This article is based upon a presentation at the Orlando IAJGS conference in July 2017— Ed.

Formally speaking, for Jews who lived during the 18th–20th centuries in Eastern Europe (in the territories of present-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Latvia, and Russia), we cannot take for granted that all their ancestors necessarily dwelled in the region that in medieval rabbinical literature was called Ashkenaz and corresponded to territories in which the Christian majority was German-speaking. Yet, such simplification is often found in various texts written about Jews, including textbooks and encyclopedias.

    Partly as a reaction to this imprecise approach, and partly for other reasons having nothing to do with science, over the past few decades a number of authors have suggested a total revision of the mainstream point of view. They contest the existence of the genetic link between Eastern European Jews and those who lived in the Middle Ages in West Germany, suggesting that most Eastern European Jews descend from indigenous converts to Judaism, Turkic and/or Slavic.

   Only an approach combining methods and data from various sciences allows us to address adequately the controversial question of the origin of Eastern European Jews. The most relevant sciences are historiography (operating with historical documents), demography (working with population figures), linguistics (analyzing various aspects of the language), onomastics (dealing with names of persons) and genetics (studying human genes). In this article, emphasis will be on information provided by historiography, linguistics, and onomastics.

Origin of Contemporary Ashkenazim

    We can state that contemporary Ashkenazim descend from the merger of three principal groups of medieval Jews, namely:

    • Jews from the Rhineland whose vernacular language was based on German

    • Jews from the Czech lands who spoke Old Czech

    • Jews from the territory of modern Ukraine and Belarus who, in their everyday life, spoke an East Slavic language, the common ancestor of modern Ukrainian and Belarusian.

   No information in our possession allows us to state that any of these three groups were formed by migrants from another group. In Jewish historiography, the fact of the existence of these three groups is consensual; medieval documents do not leave any doubt here. On the other hand, the opinions of various authors differ dramatically concerning the following aspects:

    • The exact origins of each of these groups (including the possibility that some of them were formed by migrants from another group)

    • The relative portion each contributed to the composition of modern Ashkenazic Jewry. Table 1 summarizes various approaches:

   Globally speaking, one may distinguish two significantly different groups. The first (the first two lines in Table 1) usually is called the Rhine Hypothesis. It corresponds to the paradigm that currently dominates Jewish historiography. The most detailed description of this approach from the point of view of linguistics appears in the history of Yiddish written by Max Weinreich (1973). According to this approach, Jewish communities that existed during the last few centuries in Central and Eastern Europe were mainly the result of migrations of German Jews. As a result, within the framework of the Rhine Hypothesis, the general direction of migrations in non-Mediterranean Europe has been from West to East. Scholars who adhere to this approach usually acknowledge that a number of Slavic-speaking Jewish communities existed in Slavic territories before the arrival of Ashkenazic migrants from western Germany. Generally, however, they consider the demographic contribution of these pre-Ashkenazic communities insignificant in comparison to that of the Ashkenazic newcomers.

   The second approach is totally different. It breaks the genetic link between modern Ashkenazic Jews from Slavic countries and those Jews who lived in medieval Germany. Paul Wexler is the main proponent of this approach among Yiddish linguists. In numerous published works beginning in 1991, he claims that most Eastern European Jews descend from “autochthonous” converts to Judaism, Slavic Sorbians, and Turkic Khazars. Theories by several non-linguists points to a similar direction. For example, Israeli historians Abraham Poliak (1943) and Shlomo Sand (2009), writer Arthur Koestler (1976) and certain other authors all emphasize the role of the Khazars. Jits van Straten (2011) asserts the existence of numerous conversions of East Slavs in relationship with intermarriages with Jews. He bases his conclusion mainly on demographical data. In this article, the approach of all these authors will be called “revolutionary” because it is radically opposed to the entire set of traditional points of view on this topic.

    As can be seen from Table 1, the approach suggested here is different from other authors. Yet, its difference in comparison to the scenario described by the Rhine Hypothesis is not fundamental. It just provides additional details concerning Slavic territories making the general picture more nuanced and in this way may be considered as complementing the Rhine Hypothesis. On the other hand, the approach is totally incompatible with the ideas of the “revolutionary” authors.

    In the following sections, the main arguments advanced by various authors to support their theories will be addressed critically. A much more detailed development of similar ideas is present in Beider 2015 (Appendix C) where one can also find all exact bibliographical references.

Rhine Hypothesis

     History. Historians who accept the Rhine Hypothesis often suggest arguments that reveal the existence of important cultural influences on Eastern European Jews that came from the West. The direct link between Rhenish religious traditions and those of modern Eastern European Jewry represents one such influence. Yet, this does not necessarily imply the mass migrations of people. Influential rabbis from Western Europe could have progressively incorporated various non-Mediterranean communities into the sphere of Rhenish Judaism.

   In the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth (1569–1795), the western origin of most of the rabbinical elite is obvious. It is true, for example, of such families as Auerbach, Braude, Epstein, Ettinger/Ettingen, Fränkel, Günzburg, Halpern, Heller, Horowitz, Jaffe/Joffe, Katzenellenbogen, Landau, Lipschitz, Luria, Margolies, Minz, Rappoport, Schor, and Spira/Schapiro. Clearly, rabbis were not a small closed caste whose representatives moved individually from place to place. They were accompanied by family members. Moreover, their migrations made it attractive for relatives and compatriots to move to the same areas. From the above cultural changes, however, we cannot deduce that the proportions of western migrants were significantly higher than those of  “autochthonous” Jews.

    Before the mid-14th century, the density of Jewish communities in western German-speaking territories was significantly higher than in Central or Eastern Europe. For all of Poland, references to Jews until the mid-14th century are concentrated along its western borders and clearly imply the western origins of local communities. During the entire 15th century and the first half of the 16th century, Jews were banned from numerous towns and entire provinces of Western and Central Europe. During the same period, however, the situation for Jews in Poland and Lithuania was significantly more favorable from political and economic viewpoints. It is precisely during the 15th century that we find rapid growth in the number of communities in this area. Numerous historians make a causal link between the deterioration of the situation for Jews in the West and the creation of new communities in the East. A priori, this opinion appears quite logical; it finds both a motivation for the emigration from various German-speaking provinces (including the urban centers in the Czech lands) and a phenomenon in the Polish-Lithuanian territories that looks like a direct consequence of these conjectured migrations. Moreover, we know for sure about cases of individual migrations in this direction.

    Globally speaking, consideration of the historical factors does not provide a decisive argument in favor of any competing theory about the proportions of western migrants in the formation of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. However, these facts undoubtedly look more favorable for the opinions of scholars who emphasize the western contribution than to those who consider “autochthonous” Jews as numerically more important.

    Linguistics. Analysis of various elements of Yiddish provides a number of arguments in favor of the Rhine Hypothesis. One finds a series of words known in the Yiddish of Eastern Europe with Old French roots including, among others, leyenen (to read), tsholnt (Sabbath meal), pen (pen), milgrom (pomegranate), teytl (date [fruit]), and khremzl (Passover pancake). The verb bentshn (to bless) also is of western Romance origin. These words could only have been brought to Eastern Europe by Jews whose ancestors lived in the Rhineland and who, in turn, inherited them from ancestors who mainly lived in Northern France.

   Numerous phonetic peculiarities of the pronunciation of Yiddish words of Hebrew origin are shared by various dialects of modern Yiddish, those from Eastern Europe and those from Western Europe. They are surely due to oral (rather than textual) traditions. Some of them were already known in the Middle Ages in western Germany. For others, no sources are available that would shed light on their exact pronunciation in medieval Germany. Yet, the fact they also are found in modern times in western communities (e.g., Alsace and Switzerland) implies the likelihood that these peculiarities already were present in the Yiddish pronunciation of medieval, western, German-speaking communities.

    Indeed, even if a number of Yiddish-speaking migrants moved from the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth to Western Europe after the mid-17th century, numerous linguistic criteria show that the Yiddish dialect of these western communities is not an offspring of Yiddish from Eastern Europe. It is based on western German dialects and was inherited from Jews who lived in medieval western Germany. Among such numerous words with peculiar pronunciation that cannot be directly explained by the diacritics present in the corresponding Hebrew words are shames not shamesh (sexton in synagogue), tokhes not takhes (buttocks), shayle, not sheyle (question), peysekh, not pesekh (Passover), kheyder, not kheder (Jewish elementary school), kheyn, not khen (grace).

    Numerous lexical Hebrew neologisms present in modern Yiddish also were either already known in the language of Rhenish Jews during the Middle Ages or, at least, are found in western Yiddish dialects too. Examples are katoves (jest, joke), khalef (knife for ritual slaughtering), shlakh-mones (presents sent on Purim), khoge (Christian religious holiday), klezmer (musician), shlemiel (unlucky fellow), sheygets (Gentile boy), shikse (Gentile girl).

    Among morphologic peculiarities, one finds the neuter gender for a number of Yiddish words of Hebrew origin, e.g., rakhmones (pity or mercy), goles (diaspora), mazl (luck), non-grammatical plural endings e.g.. yontoyvim (holidays), seyfer-toyres (scrolls of the Torah), ameratsim (ignoramuses), as well as the use of the suffix –te, of Aramaic origin, to create words designating women such as baleboste (female owner), mekhuteneste (female relative by marriage) and khonte (prostitute).

    A large number of Yiddish words of German origin have meanings unknown in dialects spoken by German Christians. These Jewish neologisms were usually brought from West to East. Examples are lerner (Talmudic scholar), shulklaper (one who knocks on doors calling people to synagogue), kloyz (house of worship or study), yortsayt (anniversary of death), gut(e) ort (Jewish cemetery [literally, ‘good place]), and yidishn (to circumcise). Many of these words are directly related to communal life and, therefore, could have been introduced by western itinerant rabbis. The hypothesis of massive migrations from the West is unnecessary to explain their propagation. A large set of words with German roots known in medieval Jewish communities of western Europe, with special meanings or some striking phonetic peculiarities, could appear in Yiddish of Eastern Europe through the study of the biblical translations, study that was mandatory for every boy in a kheyder (Jewish elementary school). The tradition of these translations originated in Western Europe.

    Yiddish possesses a very large set of words with Hebrew roots and German suffixes. Documents available to us show that a number of them appeared initially in Western Europe. Some examples are shekhtn (to slaughter according to Jewish ritual), farmasern (to betray), rebetsn (rabbi’s wife) and numerous compound verbs with a Hebrew root followed by zayn, for example, mekhabed zayn (to honor).

    Onomastics. Given names are of particular importance for studying the history of Jewish settlement. Migrants coming to new locations invariably have proper names; therefore, it is reasonable to speak about migrations of names associated with these persons. A comparative analysis of names used in different communities can yield information of paramount importance about patterns of migrations and genetic relationships existing between communities. Indeed, if one can find a large set of names that clearly came from region R1 to region R2, we can be sure that we are dealing with an important migratory pattern. In this respect, information about names is significantly more important than knowledge about the vernacular language spoken by Jews in various regions. Here is one example: in the 11th–14th centuries, Jews from the Rhineland and northern France spoke completely different languages, yet they shared a number of given names. As a result, close genetic links between these two groups is beyond doubt.

    A number of Romance (mainly based on Old French) names initially used by medieval Rhenish Jews were brought to Eastern Europe, among them such Yiddish names as female Beyle, Bune, Reyne, Rike, Toltse, Yentl, as well as male Bendit, Bunem, Fayvush, and Shneyer. Also from western Germany came certain male names of initially Greek origin: Kalmen (from Kalonymos) and Todres (from Theodoros). Numerous Rhenish names of German origin also are found later in other German-speaking provinces, as well as in Slavic countries. For some of them, their semantics could be at least partly responsible for their propagation as fashionable names. Among examples are Liberman(beloved man), Zelikman(blessed man), Ziskind (sweet child), and numerous female names including Sheyne (beautiful), Feyge(little bird), Golde(golden), Eydl(noble), Freyde (joy), Blume (flower) and Reyzl (little rose).

    For numerous other names, however, semantics would not have been a particular reason for their spread, which must, therefore, be explained as a direct consequence of migrations. Among examples, all with West German ancestors, are the male names Anshl, Ayzik, Ber, Eberl, Falk, Getsl, Gimpl, Helman, Henzl, Herts, Hirsh, Karpl, Kopl, Koyfman, Leyb, Lipman, Note, Volf, Zalmen, Zanvl, Zekl and Ziml, female names Brayne, Ele, Frumet, Gele, Ginendl, Hendl, Mine, Tile, and Zelde. Generally speaking, we can be confident that a large portion of these names were really inherited. The scenario of fashionable names can be a valid explanation in some particular cases only and certainly not on a large scale.

Jews from Czech Lands

   Careful analysis of data related to Jews who, in the Middle Ages, lived in Czech lands shows that their role in the development of Ashkenazic Jewry is usually underestimated. The earliest references to Jews in Czech lands date from the early 10th century. Over the next centuries, local communities became populous and the fame of their religious scholars extended beyond the region. Nothing similar may be said about Jewish communities in other Slavic countries.

    We do not know about the origins of Jews who lived in the Czech lands, Bohemia and Moravia, during the Middle Ages. From the geographic point of view, one can think about Byzantium (via Balkans), northern Italy, and/or western Germany. It would be purely speculative, however, to establish a link to any of these regions; no information is available to corroborate it. The possibility of the community in Prague being an offspring of Rhenish Jewry is implausible because of differences in the pronunciation of Hebrew, given names, and religious rites that existed between these Jews and their coreligionists from western Germany. The genesis of Jewish communities in eastern Germany, Silesia, and western Poland, is less obscure. Onomastic information implies that it is directly related to Czech Jews.

    Linguistic and onomastic data leave no doubt about the important role Czech Jews played in the development of Jewish communities of Eastern Europe. For Eastern Yiddish, this role relates to several distinct layers. The first layer corresponds to the only perfectly identifiable substratum that exists in that idiom: a number of words with Old Czech roots. Among these are treybern (to remove forbidden parts from meat), beylik (white meat), preydek (front part of an animal or fowl), zodik (butchery hindquarters), khreyn (horseradish), tsvorekh (soft cheese), srovetke (whey), parev(e) (neither dairy, nor meat), meyre (the dough for baking matzot), zeyde (grandfather), bobe (grandmother), pleytse (shoulder), hoyl (bare, pure, hollow) and the interjection nebekh (poor thing!).

    As may be seen from the list above, the importance of this group of words does not lie in a number of the items it encompasses, which is rather small, but in their semantics. Here we deal, among other things, with religious terms (including a large series of items related to food), words designating family members and parts of the body. Such words, basic for the vernacular language of Jewish communities, could not be borrowed by Yiddish from Slavic languages. They were necessarily inherited from the language of Czech-speaking Jews.

    Given names of Old Czech origin are abundant in the body of traditional names used in modern times in Eastern and Central Europe. Female examples are Dobre/Dobruske, Drazne/Dreyzl, Khvoles, Krashe, Prive, Rode/Rude, Slave/ Slove/Sluve, Tsherne/Tsharne, Tsvetle, Zlate, and the malenames Beynesh and Khlavne. During the medieval period, a number of names of Hebrew or Aramaic origin were unknown in Western Europe while references to them are found in the Czech Lands. Among them we find the ancestors of the following Yiddish forms Abe ‘Abba’, Avner, Azriel, Betsalel, Paltiel, and the female names Hodes ‘Hadassah,’ Menukhe, Nekhame, and Noyme ‘Naomi’. These names most likely also were inherited from medieval Czech-speaking Jews.

    During the 14th to 16th centuries, all Jewish communities in Central Europe gradually became integrated into the Ashkenazic cultural sphere. Gradual abandonment of the Slavic vernacular language in favor of a German-based Yiddish was principally related to two factors. The first one is related to the presence of numerous German Christian colonists in Bohemia and Moravia. The second factor is related to the arrival of Jewish immigrants from West Germany. These settlers were not necessarily more numerous than the indigenous Jews, but their cultural importance and the fact that they spoke German dialects similar to those used by local German Christians meant their linguistic influence could be disproportional to their population size. The Bohemian colonial dialect of German to which Czech Jewry—representing a mixture of those Jews whose families lived there for centuries and relatively recent migrants from Germany—shifted during the 14th–15th centuries, eventually became the basic idiom for the genesis of all Eastern Yiddish dialects.

East Slavic Jews

    Documents attest to Jewish presence in the territories of modern Ukraine and Belarus since the Middle Ages. Jews appear in sources from Kiev since the 10th century. In 1239–41, the Mongol invasion destroyed numerous towns in the area. From that time until the end of the 15th century, no reference to Jews is found in the area that corresponds to eastern Ukraine. Yet, Jewish presence in Vladimir (the capital city of the region of Volhynia, now in Ukraine) was uninterrupted from at least the end of the 12th century until the end of the 20th century. At the end of the 14th century, Slavic-speaking Jews also lived in Grodno and Brest (now both in western Belarus) and Lutsk (in Volhynia).

