mendel. He believed that the men of the two families were brothers. Abraham was born in 1768, married in 1794, and moved from Baranowitz to Sohrau. Much later, Elke sent me the 1848 death record of Abraham in Sohrau, which gave his age at death as 75, implying a birth year of about 1773, but the age entry could be just an approximation.  Joseph, the other brother, was in Baranowitz until 1817.  Each brother had a son named Mendel.  Based on the custom of naming a newborn son after a deceased grandfather, Roger inferred that this was the name of the original Badrian.

Fig. 1 Evidence of two Mendel Badrians, Pless Land Register, page 3

The Pless Land Registry covers the period from 1817 to 1847.  The index page (Figure 1) is partly illegible (water damage?). Four Badrians are listed. No. 16, Joxxxx (presumably Joseph), 17, Menxxx (presumably Mendel, but could be Menachem), 24, Wolff and 26, Mendel.  The distinctive numbers 17 and 26 indicate that these are two different Mendels.

Roger said that Generation 1 Mendel adopted the Badrian surname after 1791, along with his two sons. He added that the Mendel grandsons were born in 1803 and 1805, mentioned Abraham having a son named Michael in 1801, and suggested that Generation 1 Mendel died about 1802. While I endorse the general thrust of Roger’s argument, I subsequently obtained some additional evidence and would offer a slight variation.

I have never seen any document with Michael’s Hebrew name on it, nor any evidence that Abraham had more than one son.  I have seen Michael’s 1822 marriage record giving his age and his father’s name, so I agree that he was born in 1801. Michael died “of colic” in 1833, aged 32. A Mendel, born in 1803, is listed in the Pless register as head of his own large family.  This Mendel must be Joseph’s son, as many of this Mendel’s children were born after the death of Michael.

Joseph’s Mendel married Johanna (Hendel) Loewy in Pilgramsdorf in 1827 and the couple had a son named Samuel in 1828.  Samuel married Amalie Brenner and the couple lived in Beuthen where he was in business as a grain dealer.  He died in Beuthen and is buried in the “new” Jewish cemetery located at what is now called Piekarska Street. Frieda Voorhorst visited the cemetery in Bytom and photographed his gravestone.  One side is written in Hebrew, the other in German. The Hebrew side refers to Samuel as the son of Reb Menachem.

The name Menachem is commonly paired with Mendel.  Thus at birth, Joseph’s son was probably named Menachem-Mendel, but in everyday life, he just called himself Mendel. I, therefore, believe that the original Badrian was also called Menachem-Mendel, so that is the name I now use to refer my patriarchal ancestor.

If Michael were Abraham’s only child (my opinion, not Roger’s), then he too would have been named Menachem-Mendel at birth.  I consider the idea that this Menachem-Mendel might have adopted the everyday name Michael entirely credible. If I am correct, the two Mendel grandsons were born in 1801 and 1803, and not in 1803 and 1805. This would indicate that Generation 1 Badrian died prior to Michael’s birth in 1801.

My grandfather.  Roger suggested that I request information about my grandfather Louis from the Bytom archives.  I located the email address on the Web, and wrote in Polish (using Microsoft Translate). From Anna Szwed in the Bytom office, I learned that at birth, my grandfather had been named Löbel. She also sent me an extract of his death certificate (Figure 2). 

Fig. 2  Louis Badrian, extract of death record from Bytom (Beuthen)

I have a passable knowledge of German and I can read printed Gothic font, but am unfamiliar with Old German script. Some of my overseas contacts, however, provided help within hours. Louis had died, aged 45, in Beuthen O/S [Oberschlesien], had been born in Sohrau O/S, and was married to Emma.

Sohrau records are held in the Racibórz (formerly Ratibor) archives, administered by the Katowice office.  I emailed the archives, and struck genealogical gold.

• I received a copy of Löbel’s birth record (Figure 3).
• The record was in Old German script, except for names, written by convention in Latin script. Roger interpreted the document. Löbel was the son of the inn-lessee of Sohrau, Josef Badrian and his wife Handel nee Freund. Roger also chipped in with some of his knowledge. Handel was the daughter of Itzig Freund and his wife Minna.

Fig. 3  Entry in the Sohrau records of the birth of Löbel Badrian (Katowice National Archives)

• Sohrau had my great-grandfather’s death certificate as well (Figure 4). He had died in Sohrau on July 2, 1896. Joseph (the more usual spelling) died aged 54, so he was born in late 1841 or early 1842.  Again, Roger interpreted.  A student, Ludwig Liban, nephew of the deceased, reported the death at the home of Miss Marie Badrian of the master furrier Joseph Badrian, son of Moses Badrian and wife Rebecca (nee Berliner). Joseph’s wife lived in Bielschowitz. (The “Miss Marie” is the only unmarried Marie Badrian that I know. The Pless Excel file shows that in 1838 Moses and Rebecca had a daughter named Marie.  She would have been 58 at the time of Joseph’s death.  Perhaps she cared for her brother in his final years, consistent with the idea that Joseph and Handel had separated.)

In a single burst, my Badrian great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents had been revealed.

I could now link this new information with the 150-list, viewed several weeks earlier.  Löbel was born in Sohrau. The parents then moved to Ornontowitz, where their remaining children were born and recorded in a different archive.  I learned a simple principle, i.e., finding a record in an archive that a couple had three children does not mean that they had only three children.  Seems obvious, but it’s easily overlooked.

Fig. 4  Death Certificate of Joseph Badrian (Katowice National Archives)

Great-grandmother Handel (nee Freund).  What happened to Handel after 1896? This question remained unanswered for almost two years. The research was complicated by the presence of several Handel Badrians in the records, including a few of similar age.

Frieda and Elke combined independently to answer the question.  During her visit to the Bytom cemetery, Frieda looked unsuccessfully for Handel Badrian’s grave, but in the cemetery office she found a handwritten, alphabetically organized list of burials (Figure 5). It showed a Johanna Bad(?)an – presumably a record of a partly illegible gravestone–who died on November 15, 1903. I had already encountered the association of  ‘Handel’ with‘Johanna’ (Mendel Badrian’s wife Johanna/Hendel Loewy) so this was possibly my great-grandmother/ (Or not. She might have been just another Handel Badrian.)  Elke obtained from German archives the death certificate that provided the definitive answer (Figure 6). 

Fig. 5  Death Record of Johanna Badrian in Bytom         (Photo: Frieda Voorhorst)

Fig. 6 Death Certificate of my grandmother Johanna (Handel) Badrian

Johanna Badrian, the Beuthen Standesbeamte attests, died on November 15, 1903.  She was born in Gostin, in Pless, the daughter of innkeeper Isaac Hirsch Freund and his wife Minna nee Politzer. Johanna was the widow of the businessman Joseph Badrian, and at the time of her death, was living at Dyngosstrasse 45 in Beuthen (the same street as her son Louis and family). Her daughter Minna Badrian from the same address witnessed the certificate. (My great-aunt Minna was obviously named after her maternal grandmother.)

Fig 7.  Marriage records 1833-36 in the Raciborz archives (Katowice National Archives)

My great-great-grandparents.  JRI-Poland’s website has the details of Moses and Rebecca’s marriage on February 28, 1835, although she is recorded there with her German name of Friederike.  Elke sent me a copy of the original marriage record (Entry 31, Figure 7).  It is the oldest official document relating to a Badrian ancestor that I have. 

The JRI-P entry also has Moses’ father’s given name and place of abode:  Joseph of Sassez. There is a question mark after the place name, but I know the usual spelling in German:  Sussetz (today, Suszec).

Extraordinary. Now I knew my great-great-great-grandfather’s name as well. Moses, I estimated, was born around 1810, so if there were only two Badrian families in this region at the time, Moses’ father Joseph was the son of  Generation 1 Menachem-Mendel. My Badrian ancestry had been revealed.  It runs Menachem-Mendel/ Joseph/ Moses/ Joseph/ Löbel(Louis)/ Irma/ Paul.  I am a Generation 7 descendant.

Joseph’s Family

One of the Pless pages (Figure 8) sent by Stephen Falk gave me my first information about the other members of my great-great-great-grandfather’s family. Joseph was born in 1771. (This is not an official contemporary birth record, merely an entry made by a civic official, decades later, when Joseph brought his family to Pless. As all the entries relating to the family are in identical handwriting, I infer that they were all written by one official at the same time, i.e., after the entry relating to the youngest child, Gabriel, born in 1821. (Recall that the register was begun only in 1817). At least half a century had elapsed between the birth of Joseph and the birth of Gabriel.  The 1771 date is credible as it’s in the same time frame as the 1768 birth year of Joseph’s brother Abraham. The cross next to Joseph’s name indicates that he has died, and this must have occurred prior to 1847, when the register closed.

A 30-year gap exists between Generation 2 and the earliest Generation 3 offspring.  If we use that figure and extrapolate it backwards, that gives me a rough estimate of 1740 as the birth year of Generation 1 Menachem-Mendel.

Joseph’s wife’s name, my earliest known female ancestor, is recorded as Leye.  I feel confident that this is the way the Pless official heard and wrote the Hebrew name usually transliterated as Leah.  According to the register, she was also born in 1771. I’m not stating that this is wrong but it is questionable.  Gabriel’s birth year would mean that Leah was 50 years old at the time.  Possible, but definitely doubtful.

Fig. 8  Joseph Badrian’s family (Pless Land Register).

Generation 3: my great-great-great-uncle Mendel.  Five children of Joseph and Leah are listed in the register, but this does not mean that they had only five children.  The register is simply a list of people living in the district during a particular time period. It is not a comprehensive record of all the members of a family unit.  Mendel, born in 1803, is not included as a member of Joseph and Leah’s family. He was at least 18 years old when the register entries were made some time after 1821, and was no longer part of Joseph’s family unit.  His marriage to Hendel Loewy (born 1807) and their first four children are recorded in the Sohrau archives. Later, as the Pless register attests, they return to Pless where their family grew. They had 12 children, of whom two died in infancy. If we were to establish a Badrian Fecundity Prize, this couple would win.