   No consensus exists among historians about the origins of Jewish communities known during the 10th to 15th centuries. Usually historians assume that they had eastern and/or southern roots. Theories include the Khazar Kingdom, Crimea, Caucasus, Byzantium, Persia and Babylonia as possible sources. Until the end of the 10th century, Khazaria, whose western border passed in the immediate vicinity of Kyiv, clearly represents the most plausible source. According to a number of independent sources, the ruling elite of Khazaria embraced Judaism between the 8th and the 10th centuries. Although contacts between Russian principalities and the Khazar Kingdom before the 11th century are well known from Russian chronicles, no direct data is available to corroborate the presence of Jews from Khazaria in the territories of modern Ukraine.

   Before the destruction of the Khazar Kingdom by the Russians during the 960s, however, this powerful state in which the rulers were Jewish clearly was attractive to Jews from other countries. The probability of the presence in Khazaria of Jews who was genetically independent of the Khazar converts to Judaism is particularly high since the archaeological data show that the conversion to Judaism could not have been massive. Traces of Jewish ritual on that territory are quite scarce. Moreover, several Arab authors from the 10th century write that Jews, though politically dominant, represent a minority of the country in comparison to Muslims, Christians, and pagans. One of these authors speaks about migrations to Khazaria of Jews from Muslim countries and Byzantium. For these reasons, it is logical to consider (though without certainty) that Jewish families in Khazaria during the 10th century were of heterogeneous origin. In any case, we find no given name of Turkic, Persian, or Greek origin in documents dealing with medieval Slavic-speaking Jews of Eastern Europe that could provide any clues about the languages spoken by their ancestors.

   It is in the early 17th century that we can observe a large-scale homogenization of the body of Jewish names found in sources from the territories of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. Typically, Ashkenazic forms of biblical names dominate. Names with Germanic roots and/or suffixes are common. Many names known before, disappear and only a few (such as male Shakhne and female Badane, Yakhne, and Vikhne) survived in the corpus of Yiddish names. The onomastic homogenization is a direct consequence of the linguistic homogenization. There is no doubt that since the 17th century the Eastern dialect of Yiddish was already the first spoken language for a large majority of Jews living in the territories of modern Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania. Numerous characteristics of this language imply its origin in the Czech lands. It has a small, but well identifiable, Old Czech lexical substratum, while its major linguistic features are mainly based on the colonial Bohemian dialect of German spoken in urban centers of Bohemia and Moravia. Migrants from these lands were responsible for the diffusion of this idiom to Poland and from it to the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. An important number of other Yiddish peculiarities appeared already in the Polish territories, under the influence of the colonial Silesian dialect of German spoken in the Middle Ages in numerous Polish towns and also as a result of internal innovations. Almost all of them were eventually brought to Ukraine and a large part of them (mainly those dating from the period before the mid-16th century) appeared in Lithuania and Belorussia as well.

Revolutionary Theories

    Generally speaking, we have no evidence about the existence of Jewish mass migrations from West to East. Nevertheless, we definitely know about migrations of individuals (most likely, accompanied by members of their families) that continued until the Cossack wars of the mid-17th century in Eastern Europe. These scarce pieces of information are factual, while the “revolutionary” theories of Ashkenazic history are mainly speculative. We know about the conversion of representatives of the Khazar elite in the first millennium CE. Yet, we know nothing about any link between the Khazar converts and the Slavic-speaking communities that existed in the territories of modern Ukraine and Belarus during the 13th to 15th centuries. Moreover, we do not even know the sizes of the corresponding communities. Scant available information concerning censuses and taxes provides only a rough idea about the small number of Jews living in the area in question. For a period during which migrations could take place, such data are certainly more objective than the method used by van Straten of backward calculation using unreliable annual growth rates resulting from extrapolations made by that author on the basis of unknown growth rates. As for the putative mass conversions to Judaism of Sorbians or East Slavic people, they are the fruit of the theoretical imagination of Wexler and van Straten, respectively. Not a single piece of historical information alludes to such events.

    No author writing about the composition of Jewish communities in Slavic countries can ignore the fact that in recent centuries Yiddish, a language with an obvious High German basis, was the first everyday language for all local communities. Often, the approach to this topic is directly related to the general conception an author has about the history of the formation of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. For scholars who adhere to a traditional point of view about the history of the formation of these communities, the propagation of Yiddish is totally natural. For them, the Jewish settlement in Eastern Europe is mainly due to western migrants who brought this language from Central and/or Western Europe. For “revolutionary” authors who favor the non-western origin of Jews in Eastern Europe, the status of Yiddish represents a serious issue they need to address. Generally, they advance two main arguments.

    First, some write about a large linguistic impact of the German colonists in medieval Polish towns. This argument is invalid. The Silesian dialect spoken by colonists indeed was an important influence on Yiddish. Moreover, the presence of a large number of German-speaking Christian colonists and their dominant role in the economic life of numerous urban centers of western and southern Poland could be important factors that contributed to the survival of Yiddish during the first centuries of its presence in Poland. However, the basis of Eastern Yiddish is not Silesian; this is particularly clear from a consideration of vowels. The language of German colonists could be the reason for neither the initial development of Yiddish in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, nor for the propagation of this language, especially in Ukraine, Belorussia, and Lithuania where German presence was minimal and where most communities of Jewish speakers of East Slavic, in theory, could be located.

   The second argument deals with sociolinguistics. The dispersion of a language represents a fact that is partially cultural. If an entire community speaks the same language, it does not mean that all or even a majority of its population is of homogenous origin. In theory, at certain periods, the language of the more cultured minority could become that spoken by the majority. An explanation of the diffusion of Yiddish as a natural result of western migrations would be sufficient if direct information about the massive character of these migrations was available. Yet, that is not the case and, moreover, we have serious arguments showing that, on the one hand, the Jewish presence in the territories of modern Ukraine could be uninterrupted since at least the 10th century. On the other hand, even during the 16th to 17th centuries, certain Jews living in western Ukraine and western Belarus were still using East Slavic languages as their vernacular idioms. In this context, the mere fact of the propagation of Yiddish does not allow one to make automatic conclusions about the prevalence of western migrants in comparison to “autochthonous” Jews.

    All “revolutionary” authors invoke the possibility of sociolinguistic factors playing dramatic roles in the propagation of Eastern Yiddish. Poliak (1943) insists that the Yiddish language spoken in Jewish elementary schools and houses of rich men influenced that of all other members of communities, who, according to his general idea, were of Khazar origin. Koestler (1976) also emphasizes that Yiddish is due to a very small but more cultured group of Jews from Bohemia and Germany. Sand (2009) assigns the propagation of Yiddish (the language that started, according to him, among descendants of Khazar converts under the impact of German settlers in Poland), to a late migration of erudite German rabbis whose influence was disproportional to the small number of these migrants. Van Straten (2011) also considers that a limited number of western rabbis and teachers played a fundamental role in the propagation of Yiddish in Eastern Europe.

    Even if the sociolinguistic factors described in the previous paragraph could indeed have had some importance for the development of Yiddish in Poland and the Grand Duchy of Lithuania, as a whole the scenario in question (purely theoretical and speculative since no evidence exists to corroborate it) seems impossible. It goes against common sense.

   Certainly, in world history, we know about some cases in which the language of a more cultural minority gradually became the everyday idiom of the majority who copied the linguistic behavior of its elite. This, for example, was the case in the territory of modern France where Latin, initially a vehicular language brought by Romans, became the first language for the entire population that abandoned its Celtic (Gaulish) idiom. The case of Yiddish, however, is fundamentally different. Latin “won” against Gaulish in a context in which the competition was between these two idioms and two population groups only. An exact analogy would be an imaginary scenario according to which Yiddish-speaking Jewish migrants come to an island inhabited by Slavic-speaking Jews only and the latter gradually shift to Yiddish. Yet, Slavic-speaking Jews did not live on an island and were not confined to any type of ghetto. They constituted a minority among Slavic Gentiles and were by no means isolated from their Gentile neighbors. As a result, in the real situation, Yiddish competed against the everyday language of Slavic Jews in a context of close contact with a Gentile majority speaking a language structurally identical to that of Slavic Jews. Moreover, nothing indicates the existence of mass migrations of Jews from the West. It is clear that under such circumstances, the chances for the victory of Yiddish were relatively small. It is not a surprise that the process of total Yiddishizing took several centuries in the territories of modern Belarus and Ukraine. Traces of monolingual Slavic-speaking Jews are visible as late as the 17th century.

   To explain the fact that Yiddish finally became the dominant Jewish vernacular language in the total Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the sociolinguistic factors exposed above are totally insufficient. The dominant role of Yiddish is a cogent argument about the importance of the demographic contribution of western Yiddish-speaking migrants (from Central Europe to Poland and from Poland to Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania), with a regular influx over a long period of time into relatively small Slavic Jewish communities.

    Several additional arguments complement the above analysis. The emphasis made by “revolutionary” authors on the decisive role of the western elite is untenable from the point of view of common sense also because it is unclear how this presumably small layer of western migrants could include the many rabbis, teachers, and rich men necessary for the propagation of Yiddish over such a large area. It is logical to consider that, on the average, western migrants could be better educated from the religious point of view than Slavic Jews. Yet, there is no reason to consider that only the elite took part in the migrations to the East. Obviously, it also would be absurd to conjecture that Jewish communities in Central and Western Europe held only highly educated persons. In addition, in the case of the putative autochthonous (formerly Slavic) majority in Eastern Europe, one could expect a substantial Eastern Slavic substratum in Yiddish dialects of Ukraine and Belarus. Such a substratum, however, is invisible.

    The consideration by “revolutionary” authors of Yiddish as the prestige idiom contradicts what we learn from the history of Yiddish literature. Hebrew, the language of culture, was the only idiom whose social status among Jews was indeed high. Nothing similar can be said about Yiddish. It was a typical vernacular language. In Jewish elementary schools, the Bible was studied in Yiddish translations certainly not because of the putative prestige of Yiddish but simply because it was the language understood by all the students. In prefaces to numerous Yiddish books published in Poland during the 16thand 17th centuries, authors explicitly state that the text is written in that language so that simple folk and/or women and girls might understand. These books were printed using a special typeface, vaybertaytsh, literally “women’s Yiddish” and not in square Hebrew letters, to distinguish them from the sanctified texts in Hebrew or Aramaic. Until the 19th century, rabbinic tradition considers that Yiddish can have only an auxiliary function and is not for serious publications. Note also that girls did not study in Jewish elementary schools and, consequently, could not acquire their knowledge at school. Yet, there is no evidence that women were less fluent in Yiddish than men.

   The Yiddish literature of Eastern Europe known to us dates from the 16th century only and comes from Poland. No Yiddish publication from the territories of modern Ukraine, Belarus or Lithuania is known even for the 17th century. As a result, the available literature does not provide any direct information about a presumed period of “struggle” between Yiddish and East Slavic languages in the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Moreover there is no reason to think that the general attitude toward Yiddish could change so dramatically in time and/or space. A language with high social status in Lithuania would not be considered an idiom suitable for writings for a female audience in contemporary Poland and later in Lithuania too.

Conclusion

   For any of “revolutionary” theories to reflect historical reality, one must develop a large series of bold independent hypotheses to explain all the historical, linguistic, onomastic and demographic information in our possession. If they were valid, such assertions really would be revolutionary for the corresponding domains. This general conclusion represents itself as a very important argument against the theories in question. It shows that for the “revolutionary” authors, the scholars who worked in the domains in question before them were totally wrong. In other words, these authors consider (mainly implicitly) that their predecessors either have been bad specialists in their respective domains or, were at least, ideologically biased.

   In many cases, the real situation is just the opposite. The ideological bias of Sand, Wexler, and Koestler is self-evident. For the first two authors, their idea about converts being the basis of the Jewish people is not limited just to Jews from Eastern Europe. For them, this is just a particular case of the general task that inspires their studies—showing that all modern Jews (or, at least, the largest branches, Ashkenazic and Sephardic) descend from converts. Moreover, Sand does not hide the fact that his study is a pamphlet aimed against Israeli politics and the notion of Jewish people as a whole. In his book, Koestler (1976) declares many times his intention to prove with his study the invalidity of the Nazi racial doctrine. An ideological orientation is less visible in the book by van Straten (2011). Yet, when reading it, one has the impression that the author is a proponent of a kind of conspiracy theory. He accuses almost all major Jewish historians and almost all biologists who worked in the domain of Jewish genetics of asserting incorrect statements. His denigration of views of various authors (often considered classical by their peers) is so general that he does not hesitate to “refute” some of their basic ideas dealing with topics totally marginal to the main questions addressed in his book. Numerous passages from Sand (2009) also can be interpreted as inspired by conspiracy theories. He regularly accuses the Israeli academic establishment of hiding the truth about the conversions. Yet, almost all his information on this topic represents direct quotes from books and articles published in Israel or theses held in Israeli universities. Another general feature characteristic of “revolutionary” authors is their amateurism in the domains they address. Wexler is an exception, but his approach violates all general principles elaborated by historical linguistics, and it is not a surprise that his writings are not endorsed by his peers. Superficial opinions are particularly common in onomastics or linguistics. Often, when asserting something about Jewish history, they ignore or disclaim the opinions of the most important historians and base their conclusions on the views of authors marginal to the field.

    Due to the scarcity of written documents dealing with the early period of the existence of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe, historical and linguistic analysis never will be able to yield the proportions of population contributions of various sources of Ashkenazic Jews. In this context, any attempt to reduce the problem to a simple set of conclusions should not be accepted. Only a broader vision, without any reductionism, really allows our knowledge of history to progress.

Works Cited

    Beider, Alexander. 2015. Origins of Yiddish Dialects. Oxford University Press.

    Koestler, Arthur. 1976. The Thirteenth Tribe: Khazar Empire and its Heritage. London: Hutchinson.

    Sand, Shlomo. 2009. The Invention of the Jewish People. New York: Verso.

    Straten, Jits van. 2011. The Origin of Ashkenazi Jewry: the Controversy Unraveled. Berlin-New York: De Gruyter.

    Weinreich, Max. 1973. Geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh. 4 vols. New York: YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. (English translation: History of the Yiddish language. 2 vols. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008.)

    Wexler, Paul. 2002. Two-tiered Relexification in Yiddish: Jews, Sorbs, Khazars and the Kiev-Polessian Dialect. Berlin-New York: Mouton de Gruyter.

This article is based upon a presentation at the Orlando IAJGS conference in July 2017—Ed.

The first time I visited the half-Dutch, half-French island of St. Martin/St. Maarten in 1991, I heard that it once had a Jewish community. St. Maarten is a 36-square-mile island in the eastern Caribbean, located between St. Thomas and St. Eustatius where the Dutch and French sides of the island share a “no-passport-needed” border.

    It was my good fortune to meet my beloved under a moonlit sky in St. Maarten in 1993 and would, henceforth, call that island my home. I met the small local Jewish community that began in the 1960s and again was told there once had been a Jewish community on the island—but when and where? That was unclear. All I heard and was shown were crumbling remains of what was said to have been the synagogue and vague references to the location of the Jews’ burial ground. Where were the marble tombstones that gave witness to the past? How did the community disappear without a trace and who were they? How did we lose this piece of our Caribbean Jewish connection and history? I undertook to find some answers.

     The research was like peeling an onion—one layer at a time, one source at a time, trying to piece together a lost history. A chance meeting with the island’s notary resulted in a coveted invitation to look at his files. (The island now has three notarial offices.) A notary represents both sides in a real estate transaction. The original notary’s office houses in a fireproof safe handwritten copies of land transactions going back to the early 1800s. Most deeds are handwritten in Dutch on old parchment paper and nearly impossible to read; they required translation that took several years.

    “Nothing remained of them, not even the memory,” said Baruch Spinoza in the 17th century, referring to the Jews of Spain and Portugal, but he could have been talking about the Jews of St. Maarten. 

Expulsion from Spain and Portugal

    The expulsion of the Jews from Spain, and later from Portugal, started in August 1492, which coincided with Columbus’s first voyage to the New World. Subsequently, more than 300,000 Jews left the Iberian Peninsula for communities around the Mediterranean. Jews settled in the Balkans, England, France, Germany, Holland, Italy, France, North Africa, and Turkey. Some other Jews sailed to the New World and found islands and havens with freedom for Jews unknown in Europe.

 Brazil Connection

    The Dutch controlled the northeastern part of Brazil from 1625 to 1654. During that period, two thriving Sephardic communities, one in Amsterdam, the other in Recife (known as Mauristaad), Brazil, led the world in finance, insurance, shipping, slave trading, and sugar. Judaism in the New World traces its roots to the cataclysmic exodus of the Jewish community of Recife, Brazil, in 1654 when the Portuguese defeated the Dutch and regained control of the northeastern province of Brazil.

    Many Brazilian Jews returned to Amsterdam. Other Jews settled in freedom-loving Surinam. Many others went to Curacao, making it a major Jewish center and the spiritual leader for America’s first synagogues. Some Jews settled on British Barbados and still, others went to the short-lived Jewish community on Martinique. Jews settled in Nevis and perfected the process of crystalizing sugar; many found fortune in pirate-loving Port Royal, Jamaica. A famed 23 managed to make it to New Amsterdam, which became New York City.

    In the 1700s, the communities of St. Eustatius, St. Maarten, St. Thomas and St. Croix were established creating a network of related New Christians and Jews with different surnames. Two brothers with different names made it impossible to trace family trees, and many changed their names to Christian names.

St. Eustatius – St. Maarten Connection

    From the early 1700s, the Dutch encouraged Jews to settle on the Caribbean island of St. Eustatius. They knew that a Jewish presence guaranteed a lively merchant community and trade, thereby bringing wealth to the motherland. By the start of the American Revolution, St. Eustatius was a mixed Ashkenazic and Sephardic community of more than 100 families on an 8.1 square mile island; these elements often were at odds with one another.

   At the start of the American Revolution, French King Louis XVI and Spanish King Charles III, who were cousins, formed the trading company Roderique Hortalez et Cie. This company was responsible for the purchase and stockpiling of weapons, gunpowder, and muskets. The munitions were shipped to the island of St. Eustatius and from there to the American colonies where they were the primary source of weapons and material for General Washington and his fledging American troops.

    In 1781, British Admiral George Rodney attacked St. Eustatius with a heavy force and, after occupation, separated the more than 100 Jewish heads of household, stripped them of their wealth and expelled 30 to the island of St. Kitts. Most of the rest of the community relocated to Danish St. Thomas. In the 1790s, the community reached 151 under the leadership of Cantor Jacob de Robles, but the European wars fought on Caribbean waters led to the demise of business on St. Eustatius and by 1826, the last Jewish widow had died. After 1826, no Jews remained on St. Eustatius.

     A small reference in Isaac Edgar and Suzanne A. Samuel’s book The History of the Jews of the Netherlands Antilles, (1970) spurred on my investigation of St. Maarten. Samuel noted that two years after Rodney’s attack on the St. Eustatius’ Jewish community, the St. Martin synagogue had grown to the point of needing a more permanent home. On November 6, 1783, the leaders of the Jewish community of St. Martin (known as the Machmad) sought permission from the board of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam to approach the West India Company for authorization to form a congregation and draw up bylaws. The Amsterdam parnassim (synagogue administrators) delegated their secretary, Daniel Jesurun Lobo, to discuss the matter with the attorney for the company. The congregation of St. Martin asked for more prayer books and a Torah. The tradition was that the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue would give new congregations a Torah with a red cover. (A colleague found a reference in Portuguese from the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam’s reference library and shared it with me, actual proof of the request.)

Search for the Synagogue

    At my behest, my husband’s cousin, who worked at the St. Martin land record office, received permission in 2010 for me to view its archival records. On the notarial deeds in the land transfer record, I found a bombshell. Written in flawless script were the words “Jewish Synagogue,” evidence that in 1783 St. Martin had a large enough Jewish population to form a congregation and build a synagogue.

    Other records showed that, in 1879, a property was sold for $150 Spanish dollars. The notarial reference for its northern boundary was “two lots formally the Jewish Synagogue.” Sixteen years later, in 1895, the property changed hands again and the boundary in the north was described as “the land called the Jewish Synagogue” with a measurement of 10 meters and 20 centimeters (equal to 33.4 feet). The property sold again in 1910, but the reference to the Jewish Synagogue was not used. It had disappeared.

    Many older residents on the island who shared recollections of conversation with their grandparents and Johan Hartog’s History of St. Eustatius and St. Maarten, confirmed that the synagogue stood on the property of the former West Indian Tavern (today, Guavaberry). The property has the oldest ruin in the town of Philipsburg.

St. Maarten’s Early Jewish History

    The first recorded Jew to settle on St. Maarten was Jacob Gomez who came from Curacao in 1735. He was followed by a Mrs. Silva, a widow who moved to the island with her son and daughter about 1740. During a legal proceeding in the 1740s, Gomez insisted on swearing on the Five Books of Moses. Records also show a Jacob Dias Delgado who lived in St. Maarten in 1778.

    “Economic conditions between 1733 and 1783 showed a constant upward tendency under Philips and Heyliger, and among the many whites who settled on the island during that time were Jews.” (Hartog, J, History of Sint Maarten/St. Martin, 1981)

    Other records document the lively and sometimes heated correspondence between the Pereiras, David Israel and his two sons Isaac and Moses, with the board of the Spanish Portuguese Synagogue in Amsterdam in the 1790s. The Pereiras had been active in Honen Dolim in St. Eustatius and David had been a St. Eustatius Machmad, a board member of the Israel synagogue.

    Jacob Gomez de Mesquista is listed in the island census of April 5, 1791, along with his four male slaves, the legal limit for non-agricultural households. The birth of Samuel Sasso is recorded in 1805. (Branches of the Sasso family still live in Jamaica and St. Thomas.) The archives also recorded the death in 1820 of Moses German of the “Portuguese rite,” (which means that he was Jewish) who was buried in the Jewish burial ground.

What Happened to the Synagogue

    Records from the land office, census, the personal files of former Lieutenant Governor Mathias Voges, scores of interviews and the notary office helped peel another layer off the onion.

    The St. Maarten Synagogue likely was built of wood with the eastern wall made of ballast stone, stones carried as ballast on ships arriving with very small cargo loads. A massive hurricane hit the island in 1819, leaving little standing. “Of the former existence of a synagogue at the east end of the Achterstraat (Front Street) to the part of the south, there remains nothing more than a heap of ruins covered with noxious weeds,” according to Marten Douwes Teenstra, a bookkeeper who visited the island in 1828 to study efficiency among the sugar plantations. His letter proved that there was once a synagogue—and Jewish life and life cycle events.

Continued Jewish Life

    Notarial records of land sales and wills demonstrated the existence of Jewish life on the island from the 1820s through to the 1850s. A will appeared in the file pertaining to the property on which the synagogue was located. What originally was thought to be a misfiling turned out to be the key to understanding how the synagogue property ended up with five different owners. It showed that the Jews who were on the island after the synagogue was destroyed in 1819 still had a semblance of a community. Each person owned a portion of the synagogue and eventually sold or willed their portions.

    Samuel Henriques of Curacao moved to St. Maarten, married and fathered four children. He died on September 25, 1854, and was buried in the Jewish burial ground on St. Maarten. He owned two-tenths of a share of the property where the synagogue had stood. Moses Phillips, a well-known St. Maarten landowner in the 1830s and 1840s, owned 2/5 share of the property on which the synagogue had been located. In his will, Philips designated two executors, one of whom was Judah Cappe, a Jew of St. Eustatius who lived in St. Thomas. He also freed his slaves and left a legacy to the Jewish yeshiva in Dessau, Germany.

Last Jews on St. Maarten

    Without a physical synagogue since 1819, faced with the abolition of slavery on the French side in 1848 and Dutch side by 1863, the Napoleonic Wars, and the diminishing plantation system, the Jews left St. Maarten. Holland and the Dominican Republic had entered into a commercial treaty and some families may have sent their sons to the Dominican Republic. Most of the St. Eustatius community went to St. Thomas which is where their menorah is now. Panama was the bright star of the future; many likely moved there. Of course, the United States always beckoned. By the time slavery was abolished in 1863, St. Martin likely had no remaining Jewish residents.

Search for the Jewish Burial Ground

    “In Jewish religious community life—to a greater degree than elsewhere—establishment of common consecrated burial ground is a significant sign of permanent settlement.” Rabbi David de Sola Pool, Portraits Etched in Stone (1952).

    Knowing that the establishment of common holy burial ground is a sign of a community and with irrefutable notarial proof of the existence of a Jewish synagogue, I wanted to confirm the presence of a Jewish burial ground. That proved to be both easy and difficult. Folklore indicated that the old burial ground was underneath what is today the former Radio Shack building in Philipsburg. More than 50 local references, coupled with Dr. Hartog’s History of Sint Maarten-St. Martin made it clear that there had been a burial ground, e.g., “Up to this day, as we heard ourselves in 1977, a path along the former Jewish cemetery is still called in popular language ‘Jewish Cemetery Alley’.” (Hartog, 1981)

    The first notarial proof of the existence of the Jewish Burial Ground on St. Maarten was recorded on January 6, 1855, in a deed that referenced its northern boundary as the “Jew’s Burying Ground.” When the property changed hands in 1920, that notarial deed referenced the northern boundary as the Jewish Burial Ground measuring 140 feet long, an indication of the southern boundary as well as the size of the cemetery.

    In a deed without notarial boundaries dated May 1929, the Lieutenant Governor of St. Maarten acted as the seller on behalf of the government and sold the Jewish burial ground to the Caines family, who owned it until 1980. An obscure law dating back to 1867 (501/85 references Article 173) allowed the Governor jurisdiction to waive the ownership of government lands. A piece of the land was sold in 1948, and the family who built on the property found human bones.

    At that time, there was no one to speak up for the Jewish community, and we do not know if anyone in Curacao, the administrator of the island, was aware of the sale and the ramifications for the future. The Cannegieter family purchased the property in the early 1980s and built a mixed commercial and residential building. At that location, they started the first electronics store under the Radio Shack franchise and the building became known as the Radio Shack Building. Radio Shack closed in 2015. All the deeds (nine in total) for the surrounding land show that the properties either were sold or given by the government. All reference it as lands that were part of the former Voormalige Joodse Bergraaftplaats (Jewish burial ground).

    With the permission of the owners, Barbara and Diedrick Cannegieter and Dr. Jay Haversier, the government archaeologist of the Netherlands Antilles, I organized an archaeological dig behind the Radio Shack building in August 2010. The site had been totally built upon with only a narrow alley between two buildings. A trench of 6 feet by no more than 20 inches was dug. That was all the room there was, and the land was soft from heavy rainfall.

    The results were stunning. On the second day of the dig a skull was found at a depth of 120 centimeters.

Who Was He?

    Having watched enough CSI, NCIS and Law and Order television shows, I knew that I needed expert help at that point. Accordingly, I contacted Catyana Skory Falsetti of the Crime Lab of the Broward Sheriff Office, Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Falsetti is a forensic artist who has spearheaded a national campaign to give identities to unknown bodies. She agreed to give the man a face and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office donated her services At that time, this was one of the few U.S. police departments with a full-time forensic artiSt. Skory, whose fortitude and talent over three years to give the skull a face was amazing. She used state-of-the-art facial reconstruction techniques and consultations with Dr. Albert Dabbah, a world-renowned plastic surgeon in Boca Raton, Florida, for tissue markers. Mark Kemper, President and CEO of Engineering and Manufacturing Services donated his company’s services, scanned the clay facial reconstruction and printed out a 3D model. Because it is illegal to transport human remains over international borders, a copy of the skull was made and my husband hand carried it back to Florida.

    Forensic DNA was submitted for testing to Dr. Chris Craig of William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Virginia. Dr. Tony Falsetti, a former University of Florida forensic anthropologist came to the island and viewed the original skull. He determined that the remains were those of a man about 48 years old when he died, most likely of a tooth abscess. DNA confirmed that the man was Jewish. He belonged to haplotype group U of the Sephardic Jewish ancestral group with ties to St. Eustatius and Barbados.

    Copying of the evidence and recreation of the face of the unknown Jew of St. Maarten attracted the attention of the American Academy of Forensic Sciences. “The 19th Century Jewish Cemetery in St. Maarten – Historic Facial Approximations Using Modern Technologies – Doorway for Forensic Cases” was presented by Catyana Skory Falsetti in Washington, DC, on February 22, 2013, at the American Academy of Forensics annual meeting. It was a landmark because copied evidence was used in a case of identification and facial reconstruction when human remains could not be moved over international borders except by a law enforcement professional.

Jewish St. Maarten Today

    In 2012, the local community erected a plaque denoting the Jewish burial ground of St. Maarten with permission of the property owners, Barbara and Diedrick Cannegieter, and the sponsorship of Diamonds International, a large retail jewelry company. The St. Maarten Museum has an exhibit with an information panel and the original bust done by Catyana Skory of the Broward Sheriff’s office along with a copy of the skull.

    St. Martin/St. Maarten has an active Jewish community today. Jews from Curacao moved to the island in the 1960s and established businesses. As the island’s tourism grew, a small local community developed that is joined by visitors. In 2010, a Chabad House was established to service the Jewish communities and visitors on both the Dutch and French sides of the island.

According to its census, Brazil, with 123 million Roman Catholics, is the largest Catholic nation in the world. If one considers its DNA legacy, however, we find that many white Brazilians descend from Portuguese Jews and New Christians who arrived in the 1500s, fleeing the Inquisition in their home country. If those known variously as conversos, Marranos, crypto-Jews or Anousim had not been obliged through the centuries to abjure their religion, possibly Brazil would not be so predominantly Catholic today.

   In the 517 years of Jewish presence in Brazil, since its discovery in 1500 by the Portuguese fleet of Admiral Pedro Alvares Cabral, many other waves of Jewish immigrants arrived, making Jewish genealogy in Brazil an important field of research, especially now that discovering foreign-born ancestors may lead to second citizenship in countries such as Poland, Portugal, and Italy. This is what happened to 30 members of the Arruda family of the State of Ceará in Brazil’s northeast, who obtained Portuguese citizenship by proving their descendants through 15 generations from Branca Dias, a Portuguese-Jewish woman who died in 1558.

      A significant milestone in Brazilian history was the short period of Dutch control of the city of Recife (1630–54), the colonial capital of Brazil’s Pernambuco State, where the first Jewish community in the Americas was established. Jews were able to prosper in the sugar industry, had freedom of belief and built the first synagogue of the Americas, Kahal Kaddosh Zur Israel (Saintly Community of the Rock of Israel). After the Dutch were defeated and expelled, Jews scattered within Brazil and to other places in the world such as Amsterdam, where the Brazilian Rabbi Isaac Aboab da Fonseca built the impressive Portuguese Synagogue, still operating today, and to a remote island known today as New York City.

   Until 1808, very few signs remained of crypto-Judaism in Brazil, but Napoleon’s invasion of Portugal changed the picture. The Portuguese Courtmoved to Brazil and King Dom João VI opened the harbors of the former colony to all countries, favoring migration from England, Alsace, and Morocco. Moroccan Jews went in considerable numbers to the Amazon and Pará, at the beginning of the “Rubber Cycle,” a boom in rubber exploitation in the rain forest that inaugurated a period of significant economic development, going up the Amazon Riveras far as Iquitos, Peru. In 1870, the Franco-Prussian War motivated the arrival of Jews from Alsace-Lorraine, which was taken from France by Germany and, in 1900, Baron Maurice de Hirsch founded the colonies of Philipson (Santa Maria) and Four Brothers (Erechim) in Southern Brazil, through the Jewish Colonization Association. Small nuclei of Jewish communities were established in the North, in Bahia, and in Rio, and sparse groups of immigrants were to be found in several other areas of Brazil.

   After World War I, Brazil experienced an increase in Jewish immigration from Poland, Romania, Germany, Austria, France, and Belgium. Urban concentrations grew in Rio and São Paulo, as did small communities in the interior, less densely populated hinterland. In 1933, refugees began to arrive from Germany, Austria, and Italy, generally well educated and with specialized professions. After World War II, Brazil received refugees and Holocaust survivors, and after the 1956 Suez Canal War, Jewish refugees came from Egypt.

    Apart from crypto-Jews, the Jewish population in Brazil diminished considerably from 1654 to 1808, then grew slowly until the beginning of the 20th century. During World War I, 5,000 to 7,000 Jews were present in Brazil, increasing to 55,000 during World War II, predominantly through immigration.

   From the 1970s onward, Jews in Brazil increasingly relocated to cities and small communities; almost all disappeared. Jewish presence is now concentrated primarily in the capitals of 13 of Brazil’s 26 states, numbering some 120,000 people, mostly in Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and Porto Alegre.