Joseph and Leah’s later children. The five children in the Pless list are Wolff (born 1810); Moses (born 1812), my great-great-grandfather; Güttel (born 1817, the only daughter); Jochem (born 1819) and Gabriel (born 1821).

My great-great-great-uncle Wolff.  The name Wolff (or more commonly, Wolf) Badrian occurs several times in the records in various generations, often in conjunction with, or alternate to, the Hebrew name Ze’ev (which means wolf) and (in later generations) with the German name Wilhelm. The Pless data confirmed what I had believed for some time, that he was a sibling of my great-great-grandfather Moses.

The register has a separate listing for Wolff and his family. He married Rosel Wohlauer in 1830.  The maiden name deserves a comment, as elsewhere in the register she is described as born in 1812, the daughter of Jacob Anspach and his wife, Feigel Wohlauer. In other words, Wohlauer is the maiden name of Rosel’s mother.  Rosel, after bearing Wolff three children, died young, in 1837.

Wolff is mentioned again in the Pless registry.  On September 28 (the year is illegible) he married a woman who at her birth on May 24, 1819, was called Friedel Schleyer (born 1819), the daughter of Moses and Therese Schleyer.  This, however, is almost certainly a reference to Wolff’s third marriage, not his second. The evidence for this is a JRI-Poland listing of the marriage of a Joseph Badrian (born 1840) to Julianne (Handel) Tichauer on January 8, 1862.  The bridegroom’s parents are recorded as Wolff Badrian and Rachel Loewy.  Clearly, Wolff was not married to Friedel Schleyer in the early 1840s.

JRI-P lists Wolff as the father of a five-year-old boy who died in 1847;  the mother is not named. (My guessing is that it was Rachel Loewy.  Perhaps she died between 1842 and 1847.)  This is followed by a list of six births, from 1849 to 1861 where the mother’s surname is Schleier or Schleyer, with the first name given as Marianna (three times), or Marie, or Friedericke, or Fradel Marianna, the last two entries being fairly consistent with the Pless record of Friedel while at the same time confirming that Marianna or Marie is her everyday German name.

If we were to institute a Badrian Marital Relations Prize, Wolff would win. As Shakespeare said, “And one man in his time playes many parts”. (‘Playes’ is not a typo, that’s how The Bard wrote it.) I have no marriage records, so how do I know that this is one man, and not three different Wolff Badrians?  In short: there were only two Badrian families in the region at that time.  Abraham’s son Michael died young, so he could not have been involved.  There was another Wolf Badrian, the son of Wolff’s older brother Mendel, but he wasn’t born until 1835.

My great-great grandfather Moses., Based on the 1835 marriage document, I originally estimated Moses’ birth year at about 1810. Later, Elke visited the archives in Leipzig and obtained a copy of his 1878 death certificate.  The deceased was 73 years old, i.e., born in 1805.  Then I saw the Pless entry which is 1812.  In the absence of any reliable birth record, I am inclined to accept 1812 as likely the most reliable.

My great-great-great-uncle Jochem.  Jochem is probably the way the civic official in Pless chose to record the boy’s Hebrew name, Y’hoyachim. (It’s not an idiosyncratic error. Numerous Jochems appear in the Pless registry.) In later records, when the boy reaches adulthood, he married (Handel Eichner, born 1818) and his name was recorded as Joachim or Haimann or Heimann.  The couple had seven children, a boy and four girls in Sussetz, the last two girls in Warschowitz. Their second daughter, Lehne (born 1849), possibly was named after grandmother Leah, while the first daughter, Rosa (born 1844) was not, implying that Leah died between 1844 and 1849.

Gabriel Badrian. The Pless page of Joseph’s family provides little information about the youngest sibling. He was born on May 2, 1821, and married Marie Schleier (born 17 January 1827) on February 10, 1847. In the previously mentioned Pless Excel file, the surname is spelled Schleyer, but there is no mention of a Marie, or any other female Schleyer with this birthdate.  The marriage occurred at the start of the year in which the Pless register was closed, so there is nothing more about them there.  Gabriel’s name does not show up again in the later years covered by the JRI-P website.  Perhaps Gabriel died as a young man, and widow Marie became the third wife of Gabriel’s brother Wolff. 

Jacob Badrian. This name appears frequently in the JRI-P files as the husband of an Emilie/Mirel Schleier. They had at least six, and possibly nine children. They named their first two children Joseph Heymann and Leah/Lene, which provides strong circumstantial evidence that Jacob is a late son of Generation 2 Joseph and Leah.  If so, it implies that Joseph and Leah left the Pless district sometime after Gabriel’s birth.

Joseph’s death.  I have not found any record of Generation 2 Joseph’s precise date of death, but the evidence suggests that he died between 1835 and 1840, based on the years in which several grandsons named Joseph were born. There’s also a JRI-P death record of an elderly Badrian, first name not cited who died in 1836. This cannot be Menachem-Mendel, who died before 1801, or Joseph’s brother Abraham, as we have his death record of 1848. It might be Joseph.

Unsolved puzzles. What happened to my great-uncle Adolf? That question remains unanswered, despite two years of research. At first, we thought we knew the answer.  Elke had found information that Adolf Badrian was a soldier in World War I, had died, and was buried in Gleiwitz.  Further research indicated that the soldier was a young lad, not my middle-aged great-uncle.  Moreover, the soldier, although seriously injured, had not died (at least not soon afterwards), as he was still living in Gleiwitz in 1924. What happened to my great-aunt Minna in her later years also is an unsolved puzzle. I have been unable to find where or when she died.

Badrians in the Netherlands

Great-uncle Hermann and family. Frieda Voorhorst’s untiring efforts researching books, civic records and memorial websites provided me with accurate genealogical (and historical) information about my great-uncle Hermann Badrian and his family. Frieda located a Haymann Badrian on a Dutch Holocaust memorial website.  His birthplace, Ornontowitz, and date of birth,  October 3, 1875, clearly identified him as my mother’s uncle Hermann.  This led to further information about his family.  Hermann’s wife, also called Frieda, was born on June 28, 1876, in Hirschberg, a town in the alpine Riesengebirge region. Her maiden name was Herrnstadt. The couple married in Beuthen on August 31, 1902. (Frieda Voorhorst discovered this snippet of information in a Dutch archive, of all places.) Their two children were both born in Beuthen, daughter Erna on June 17, 1903 and son Gerhard on October 13,1905.

Frieda’s findings corrected an erroneous entry (October 13, 1906, in Breslau) in a Yad Vashem testimony that I had believed for years.  The submitter undoubtedly was well-meaning, and should be commended as the only person to post a testimony about Gerhard, but she must not have known Gerhard well.  Frieda found a document in the Amsterdam archives, in a police file. Someone had stolen Gerhard’s bicycle. He signed a statement that included his date of birth.

During World War I, Gerhard was sent as a child to the Netherlands, which was neutral in that war, and cared for by Jewish foster parents, Jaques and Rachel deVries (nee Brandon).  Erna married an Austrian, Hans Kerpen in Beuthen in 1930, but the couple divorced in 1938. Hans had returned to his family in Austria, was arrested there, sent to Dachau, released, fled to France, captured there and sent to Auschwitz. His precise fate is unknown.

Hermann, Frieda and Erna were arrested by the Nazis in March 1943. The parents were interned briefly in the Westerbork transit camp and then deported to Sobibor where they were murdered.Erna worked in the Vught slave labor camp for three months, then was taken to Westerbork in June, immediately deported to Sobibor and murdered.

Gerhard went into hiding and joined the Verzet, the Dutch resistance. He was part of the PBC (Persoonsbewijzencentrale) group, which specialized in stealing, altering and forging identification papers and other documents, initially to help protect Jews in hiding, but later to assist Dutch men targeted to work as forced labourers in Germany. If that were all he did, it would have been impressive enough, but he also did something else that was extraordinary. The evidence is drawn from Dutch and German books and websites, a Dutch two-part radio program that included testimonies by Verzet survivors and even one Gestapo document gloating over its success in killing this leading German Jew terrorist. With his solid build, Aryan appearance (whatever that means) and perfect German, he would dress up as a Nazi officer, drive in a green Opel car with Wehrmacht number plates, and armed with the appropriate (fake) documents, march into a police station or hospital ward and order the release of a prisoner (a fellow member of the resistance) “to take him to headquarters for further questioning,” i.e., off to a safe house.

We know how this story ends. I have known about it ever since my Israeli cousin Arye Badrian gave me, in 1985, a copy of the photograph of the memorial plaque in Amsterdam at the place where Gerhard was shot to death in a carefully planned ambush on June 30, 1944. (Figure 9).

Fig. 9  Memorial plaque in Rubensstraat, Amsterdam      (Photo: Arye Badrian)

(“Born as a German Jew and at this place on Friday, June 30, 1944,

was killed in action as a fighter for The Netherlands’ freedom.”)

I have written extensively about Hermann and his family in my annual family journal, and I am currently writing an account of Gerhard’s life story. (Frieda Voorhorst is writing one in Dutch.)  He is my family hero, and he deserves an extended literary treatment. However, the long version is a work of biography and wartime history, not genealogy.

Horst Kerpen. The research did, however, generate one truly remarkable genealogical finding.  I mentioned above that my mother’s family tree included a blank box underneath her cousin Erna’s name, representing a child of unknown name and gender (and, obviously, unknown fate).  The most rational expectation for a Jewish child born in the 1930s whose grandparents, mother, divorced father and uncle all perished during the Holocaust would be that the child would not have survived either.