Genealogical Research

   Jewish genealogy research is not as popular in Brazil today as it is in other countries; the same applies to general genealogy. Only in the last few decades have Jewish historical societies and archives been established, and they must cope with a persistent lack of resources, suitable space, and specialized personnel and technologies, even though there is a strong commitment of a few dedicated volunteers and employees. English is not widely spoken so researchers must be able to read and speak Portuguese.

    Around the middle of the 20th century, nearly all landsman societies and some relevant Jewish libraries, schools and some organizations in Brazil disappeared or merged, with a consequent loss of documents. The decline of the Yiddish language contributed to this, as did geographical changes in the community. Fires (Ostrowiec Landsleit) and a building collapse (Jewish Library) added to the loss of records of Jewish institutions, as did the discarding of papers and documents from groups that have ceased to exist or have merged with one another. Only recently has a greater interest developed in preserving the memory of the community.

   Outside the Jewish community, there also are some relevant sources of Jewish genealogical and historic information, the main ones being the notarial offices and many federal and state archival agencies known to preserve useful, valuable and reliable information for the researcher.

    The main government archive is the Arquivo Nacional (National Archive), (www.arquivonacional.gov.br) in Rio de Janeiro, which holds arrival records for passenger arrivals in Brazilian ports. Records in this archive roughly cover the years 1920 to 1960. When using Brazilian archives, remember the following definitions, Sobrenome (surname), Nome (given name), Buscar or Consultar ( search).

   The Latter-Day Saints (Mormons) have done extensive filming in the Arquivo Nacional, and the results may be seen online at https://familysearch.org/search/collection/ 1932363 “Brazil, Immigration Cards, 1900–1965.” These are films of indexes and images of immigration cards created by Brazilian consulates in several countries of the world and presented to the port of entry by foreigners visiting or immigrating to Brazil.

    The military archives of the army (www.ahex.ensino.eb.br), navy (www1.mar.mil.br/dphdm) and air force (www. facebook.com/cendoc.fab) also can be searched online.

   Biblioteca Nacional (national library), (www.bn.gov.br/y), Av Rio Branco 219, Rio de Janeiro, is the official depositary of all books printed in Brazil. The collections may be searched at http://acervo.bn.br/sophia_web/.

   Some organizations abroad hold substantial references for Brazil. The main ones are the Archives of the Municipality of Amsterdam (Dutch Brazil, 1630–1654) and Arquivo Nacional Torre do Tombo, Lisbon (http://antt. dglab.gov.pt/), the main repository for the Colony of Brazil from 1500 to 1822. Included are the Inquisition records and New Christian names of Brazilians who were prosecuted.

    Files on Brazil at the Center for Jewish History in New York include newspapers, magazines and editions of an important bulletin, Gerações (generations), published by the Brazilian Society of Jewish Genealogy, a society that functioned in the 1990s and 2000s.

   Private archives include the Colégio Brasileiro de Genealogia (CBG Brazilian Genealogy College), www.cbg.org. br/novo/, Av. Augusto Severo, 8, 20021-040 Rio de Janeiro, telephone 55-21 2221-6000, open for consultation on Tuesdays from 2 to 5 pm. The Getulio Vargas Foundation, (FGV), named after a former president of Brazil,http://cpdoc.fgv.br/acervo/arquivospessoais/consulta, holds many files on Jewish personalities. Recently, Brazil’s leading newspaper, O GLOBO, opened a website that holds all editions since the first on July 29, 1925, http://acervo. oglobo.globo.com/. Obituaries and funeral notices covering nearly a century may be retrieved here.

    Post-graduate courses in Brazil began around 1970, and since then the number of theses and master’s/doctoral degree papers and monographs dealing with Brazilian Jewish history has grown greatly. These have a wealth of useful information for genealogists. All Brazilian universities have a databank of thesis papers.

Jewish History

    Brazil has some Jewish organizations devoted to history and genealogy as follows:

    • Brazilian Jewish Historical Archive (AHJB) was incorporated into the Jewish Museum of São Paulo (MJSP). It probably is the most complete Jewish archive in Brazil, Cdm@museujudaicosp.org.br, telephone 55-11-3088 0879.

    • Instituto Cultural Judaico Marc Chagall specializes in Jewish history in Rio Grande do Sul State, including the colonies established by the Jewish Colonization Association a century ago. Rua General João Telles 329, Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, @icjmcrs, icjmc@hotmail.com, telephone 55-51-3019-4600.       

    • Instituto Cultural Judaico Brasileiro Bernardo Schulman has a library and historical files on Jews in Paraná State, saraschulman@gmail.com.

    • Arquivo Historico Judaico de Pernambuco holds files on Pernambuco State Jews, home of the first synagogue of the Americas, tnkaufman@gmail.com.

    • Instituto Histórico Israelita Mineiro (IHIM) concerns the Jewish history of Minas Gerais State, telephone 55-31-3226-7848, ihimmg@outlook.com.

    The Israelite Confederation of Brazil, www.conib.org.br/ comunidades, is the umbrella for 13 state Jewish federations. Brazil has one Holocaust museum, the Museu do Holocausto, in the City of Curitiba, which has data on Shoah survivors, especially in the southern state of Paraná, www.facebook.com/MuseuShoaCuritiba.

Useful Books

    Among books of genealogical interest written in Portuguese we have:

    Dicionario Sefaradi de Sobrenomes (Sephardic Surnames Dictionary) Faiguenboim, Guilherme; Campagnano, Anna Rosa; Valadares, Paulo; includes New Christians, converts, and marranos, and has 12,000 surnames and 17,000 entries. São Paulo: Fraiha, 2003.

    Benchimol, Samuel. Eretz Amazônia—Os Judeus na Amazônia.(Eretz Amazon—Jews in the Amazon) Amazonas: Manaus, Comitê Israelita do Amazonas, 1998.

    Malamud, Samuel. Documentário.(Documentary)Rio de Janeiro: Imago, 1992.

    Malamud, Samuel. Recordando a Praça Onze (Remembering 11th Square) Rio de Janeiro: Kosmos, 1988.

    Frieda and Egon Wolff published 47 books between 1970 and 2001, many of genealogical interest, such as

    Breve História da Sociedade do Cemitério Israelita de São Paulo. (A brief history of the Israelite Cemetery Society of Sao Paulo) São Paulo, Scisp, 1989.

    Campos – Ascenção e Declínio de uma Coletividade. (Campos—the rise and fall of a collectivity) Rio de Janeiro: Cemitério Comunal Israelita, 1986.

    Documentos V.(Documents V). Rio de Janeiro: edição dos autores, (author’s edition) 1994.

    Sepulturas Israelitas. (Israelite sepultures). Rio de Janeiro: Centro de Estudos Judaicos, 1976.

    Sepulturas Israelitas II. (Israelite sepultures II). Rio de Janeiro: Cemitério Comunal Israelita, 1983.

    Sepulturas Israelitas III. (Israelite Sepultures III). Rio de Janeiro: Cemitério Comunal Israelita, 1987.

    Two English-language books document more than one thousand Jewish soldiers in the Brazilian armed forces since the discovery of the country in 1500:

    Blajberg, Israel. Soldiers Who Come From Afar, Resende, AHIMTB/FIERJ, 2008.

    Blajberg Israel. Star of David in the Southern Cross, 2015, Resende, AHIMTB/FIERJ/CONIB, 2008.

Useful Websites

    Many web resources hold data on Brazil, some of which are:

    AVOTAYNU CD, now “AVOTAYNU Anthology of Jewish Genealogy” contains all articles that have appeared in the International Review of Jewish Genealogy from 1985–2011. It has 58 entries for Brazil.  See www. avotaynu. com/ books/Anthology.htm.

    Cemeteries: JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR), Brazil (30 cemeteries, 23,679 burials), Vilar dos Telles Cemetery, 4,210 burials; Porto Alegre (two cemeteries, 2,610 burials); Vila Rosaly (two cemeteries, 13,611 burials.

    Geni.Com has a project at www.geni.com/pro­jects/Brasil-Portal/7439 for all those interested in the genealogy of Brazil and everything related to the country. It is possible to reach different projects related to Brazil, participate in discussions and share information.

    The Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People Jerusalem (CAHJP), http://cahjp.nli.org.il/, holds documents on Jewish communities, organizations and schools in Brazil—about 260 files that record Jewish life across the country, Zionist and educational activity.

This article first appeared in Shemot, a publication of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain, December 2016, Vol. 24, 2-3. It is reprinted with the permission of Shemot and the author—Ed.

When the Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492, half went to Turkey, Morocco and Italy and half moved to Portugal.¹ By 1495, the Jewish population of Portugal had risen from three thousand to some thirty-five thousand in a total population of one million.² This heavy immigration occasioned much tension and resentment, but the Jews brought many useful trades with them, including silk weaving, tanning, metalworking, and printing. The first books printed in Portugal were in Hebrew!

    King Manuel I wished to marry the Infanta Isabel of Castile, who was heiress to the crowns of Castile and Aragon, but her parents, Ferdinand and Isabel, insisted that Manuel must first expel the Jews from Portugal. In 1496, Manuel decreed their expulsion and made the practice of Judaism punishable by death. He then prevented them from leaving and enforced their compulsory baptism, at the same time promising them not to establish an Inquisition in Portugal for twenty years. Any Spanish Jews willing to become Christians had stayed in Spain. Those who left Spain for religion’s sake were determined to remain Jews. They saw the forced baptism as the divine punishment foreseen in Deuteronomy 28:

If thou wilt not observe all the words of this Law that are written in this book … then the Lord will make thy plagues wonderful and the plagues of thy seed … of long continuance … And the Lord shall scatter thee among all peoples from one end of the earth even unto the other end of the earth and there thou shall serve other gods, which thou hast not known, thou or thy fathers, even wood and stone. And among the nations thou shalt have no repose …³

    Since this punishment came from Heaven, it must be endured and life lived with as much Jewish observance as practicable. Under Manuel, the baptized rabbis set about adapting Portuguese Judaism to survive as a secret religion.

Secret Judaism in Portugal

    Circumcision was banned because saving lives is more important than keeping a positive commandment. Public ceremonies were scrapped. Purim and Succoth could no longer be celebrated. People were urged to wear clean shirts and blouses on Saturdays and to avoid eating pork, rabbit, and shellfish. The Monday-Thursday-Monday Fast was introduced, probably to atone for receiving the compulsory communion before Easter. People were taught that Pesach commenced on the fourteenth day after the new moon of March, and the Yom Kippur fast should be observed ten days after the new moon of September. The secret Jews of Portugal remembered these dates down to the present day. The Portuguese Jewish Fast of Queen Esther on three successive Wednesdays in July probably was introduced during the 1530s when King João III was campaigning in Rome to have an Inquisition set up in Portugal.⁴

1506 Massacre

    In 1506, two Dominican friars in Lisbon preached up a riot and urged the people to kill the baptized Jews, who were now called New Christians. In the course of two days, two thousand people were killed. The magistrates of Lisbon did nothing to stop the attack. Manuel was furious. He sent his army into Lisbon, canceled Lisbon’s autonomy and its proud motto Nobre e Sempre Leal (Noble and Always Loyal). The friars were executed. Manuel allowed the New Christians to emigrate and two Lisbon synagogues were founded in Salonica.⁵

   During the 16th century, Portugal established a world-wide trading empire, securing territories in Goa, Colombo, and Macao, as well as Brazil, Angola, and Mozambique. Portuguese New Christians prospered as major international merchants, and they dominated the Portuguese merchant group in Antwerp, which was the main market for the King of Portugal’s exports of spices, salt, sugar, pearls, and rough diamonds.

    In 1535, the papacy allowed Manuel’s son, João III, to establish an Inquisition in Portugal. In Spain, property confiscated by the Inquisition went to the Crown. In Portugal, when João III’s brother, Cardinal Henrique, became first Inquisitor General and then King, he arranged that the Inquisition should keep the property they seized. In the 17th and 18th centuries, this gave an extra incentive to accuse any rich New Christians of apostasy to Judaism. Persecution by the Inquisitions caused Portuguese New Christians to emigrate from both Spain and Portugal.

Migration to England

    Although there were small Portuguese crypto-Jewish communities in London in the Tudor and early Stuart periods, the history of the modern Jewish community starts with the opening of the Creechurch Lane Synagogue in 1656. It was founded by Portuguese refugees from religious persecution in Spain, but before long bursts of persecution followed in Portugal. By 1695, there were 500 Portuguese and 200 German Jews, mostly from Hamburg,⁶ in London, each with their own synagogue.

    During the 18th century, Portugal was England’s biggest export customer and, under the Methuen Treaty of 1703, all English ships were exempt from arrest or search by the Portuguese Inquisition. This meant that many New Christian secret Jews could escape from Lisbon on an English ship. This led to a steady migration to London during the early 18th century. The Portuguese Jews’ Congregation often paid the fares of refugees who could not afford to pay. Further financial help depended on full conversion to open Judaism.

    In 1753, there were about 2,000 Portuguese Jews in London, with one synagogue, and about 5,000 German and Dutch Jews, with three synagogues. It was estimated that there were then about twenty rich men among the London Jews.⁷ Only two or three of them were Ashkenazi.

   As in Amsterdam, the congregation always described itself as Portuguese, and sermons and minute books were normally in that language. The merchants’ trade was concentrated in areas where they had special advantages of language, kinship or personal experience. They exported English cloth to Spain and Portugal, imported fine wool and silver coin from Spain, and salt, sugar, gold, and gemstones from Portugal. They traded with Jamaica and Barbados. The import of rough diamonds from India and Brazil was an important trade.

Occupations

   Jews were allowed twelve brokers on the Royal Exchange, ten of whom were Sephardi and two Ashkenazi. The community included several physicians, apothecaries, and notaries. Street traders sold quill pens and sealing wax, fruit, rhubarb and leather slippers. There were engravers, embroiderers and tailors and one distinguished silversmith, Abraham Lopes de Oliveira. The community had charity schools for boys and girls. The girls were taught to sew and embroider and to read and write in English, Portuguese and Hebrew and to count in English. There were charities for apprenticing boys and girls and for dowering poor girls. Matzah was baked every year for free distribution to their poor.

    Dr. Jacob de Castro Sarmento MD FRS was physician to the Portuguese Ambassador, Sebastião Carvalho e Melo. In 1740, he procured the ambassador’s election as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and his friendship with him had important consequences. At Sarmento’s suggestion, the community’s small hospital, Beth Holim, was founded in 1748, with an outpatients’ dispensary. When Sebastião Carvalho e Melo became ruler of Portugal, as Marquis of Pombal, he stopped the persecution of the New Christians and neutered the Inquisition. After 1765, no more were executed and the flow of Jewish refugees to England from Portugal ceased. In the late 18th century, the London Sephardi community adapted well to English life.

    It was only after Haham (spiritual leader) Raphael Meldola was appointed in 1805 that the congregation started to describe itself as Spanish and Portuguese. By then, it included people from Gibraltar, Morocco and Turkey who spoke Spanish, and people from Italy who spoke Italian, many of whose ancestors never lived in Portugal. In 1819, the Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation decided to keep its minute books in English instead of Portuguese. In 1830, it decided that sermons should be preached in English and no longer in Portuguese.

Tracing Portuguese Jewish Ancestors

   It is a sound rule that if you are investigating your London Sephardi forebears, you should start by asking the senior members of your family for information about their parents and grandparents and then work backward using each of the published Bevis Marks Registers (see below). Start with the marriage registers in Bevis Marks Records II and III.

    If you know the surname of your Portuguese Jewish ancestors, the next step should be to search the Colyer-Fergusson Collection of Jewish genealogies at The Society of Genealogists or University College London. Sir Thomas Colyer-Fergusson Bt. compiled a very thorough study of leading English Jewish families.

    Two useful books are Albert Hyamson’s The Sephardim of England (1951) and Anglo-Jewish Notabilities (ed., 1949), which includes a list of Jewish wills at the National Archives, Kew, obituary notices from The London Magazine and grants of Coats of Arms. It is always worth searching the name index of Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, after volume XXV, and the name index of Jewish Historical Studies at the end of Volume 36. James C. Boyajian’s Portuguese Bankers at the Court of Spain 1626–1650 (1983) includes some important 17th-century New Christian genealogies. Lydia Collins’ The Sephardim of Manchester gives genealogies of many families from the Middle East, including some of Portuguese descent, such as the Picciotto family.

Published Registers

    The Spanish and Portuguese Jews’ Congregation of London has published a valuable series of registers entitled Bevis Marks Records, which can be consulted in many major libraries. These are as follows:

    Barnett, Lionel D. Bevis Marks Records Volume I deals with the early history of the Congregation from 1656 to 1800.

    Barnett, Lionel D. El Libro de los Acuerdos (1931) is an English translation of the earliest surviving Elders’ Minute Book.

    Barnett, Richard D. “The Burial Register of the Spanish and Portuguese Jews, London 1657 to 1735” in Volume VI of Miscellanies of The Jewish Historical Society of England. [1962]. The same volume also contains Extracts, concerning London Jewish households, from the 1695 census lists.

    Barnett, Lionel D. Bevis Marks Records II lists allmarriages from 1687 to 1837.

    Whitehill, G. H. Bevis Marks Records III lists the Congregation’s marriages from 1837 to 1901.

    Barnett, Richard D. Bevis Marks Records Part IV contains the Circumcision Register of Isaac and Abraham de Paiba (1715–1775).

    Rodrigues-Pereira, Miriam. Bevis Marks Records V contains the Birth Register of 1767–1881 and also other circumcision registers.

    Rodrigues-Pereira, Miriam. Bevis Marks Records VI lists all burials in the Novo or “New” Cemetery from 1733–1918.

    The Marriage Registers of the Amsterdam Portuguese Jewish Community have been published and are a most valuable source:

    Verdooner, Dave & Snel, Harmen J. W. Trouwen in Mokum – Jewish Marriage in Amsterdam 1598–1811 (The Hague, n.d.) 2 vols.

    Verdooner, Dave & Snel, Harmen J. W. Handleiding bij de index op de Ketuboth van de Portugees-Israelietische Gemeente te Amsterdam van 1650–1911 (Amstelveen, n.d.).

Portuguese Inquisition Archives

    Portuguese Jewish merchants from Spain founded the Jewish community in England. Almost every family of Portuguese origin has some record in the files of the Portuguese Inquisition. Its archives are a valuable source of social history and genealogical information which, in theory, could make it possible to trace a Sephardi Jewish family back to before the 1492 expulsion from Spain. In practice, I know of only four families that have been traced back in this way, namely: the Aboabs, whose history was recorded by its members;⁸ the Queridos, who were traced by the late Dr Luis de Bivar Guerra;⁹ the HaLevy Navarros, who were traced back to the 13th century by Professor António Vasconcelos de Saldanha;¹⁰ and the Curiel family, who were traced by Professor Saldanha and myself.11

    The Inquisition archives can be studied, starting with Joy Oakley (ed.) Lists of the Portuguese Inquisition Volume I LISBON and Volume II EVORA & GOA (Jewish Historical Society of England, 2008) and Luis De Bivar Guerra Inventário dos processos da Inquisição de Coimbra (1541–1820) (Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, Paris, 1972), whichlists everyone tried by the Coimbra Inquisition. Copies of Inquisition trials can be purchased from the Portuguese National Archive of Torré do Tombo in Lisbon, but you would need the help of a Portuguese genealogist to do research in Portugal.

Notes

    1. Luis Suarez Fernandez, “La population juive à la veille de 1492. Causes et mecânismes de l’expulsion.” In Henry Mechoulan (ed.), Les Juifs d’Espagne: histoire d’une diaspore 1492–1992 (Paris, 1992).

    2. Maria José Pimenta Ferro Tavares, Os Judeus em Portugal no Século XV (Lisbon, 1982), 74.

    3. Martin A. Cohen, Samuel Usque’s Consolation for the Tribulations of Israel (Philadelphia, 1965), p. 204. Dialogue 3 Section 29.

    4. Edgar Samuel, “Passover in Shakespeare’s London”, JHSE Trans XXVI (1979), citing Lisbon Inquisition Processo 3333 of Vicente Furtado (1609).

    5. Joaquim Veríssimo Serrão, Historia de Portugal III [1495–1580] (Lisbon, 1980), pp. 18–19.

    6. “Census Lists of 1695”, JHSE Miscellanies VI, 77.

    7. Jonas Hanway, Letters admonitory and argumentative… (London, 1753), p. 41.

    8. Immanuel Aboab, Nomologia o discursos legales (Venice, 1629), Ch. 26, pp. 288–98 and I. S. Révah “Pour l’histoire des Nouveaus-Chrêtiens portugais; la relation genéalogique d’Isaac de M. Aboab” in Boletim International de Bibliografia Luso-Brasileira II No. 2 (Lisbon, 1961), pp. 276–312.

    9. Luis De Bivar Guerra, “História Genéalogica de uma família do Alentejo”, Arquivo de Beja (1949), pp. 243–265 and “Um caderno de cristãos-novos de Barcelos”, Armas e Troféus (Braga, 1960).

    10. António De Vasconcelos Carvalho Simão, “Algumas Considerações à Propósito de uma Noticia Genealógica” (Coimbra, 1977).

    11. Edgar Samuel, “The Curiel family in 16th-century Portugal”, At the End of the Earth; Essays on the History of the Jews of England and Portugal (London, 2004), pp.43–68.

The Mediterranean is the name of the sea that lies “in the middle of the lands,” these lands being the continents of Africa, Europe, and Asia. The Italian peninsula is located centrally on this sea. Because of its strategic position, Italy served Jews as a crossroads between north and south, east and west, the Middle East and Europe. The Tuscany region, located centrally in this natural path, played a special role in Jewish history.

    The oldest Jewish writings from Israel to Europe involve Tuscany and genealogy. Sefer Yuhasin (the book of genealogies) is a family chronicle from the 8th and 9th centuries that describes the arrival of wise men (rabbis) from the Talmudic schools of the Middle East to Apulia, in southern Italy. These rabbis with their first-hand Talmudic knowledge brought directly from the areas where the Talmud was compiled, opened schools in Italy.

    The sages and their descendants moved up to Rome and Tuscany, and from Tuscany, further north to Ashkenaz (Germany). The main center of this Dark Ages Judaism was the town of Lucca, Italy. Abraham ibn Ezra, who was born in Spain, lived in Lucca for several years about 1150, and the town was a leg of the travels of Benjamin of Tudela in 1165. Eleazar of Worms, a German rabbi of the 13th century, reports the arrival of sages from Babylon, their settlement in Tuscany and then, after generations of wandering from place to place, their arrival in the Rhineland.

   At this time, the Italian peninsula was divided into tens of small states and Tuscany had fragmented into a dozen communal political powers. While increasing its wealth through business and mercantile activities, the city of Firenze(Florence)conquered a large part of the Tuscan region—Arezzo, in 1384; Pisa, in 1406; Siena, in 1555; Grosseto, in 1557; and Lucca much later, in 1847.

    During the 14th and 15th centuries, the increasing influence of towns and decreasing influence of the Church gave rise to a flourishing of culture and arts, a period of passage between the Middle Ages and the Modern era called Rinascimento (Renaissance). The Jews were very active in the Renaissance, especially in Tuscany. They were physicians at the courts and cultural intermediaries—physicians, scientists, philosophers, traders, money lenders, and others—who, through networking, imported knowledge of magic, science and philosophy from the Arab countries and brought it to the Catholics and the Protestants of Europe. Above all, Jews were teachers of Hebrew to notable cultural figures.

   The discovery of the Americas, the date that conventionally marks the beginning of the Modern Era, coincides with the beginning of a long period of expulsions of Jews from Spain and Sicily (1492), as well as persecutions and confinement in ghettos. In 1516, the first ghetto in the world was established in Venice. A few decades after the start of the Protestant Reformation in Germany, the Catholic Church began a Counter-Reformation, a return to orthodoxy. Because Italy had no Protestants, the Jews became the main target of the persecutions of the Catholic Church. These persecutions began with the burning of the Talmud (1553), then two bills in 1555 and 1569 that limited freedom for the Jews, established the ghettos and decreed the expulsion of the Jews from the entire Papal State, except for the cities of Rome and Ancona. This expulsion produced the flight of some Papal State Jews north to Tuscany.

   In the 16th century, the policy of the Medicis, the family that ruled Tuscany, was ambiguous toward the Jews. On one hand, the Medicis needed to populate the coastal area of its dominions and especially the new port of Livorno (Leghorn), and for this, they invited Jews to settle there. On the other hand, the Medicis adopted the anti-Semitic policy of the Church and decided to establish ghettos.

   Thus, the 16th century is the start of a dual history for the Jews of Tuscany. The proclamation of the Medicis that invited Jews to populate the coastal area mentioned explicitly, “To all of you merchants from the west and from the east, Spaniards, Portuguese, Greeks, Germans, Italians, Jews, Turks, Blacks, Armenians, Persians….” Jews arrived in large numbers. In two centuries, the Jewish population of Livorno increased many times, until it became half of the Jewish population of Tuscany and the second-largest Jewish community in Italy.

    Jews in Livorno:

                1642              1,100

                1700              3,000

                1738              3,500

                1809              5,340

                1880              4,000

   In the interior of Tuscany, however, Jews were forced to live in ghettos. During the Renaissance, the Jews were very scattered throughout Tuscany and apart from a few major places—Firenze, Pisa, Prato, and Siena—most Jewish communities numbered just 20 to 30 people. In the years 1571 to 1573, however, the Medicis decided that the main towns of Tuscany, Firenze, and Siena, also should have ghettos and this is where the Jews were forced to live for the next two to three centuries. A third of Tuscany, the southern part called “Maremma,” bordered the Papal State. Maremma is where the “Jews of the Pope” came after their expulsion in 1569. The community of Pitigliano flourished here and the ghettos were established later.

    In the 16th century, because of the expulsion from southern Italy and the segregation in the Papal State (1492–1555), Tuscany remained the Jews’ main Italian peninsula transit point. This period of reversals (capovolgimenti) for the Jews coincided broadly with the consolidation of their surnames. When the Jews lived in small communities spread around the country, the given name and the father’s name (“Gaio di Rubino”) were sufficient to identify the person. With the closures into ghettos, the migrations and urbanization, a surname became a necessary additional identification item. The adoption of surnames generally is the starting point for most genealogical research.

   During their closure in the ghettos, the Jewish communities and the local communal authorities produced administrative documents that are good sources for genealogy. The first ghetto in Tuscany was built in 1570; others continued to be established until 1714. When the French army invaded Tuscany in 1796, the gates of the ghettos were opened and the Jews received full civil rights (1796–99).

    The following dates must be noted when researching Tuscan genealogy: after the Congress of Vienna in 1815, the Tuscan rulers commanded a “restoration” of the political order and again Jews were ordered into ghettos; in 1860, Tuscany held a referendum for annexation to the Kingdom of Italy; and for a few years, 1865–70, Florence was the capital of Italy.

Genealogical Sources

    Census of 1841. After the French Revolution and before the unification of Italy, in 1841, Tuscany took a census of its population. Before this census, all the surveys, catasti (cadasters), tassa del sale (salt tax), cittadinari (lists of citizens) and other fiscal documents were administered at the local level by various communal administrations. The 1841 census is the first census that covers all of Tuscany. The census records all family members by name, surname, age, profession, and capacity to read.

   In the light of what we said above, at the moment of the census, the Tuscan Jewish population should have again been in ghettos. A thorough search of all the census registers, however, reveals a different picture. Surprisingly, Jews are spread throughout Tuscany. The census records 8,056 Jews, of whom 4,546 (56 percent) live in Livorno. Firenze has the next largest population with 2,273 (28 percent), followed by Siena with 369 (four percent), Pisa with 363 (four percent) and Pitigliano 360 (four percent). The remainder scattered among smaller communities. Apparently, after they had tasted freedom and equality of rights during French domination, some Jews refused to return to the old prohibitions and many did not return to the ghettos.

    Beyond the 1841 census, sources for Jewish genealogical research in Tuscany vary from town to town. The table above indicates some sources for the major cities and towns, along with relevant corresponding history.

Aleppo, Syria, one of the most ancient cities in the Middle East, sits on the Asia/Middle East/Europe trade route. It was mentioned in Egyptian papers in the middle of the third millennium BCE, and served as the capital of a kingdom called Yamahad in the 17th century BCE. The city’s name at that time was Halep.

    Jews began to settle in Aleppo at the time of the Babylonian Diaspora in 536–538 BCE and continued to do so until the creation of the modern State of Israel. The trade opportunities that Aleppo’s location offered made it possible for Jews to establish themselves there over a 2,000-year period and to become one of the oldest, continuous Jewish communities outside of Israel.

    The Aleppo Jewish community succeeded in establishing and sustaining a successful spiritual-religious heritage combined with a life of trade. When it was part of the Ottoman Empire, from the 16th century onward, Aleppo became a magnet for Jews migrating from other places, absorbing Jews expelled from Spain at the end of the 15th century and attracting Jews from Middle Europe (the so-called Francos) at the beginning of the 18th century.

    In the middle of the 16th century, the city of Safed in northern Israel suffered an economic crisis. England aggressively invaded its wool industry, purchasing almost all available raw materials, thus bringing almost the entire Safed textile industry to a halt. Following that crisis, 8 to 12 Jewish families left Safed for Aleppo (and Damascus). Upon arrival in Aleppo they were nicknamed Safdie (people who came from Safed in Palestine). That became my ancestors’ family name, which they kept until the family returned to Israel where it was transformed into Sfadia.

Why Did Jews Leave Aleppo?

    From the end of the 17th century to the 19th century, several factors led Jews to leave Aleppo and to immigrate to other countries. In chronological order, from the 17th century to the 20th century, they were:

   • The progressive disintegration of the Ottoman Empire starting at the end of the 17th century. Economic stagnation in the 20th century affected not only Jews but the entire Syrian population. In the 19th century, approximately 50,000 Syrians immigrated to Egypt, while another 90,000 went to the United States. Most were young emigrants who sought their future outside Syria.

    • A severe earthquake in 1822 claimed approximately 3,000 victims, one-third of them Jews. The disaster caused about 1,000 victims; many families lost their homes but received no help from the authorities. Some of the families moved to Damascus and villages close to the Turkish border; poor families built tents outside Aleppo, in what later was called “Tent City.”

   • A blood libel in Damascus in 1840 and similar events in other cities, such as Hamma and Aleppo, weakened the Jews’ feelings of security vis-à-vis their neighbors. As had happened in Europe, Christians accused the Jews of using Christian blood to make matzohs for Passover.

   • Following the blood libels, a group of Jews in France established the Alliance Universelle Israelite to help the Syrian Jews. At the same time, the French Jews brought European culture to Aleppo, which found favor among a portion of the community, but which clashed with the religion and the tradition. In traditional Jewish schools, boys only learned to pray, study the Bible and learned about Jewish holidays and traditions. The French, on the other hand, started to teach literature, history, mathematics, and the French language. The rabbis were against teaching this new curriculum, but the new teaching opened the minds of the students who liked that.

   • The big steamships that plied the Mediterranean beginning in the mid-19th century had difficulty anchoring in Syrian harbors and, therefore, chose other destinations. This limited export of Syrian goods to nearby countries such as Greece, Italy, and the Balkans.

    • The opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 altered trade routes and removed Aleppo’s role in trade with the Far East.

    • The 19th-century European industrial revolution led to severe competition in the prices of goods, especially in textiles, and slowed trade and local industry.

    • Jewish traders availed themselves of the economic opportunities coming from the West and reduced their local activity.

    • The arrival of the “Francos” (Jews from Italy and Central Europe) at the beginning of the 18th century enlarged the contact of the Aleppo Jews with western culture, involving Aleppo traders in their business and leading to the westernization of a portion of the Jewish community.

    The cumulative effect of the events described above led to a cultural crisis for the Jews of Aleppo. Some were the conservative, traditional religious Jews who opposed innovation and feared the erosion of their way of life. Others were the Jews who were exposed to the growing influence of modern Western culture.

    Aleppo Jews began to search for alternative ways to conduct commerce, including trade with overseas markets. They knew about the opportunities in some destinations because of earlier commercial ties. In other cases, they were drawn to localities by assessing the inherent trade potential.

    The Jews did not migrate en mass, nor in panic; the movement extended over a period of about four generations. The destinations chosen depended upon a family’s economic situation. Wealthier families could afford to migrate far away—to the Western world; others chose closer, less costly destinations––Europe and Israel.

    On the eve of World War I, Aleppo had about 12,000 Jews. Between the two World Wars, about 2,000 Aleppo Jews migrated to Jerusalem. The largest migration was to the Western Hemisphere, to the United States and Latin America. In the years 1908–14, about 11,000 Aleppo Jews left. Most (46 percent) moved to Argentina, 32 percent went to Brazil, 14 percent to Cuba, 4 percent to Uruguay, 3 percent to Mexico and 1 percent to Chile.

Emigrant Destinations

    Manchester, England. Migration to Manchester began in 1874 when textile traders joined the textile industry with which they had enjoyed business ties for a long time. The immigrants established a permanent community that continues to this day. Among the early Jewish families were Ades, Betesh, Dayan, Duwek, Esses, Halak, Hamui, Menaged, Nehmad and Safdie.