That awful but perfectly reasonable expectation was, miraculously, wrong. The starting point for this investigation was a brief reference in a Dutch memoir, written by a surviving resistance member, which referred to the nephew (still nameless) of Gerhard Badrian. It took some months of patient work in 2014, much of it by Frieda Voorhorst, some of it by me, to find out who he was and what had happened to him.

The genealogical facts can be written succinctly.  My second cousin’s name was Horst Kerpen. (He called himself by his father’s name, Hans, in the Netherlands. The name Horst is almost exclusively German, while Hans is popular in numerous European countries, including the Netherlands.)  Born in Beuthen in 1930, he was placed on a kindertransport from a Jewish orphanage in Berlin and arrived in the Netherlands in 1939. His childhood was unimaginably disruptive.  He lived for brief periods in various orphanages, his grandparents’ home, other homes and (later) in safe houses. He was captured twice by the Nazis and imprisoned at Westerbork transit camp, from which his escapes were organized.  Despite this trauma, he was a child survivor.  After the war, he resided in a Jewish orphanage–where he celebrated his bar mitzvah at the age of 15–until he was old enough to leave.  After working for a few years in the Netherlands, he returned to Germany, working in various jobs until his death from cancer in 1993.

The story of that branch of the family, however, does not end there. Horst married a divorcee in Germany in 1962 and a year later the couple had a son, who in turn married and had three children, now adults.  Horst lived just long enough to see all three of these grandchildren. That couple divorced, the son remarried, and had three more children with his second wife.  Helen and I met this younger family in Germany in mid-2015, following our meeting with Elke.

Two of the adult children from the first marriage now have young children of their own.  These two children are Generation 10 descendants of Menachem-Mendel Badrian.  They are separated in temporal distance from their ancestor by a quarter of a millennium, yet, strangely enough, their homes in the center of Germany are closer in geographic distance to what was once Oberschlesien than those of any other Badrian descendants in the world.

Fig. 10 Westerbork Meldezettel recording Horst’s escape from the camp

How Frieda and I obtained this information and put myriad pieces together is obviously a long and complicated story, and this is not the place to tell it, but suffice it to say that the hand of Gerhard Badrian was at work in ensuring Horst’s miraculous survival, more than once.  A crucial piece of evidence was the Westerbork Meldezettel for June 7, 1944 (Figure 10).  The German word means registration form, but in this context it was a daily attendance summary. Hans (i.e. Horst) is vermisste (missing). He is a prot. The abbreviation means Protestant i.e., Dutch Reformed Church; perhaps with false papers supplied by Gerhard.  Horst’s escape the previous day–smuggled out on a truck that brought vegetables to the camp, driven by a Verzet sympathizer who took him to a safe house–was arranged by Herta Caan, an associate of Gerhard in the PBC group. She was imprisoned in the camp, and was following instructions supplied by Gerhard. We know this because Herta, in her nineties, was living in London in 2014, and the information about her role in the story was passed on to us by one of her close friends, the daughter of another member of the resistance.  Not only that. Herta also provided crucial information that allowed Frieda to locate Horst’s son in Germany.

For a number of years, I taught a master’s course in statistics in my university faculty, so I have a fairly good grasp of probability theory.  Despite this, I have not the slightest idea of how to calculate the probability of finding, 70 years after the event, the one living person in the world who could provide the key that would unlock the mystery of what had happened to Hermann and Frieda Badrian’s little grandson. And the process through which I found the person who knew of the existence of Herta Caan also involved another highly improbable sequence of events. I still shake my head in wonderment that any of this ever happened at all.

The post Personal Journey: The Early Badrians of Oberschlesein appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

Introduction

The authors have considerable experience conducting DNA lineage studies, with a focus on Y-DNA studies of the world’s historic rabbinical lineages.[1]^, [2]^, [3]^, [4]^, [5] Each of these studies presents its own unique challenges. Two of the more challenging aspects that are common to all such studies are the difficulty in finding pedigreed descendants of a rabbinical lineage, and then, once they are identified and located, convincing them to take a DNA test.

In this article, we shall focus on the some of the difficulties that we have encountered in convincing pedigreed descendants to agree to take a DNA test, the predominant reasons why they are reluctant or refuse to test, and some of the strategies that we have found effective in dealing with these difficulties and in encouraging them to test.

Although most pedigreed descendants whom we invite to join our DNA studies and to take a DNA test give us their full cooperation, a significant proportion of them either are reluctant to take a DNA test or simply refuse to do so.[6] This can be a major problem when only a small number of pedigreed descendants of a rabbinical lineage under study can be identified and located.

There are many reasons why pedigreed descendants either are reluctant or refuse to take a DNA test. The various rationales that we have encountered in working with pedigreed descendants fall into the following six main categories:

• Lack of interest in genealogy/genetic testing
• Cost considerations
• Misunderstanding/mistrust of DNA testing
• Fear of what the results of DNA testing will show
• Privacy concerns
• Religious objections

Lack of Interest in Genealogy/Genetic Testing

Although it is often difficult to fathom, especially for a genealogist, some pedigreed descendants have absolutely no interest in genealogy, genetic testing, or learning more about their Jewish heritage. This lack of interest can be attributable to any number of reasons, among which are:

• A pedigreed descendant may believe that he already knows his heritage, and that DNA testing will not add any new information to what he already knows.
• The pedigreed descendant’s family may no longer be Jewish, and he may be uncomfortable exploring his Jewish heritage.
• The pedigreed descendant may have a painful event in his family’s past that he does not care to revisit, or he may be estranged from his family and may have no interest in learning more about his family’s heritage.

Lack of interest in genealogy/genetic testing is one of the more common reasons why some descendants refuse to take a DNA test. This refusal is generally indicated by a polite yet firm declaration that they are not interested in participating in the Y-DNA study. Occasionally, disinterested descendants will not respond to requests for testing, and they simply ignore all attempts at correspondence with them.

In our Y-DNA study of the Katzenellenbogen rabbinical lineage, we were dismayed when the only pedigreed descendant we identified who still bore the Katzenellenbogen surname refused to take a Y-DNA test. His family was no longer Jewish, and, for that reason, his wife harshly refused the test on his behalf, and rejected our efforts to contact him directly.

Some descendants do not understand the genealogical significance of their DNA test.  It took us the better part of a year to convince a pedigreed descendant of the Shpoler Zeida to take a Y-DNA test. When we explained the critical importance of his Y-DNA test to the success of the entire study, he finally relented, and agreed to test.

This is not a simple issue to address, as it is difficult to motivate someone to take a DNA test if he has no personal interest in his family history or heritage, and no encouragement or support from family members to pursue testing.

Cost Considerations

Some pedigreed descendants are interested in learning more about their heritage and are willing to take a DNA test, but only if there is little or no cost involved. We reduce the cost of all Y-DNA tests for all pedigreed descendants by ordering their tests at a negotiated research discount rate, but for many of these descendants, the authors have found it necessary to fully sponsor their Y-DNA tests. Without this financial incentive, these descendants would most likely decline to test.

A potential participant in our forthcoming Y-DNA study on the lineage of Rabbi Raphael of Bershad [7] was not particularly interested in his rabbinical heritage, but was willing to be tested; however, he emphatically declared that he would not pay “one thin dime” for his test kit. Since his surname was a variant of the unique family name of Rabbi Raphael’s descendants, “Friedgant” (peace hand), we offered to pay for his test, and he did prove to match the other tested descendants.

Another candidate for that study, who also bore a variant of the family surname, was quite interested in his ancestry, but, as he explained his current circumstances, it became obvious that paying for the kit would be a financial hardship for him. In this case, our offer to sponsor his test kit changed a reluctant “no” to an enthusiastic “yes.”

This policy of sponsoring DNA tests for pedigreed descendants is consistent with one of the late Rabbi Malcolm Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy: “If verifying data involves costs to others these should be reimbursed.” [8] Once a Y-DNA genetic signature of a rabbinical lineage has been identified, and the findings have been verified and published, it is significantly easier to persuade other descendants of the lineage to take a DNA test, and to cover the cost of the test themselves, as they see a direct benefit in connecting themselves to the lineage through DNA testing.

Misunderstanding/Mistrust of DNA Testing

Some descendants do not understand what DNA testing is, or what type of information it is designed to produce. Some of them have read misinformation about genetic testing, claiming that it is unreliable, and that its results cannot be believed. Other descendants mistakenly believe that a DNA test will reveal personal medical information that their employer or health insurance company can use to discriminate against them. It took us several months to convince one of our pedigreed descendants of Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky of Chernobyl to take a Y-DNA test, because he believed that his test would reveal personal medical information that his insurance company would use to raise his health insurance premiums, or to terminate his policy. That descendant has since tested, was found to match the Y-DNA genetic signature of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty, and was overjoyed with the results of his test.

Providing basic information on the nature of DNA testing to these descendants, together with links to previously published DNA studies, can help establish credibility and encourage them to test, although some are very intractable in their beliefs.

Fear of What the Results of DNA Testing Will Show

Two of Rabbi Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy state that: “Family traditions must be interpreted with caution and only used as clues,” and “Thou shalt clearly label the questionable and the fairy tale.” [9] Y-DNA genetic testing, which was not available during Rabbi Stern’s lifetime, is very useful for just this purpose – separating fact from the questionable, and the fairy tale.

However, some pedigreed descendants are reluctant to take a DNA test because they are afraid of what the results of the testing might show. They may know that there is a gap or an uncertainty in their line of descent, or they may suspect that their line passes through a maternal ancestor.

This was the case for one potential participant in our forthcoming study on the lineage of Rabbi Raphael of Bershad. His family lore claimed descent from Rabbi Raphael.  There was some uncertainty in the lineage, however, because his great-great-grandfather had changed his surname, and the family did not know the original surname. Although the descendant was very interested in his family history, he decided not to participate in our study because he thought that he might be descended from the rabbi through a maternal ancestor, and he did not want to confirm his suspicion by testing his Y-DNA.

In some cases, descendants of a rabbinical lineage may know, or strongly suspect, that their yichus (pedigree) claims may be exaggerated. There may be a weak link or missing generation in the lineage, and unfounded or unsubstantiated assumptions made regarding who that ancestor was. These descendants generally have an impressive yichus that was passed down through the generations by oral history, and they do not want to place that yichus in danger of being disproved by Y-DNA testing.

We encountered an example of this in our study of a branch of the Savran-Hager family, which claims paternal descent from the Savraner rabbis of the Savran-Bendery Chassidic dynasty.

The Savran-Bendery Chassidic dynasty was founded by the sons of Rabbi Shimon Shlomo I (c. 1750 – 1802) of Savran; Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Giterman of Savran (c. 1775 – 1838), and his brother, Rabbi Aryeh Leib Wertheim of Bendery (c. 1772 – 1854). In our Y-DNA study of the Savran-Bendery Chassidic dynasty, we tested pedigreed descendants of both rabbis and identified the Y-DNA genetic signature of the lineage.[10]

The Savran-Hager dynasty claims that their paternal ancestor, Rabbi Baruch (born c. 1820) was a son of Shimon Shlomo Giterman II (c. 1811–1848), son of Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Giterman of Savran, and a descendant of the Baal Shem Tov, through Shimon Shlomo’s wife, Feyga Yenta (née Vulis.)

It took nearly two years to find two descendants from different branches of the Savran-Hager family who were willing to take a Y-DNA test. They were tested and their Y-DNA was found to match each other. However, their Y-DNA did not match the Y-DNA genetic signature or haplogroup of the pedigreed descendants of the Savraner rabbis, from which their family claims to be paternally descended.

This finding led us to take a closer look at the Hager family tree, and to research the documentation of their descent from the Giterman lineage. We concluded that based upon the Y-DNA evidence, the genealogical evidence, and his year of birth, Rabbi Baruch cannot be a son of Shimon Shlomo II, and a paternal grandson of Rabbi Moshe Tzvi Giterman. He cannot, therefore, be a descendant of the Baal Shem Tov through Shimon Shlomo’s wife, Feyga Yenta Vulis. We believe that Rabbi Boruch was most likely the son of Rabbi Moshe Tzvi’s daughter, Vitya Feyga.

This may explain the difficulty that we encountered in finding Savran-Hager descendants who were willing to take a Y-DNA test. Yichus plays a very important role in determining leadership positions in Chassidic dynasties, and the descendants who refused to test may have known that their paternal descent from the Savraner rabbis was suspect, and that it could be disproven by Y-DNA testing.

Reluctance to take a DNA test due to fear of what the results will show is a difficult issue to overcome, as this trepidation may be very well founded. When this issue arises, we try to counsel descendants that it is always preferable to separate fact from fiction, and to know the truth regarding their lineage, and who they are descended from, rather than to believe in unfounded or exaggerated yichus claims. To quote the fourth of Rabbi Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy: “Thou shalt not hang nobility or royalty on your family tree without verifying with experts.” [11]

Privacy Concerns

Privacy concerns are a big issue for some descendants, especially those who are religious. They are concerned how the results of their DNA tests will be used, and who will have access to them. Some are reluctant to have their results shared with their genetic matches, posted to a genealogy website, or published in a journal article.

One way that we address privacy concerns is to assure our study participants that their DNA results will remain confidential, and that they will not be shared with any outside party or published in a journal article without their written permission. At a descendant’s request, we will also remove personal identifiers from his DNA data to protect his identity.

These strategies are in keeping with another of Rabbi Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy: “Thou shalt credit those who help you and ask permission of those whose work you use.” [12] They help to reassure some descendants, but others remain skeptical and refuse to test because of privacy concerns.

Religious Objections

Because we are testing pedigreed descendants of rabbinical lineages, some of them are quite religious. This can lead to a reluctance to test based on religious beliefs or principles.  Some Chassidic Jewish men will seek the permission of either their fathers or their rabbis before agreeing to take a Y-DNA test. Rabbis are divided on the question of whether DNA testing is compatible with Halachic law (the collective body of Jewish religious laws derived from the written and oral Torah).[13] Some will give their permission to test, and some will not. It is rare for a descendant to override the decision of his father or rabbi.

In these cases, we often enlist a member of the rabbinical or Chassidic community to reach out to these descendants, and to assist in explaining the purpose of taking a Y-DNA test and the procedure involved in obtaining the sample.

Recently, we attempted to contact several pedigreed maternal descendants of Malka Twersky, the daughter of Rabbi Menachem Nachum Twersky (founder of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty) and his wife, Sarah Shapira, and we invited them to participate in our proposed mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) study.

The purpose of this pioneering mitochondrial DNA study was to identify the mtDNA genetic signature of the maternal line of a famed rabbinical dynasty. The maternal descendants were contacted by one of our study investigators, Yitzchak Twersky, who is, himself, a pedigreed descendant of the Twersky Chassidic dynasty.

Unfortunately, none of the maternal descendants who were contacted agreed to test. They indicated that based on religious grounds, it was immodest and inappropriate for a man to contact them for this purpose.

Recently, our co-investigator, Susan Steeble, discussed DNA testing with a Chassidic friend. Her friend indicated that she would be willing to be tested if there was a medical or humanitarian reason for doing so, especially to help others, but that she would not test out of mere curiosity or to find distant relatives.

Summary and Conclusions

Conducting DNA studies of rabbinical lineages presents several unique challenges. Identifying pedigreed descendants of the lineage is only half the battle; the other half is convincing them to take a DNA test. Although most of these descendants are very cooperative with our DNA lineage project goals and testing protocols, a significant proportion of them either are reluctant to take a DNA test or refuse to do so.

The main reasons that descendants refuse to test include: lack of interest, cost considerations, mistrust of DNA testing, fear of what the results of DNA testing will show, privacy concerns, and religious objections. Based on our experience conducting numerous DNA studies, we have implemented a variety of strategies for alleviating some of these objections and concerns. These strategies conform to the IAJGS Ethics/Code of Conduct,[14] which incorporate the late Rabbi Malcolm Stern’s Ten Commandments in Genealogy.

We provide basic DNA testing information and links to previous DNA studies to help educate descendants, alleviate mistrust, and demonstrate the value of DNA testing. We also provide discounted research rates and sponsor Y-DNA tests for those pedigreed descendants who have financial hardships, or who would decline to test if they had to bear the full cost of the test themselves.

We approach all descendants with sensitivity to their privacy concerns, giving them assurances that their data will not be shared or published without their written permission. We also approach religious descendants with respect for their religious principles and beliefs by having rabbis and other members of the religious community contact them and explain the nature and purpose of the DNA testing program to them. Because many of our pedigreed descendants live in other countries, such as Israel or Russia, it is important to communicate with them in their native language.

Although it is not realistic to expect perfect DNA testing compliance from all pedigreed descendants of rabbinical lineages, we have found that by: (1) communicating with pedigreed descendants before broaching the subject of DNA testing, (2) establishing credibility by clearly explaining the purpose of our DNA lineage studies and providing them with appropriate information, and (3) addressing any privacy and religious concerns that they may have, we stand a much better chance of gaining their trust and cooperation.

Notes

[1]  Jeffrey Mark Paull: “Connecting to the Great Rabbinic Families through Y-DNA: A Case Study of the Polonsky Rabbinical Lineage.”  AVOTAYNU: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Vol. XXIX, No. 3, Fall, 2013.

[2]  Jeffrey Mark Paull and Jeffrey Briskman: “Connecting to the Great Rabbinic Families through Y-DNA: The Savran-Bendery Chassidic Dynasty.” Surname DNA Journal, May 31, 2015. https://www.academia.edu/7275345/Y-DNA_Genetic_Signature_of_the_Savran-Bendery_Chassidic Dynasty Connecting to_the_Great Rabbinic_Families_through_Y-DNA.

[3]  Jeffrey Mark Paull, Neil Rosenstein, and Jeffrey Briskman: “The Y-DNA Genetic Signature and Ethnic Origin of the Katzenellenbogen Rabbinical Lineage.” Avotaynu Online, March 7, 2016. https://www.avotaynuonline.com/2016/03/y-dna-genetic-signature-ethnic-origin-katzenellenbogen-rabbinical-lineage/.

[4]  Jeffrey Mark Paull and Jeffrey Briskman: “Identifying the Genetic Fingerprint of a Tzaddik that Touched the World: The Shpoler Zeida.” Avotaynu Online, July 1, 2016. https://www.avotaynuonline.com/2016/07/identifying-the-genetic-fingerprint-of-a-tzaddik-that-touched-the-world-the-shpoler-zeida/.

[5]  Jeffrey Mark Paull, Jeffrey Briskman, and Yitzchak Meyer Twersky: “The Y-DNA Genetic Signature of the Twersky Chassidic Dynasty.” Academia.edu: https://jhsph.academia.edu/JeffreyMarkPaull (Pre-publication draft).  Accepted for publication in Avotaynu Online.  Expected date of publication, December, 2016.

[6]  The Y-DNA testing compliance rate varies widely between studies. In some of our smaller lineage studies involving five or fewer pedigreed descendants (e.g., Baal Shem Tov, Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, Polonsky, Rappaport-Cohen, Shpoler Zeida, Wertheim-Giterman), we achieved close to 100 percent compliance.  In some of our larger lineage studies (e.g., Katzenellenbogen, Shapiro, Twersky Chassidic dynasty) the Y-DNA testing compliance rate dropped to as low as 50 percent. In our proposed maternal DNA study of the descendants of Sarah Shapira, the testing compliance rate was effectively zero.