    Paris. Having established connections with Alliance leaders, some families that already spoke French preferred to emigrate to Paris.

    Egypt. After the opening of the Suez Canal, some Aleppo Jews moved to Egypt with the aim and hope of close proximity to the trade routes. The results were not as they had expected, however, and after about 50 years most left for Argentina, Brazil, Israel and Europe.

    United States. Aleppo Jews started to settle on Manhattan’s Lower East Side at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th century. Families typically sent their eldest sons first to assess the area, with other family members following later. Some families or family members were refused entry either because of disease or because a quota was full. In such cases, the individuals returned to Syria or chose to go to another country.

    Mexico. Most of the emigrants who were refused entry by the American authorities went to Mexico. Some waited for the U.S. quota to be opened; others decided to settle in Mexico. In Mexico they met Jews who had lived in the country since the Spanish occupation; among them were families such as the Charabati, Hamui, Hanono, Hayat, and Shabot.

    Brazil. Upon arrival in Sao Paolo, the Aleppo immigrants found other Jews, descendants of the secret Jews who had left Portugal in the 16th century. The new families arrived with business vision and courage and quickly integrated with the local community. Among the immigrants were such families as the Betesh, Hayat, Safra and Safdie.

    Argentina. Like Brazil, Argentina, which had gained its independence from Spain in the second half of the 19th century, badly needed manpower to establish investments and create a modern country. Today, Buenos Aires has South America’s largest Jewish community, about 250,000 individuals with ancestors from various countries. The Aleppo community, including the Bahuabe, Daye, Duwek and Safdie families, settled in the Once and Flores quarters of the city. They continue to maintain their Aleppo religious traditions today.

    Columbia. Aleppo Jews arrived in Columbia immediately after World War I, settling in Bogota, Brankila, and Cali. Others arrived following World War II. These were Jews from Greece, Morocco, Syria, Damascus, (a town 200 kilometers south of Aleppo) and Kamishly, (a town 80 kilometers northeast of Aleppo) and Turkey, with a small number from Israel. They established trade in various industries and businesses, including ranches for a special variety of small bananas (the Chiquita banana).

    Venezuela and Panama. Venezuela and Panama were secondary destinations for some who had initially settled elsewhere in the West. Most of these families made their living in textiles, jewels and as goldsmiths.

    India. In the days when the British Empire ruled India, a few Aleppo families, such as the family of Abraham Duwek Hacohen, arrived as representatives of commercial companies. As temporary residents, they did not build a separate community but instead became involved with the local Jews.

    Australia. As is the case with India, Aleppo Jews also arrived in Australia as commercial representatives, positions they still hold today. Families included the Antebi, Boshi (from Manchester) Harrari, Setton and Safdeah (Safdie).

    Japan. Today, approximately 30 to 50 Jewish families originally from Aleppo live south of Tokyo in Kobe, making a living in the textile and electronics businesses. Included are the Chaber, Charabani, Dabach, Hamui and Matoka families.

    Israel. Those Aleppo Jews who settled in Jerusalem were primarily rabbis, students of learned scholars and families of the middle class and lower. Hundreds of other families went to Haifa and Tel Aviv.

The Quiet Migration

    Shortly before the establishment of the State of Israel, Syria closed its borders forbidding its Jews to leave the country. As a result, a secret department of the Israeli intelligence smuggled Jews out of Syria (and sometimes from certain European countries as well). During the period 1932–36 and 1938, single individuals and groups left Aleppo for Israel, sometimes with no notice to their families.

    My cousin’s family was smuggled out of Aleppo in 1979 (and my father in 1933). The family was tired of the fact that Arab boys had been harassing their four daughters for a long time. One day they simply closed their house and left with two other families with the assistance of smugglers who helped them to cross the border in the night by foot into Turkey. It took them a month to prepare certificates before they arrived in Israel.

    The last Jew of Aleppo, age 76, arrived in Israel in 1996. Thus the curtain descended upon one of the oldest and most glorious communities of the Jewish people of their time.

This article is based upon a talk delivered at the IAJGS conference in Seattle, 2016—Ed.

When he was 50, my husband, Nahum Gedalia, who was born in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, in 1948 and had not previously shown any interest in his genealogy or family history, asked me for a family tree. Having no living family members to interview, all I knew was that his paternal Sephardic family had come from a town called Nis in Serbia and that all ancestors and descendants, but for his father, perished in 1942.1 I had no idea then that the research would take me back to a Portuguese family that arrived in Salonika with a large group of Jews in 1505. This is the story of how I traced his family, mostly from books and with few archival records.

One must always start any Jewish genealogical research with the etymology of the family name and with a location’s history. I started with the Gedalia surname. Gedalia/Guedalia is a Biblical Sephardic name that appears in several books, among them Notable Families Among the Sephardic Jews, by Isaac da Costa, Bertram Brewster and Cecil Roth.² It also appears in the article “Aliases in Amsterdam,” by Viberke Olsen,³ and many more resources listed on the JewishGen Sephardic Special Interest Group (SIG) site. In Hebrew, Gedalia means Great Lord and it used to be, and still is, a given name. Thus, we genealogists call it a patronymic name—a surname derived from a paternal given name. (For the most prominent Gedalia public figure, see Tzom Gedalia.)⁴

As it is crucial to put the family in the right historical place and context, such as the regime and its ruling governmental system, I went back to books⁵ and learned about the Nis Sephardic community, which was extremely loyal to the Ottoman Empire.

Next, I looked for a Jewish Serbian historian and found the well-known Ms. Zeni Lebl. Lebl was the one who told me about Rabbi Rachmim Naftaly/Nehemia Gedalja, who was summoned to be a chief rabbi in Nis in 1756 and whose tombstone reads Harav ha Kolel shel Nis. Niftar le’olamo yud Tet tishreri 5541. (“The all-inclusive rabbi of Nis. passed away October 18, 1780.”) Although the stone can be seen in a photograph taken 50 or more years ago, it will not be found on a visit today. The Jewish cemetery was expropriated by the Communist authorities in 1948 and burials were barred in 1965. After that, Roma families occupied one-third of the site, building homes among the tombstones and creating a “village,” while using the stones as building materials and for furniture. Although the cemetery was cleaned a few years ago by a large national and international task force that recovered and restored many stones, Rabbi Gedalja’s tombstone was not recovered.

Lebl also told me the story of Jewish Nis, citing the book she wrote, The Jews of Serbia.⁶ Subsequently, I have learned that Nis was one of the oldest cities in the Balkans and served as an east-west connecting passage. The city was named after the Nisava River, which flows through it. Over the years, it was also called Navissos by the Celtics in the third century BCE, Naissus by the Romans, Nysos by the Byzantines and Nis by the Slavs. Constantine the Great, the first Christian emperor, was born there.

In 1375, the Ottoman Turks captured Nis for the first time. The second time Nis succumbed to Ottoman rule was in 1448, and it remained under Sanjak Rule for the following 241 years.

The first recorded mention of the Sephardic Jewish community in Nis is from 1651 when Jews were given land of their own. The Hebrew word Nachala appears in old documents, but I have learned that it actually should read machlessi, which means “neighborhood” in Turkish. Nis was taken from the Turks by the Serbian army in 1878 during the Ottoman-Serbian War (1876–78).

According to Yad Vashem’s Pinkas Hakehilot,⁷Nis was a typical homogeneous Sephardic community of Jews expelled from the Iberian Peninsula who migrated there from the Balkan southern areas of the Ottoman Empire starting in the 17th century.

Lebl’s chronicles, translated for me by my husband, left me with a few questions. From where had Rabbi Rachmim Gedalia been summoned to Nis? Before he was summoned in 1756, the rabbi of Nis had come either from Belgrade or from Sofia, Bulgaria.⁸ How—if at all—was my husband related to Rabbi Gedalia? Are there people in this community today who can help me with my research?

I Googled “Nis Jewish community” and was surprised to find Jasmina (Jasna) Ciric⁹ since the family had never mentioned that there still was a Jewish community there. Jasmina proved to be another major source of information about the town.¹⁰ She cited the “common belief” in Nis that Rabbi Rachmim Naftaly/ Nehemia (both names came up in her stories) was a descendant of Don Yeuda Gedalia who arrived from Lisbon, Portugal, and in

1505 was the first Hebrew printer in Salonika.¹¹ Now I had three towns on my research map, Lisbon, Nis, and Salonika, but I had no identified migration paths.

The research needed a plan and once again I needed to go back to the books to learn about topics of which I knew little—the Portuguese Jewish community and its waves of migration, the Sephardic Jews in Salonika, rabbinic genealogy and Hebrew printing. As I dove deeper into my research, I had more Sephardic communities and subjects to explore.

I based my research plan on two basic elements. Assuming that most Gedalias may be related,¹² such as the Albohers, Aramas, Kobos, Shealtiels, Toledanos, Versanos and other Sephardic clans, I decided to map all Sephardic Gedalias.¹³ The second significant element is the Sephardic naming pattern in which a baby is named in honor of a grandparent who is still alive (unlike the tradition of the Ashkenazim). Therefore, I needed to look for another Rachamim Naftaly/ Nehemia Gedalia among the other branches.

Mapping the Gedalias from Nis was my first step. I started by using Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony submitted by my father-in-law and others, aggregating lists from Lebl’s and other books and mapping the cemetery. I made a roots trip to Serbia where I was introduced by Jasna Ciric to “lost” relatives I had never before heard of, children and grandchildren of Pesha Gedalia, my father-in-law’s first cousin who returned to Nis after five years of captivity in Germany. This enabled me to make an attempt to build a tree, which started with my husband and went back in time.

Figure 1 shows why I believe that Rabbi Rachmim Gedalia probably was my husband’s fourth great-grandfather. I am not sure if the rabbi’s second name was Naftaly or Nehemiah, but both names appear on my husband’s family tree over the years. Nehemiah and Nahum (my husband’s name) have the same Hebrew meaning: both names derive from the Hebrew word “Nechama” which means consolation or condolence. My husband’s name is Nahum and so was his grandfather’s name, while his fourth great-grandfather was Nehemiah, but also Rahamim, which means mercy.

Going back to the books, I started with the Portuguese Jewish community and Toledano’s Hebrew Printing House¹⁴ where Don Yeuda Gedalia was an associate. He arrived in Salonika in 1505 with sons and an uncle, the famous sage Nissan Bibash. Numerous books mention Don Yeuda Gedalia, especially those by Emmanuel, Friedberg, Rosanes and Yaari.¹⁵

Figure 2 is a small family tree I constructed for Don Yeuda Gedalia from the above-mentioned sources. Oneof Don Yeuda’s sons, Moses, author of Masoret Hatalmud Bavli (Heritage of the Babylonian Talmud) moved to Livorno, Italy.Some family members died during earthquakes and plagues in Salonika, and we see below the inscriptions on their tombstones in Molcho’s book.¹⁶ Many others left and were scattered throughout the Ottoman Empire and beyond.

I have found Gedalias from Salonika in Yad Vashem Pages of Testimony, but have not traced them to their ancestors. The earliest I have found by birth date are Joseph Gedalia, born in 1840 and his wife, Dulca. Rivka Gedalia, born in 1865, married Daniel Russo, son of Nissim and Bienvenida, born in 1880, father of Aaron. From the names, it is clear that on the eve of World War II, Salonika was still a Sephardic Jewish community.¹⁷

A branch of Gedalias from Salonika arrived in Eretz Israel at the beginning of the 16th century.¹⁸ I was able to build the tree represented in Figure 3 again from the books mentioned below. Abraham, son of Samuel, no. 2 in the chart, is mentioned as a descendant of Don Yeuda. He wrote a renowned commentary on Yalkut Hashimoni and published it in Italy where he also was serving as an emissary from the Jerusalem Sephardic community between 1648 and 1660. Abraham was known to be a disciple of the false Messiah, Shabbetai Zvi.¹⁹ Some tombstones in the Nis cemetery have symbols believed to have been of those Shabbetaim (followers of Shabbetai Zvi).

Joseph, son of Abraham, no. 3 in Figure 4 was Hebron’s emissary to Egypt in 1704 and was killed enroute to that country. He is mentioned in Molcho’s book²⁰ about the Salonika interments, right beside Don Yeuda’s grandchildren. One may, therefore, take it for granted that the Eretz Israel branch, indeed, was related to the Salonika branch.

Meir, no. 7 and Chaim Shimon, no. 8 on the chart were emissaries to North Africa. Isaac, no. 9 was an emissary to Togarma, Turkey, and returned to Hebron in 1765. Eliyahu, no. 10 on the chart, was an emissary to Tiktin, Lithuania, in 1785. I was most interested in Nehemia Rachamim, no. 5 on the chart, because he had the same name as the Nis rabbi.Nonetheless, I needed to complete my research on all the other branches of the Gedalias before I could come to a conclusion about from where Rabbi Rachamim Nehemia had been summoned to Nis.

I was thrilled when I found Romanelli’s²¹ book, Masa B’arav (Travel in the Arab World)²²in thebasement of the Israeli National Library, as he introduced me to two additional branches of Gedalias.The Guedalias of Mogador, Morocco, were a rich and famous family of merchants. They were called Ma-a-ravi-im (westerners) and Ild El Cazan (sons of the rabbi). According to Romanelli, their given names (Jacob and Yeuda ) were bestowed in honor of two brothers who were their ancestors who used to live in Amsterdam.

Some members of the Mogador family moved to Gibraltar while others relocated to London. Among the members of the London family was the prominent Yeuda—no. 2 on the London Geudalia family tree in Figure 5—who came from Mogador in 1873 and married Esther Montefiore and who built a large Sephardic yeshiva in Jerusalem. His son, Chaim, married Yemima Montefiore. Another son, Moses (no.10 on the London chart), was the grandfather of Philip Guedalla (1889–1944), a well-known British barrister, popular historical travel writer and biographer.

Wanting to trace the forefathers of the Mogador family back to Amsterdam, I examined the marriage indexes of the Amsterdam Sephardic community²³ and created four branches, which I still cannot connect at this time. I did, however, find men named Jacob, one of whom was the ancestor of Jacob from Mogador.Figure 6 is the Amsterdam Gedalia family chart.

Since Romanelli mentioned immigration from Morocco to Gibraltar, I also followed that branch of the Guedalia family and discovered that their roots were in Livorno, Italy. Aaron Guedalia was born in Livorno circa 1760, as was his son, Jacob. Whether or not they were descendants of our Salonika Moses (son of Don Yeuda) is still an open question.

Eventually, the huge Guedalia family left Gibraltar. Moses immigrated to the United States in 1865 and founded a Portuguese synagogue in New York. His sons, Jacob and Hiram, moved to the Sephardic communities in New Orleans and Georgia. Leon left for Amsterdam and, after a few years, followed family members to the United States.

Another branch I have been tracing is the Guedalias from Jamaica recorded in the book The Jews of Jamaica Tombstones. This was a small branch headed by Samuel Guedalia who was born in Amsterdam in 1728 and arrived in Montego Bay, Jamaica, in 1756. His daughter, Hanna, married a Corinaldi of an Italian Sephardic family, and his son Moses (1775–1858) immigrated to the United States.²⁴

My final Geudalia branch is from Livorno. Livorno was an earlier home of two Geudalia branches that I have found with roots in Egypt.²⁵ See their chart in Figure 7. The Y-DNA of one member of this branch, Amir Guedalia, an Israeli whom I came to know quite well, does not match my husband’s DNA results. This demonstrates that probably not all the Gedalias are members of one unique clan.

Conclusions

After having consulted numerous books, articles and archival records, I believe that I am able to point to the origins of my husband’s family in Nis, Serbia. Mapping all of the major branches of the Sephardic Gedalias and Guedalias reveals only one that has our family’s given names—Nehemia and Nahum. I believe that Rabbi Rachamim Nehemia/Naftaly Gedalia was summoned in 1786 to Nis from Eretz Israel, and that he was a grandson of the Hebron chief rabbi either by his son Abraham or his son Eliyahu. Neither of his sons appears in the Montefiore census for 1839.²⁶

Support for my hypothesis comes also from researchers who believe that the Nis cemetery has Shabbetaim signs on its tombstones.²⁷ We know that Nehemia’s grandfather, Abraham²⁸ (1590–1672), was a disciple of Shabbetai Zvi. If indeed a branch of the Gedalia family went from Eretz Israel to Nis, this might account for the cemetery symbols.