[7]  The Y-DNA study of Rabbi Raphael of Bershad is one of several Y-DNA studies currently underway for which we have tested pedigreed descendants. The others, as mentioned above, include the lineages of the Baal Shem Tov, Rabbi Levi Yitzchak of Berdichev, Rabbi Yehuda Heller Kahana of Sighet, and the Rappaport-Cohen, and Shapiro rabbinical lineages. For all but one of these lineages (Shapiro), we have also preliminarily identified the Y-DNA genetic signature of the lineage.

[8]  Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack: “Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern (1916-1994), Dean of American-Jewish Genealogy.”  AVOTAYNU: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Vol. IX, No. 4, Winter 1993.

[9]  Ibid.

[10]  Jeffrey Mark Paull and Jeffrey Briskman: “Connecting to the Wertheim-Giterman Rabbinical Lineage through Y-DNA.”  AVOTAYNU: The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, Vol. XXX, No. 3, Fall, 2014.

[11]  Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack, 1993, Op cit.

[12]  Ibid.

[13]  Shlomo Brody: “Ask the Rabbi: DNA and Paternity Testing: Does Halacha Recognize Paternity Tests?”  The Jerusalem Post, June 11, 2009, http://www.jpost.com/Jewish-World/Judaism/Ask-the-Rabbi-DNA-and-paternity-testing.

[14]  IAJGS: “Ethics/Code of Conduct.” International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, November 2, 2002, http://www.iajgs.org/blog/code-of-conduct/.

The post Challenges Involved in Conducting DNA Tests of Pedigreed Descendants of Rabbinical Lineages appeared first on Avotaynu Online.

The organized Jewish community in Cuba lasted about 50 years during the first half of the 20th century and was composed of three essentially separate groups, the North Americans, the Sephardim and the European Ashkenazim. Together they built a vibrant Jewish community that grew from a parlor meeting of 11 North American Jews in 1906 founding the first synagogue in Cuba, the United Hebrew Congregation, to an extensive network of schools and synagogues throughout the country. During the years between 1906 and 1959, the number of North American Jews residing in Cuba never exceeded 300, representing 70 families. Their presence in Cuba, even though small in number, was a significant one, given their financial and political resources.

[This article first appeared in AVOTAYNU Volume XXII, Number 1, Spring 2006]

In 1959, after the Castro Revolution, all this came to an abrupt end. Today fewer than 2,500 Jews remain in Cuba. More than 10,000 Jews left, most resettling in the Miami Beach, Florida, area, where they re-established their specifically Cuban infrastructure and rebuilt their business fortunes. Many, originally from Europe, had been denied entry to the United States before World War II. As “Cuban refugees” fleeing a Communist Cuba, they now found the haven in the United States they previously were denied.

My grandparents were part of the North American group. In tracing their history, I learned about the Jewish history in Cuba and found resources for tracing it.

History

Jews began to settle on the island not long after Cuba gained independence from Spain, starting with the United States occupation of 1902–09. Primarily Turkish and Syrian Sephardim arrived first. They viewed their migration to Cuba as permanent and sought to establish roots in their new home as quickly as possible.

Large-scale Ashkenazi immigration began in 1920 when thousands of Eastern European Jews started to arrive in Cuba. Initially Cuba was only a transit point on the way to the United States. Most of the immigrants, who arrived between 1920 and 1923, had left Cuba by 1925. Before 1924 many new arrivals emigrated to the United States within a few months of landing in Cuba. Steamship companies, faced with loss of steerage-class revenue, began to publicize in the European Yiddish-language press Cuba’s lack of immigration laws and Cuban officials’ practice of permitting anyone disembarking in Havana to remain. Because U.S. immigration laws did not restrict immigration from Latin America, persons remaining in transit in Cuba could re-emigrate to the United States after a year’s stay. A total of 24,000 Jews, the equivalent of about five percent of the U.S. Jewish population, had passed through Cuba by the end of 1924. Yiddish speakers among them called the island Akhsanie Kuba (Hotel Cuba), considering it a temporary home until they could enter the United States, only 90 miles away.

Although the Sephardim never established lasting relations with the American Ashkenazim in Cuba, they did blend to some extent with the developing Eastern European Ashkenazi community of the 1920s.

In the years my grandparents lived in Cuba (1928–38), the North American Jewish community effectively remained a United States enclave. Many North American Jews saw Cuba as a site of temporary settlement and intended to commute between Cuba and the United States after setting up small factories, retail stores and import-export firms on the island. In the years before World War II, the lives of the small community of English-speaking American Jews paralleled those of other members of the rather large foreign colony of businessmen, entrepreneurs and administrators from the United States, Canada and Europe. As an exporter of agricultural products and a tourist playground, Cuba was a colonial dependency run by an elite, partially Cuban and partially foreign. The American Jews fit comfortably into this elite. They often sent their children to schools in the United States. In Havana their children attended the Ruston Academy. They traveled back and forth with ease.

In the years leading up to World War II, the three Cuban Jewish communities lived largely separate lives, both institutionally and socially, in part because of cultural and linguistic differences. The North American’s common language was English; Sephardim spoke Ladino; and the European Ashkenazim’s mother tongue was Yiddish. In contrast to the wealthy and sophisticated North American Jews whose settlement in Cuba was motivated primarily by business interests, the other Jews arrived in Cuba as poor immigrants with uncertain futures.

At the start of the 1920s, conditions in the non-North American Jewish colony were fluid, with almost all seeking temporary jobs to earn money for food and lodging before emigrating to their intended destination, the United States. Jewish immigrants were left with the choice of either working in Jewish enterprises or engaging in independent trade. Peddling represented the line of least resistance and offered a way of getting into trade. Seeking jobs in a totally alien milieu, the new arrivals also turned to Jewish enterprises. North American Jews, some East European Jews and a handful of Sephardim started workshops and small factories that eventually revolutionized the production of cheap clothing. Among these immigrants, shoemakers were most numerous, with the tailors second. There were also carpenters, painters and other artisans.

Incorporation of Jews into the Cuban economy produced important change. Prior to their arrival on the island, industry and trade had been held mainly in the hands of Spaniards. Competition was insignificant, and consumers, having no choice, were compelled to pay high prices. Merchants saw no challenge to their comfortable and lucrative existence. But the arrival of ambitious young men content with small profits enabling them to build up their own existence shook the assured position of many a merchant. New articles made their appearance on the market and sold at cheaper prices than those previously imported. Even the prices of imported articles were reduced. The former trade leaders had to find ways and means to keep pace with the new developments. The young immigrants proved themselves shrewd competitors. After a comparatively short time, they succeeded in gaining a foothold even in Havana’s main trade thoroughfares, Bernaza and Muralla Streets. Many of the wealthy Jewish businessmen, who came to own the largest stores on Muralla and Bernaza Streets, began their careers peddling cheap wares such as Eskimo ice cream pies, neckties and underwear.

In 1924, thousands of immigrants suddenly found themselves compelled to stay in Cuba. In that year, the U.S. Congress enacted a new Immigration and Naturalization Act, stiffening U. S.immigration laws and closing the Cuban loophole. Thousands continued to arrive in Cuba. Jews who had hoped to live in the United States now found that they had to remain in Latin America permanently. Some in Cuba emigrated to other Latin American countries. Some entered the United States illegally or by marrying United States citizens. The rest chose to make their America in Cuba. In 1925, about 5,200 Ashkenazi, 2,700 Sephardim and approximately 100 North American Jews lived in Cuba.

Immigrants from Eastern Europe who remained in Cuba proved adaptable. Some became successful businessmen in no way inferior to the English-speaking North American Jews. Yet real understanding between the two communities was lacking. The European newcomers had gone through World War I, German occupation and the Russian revolution. To them Jewry was a nationality with its own language (Yiddish) and culture. The Americans were spared by World War I and postwar developments; they tended to perceive Jewry as a religion. The former were dynamic, inspired by (perhaps fanciful) plans for the transformation of the world and of the Jewish people; the latter were conservative with little tolerance for Jewish political activism. The former were eager to solve world problems; they were noisy and dissatisfied. The latter were preoccupied with their flourishing businesses and preferred calm reasonableness and respectability.

North American Jews in Havana were prone to go slow politically, while the younger immigrants from Europe knew no bounds. The North American Jews preferred to avoid the light of publicity and believed in personal contact with influential Cubans, rather than in noisy demonstrations. This resembled the pattern for relations in the United States between the established early 19th-century North American Jewish communities and the arriving Russian Jewish immigrants of the early 20th century.

A leading member of the United Hebrew Congregation contended that relief work for the benefit of the immigrants made extreme restraint and the greatest possible modesty in behavior imperative. In 1937, when plans for a public protest rally against anti-Semitic violence in Poland were under discussion, he opposed the demonstration and wished to confine the protest to the adoption of a resolution. Thus, he maintained, the impression would disappear that Jews were fostering disorder in Cuban public and economic life. The East European Jews, he complained, would not appreciate this viewpoint. The demonstration was held.

Tracing the Epsteins in Cuba

I had always known that my mother’s Epstein family had lived in Havana, that she had gone to an American high school, had commuted part of the way to school by boat and that her father’s company made underwear. But, I knew little else. My mother had long since died before I began my research. As I was to learn, her family was typical of the American Jews in Cuba.

Fortunately, a cousin had a photocopy (clue #1) of an article that had appeared in an English-language Cuban newspaper, The Havana Post, some time in the late 1920s prior to the Epsteins relocation to Cuba:

American Firm to Manufacture Products Here; Aetna Knitted Fabrics Company Will Establish Plant in Guanabacoa.  Samuel Epstein, member of the Aetna Knitted Fabrics Company 446 Broome Street, New York, now is in this city completing plans for the occupying of the premises rented by them near Havana. This factory is located in Guanabacoa, and Mr. Epstein is expecting the arrival of some $75,000 worth of machinery this week. This firm, which is a large and important one with branch factories in Mexico City, Toronto, Canada, and Sydney Australia, will start the manufacturing of men’s and ladies’ underwear, shawls and scarfs [sic]. They also will weave the cloth on some special machines that they are bringing down for the purpose.

Mr. Epstein stated that they planned to be able to give work to some 200 Cuban girls and men in their new factory, and they have located in Guanabacoa on account of its proximity to Havana and the facilities they have there for securing the help they need.

Mr. Epstein and Mr. Beers, of Beers & Company [a Havana realty company founded in 1906 that handled both residential and commercial properties] called upon the mayor of Guanabacoa, and he assured them of all the help and encouragement in his power, including several years free of taxation, with the promise that the majority of his help would be Cuban people, whom Mr. Epstein assured him would be employed. They expect to have the factory under way and working about the middle of October. Mr. Epstein’s brother and two sons are joining him this week and every effort will be made to get the plant going with as little delay as possible.

So my grandfather, Samuel, and a brother were in Cuba together.

In addition, my brother had a playbill (clue #2) from the Ruston Academy in Havana that listed my mother as one of the students helping with the scenery. With these two clues and an old partial family tree, I started to unravel the entire story. I connected with several Epstein relatives all over the world and came to a better understanding of what Cuba was like for Jews during the pre-Castro era.

Here is how I did it and some of what I found. The New York City Archives has the incorporation certificates for many businesses, including that of my own family. In the 1910s and 1920s, before relocating to Havana, Samuel Epstein and his brother, Philip, were in business together in New York City. A 1924 County of New York business certificate gives Aetna Knitted Fabrics partners as Samuel and his brother Philip Epstein. They also were in business earlier as the Aetna Yarn Company.

I wrote e-mails to trade associations in Mexico City, Toronto and Sydney, asking about a company called Aetna, but learned nothing. Next I tried another path in Toronto. From an old handwritten partial family tree, I knew that one of my grandfather’s nieces had relocated to Toronto after 1920. According to the 1920 U.S. census, her husband Ben Gitter had been in the hat business in New York City. The Toronto Public Library will answer up to three simple research questions a day at no cost. In spring 2004, I asked, “Starting in 1920, is there a so-and-so in the Toronto City Directory?” For several successive days I asked this question (three years at a time), always getting positive responses. A Ben Gitter was still in Toronto. Then after of few days of such inquiry I learned that he was now in business again (clue #3) and that his business, Majestic Laces, had existed until the 1960s.

The library said that was the only information they would provide for free, so I returned to the Internet. I tried business telephone listings for hats in Toronto. No luck. I tried again searching for millinery businesses and found the names of two companies. Neither had the name I was seeking, but I called one of them just the same. The receptionist volunteered that her firm had been in business for more than 50 years, and possibly someone there might know of my company. I faxed them what I knew. That very afternoon, I received an e-mail with clue #4—the current name of the company and its website URL. Back to the Internet. The website said the president had the family cousin’s name. I immediately called him at work.

Success! He was indeed my relative. There is a large Epstein presence in Toronto, and, best of all, he told me that he planned to visit Boston, where I live, the next week. One week later my relative from Toronto arrived. He brought a valuable gift. My cousin had made a new videotape interview of his Toronto family telling about their early days and about the family businesses.

This is some of what I now learned: The family’s worldwide businesses started from Hub Knitting Mills, incorporated in 1916 by my grandfather’s elder brother James Epstein and his son, Morris Epstein. Hub Knitting Mills operating in New York did business with Canadian manufacturers, which were slow to pay their bills. Morris went to Toronto to collect the money owed his father. Morris saw that there was a large, excellent and untapped opportunity for knitted fabrics manufacturing. He convinced his father to back him, and they created Ontario Silknit. James closed Hub Knitting Mills, transferring equipment to Toronto, and retired. Ontario Silknit became the first of a worldwide network of family-owned and operated knitted goods manufacturers. By 1925, Morris had relocated his family permanently to Toronto. In 2005, the family is still there.

Clue #5. The family worldwide business name was Silknit, not Aetna. What could I learn about the Cuban operations? Well, maybe my grandfather or his brother Philip needed passports. Although travel between Cuba and New York in those days did not require a passport, maybe….

Clue #6. I located no passport application for Sam, but did find one for Philip. By the date it was made, the U.S. State Department was the keeper of these archival records. After payment of a $45 fee, they sent me a copy of the application. What a copy—a 50-page file on Philip! The file explained in detail that as a naturalized citizen, Philip Epstein needed permission from the United States Consul in Havana to remain in Cuba after November 1933. He had been in Cuba since 1928. According to a 1907 United States naturalization law then in effect, naturalized citizens could not reside continuously for more than five years outside the United States without risk of losing their citizenship (called expatriation) unless a State Department officer waived the requirement. The law stipulated the conditions. Philip and the United States consul in Havana had difficulty in agreeing to a waiver. For this reason Philip’s case caused a significant amount of correspondence, which is still on file at the State Department office. Philip wanted to sell his business share to a buyer outside the family. In 1933 a revolution was waging against the Machado dictatorship. Philip needed extra time to sell his business shares.

Initially refused, an extension eventually was granted. In the file, supporting the extension were letters—most importantly the clue of clues, a letter on my grandfather’s company stationery to the U.S. consul. My Uncle Saul was company president and Philip Epstein’s son was treasurer. Moreover, the family company was incorporated in Cuba under the name Sedanita de Cuba, S. A. not Aetna (Seda, Spanish for silk, and the Spanish nita ending which sounds like knit). I saw the addresses where Philip lived; the factory was located to the east of Havana across the bay in Guanabacoa.

This started me on a reading spree to find out more about the Cuba of my family. Early in March 2005, I visited the Cuban-American Synagogue in Miami Beach. They had sponsored a 1996 book by Margalit Bejarano based on her doctoral thesis. In Spanish, it contains a wealth of oral histories. Several of the people interviewed attended Ruston Academy and were close in age to my mother (younger) and most importantly, still alive.

Again back to the Internet.

Clue #7: One of the persons interviewed, Jim Knopke, was living in Miami Beach. Margalit Bejarano’s book mentions that he went to Ruston Academy and in 1996 he was still living in Miami. Using Internet white pages, I found his telephone number and called Jim.

He vaguely remembered a Jeanne Epstein, “Did she have red hair?” My mother had auburn hair when she was young. He was the first person I ever knew who had known my mother as a kid! Unfortunately he did not remember Sedanita (he was in the sugar business), but he put me in touch with another Jewish Cuban expatriate living in Houston, Texas, who might know something.

I called. “Yes, I know the name.” She asked, “Do you know the Brandon family?”

“No.”

She suggested, “Try contacting my Brandon classmate living in Florida. The Brandons owned Sedanita.”

Final and Confirming Clues

Earl Brandon in Florida was born in 1918 in New York City and moved to Havana in 1924. Brandon’s elder brother David, born in 1907, was a squash buddy of my Uncle Saul (also born in 1907). When he lived in Havana, my uncle, like my mother, was a redhead. His nickname was Eppy. Brandon recalls them both.

I cannot confirm my grandfather’s original business plans. The Epstein family’s Silknit business model means it is probable that my grandfather would have remained in Cuba indefinitely had he not become so seriously ill that he was forced to sell his business interests and return permanently to New York in 1935 or 1936. My grandfather died a few years after his return. His son, my Uncle Saul, apparently remained in Havana in the business until 1938.

When my grandparents returned to the United States, Sedanita was sold to the Brandon family. My wife and I visited Brandon in May 2005. Brandon showed us his family tree and accompanying memoir written by his father. In the memoir his father wrote:

The chairman of D. I. Stern, New York City financier, helped Brandons take over a going underwear knitting plant in Guanabacoa called Sedanita de Cuba, the proprietors being various members of the Eppstein [sic] family. This business held forth excellent possibilities. Mike [Brandon] was given charge of Sedanita in which he invested a nominal sum which multiplied handsomely when he needed it.

Brandon is the anglicized version of the Portuguese surname Brandao. The Brandons and their Maduro cousins are linked to Sephardic families with the same name throughout the Caribbean. Originally from Portugal, they escaped the Inquisition to safety in northern Europe and later to the New World. The Maduros came to the Americas from Holland; the Brandons came from England. The Brandon or Brandao family name has figured prominently in the annals of Spanish and Portuguese Jewry in Amsterdam, Curacao, Jamaica, London and Panama.

David Henry Brandon was born on September 26, 1855, in Philadelphia and died on August 10, 1903, in Panama City, Panama. In 1879, he married Judith Maduro, daughter of Solomon Maduro and Esther Piza Maduro in Panama City, Panama. Judith Maduro Brandon was born August 9, 1862, in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, and died on March 1, 1940, in Havana.

After the death of David Henry Brandon and the marriages of his eldest daughter and eldest son, his widow moved to New York City with her 10 younger children to live close to her late husband’s relatives. Ellis Island records for the Brandon family, dated May 30, 1906, list Judith Maduro Brandon (widow, age 43) and several children en route to her brother-in-law Isaac Brandon’s residence in Manhattan. Because she was born in St. Thomas, Judith Brandon’s nationality is listed as Danish. Her family had lived in the Virgin Islands for many years before her marriage. Although the children all were listed as Panamanian citizens, they were entitled to United States citizenship because their father had been born in Philadelphia. In the 1700 and 1800s, many Brandons had moved about the Caribbean—to Barbados, Curacao and Jamaica—and to cities in the United States (Baltimore, New York and Philadelphia). In later years, many of David Henry Brandon’s sons carefully ensured that their children would be U.S. citizens by residing for a time in the United States, particularly at the time their children were born.

The Brandon’s Cuban connection began in the 1920s with Earl’s father, Jacob, son of David and Judith Brandon. Jacob suggested to this brothers that Cuba offered good business opportunities. They agreed and moved to the island where the family prospered. The Brandon brothers created a holding company called Standard Mills of Cuba. Many of the Cuban businesses of this period were based on family connections, which meant reliable partners in other cities and countries. Among the four textile plants owned by the Brandon family were Robrand, Sedanita, Textilera Corona, and General de Tejidos. Stockholders included family members and Cuban nationals.