Notes

      1. Nafaly Bata Gedalja, a Serb officer in captivity in Nuremberg, Germany, five years and thus survived.

      2. Costa, Isaac da, Bertram Brewster and Cecil Roth, “Notable Families Among Sephardic Jews” Oxford University Press, H. Milford, 1936

      3. Olsen, V. “Aliases in,” ETSI, vol. 4, 2001

      4. The Babylonians destroyed the Holy Temple in Jerusalem  and exiled many Jews in 3338 (423 BCE); they appointed Gedaliah ben Achikam as governor of the remaining Jews in the Holy Land. In memory of Gedaliah’s tragic death and its disastrous aftermath, we fast every year on the 3rd of Tishrei, the day after Rosh Hashanah.

      5. Loker, Z. (ed.) Toldot Yehudei Yugoslavia. The Yugoslav Association Tel Aviv,1971. (The History of the Jews of Yugoslavia)

      6. Lebl., Z, Do Konaconog Resenja Jevreji u Seriji, Beograd, 2002.

      7. Loker, Z. (Ed.) Pinkas Hakehilit Yugoslavia, Yad Vashem, Jerusalem, 1988. Pages 196–200 (Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities Yugoslavia)

      8. Loker, Ibid page 198

      9. According to Loker, Ibid p. 200 only one surviver returned to Nis

      10. Jasmina Ciric is the president of Nis Jewish Community and editor of http:// elhttp:// elmondosefard.wikidot.commondosefard.wikidot.com

      11. Don Yeuda Gedalia arrived from Lisbon where he was a member of the staff at Toledano’s Printing house. Many arrived with this immigration wave including the Ibn Yaya brothers. Perhaps they were not expelled but certainly driven out.

      12. This is a most common belief among Sephardic researchers because, unlike Ashkenazi families, Sephardic had their names very early, some even believe that it was as early as the Babylonian exile. Since this was an early stage in my research, I believed so too.

      13. Gedalia can also be an Ashkenazi surname most prominent is that of the chief rabbi in Copenhagen, Denmark, in the 18th cent­ury.

      14. See Eliezer Toledano, scholar who went from Toledo to Lisbon, http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/loc/Lisbon.html and https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/mullerlibrary/category/hebrew- printing/incunabula/https://blogs.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/mullerlibrary/category/hebrew- printing/incunabula/

      15. Emmanuel, S.I. (The Sages of Salonika) Gedolei Shaloniki l’dorotam, Tel Aviv, 1935. Freidberg, C.D. (History of the Hebrew printing in Italy, Spain. Portugal, Turkey and more) Toldot Hadfus Haivri b’medinot italia, Ispamia, Portugal, Togarma and more, Antwrepen, 1934,

      Rosanes, S. (The History of the Jews in Togarma based on first hand documents) Divrei Yemei Israel b’Togarma Al Pi Mekorot Rishonim, Tel Aviv, 1929

       Yaari, A. (Emissaries from Eretz Israel) Shluchei Eretz Israel, Jerusalem, 1976

      16. Molcho, S. (At the Salonika Cemetery) B’bait Ha’almin shel Yehudei Shalonika Tel Aviv, 1932

      17. Kounio, H. The Jews of Thessaloniki, 2010

      18. Gaon, M.D. (The Eastern Jews in Eretz Israel) Yehudei Hamizrach b’Erertz Israel, Jerusalem 1937 and Barnai,J. (These are the names of Jerusalem citizens 1760–1763) V’ele shmot Yehudei Yerushalayim in Catedra ,72 ,June 1996, pp. 135–168

      19. Shabbetai Zvi ,1626–1676 was an ordained rabbi of Romaniote origin and an active kabbalist throughout the Ottoman Empire who claimed to be the Jewish Messiah. In 1666 upon his arrival in Constantinople, he was imprisoned and chose to convert to Islam rather than face death.

      20. See footnote 14.

      21. Romanelli Samuel Aaron 1757–1817, Italian Hebrew poet and traveler, Arrived in Morocco in 1787.

      22. Romanelli, S.A. (Travel in Arab World) Massa ba- Arav, Berlin, 1792; repr. with intro

      23. http://www.dutchjewry.org/phpr/amsterdam/tim_sephard_ marriages/menu.php. Also http://dutchjewry.org/phpr/amsterdam/ port_isr_gem_burials/amsterdam_port_isr_gem_burials_list.php. Also HTTP://familysearch.org/wiki/en/The_Knowles_Collection:_

Jews_of_Europe

     24. Barnett, R. and P. Wright “The Jews of Jamacia: Tombstone  Inscription 1663–1880” Jerusalem, Ben Zvi Ins.

      25. One family, that of Amir Geudalia, knew of her Livornese roots as his grandfather received Italian citizenship in Cairo. I believe they might have been descendants of the son of Don Yehuda (the printer) who moved to Livorno from Salonika.

      26. www.montefiorecensuses.org

      27. Many older gravestones bear mysterious carvings linked to Jewish mysticism—half-spheres arranged in various patterns; geometric forms; snakes and other symbols that some believe are linked to followers of the 17th-century false messiah Shabbetai Zvi.

      28. Toldot Gedolei Israel www.hebrewbooks.org/pagefeed/ hebrewbooks_org_44042_94.pdf

The Avotaynu DNA Project seeks male participants for a study of  Sephardi and Mizrahi paternal DNA lineages.

The project, led by pioneering genetic genealogist Dr. Karl Skorecki of the Technion, aims to shed light on the origins of the Sephardim and Mizrahim and to establish a strong dataset of DNA results, grounded in archival research, in order to stimulate further intensive studies. At least 500 men will be tested. Participants must supply an accurate paternal genealogy with as much information as possible. Individual privacy will be protected and the results of the study will be published.

Thus far testing has taken place among the following Jewish commuunities: Afghani, Irani, Iraqi, Bukharin, Kavkazi, Turkish, Greek, Rhodsli, Syrian, Italian, Egyptian, Maghrebi, Panamanian, Amsterdam, London, Jamaican, Curacao.  New communities are being tested weekly.

Sicilian Jewish surnames:  Abene, Accardo, Accolla, Actuni, Actuni, Acugna, Adario, Aiello, Ajello, Alagona, Alaimo, Alaymo, Albertino, Alessandro, Alessi, Alessio, Aloysi, Amato, Ambrosio, Amore, Andrea, Andriano, Anello, Angrida, Angrida, Anigito, Anquida, Antilla, Arberiz, Arena, Ariola, Ariza, Attuni, Attuni, Atuni, Aurifici, Ausello, Ayello, Balam, Balbenta, Balbentano, Balbo, Ballester, Balsamo, Balventano, Balvo, Bandira, Barbara, Barbarino, Barbaruso, Barbato, Barbeno, Barbera, Barberi, Barberino, Barbusa, Bardaro, Barisano, Baro, Barone, Barresi, Bastone, Bayna, Bella, Bellavia, Bellissima, Bellocchi, Bellomo, Benjamin, Bentevegna, Bernardo, Bernentano, Biancolilla, Billardita, Bivilacqua, Blancolilla, Blunda, Bochino, Bon, Bonafide, Bonanno, Bonavoglia, Bondelmonte, Bonfiglio, Bongiorno, Bonifazio, Bonina, Bonjorno, Bono, Bonsenor, Bonsignore, Bordonaro, Borrusio, Boxino, Braçavento, Brancato, Branchiforte, Branciforte, Brazavento, Briatico, Brigandi, Briyogna, Bruno, Bucchere, Buchere, Bucheri, Bufalo,Calandrino, Calanterra,Calcasia, Calcaterra, Calderaro, Calì, Calvi, Calvino, Cameriere, Cammarera, Cammareri, Campagna, Campano, Campanya, Campisi, Campulo, Canador, Candela, candelaio, Candila, Candilaro, Canizzaro, Cannata, Capello, Carbi, Carbon, Cardamoni, Carini, Caro, Caruso, Casachio, Casacho, Casciara, Casciaro, Caserma, Castaeli, Castaneda, Castillo Bono, Caxaro, Certa, Chagegi, Chancho, Chaniteri, Charissimo, Chiarol, Chicala, Chillarano, Chinello, Chinirella, Chirmino, Chirri, Chirullo, Ciccardo, Cimatore, Cocubella, Coggi, Cohino, Coino, Coloca, Compagna, Conciatore, Conso, Contaturi, Conuxenti, Conzatore, Corbiseri, Costa, Costantino, Coyno, Crapi, Cresi, Criscimanno, Crisi, Crispo, Cubaytaro, Cuchino, Culcara, Cundari, Curjali, Cusimano, Cutilli, Cutraro, Cuxino, Cuyno, Damiano, Dangelo, Daniel, Danieli, Dardo, De Abene, De Accardo, De Accolla, De Acugna, De Adario, De Alagona, De Albertino, De Alessandro, De Alessi, De Alessio, De Alotta, De Alotta, De Aloysi, De Amato, De Ambrosio, De Amico, De Amico, De Amore, De Andrea, De Andriano, De Anello, De Angelo, De Anigito, De Anquida, De Antilla, De Antonino, De Antonino, De Aquino, De Aquino, De Arberiz, De Arena, De Ariola, De Ariza, De Atilia, De Atuni, De Ayello, De Balsamo, De Balsamo, De Barberio, De Barberio, De Baro, De Baso, De Bella, De Bella, De Bellissima, De Bellissima, De Bellocchi, De Bellochi, De Bernardo, De Bernardo, De Blunda, De Blunda, De Bona, De Bonanno, De Bonanno, De Bono, De Bonomo, De Bonomo, De Borrusio, De Borrusio, De Brancato, De Brancato, De Briatico, De Briatico, De Bucheri, De Camastra, De Cardonas, De Carlo, De Caruso, De Certa, De Cervellon, De Cesare, De Cola, De Colacerdo, De Composta, De Cona, De Costa, De Costancio, De Costanzo, De Cotrona, De Diana, De Donato, De Fassati, De Favata, De Ferlito, De Ferrante, De Fide, De Figlia, De Flore, De Fluri, De Francardo, De Furnari, De Garcia, De Gennaro, De Giansardo, De Grande, De Grimaldo, De Gualterio, De Gurreri, De Gurrerio, De Hector, De Heredo, De Iona, De Iurato, De Jaffe, De Jenaro, De Jeronimo, De Jesu, De Jop, De Jordano, De Judeo, De Lauria, De Lazaro, De Leofante, De Levi, De Li Causi, De Lione, De Lione, De Liotta, De Lippo, De Macri, De Mancuso, De Mandato, De Manuel, De Marchisi, De Maria, De Marino, De Marquesi, De Mayo, De Maystro, De Mela, De Melito, De Melzo, De Merion, De Michele, De Migna, De Millisio, De Minardo, De Minutili, De Moncada, De Mufari, De Nardo, De Nava, De Nechito, De Nichito, De Nicolao, De Nonis, De Nuchio, De Oliva, De Oliveri, De Oviedo, De Pagano, De Palma, De Paolino, De Paolo, De Parisi, De Patela, De Peri, De Perino, De Perna, De Perollo, De Perrino, De Pimentorio, De Porreta, De Rafaeli, De Rainaldo, De Rainerio, De Recupero, De Requesens, De Rizo, De Rizzuto, De Rodiglia, De Rogeri, De Rosso, De Russo, De Sagona, De San Martino, De San Michele, De Sancto, De Sangiorgi, De Sansoni, De Santa Fe, De Santa Luchia, De Santapao, De Santelmo, De Santo Padre, De Scalona, De Scavello, De Sena, De Simone, De Soldano, De Speciis, De Spines, De Stabile, De Tirpiano, De Turris, De Villesima, De Vita, De Vitali, De Zacaria, De Zacco, del Pesce, Demma, Despecie, Dexne, di Alvaro, di Anigito, di Bruno, di Cappitello, di Chirico, di Corno, di Fontana, di Franco, di Gavarecto, di Gerardo, di Giorlando, di Greco, di Jeso, di La Turri, di Leo, di Martino, di Milicia, di Monpilleri, di Muchera, di Paulino, di Peralta, di Ricardo, di Romano, di Russo, di Vento, di Vignuzo, di Xurtino, Embarbara, Estabele, Estaiti, Estanataro, Estayte, Estayti, Falcon, Falcone, Fardella, Farna, Faso, Fava, Felipponi, Ferlisi, Ferlito, Ferrante, Ferranti, Ferrantí, Ferrario, Ferro, Filippazzo, Filippuni, Finocchi, Firruni, Fois, Formica, Fornaia, Fornazzo, Fragano, Franamonaco, Frantiza, Fratello, Fundacaro, Furnari, Fusaro, Gagliardo, Galefi, Galeon, Galiano, Galifi, Galifo, Galisi, Galiuni, Gallardo, Gallo, Galluxo, Galluzzo, Galofaro, Gambadauro, Gandarano, Garcia, Gargana, Garrafa, Garraffo, Garsia, Garzìa, Gato, Gatta, Gatto, Gavarreta, Gentil, Gentili, Geremia, Giannotta, Giganti, Gipponaro, Grabynia, Granatino, Grasso, Greco, Grimaldi, Grimaldo, Guaglardo, Guagles, Guagliazzo, Guallardo, Guillermoso, Imbarbara, Imbo, Impignolo, In Parrino, Inserra, Iob, Iop, Iurato, Jaffe, Joffe, Jofre, Jucondo, Juda, Karissimo, La Biscania De Toledo, La Bonanno, La Bufala, La Buffa, la Cachara, La Carruba, La Castellana, La Castillana, La Chiana, La Chinia, la Cofinata, La Costa, la Delia, La Fenza, La Gaipa, La Gallola, La Gambina, La Giyusa, La Juppa, La Liota, Maccayuna, La Madiana, la Madiuna, la Manczuna, La Matina, La Mendola, La Muta, La Muta, la Oliva, La Padula, La Parrina, la Requesenza, la Restiva, La Rosa, La Russa, La Sala, La Scaletta, La Sena, La Valle, La Villa, La Yupa, Lagunari, Landolina, Lanza, Lanzafame, Lanzarota, Lanzarotta, Lanzarotto, L’Arricchito, Laudato, Lauria, Laurichito, Laurifichi, Laurifici, Leone, Li Castelli, Li Chiavi, Li Duchi, Li Pira, Li Puzzi, Libertino, Lione, Lixandro, Lixandro, Lo Bianco, Lo Biundo, Lo Buccheri, Lo Campo, Lo Castello, Lo Cheraulo, Lo Conte, Lo Conzo, lo Ferraro, Lo Gallolo, Lo Guzardo, Lo Lippo, Lo Marcho, Lo Mosuto, Lo Nanfrio, Lo Nobile, Lo Palazzo, Lo Porto, Lo Preste, Lo Presti, Lo Puzo, Lo Russo, Lo Surdo, L’Orefice, Lu Battiatu, Lu Janco, Lu Monaco, Lu Perno, Lu Pichulo, Luchiani, Luchiano, Maccagnuna, Madioni, Madiuni, Magistro, Maimone, Maiolina, Maiolino, Malaherba, Malandrino, Malaventano, Malerba, Maltisi, Malventano, Mamiuni, Mammana, Manegla, Manescalco, Mangananti, Manganaro, Mangiavillano, Manilla, Mansone, Manuel, Manuele, Manuele, Manuello, Manzone, Marchesano, Marinara, Marinaro, Marsello, Maymuni, Mayo, Mazone di Aragona, Mazulo, Mazza, Mazzullo, Melito, Mercheri, Merciero, Mezaparti, Midari, Modioni, Modioni, Monello, Monj, Montalbano, Montaperto, Montemagno, Monterusso, Montinero, Montiviridi, Morello, Morso, Mozzicato, Mucicato, Mufori, Mulè, Muleto, Mulino, Murales, Murella, Mustaza, Musulione, Musuliuni, Muzarolo, Napulino, Naso, Nasone, Naynere, Nichifora, Nigrelli, Nuchifora, Occhipinti, Oliveri, Ottone, Ottone, Ottuni, Ottuni, Pagunj, Palagio, Palazo, Palmerino, Palumba, Palumbo, Pancarj, Papaloro, Paparone, Parquitano, Paschali, Pastorella, Patela, Patella, Patella, Pecoraro, Pegna, Pellegrino, Pelliceri, Pelobianco, Perella, Perna, Pernichi, Perrone, Petrosino, Pettula, Pezzimenti, Pidalu, Pidolo, Pimentel, Pizzimenti, Pizzolu, Pontela, Ponti, Porco, Porreta, Preste, Provenzano, Rabbi, Rabbiba, Raffa, Rali, Rangulosa, Raynaldo, Recaro, Remissana, Restivo, Ricotta, Riczo, Rigio, Rizo, Rizone, Rizzo, Rocaforte, Romano, Rosela, Rosello, Rossello, Rosso, Rotolo, Rubino, Russo, Saba, Sabeti, Sabia, Salamon, Salichito, Salicoti, Salinaro, Salvo, Sama, Sami, Samma, Sanso, Sansone, Sansoni, Santa Croce, Santa Lucia, Santafè, Santafide, Santangelo, Santanisi, Santantoni, Santiglia, Santilla, Santoro, Sanzapace, Sapia, Sarto, Sartori, Satariano, Savarino, Scamiglia, Scandiano, Scanomontano, Scantiglia, Sciandiano, Sciarrat, Scono, Sellaro, Senia, Senia, Sgrima, Silvestro, Sinacolfi, Sinorello, Sirina, Solana, Soldano, Sonzeri, Sorino, Sosini, Spataro, Speciale, Stagnataro, Stagno, Staiti, Statella, Svaglia, Tavaglia, Terra, Timpa, Torregrossa, Torturici, Tramontana, Traper, Trubitteri, Truppiano, Turpiano, Turriforti, Turturici, Valentino, Valisti, Vanarco, Varisano, Ventimilla, Ventuni, Venturino, Vergogna, Vriatico, Vriatico, Xandiano, Xarat, Xernera, Xortino, Yelpo, Yona, Zabateri, Zacarias, Zacco, Zaffarana, Zafuta, Zafuto, Zafuto, Zapateri, Zarzana, Zavatteri, Zebedeo, Zingarella

For three years the Avotaynu DNA Project has been spearheading a collaborative international DNA project that includes academics at leading institutions such as the Technion, New York University Winthrop Hospital, the University of Colorado, the University of Haifa and others around the world, together with a local cadre of Jewish historians and community leaders. The project currently has DNA from more than 8,000 participants in its database. Our aim has been to describe the origins and migrations of the world’s Jewish populations since the founding of the Jewish People approximately 3,000 years ago.