They purchased Sedanita from the Epstein family sometime after 1933. After Brandon’s uncles purchased Sedanita, they moved the factory to the small town of San Jose de las Lajas, 17 miles southeast of Havana. The town is a commercial center in the dairying and sugar-growing region. Initially, Mike Brandon managed Sedanita. The Sedanita name was still in use in 1960. Sedanita did about $500,000 business per year in 1960, when it was closed down by the Castro regime. Another Brandon brother later took Sedanita over from Mike, who sold his shares and moved from Cuba to Long Island, New York. In the last pre-Castro 1958 Havana telephone book, there are entries for Brandon and Company and Sedanita Textile in the clothing business at 213 Muralla Street. In 1958, this street was the location of many retail shops, so possibly this was a retail shop or outlet for Sedanita clothing.

The small American Jewish group almost completely segregated itself from other sectors of Cuba’s Jewish community. The Brandons were notable exceptions. They played major roles in institutional Cuban-Jewish communal affairs. Earl’s father, Jacob Brandon, was the most active family member. He headed the Cuban branch of the Joint Relief Committee that aided the hundreds of Jewish refugees in Havana fleeing the Nazis. Jacob Brandon also served as president of the Havana B’nai B’rith Lodge. On February 24, 1940, President Laredo Bru knighted Jacob Brandon with the Order of Merit Carlos Manuel de Cespedes. President Bru cited Brandon’s services to the entire Cuban community as executive director of the Joint Relief Committee that enabled Cuba to accept extraordinarily large numbers of Jewish refugees within a short time with no serious problems. According to Bru, “The Joint Relief Committee had brought great honor to the Cuban nation.” The Brandons are also distant relatives of Noble Brandon Judah, United States ambassador to Cuba from 1926 to 1930.

Brandons served as officers in the United Hebrew Congregation. Always an English-speaking congregation and identified with North American Jews, United Hebrew officially joined the [Reform] Union of American Hebrew Congregations in 1951. In September 1956, on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of its founding, their Anniversary Journal assessed the future:

English-speaking Jews in Cuba are still a minority, but it is evident that a considerable number of youthful co-religionists, especially those who have had a bilingual education, favor our services and are likely prospects for future membership. Moreover, the Jewish population in Cuba is steadily increasing, and the constant influx of the new industries, many of which are operated by Jewish investors, betokens a bright future for the United Hebrew Congregation.

The United Hebrew Congregation did not survive. The entire Havana Jewish colony became virtually extinct after 1959 when Castro assumed power. By 1961, most of the congregation’s membership had fled Cuba. Jews who lived in Cuba during the decades before Castro had come to regard the island as a friendly harbor in which they could build comfortable lives for their families without the pressures faced by Jews in Latin American countries where traditional Roman Catholicism was stronger or where there were too few Jews for communal life.

Cuba’s live-and-let live atmosphere rewarded persons willing to work hard and accommodate to society’s unwritten rules. Jews rarely experienced anti-Semitism in Cuba, and they found their non-Jewish neighbors to be friendly. They did not aspire to political or bureaucratic offices, and they did not seek to enter the professions or universities, banks, corporations, or the government. Rather, virtually all Jews in Cuba engaged in commerce. They socialized with other Jews, supported Jewish community organizations and encouraged their children to do the same. Before 1959, they supported whatever government was in power. Whenever problems arose, they dealt privately through emissaries or through spokesmen for Jewish organizations. Earl Brandon says:

Those of us who lived in Havana before Castro will remember with pride and joy the great ambiance of that city. And after 45 years, many of us laugh and cry, remembering what was then the Paris of the New World.

Additional Reading About the Cuban Jewish Community

The following four books tell a much more detailed story of the Ashkenazim and Sephardim fleeing persecution who found refuge in Cuba, and the small but influential, business-oriented North American Jewish colony.

1.  Robert M. Levine, Tropical Diaspora: The Jewish Experience in Cuba (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1993). This was the first detailed book to chronicle the successive waves of Jews from Eastern Europe, the Middle East and Germany that flowed into and through Cuba during the 20th century. The book focuses on the interwar years when Cuban visa officials permitted thousands of Jewish refugees from Eastern Europe and Germany to enter Cuba, even against the wishes of the U.S. State Department. Levine not only surveys the history of an immigrant group, he also illuminates the nature of the tropical society to which they came.

2.  Margalit Bejarano, La Comunidad Hebrea de Cuba: La Memoria y la Historia [in Spanish] (Jerusalem: Hebrew University Press, 1996). This book is based upon Bejarano’s doctoral dissertation, oral histories of Jewish refugees from Castro’s Cuba living in the Miami, Florida, area. Substantiated by research, the book recounts the collective memories of Cuban Jews from the beginning of the 20th century until the Castro revolution. The main subjects are immigration and economic adjustment, organizational patterns, Holocaust refugees (including the St. Louis affair), establishment of the State of Israel, years of economic and communal prosperity under Batista and the trauma of the Castro revolution.

3.  Maritza Corrales Capestany, The Chosen Island: Jews in Cuba (Chicago: Salsedo Press, 2005). This book about the nature and functioning of Jewish life in Cuba during the past four decades recounts the lives of 36 men and women who did not leave Cuba. They explain their motives for remaining. Three sets of interviews are presented: The first emphasizes the ideological leanings of the pioneer immigrants and their descendants as Communists, Zionists and/or revolutionaries. The second chronicles primarily Sephardic Jews living outside Havana. The third portrays the immigrants and the first generation born in Cuba, whose permanence has been decisive in the continuation of Jewish life on the island after 1959.

4.  Jay Levinson, The Jewish Community of Cuba (Nashville, Tenn.: Westview, 2006). Levinson describes the Cuban Jewish community in its Golden Age—how Jews fleeing from persecution abroad found refuge in Cuba, adjusted to a new country and built a vibrant Jewish presence in Cuba; how there were essentially three Jewish communities in Cuba; and how sociological, linguistic and cultural differences changed at different periods of time, but always separated them.

For a general overview, see the section on Cuba in “Caribbean Basin,” Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy, (Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2004), pp. 261–78. Much of the economic and political information in this article comes from “Jews in Cuba,” by Boris Sapir, published in the Jewish Review, July-September 1946, pp. 109–44.

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At my home, we refer to Hillary Rodham Clinton as Cousin Hillary. More precisely, the correct term would be step-cousin. Detailed research demonstrates that Hillary’s grandmother married my father’s fifth cousin. But let’s start at the beginning.

In August 1999, the Forward newspaper included an article titled: “Meet Hillary Clinton’s Grandmother, Della Rosenberg – the Feisty Wife of a Yiddish-Speaking Jewish Immigrant”. Born as Della Murray in 1902 in Aurora, IL, Hillary’s grandmother married Edwin Howell in 1918 in Chicago; Dorothy Emma Howell, Hillary’s mother, arrived in 1919. In her autobiography, Living History, Hillary wrote: “Della essentially abandoned my mother when she was only three or four, leaving her alone all day for days on end with meal tickets to use at a restaurant near their five-story walk-up apartment on Chicago’s South Side.”

Della and Edwin Howell divorced in 1926. Shortly thereafter, Mr. Howell sent Hillary’s mother Dorothy, along with her younger sister Isabelle, on a train to Los Angeles to live with his parents. In 1933, Della remarried to Max Rosenberg, a Jewish immigrant from Poland.

When the Forward article appeared, this Max Rosenberg was already present on my family tree. Max was on my Tzvi Hirsh Chrabołowski branch, initially “discovered” by the author in 1978 and expanded through efforts of several cousins. So, in 1999, I became aware right away that my family connected directly to Hillary Rodham Clinton’s family – a major discovery. To begin the story, let’s focus next on Max’s background.

Who was Max Rosenberg?

Max had changed both of his names, so let’s start with his birth. He was born as Moshek Chrabołowski in Ostrów Mazowiecka, Poland on October 14, 1901. Ostrów was then part of Congress Poland in the 19^th Century and continues today as part of Poland. Max’s birth record, which is being indexed, was provided by Stanley Diamond, Executive Director of Jewish Records Indexing – Poland (JRI-Poland) and coincidentally also their town coordinator for this community.

The birth record below shows that Moshek was the son of Yankel Chrobolowski (Chrabołowski) and Michla Rozenberg (Rosenberg). The couple was married in 1897. Yankel was registered in Orla, Bielsk County, located south of Białystok. In the 19^th Century, Orla was part of Grodno Gubernia in the Russian Empire; it became part of Poland by 1920.

When Max came to the USA aboard the S.S. Finland in September 1911, the passenger arrival manifest stated his name was Menaze (Menashe) Rosenberg, using his mother’s maiden name. His age was understated, which was common at the time to assist families in paying a lower steamship fare.

In Chicago, Max worked in real estate property management.

Max’s Father

Now, let’s turn our attention to Max’s father, Yankel Chrabołowski, who also changed both his names. Yankel was born in Zambrow, Poland in 1877 as shown in the following birth record originally located in the Mormon Church microfilms.

When his wife and children arrived in 1911, the passenger manifest stated they were going to live with their husband and father then called Yankel Rosenberg and who became known as Joseph later in that decade.

Note that Joseph Rosenberg’s gravestone in an Ostrow plot at Chicago’s Waldheim Cemetery also reflects his original name Yankel (Yaakov in Hebrew), the son of Yosef Yitzhak.

Max’s Nuclear Family

Here is a photo of Max’s nuclear family in Chicago.

The Move to Los Angeles

Della and Max Rosenberg had one daughter, Adeline who was born in 1934. Adeline later married Clarence Friedman and converted to Judaism.

Max separated from Della and moved to Los Angeles. At the time of his death in 1984, Max lived with Adeline in an apartment complex adjacent to Universal City in the San Fernando Valley. He was cremated at Grandview Memorial Park in Glendale. Adeline was buried at Mt. Sinai Memorial Park in Los Angeles. Her marker is shown here. According to Adeline’s stepson, she stayed in contact with both Hillary and her mother Dorothy.

Max’s Ancestry

Max’s mother, Michla/Mollie Rosenberg, was born in Ostrów Mazowiecka in 1873 subsequent to her parents’ marriage in 1862.  Max’s paternal ancestral line ties to the author’s family:

Moshek Chrabołowski AKA Max Rosenberg (1901-1984)
Yankel Chrabołowski AKA Joseph Rosenberg (1877-1947)
Yosef Yitzhak Chrabołowski (1851-1923)
Tzvi Hirsh Chrabołowski (1823-1913)
Elkon Chrabołowski (1787-   )
YoselChrabołowski  (1767-    )

Shown below are two supporting documents from the Belarus Archives in Grodno, the location of many surviving documents from Polish areas formerly within Grodno Gubernia of the Russian Empire.

This excerpt from the 1868 Additional Revision List for Bielsk Podlaski, Poland shows that Girsh (Tzvi Hirsh), son of Elkon Chrabołowski, lived here along with his son Itzko (Yosef Yitzhak). Bielsk is 8 miles from Orla where Yankel was registered in 1901. Please note that virtually all vital records (births, marriages, deaths) for Bielsk and Orla disappeared either in World War I or World War II, so they are not available for corroborating information.

This is an unusual document from the 1817 Revision List for Ryboły, which had no Jewish community and only one Jewish family. Elkon is shown as son of Yosel Chrabolski, likely an early version of the name Chrabołowski. This is possibly the first time the new surname was written down. Chraboły is a tiny municipality, south of the Narew River from Ryboły, with only about 35 houses in 2016. The 1817 Revision List gives examples of numerous small hamlets with only a few Jews. In most of these, the authorities apparently named the Jewish residents after their town.

Oral history written down by one of Elkon’s descendants in the Częstochowa memorial book notes that his son Tzvi Hirsh was an inn-keeper and fisherman. Inn-keeper was a likely occupation in a hamlet with one Jewish family along a main road.

The Author’s Ancestry

The author’s great-grandfather, Phineas Chrabołowski, changed his name to Gordon after arriving in the USA in 1889. As a peddler, his customers had difficulty pronouncing and remembering his name. Phineas recalled to his daughter Rose that in Białystok, where he lived beginning in the early 1880s, one of the richest Jews, a banker, had the surname Gordon. He stated, “If the name was good enough for him, it is good enough for me.” Also, note that Gordon is linguistically equivalent to Grodno, the Russian Empire gubernia that included Białystok and his birthplace Bielsk.

My paternal ancestral line is as follows:

Jack E. Gordon (1918-1996)
Herbert Gordon (1889-1975)
Phineas Chrabołowski Gordon (1856-1954)
Eli Yankel Chrabołowski (1830-1909)
Yosel Chrabołowski (1784-     )
Boruch Chrabołowski

The ancestral tree which connects my ancestry to Cousin Hillary appears as follows:

Epilogue

The author’s grandfather Herbert and Hillary’s step-grandfather Max were both born with the same surname – Chrabołowski. Herbert’s father and Max’s grandfather both lived in Bielsk Podlaski, Poland, and their ancestors came from either Chraboły or Ryboły on opposite sides of the Narew River.

Based on a thorough analysis of the 1817 Revision Lists for Bielsk County (poviat, district) along with the 1855 list of Jewish heads of household for the city of Bielsk, the most likely relationship between these families – displayed in the tree above – is that Tzvi Hirsh Chrabołowski in Max Rosenberg’s family was a second cousin to Eli Yankel Chrabołowski in my family.  That would make Max Rosenberg and my father Jack Gordon fifth cousins. Della and Max’s daughter Adeline would then be a blood relative of both Hillary and the author.

In conclusion, Hillary Rodham Clinton and I are indeed step-cousins, and I am proud to document and share this relationship.

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This article is a sequel to my earlier article in Avotaynu Online, entitled “From One Photograph to Journeys of Research and Discovery,”,  in which I described how I uncovered and researched the romance of my great uncle Moshe and Paula Lichtzier, starting with a single photograph taken in Orla, Poland in 1920. But my search wasn’t complete: details about the driver of the vehicle in the fatal accident that resulted in the death of my Uncle Moshe were still a mystery. The 1931 Argus newspaper article reported that Mr. Katz, the driver of the vehicle in which Moshe (Morris) was a passenger, was the manager of the Mowbray Hotel. I tried accessing the archives of the company that once owned the hotel and the bus company most likely involved in the accident, consulted some Cape Town historians, and struck out on all of them, but still hoped for other leads.

 The Cape Argus, April 8, 1931, National Archives, Cape Town

In June 2016, I met Professor Colin Tatz and Vernon Katz in Sydney, Australia. Vernon, a Katz from Cape Town, was interested in the mystery of Mr. Katz, the driver. We started a correspondence and on September 3, 2016, Vernon wrote this to his database:

This is a stab in the dark but can you help Eli Rabinowitz (who has lived in Perth since 1986, ex-Cape Town) trace family of the Mr Katz who drove the car in 1931 in which Eli’s great uncle Moishe Rabinowitz was killed in Woodstock / Salt River? – see (the article in Avotaynu) below. Please let Eli and me know if you have any information.

On the same day, a reply came from Selwyn Katz of West Harrison, New York. He wrote:

SA Breweries had a company called Retco, the holding company for its one and two star hotels.  At the end of the sixties they started to offload these hotels and my (Katz) family picked up six of them, including the Mowbray. It is not impossible that this Mr Katz was family of mine but I have no way of finding out. My oldest living relation was born around 1931 so she would not know.

On September 2016, I was in the process of replying to an email from Solly Epstein in Cape Town who explained that his friend and author, Ivan Kapelus in London, had suggested I make contact with the National Library and Western Cape Archives to further my research. I decided to go online and do a quick search. One can see only the titles of the documents online and then one must follow up with a visit to the reading room to see the actual document.

I entered “Katz” and “1931” in the database search. The following was the last of four results:

The accident had occurred on April 8, 1931. Although this citation was not definitive., it did sound like the Mr. Katz I was seeking. Until I saw the court document itself four weeks later, I had no proof that this court case related to the death of Morris Rabinowitz. It might have been a death caused by Leo Katz in another set of circumstances, This court case was in July.

That same day, I sent email messages to several people, telling them about the archival record. Ann Rabinowitz of Miami replied:

If the Leo Katz in the Archives is the correct one, there is also a record in the South African Jewish Rootsbank that lists a Leo Katz who was born 1902 and died May 3, 1961, and is buried in Pinelands #1.  He would have been 29 in 1931.  His tombstone has his name as Yahudah Leib ben Reuvain HaKohain Katz.

On the Cape Town Jewish Cemeteries Maintenance Board website, http://www.jewishcemetery.co.za I found this photograph

Taking the two names Leo and Lily Katz from the tombstones I searched and found the family details on the Geni.com website http://www.geni.com/people/Leo-Katz/6000000011738063296. Geni enabled me to track down Mr. Katz’s grandson, Leo Fainsinger in Sydney. I called, asked if his grandfather was Leo Katz (“yes”) and what his grandfather had done for a living. When the grandson said “in the hotel business” I asked, “the Mowbray Hotel?” He answered “yes.” I had found my man.

Fainsinger was quite cooperative. He knew that his grandfather had been involved in an accident in which, he said, a hitchhiker had been killed. That was the first I had heard of a hitchhiker and I was puzzled. Fainsinger sent me a photograph of Mr. Katz. My brother-in-law, Anthony Reitstein, visited the Western Cape Archives and Records Service in Cape Town on my behalf and called for the document, Rex vs Leo Katz. He sent me two emails, totaling 33 pages, of the court proceedings of Rex versus Mr. Leo Katz.

There were many technical details in the evidence given, but the following grabbed my attention and shocked me:

My great uncle, Morris Rabinowitz, had missed the last bus; he had hitchhiked to get home to (the Coghills Hotel in) Wynberg; Katz stopped to give him a lift in the city outside the Opera House; it was raining; Katz was only going as far as Mowbray; Katz and Morris did not know each other; the distance from where Morris was picked up to the accident was about 4km; they hit a bus that was turning to go down Durham Rd; the time from which Morris was picked up until his death was at most 10 minutes; this was the total time that they were together. Such was their fate!  Katz was found guilty of culpable homicide, fined 40 pounds sterling and lost his driver’s license for a year. Morris was dead! Morris’s fiancée Paula Lichtzier’s life was in turmoil just a few weeks before her planned wedding. This is the sad conclusion to the mystery of Katz, the driver, and the accident, which killed Morris Rabinowitz, but something special is developing. I called Leo Fainstein to tell him the outcome of the case and to arrange to send him the emails of the court proceedings. He told me that as his grandfather, Leo, was a good- natured and genteel man and that by giving my great uncle Morris a lift, Leo was performing a mitzvah (good deed) but had turned it into a tragedy. Fainsinger and I have realized that the discovery of this tragic event has forged a meaningful connection between us we have committed ourselves to creating a positive outcome, a completion of the mitzvah Leo begun 85 years ago. We have several ideas to discuss between now and when Brian and I meet for the first time in Sydney in February 2017. Whatever project we choose, we will name in honor of Leo and Morris.

Leo Katz’s motorcar at the scene of the accident in Salt River.  (Supreme Court documents from Western Cape Archives and Records Services, Cape Town)

Leo Katz  = – photo from his grandson, Brian Fainsinger

Morris Rabinowitz. Family Photo.

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