[An earlier version of this article was published in the Winter 2019 edition of AVOTAYNU, The International Review of Jewish Genealogy. To obtain a subscription to AVOTAYNU, please visit https://www.avotaynu.com/journal.htm – Ed.]

For three years the Avotaynu DNA Project has been spearheading a collaborative international DNA project that includes academics at leading institutions such as the Technion, New York University Winthrop Hospital, the University of Colorado, the University of Haifa and others around the world, together with a local cadre of Jewish historians and community leaders. The project currently has DNA from more than 8,000 participants in its database. Our aim has been to describe the origins and migrations of the world’s Jewish populations since the founding of the Jewish People approximately 3,000 years ago.

During our study, we have actively tested Jewish men on six continents, from China to Chile. In doing so, we have been the first project to ever describe the enormous genetic diversity of Jewish males worldwide. Using statistical analysis of Short Tandem Repeats (STRs) in the Y chromosome we have segregated our Jewish participants into separate lineages, each lineage representing the descendants of a specific man whose male direct descendants are (or were) Jewish during the past 1,000 years. During 2019 alone, the number of separate Jewish paternal lineages preliminarily identified by our project grew by 25 percent, from 518 to approximately 650. Of these 650 lineages, it is worth noting that while 85 percent of the lineages are found almost exclusively in the non-Ashkenazi population, an overwhelming number of both Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi Y chromosomes draw from the same, general, pre-Jewish population living in the Middle East at the time of the Patriarchs during the Late Bronze Age.

In terms of Jewish Y-DNA diversity, this is the tip of the iceberg, as the number of currently identified Jewish lineages does not include the large number that became extinct over the centuries. As described in 1873 by the statistician Francis Galton, a substantial number of paternal lineages inevitably become extinct because of the Galton-Watson process, which describes the probabilistic tendencies by which a specific male lineage no longer has any sons on whom to pass its Y chromosome. These tendencies are particularly strong in small populations, such as those of the small, non-Ashkenazi, Jewish lineages that found safe harbor in various corners of the world, e.g., China, Portuguese India, Italy, and portions of North Africa.

Galton had a second insight that equally contributed to our understanding of the Y chromosome, the statistical concept known as “regression to the mean.” This concept refers to the fact that in any sample of data where measurable outcomes diverge, those results will tend over time to return to the average (or mean) measure. Any student of baseball hitting streaks knows the concept. A hitter will have periods when he is hot, and periods when he suffers slumps, but ultimately, absent an external factor such as better eyeglasses or a new hitting coach, he will return to the average degree of hitting success that has described his career overall.

Low-level STR Testing Frequently is Misleading

Regression to the mean affects variables such as STR markers as well. Researchers who have used the distance between highly variable Y-DNA STR markers to identify genetic distances between men have noticed STR markers have a strong tendency over time to mutate back toward their original positions. This tendency, called “convergence” by geneticists, causes relationships between two men to appear to be far closer than they truly are, leading to many misunderstandings of DNA results, especially when comparing men whose common ancestor lived more than 20 generations ago, only yesterday in terms of Jewish history.

Research also has identified an equal and opposite problem called genetic drift. This is the term for the situation whereby STRs in small populations, such as the Jewish people, randomly diverge over time to such an extent that they are no longer recognizable as sharing a common ancestor. Taken together, these two characteristics of STR testing have represented an enormous problem for those studying Jewish genetic history.

We are frequently contacted by Ashkenazim who find Spanish-language surnames among their Y12 and Y25 matches. “Experts” on social networking frequently encourage these participants to believe that our contacts descend from Sephardi exiles. Nothing could be further from the truth. At the Y12 and Y25 level, because of convergence and drift we cannot possibly tell whether those Span- ish-surnamed matches share a common ancestor with our Jewish participant within the last 2,000 years, let alone the mere 500 years since the Spanish Expulsion. What we can state reliably is that our participants share common ancestors with individuals who presently have Iberian identity. To go beyond that using low-level STR tests alone is fantasy, not science.

Next Generation Sequencing to the Rescue

Although geneticists continue to use STR testing as a low-cost means of conducting extensive DNA sampling around the world, our researchers have begun retesting representative samples in our project using an advanced (and more expensive) Y-DNA testing technique called “Next Generation Sequencing” (NGS), commonly known in the genealogical world as Family Tree DNA’s “BigY” or “Y700” product. Instead of analyzing 37 STR markers as the project has done to date, the NGS product looks at approximately seven million locations on the Y chromosomes, offering a far more specific definition of an individual’s paternal lineage in the context of Jewish history. The test uses single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), a measure of genetic variations between members of a species.

Fortunately, the SNP mutations uncovered by NGS do not “return to the mean” as do STRs. Of the more than 1,000,000 Y-DNA SNP variations discovered by NGS testing up to now, only one has been seen to mutate back to its original position. The occurrence of SNP variations is correlated to the number of births and will occur at a steady rate in stable populations. A careful study of the thousands of Y-DNA SNPs discovered by NGS to date has led to an estimated rate of new, measurable Y-DNA SNPs in a stable population of once in 84 years for the latest Y700 test offered by Family Tree DNA.

An important exception to the calculation of mutation rates, however, results from the effects of rapid population expansion. A man with ten sons will have ten times the probability of having a son with a new SNP than a man with one son, resulting in a separate Y-DNA branch for the son who possesses the mutation not shared by his brothers. Over just a few generations of such expansion, this will lead to dozens of new SNPs, some of which could be expected to survive the Galton-Watson process by which Y- DNA variations are culled from small populations.

As we, and our colleagues in the field have begun using NGS more broadly, we have discovered discrete periods of simultaneous emergence of new SNPs and branches in an identifiable portion of the Y chromosome lineages found in the Jewish population. The first major expansion in Y-DNA SNP proliferation appears to have occurred 1,200 years ago, the second, 600 years ago. In our opinion, this represents the unmistakable settlement, economic success and population expansion of the proto-Ashkenazi population in France at the invitation of Charlemagne in the 9th century, and a similar experience among the Jews who settled in 14th- century Poland at the invitation of Casimir the Great.

Jewish Religious Practice and Surnames Often Are Unrelated to Place of Origin

These two expansion events are never seen among our known self-identified Sephardi or Mizrahi participants, except among those whose recent ancestors lived in areas where there was known interchange between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi populations, such as northern Italy, Turkey and the Balkans. In these places, it is likely that an Ashkenazi ancestor migrated to a non-Ashkenazi land and adopted the local Jewish practice, surnames, and ethnic identity. We are now confident that in nearly all cases, we can quite easily distinguish between Ashkenazi lineages and non-Ashkenazi lineages based on the presence or absence of these Ashkenazi expansion events on any Y-DNA genetic tree.

NGS testing also has helped us interpret the unusual results among men with Ashkenazi genealogies who nonetheless match men with Spanish surnames living in Iberia or remote former Spanish colonies. In earlier years, we inferred that these results indicated a lineage that had left Spain at some time after the decline in Iberian Jewry commenced in 1391 and settled among the Ashkenazim in Central or Eastern Europe. NGS testing, however, has told a far more interesting story about the deep ancestry of some of the Ashkenazi lineages. In general, the Jewish branches of these lineages show the Ashkenazi branching events of 800 CE and 1400 CE, plus an additional major branching event in Iberia at approximately 500 CE (long before Sephardi and Ashkenazi identities had been established).

We now believe that we are seeing a split between descendants of a common Iberian ancestor in Roman times, some of whom entered the Jewish population and others who did not. Ample evidence shows a good deal of religious fluidity in the late Roman Empire, with evidence of individuals throughout the Empire “who worshipped the God of Israel as well as their own deities.” (Paula Frederick- son, “Jewish Romans, Christian Romans and the Post-Roman West: The Social Correlates of the Contra Judaeos Tradition,” https://www.bu.edu/religion/files/2010/03/ Jewish- Romans-PF-6-14.pdf accessed 12–24–2019). The vestiges of pagan conversion to Judaism in Iberia is a matter that the historians and geneticists on our team plan to investigate in further detail as we continue our NGS investigation.

NGS also has given us the power to prove connections between ancient Jewish communities. Discoveries such as the origins of the Jews of Kaifeng, China, or of communities of forgotten Jewish descent in mountain communities in the Americas, Eastern Europe, and the Middle East now are a common occurrence as the results continue to come in from our worldwide DNA survey. All results will be described in peer-reviewed professional journals and summarized in the pages of AVOTAYNU. Every genetic result from every individual who has been tested is vital to us, as it statistically sharpens our results. We encourage AVOTAYNU’s readers to join their genetic library of YDNA results in our study—whether male or female, STR or NGS, mitochondrial or autosomal—by logging in at www.JewishDNA.org and pressing “join.” Anyone with questions about our project, or their own DNA results is welcome to contact me at Adam. Brown@AvotaynuDNA.org.

On the occaion of the 250^th anniversary of the death of Yaakov Kopel Lukover*

Abstract

Yaakov Kopel Likover (ca.1695-1769) a well-known kabbalist, scholar, tavern owner and progenitor of at least three Chassidic dynastic legacies is the progenitor of the Elbaum surname. Starting from a classical reconstruction of a family tree in the particular town of Krasnobrod, we have succeeded in tracking the entire family of Shlomo Tzvi Elbaum, in linking him to Yakov Kopel Likover, and in deducing the latter’s previously unknown descendants.  We have examined family tombstones and the subscription list of an important scholarly work, thereby learning more about the family. The peculiar geo-political history, particularly of the Zamość District, of the main towns of residence in relationship to Austrian naming laws allowed us to determine the etymological origin of the surname, Elbaum.  The unusual naming of grandchildren of the progenitor of the family during his lifetime, along with peculiar aspects of hagiography, i.e. idealized biographies, allowed us to determine the possible Italian provenance of the family. 

Keywords

Rabbinic genealogy, Kopel Likover, origin of surnames, tombstone inscriptions, prenumeranten lists, family reconstruction

*Presented in part at the 38^th IAJGS, Warsaw, Aug. 2018

A. Introduction

The origin and development of Jewish surnames in Poland has been the subject of several modern treatises[1].  The studies are based on religious, historical, philological and etymological principles. By and large the forced adoption of surnames took effect only over a 20-year period, regardless of regulations, during which time there was a transition from the age-old system of patronyms to one of invented surnames.  As Jews became used to the new order, identities sometimes vacillated between two or more invented surnames until the names became invariant by about 1830.  Not so ELBAUM[2], which seems to have appeared sometime around 1788 and remained fixed thereafter. Furthermore, as we found out from the present study, no unrelated family seems to have adopted that surname. Aside from its uniqueness, ELBAUM is also a prime example of a Jewish family whose members lived almost entirely in the Lublin Guberniya, specifically in the Zamość and Tamoszow districts of Galicia in 1788.   Its near geographic isolation allows us the opportunity to study the history of the family without having to stretch our resources too widely. The progenitor of the family, known to historians, was Yakov Koppel Lukover (ca 1695-1769). He had a reputation as a scholar and kabbalist; and he was also famous for his kindness to his guests and to all travelers stopping at his tavern in the Polish village of Lukowa near Tarnograd.[3]  Lukover was, therefore, a toponym.

The purpose of this study is to not only flesh out the genealogical history of the ELBAUM family but also to trace the origin of the surname.  The surname appears to have remained stubbornly unchanged for the most part, even as those of other contemporary families evolved or changed dramatically during the 19^th century.  Its establishment is partly a quirk of history and geography, subject to religious custom.  We are fortunate that the progenitor of the family, Yakov Kopel Lukover, is a well-known religious figure with even more well-known descendants who were religious leaders and who left behind oral and written records.  This helps us to track the family history throughout the ages.  Hagiography in these writings luckily provides us with clues to the family history prior to its arrival in Poland without those authors necessarily knowing such details.  The only other source of information which we have encountered regarding the origin of the family dates back to 1935 with the establishment of the Oelbaum Family Society[4] which has a tradition of descent from Kopel Lukover. We believe that ours, however, is the first comprehensive and systematic study. 

B. Procedure

     a) Record extraction

Since the original aim of the project was restricted to reconstructing the family history of one particular Elbaum family living in Krasnobrod (Lublin guberniya), we started with the extraction of genealogical data available in the Polish State Archives for that town starting from 1826 when birth, marriage and death records were kept in separate books for Jews[5].  A single monolithic family was revealed. This exercise was extended to the vital records kept in the mixed Catholic / non-Catholic parish records covering the years 1810 to 1825[6]. This is sometimes referred to as the patronymic era because, at least for Jews, surnames were most often absent and, instead, Jews were denoted as X son/daughter of Y.  We were surprised, however, to see the Elbaum surname being in use as early as 1810.  The data had been extracted from the records which had been originally microfilmed in the past[7] or from images available on the Polish State Archives website[8], many of which are also available at the JRI website[9].  The family reconstruction indicated that all Elbaums living in Krasnobrod were related.  The reconstruction was subsequently augmented by studying the records from neighboring towns.  Printed family histories placed this Krasnobrod clan into a larger framework.

An important headstone, still extant in the Jewish cemetery of Jozefow Ordinacki, helped us enormously with the reconstruction, as it spread further afield in Lublin province.

     b) Geographic provenance of the Elbaum surname

One of JRI’s tools is a time-and-space mapper[10] indicating the density of the use of any given surname during any particular decade after 1810. (Get permission from JRI to reproduce the maps). The application to the surname, Elbaum, indicates that its use showed up in Zamość county and in very distant Kutno. (See Figure 1, below).  We shall argue that the Kutno branch transported its name when it migrated from the Zamość area to Kutno after about 1788.  In each case, the family spread outward concentrically from these locations as the generations progressed.  No registry data was available prior to 1808, leaving us with the uncertainty of whether or not there were two unrelated Elbaum clans originating simultaneously in two different regions.  Therefore, the next step was to examine the history of these two locations.  An important Prenumeranten (subscription) list helped us to answer this question. 

1811-1820

1831-1840

1851-1860

Fig. 1. Time- and space-distribution of ELBAUM family events during early period of record-keeping in Poland.

Reproduced with the kind permission from JRI-Poland.

c) Austrian surname laws

Zamość county was, at one point in this critical time period, located within the Austrian Empire.  Therefore, we examined the legal use of surnames within the region, subject to the historical framework of rapidly changing borders.

    d) Origin of the Elbaum family itself

We then examined family lore recorded by the Rabbinic branches themselves in order to understand the broader picture including the geographical origin of the Elbaum family prior to its arrival in Poland. 

C. Results and Discussion

At first, the analysis of the civil registry records led us to most of the children of Josef ELBAUM  (1768-1818) of Krasnobrod. The patronymic era records revealed that the parents of Josef were Szlama and Gryna[11].   With such an unusual combination of given names, it was not difficult to expand the scope to nearby towns, thus revealing several additional Elbaums whose parents were Szlama and Gryna.  A chart resulting from this earliest analysis is shown in Figure 2, below.

Fig. 2.  Children of Shlomo Tzvi Elbaum

Moszek, a teacher, was identified by virtue of his (second) marriage in 1828 in Zamość to Fayga BRAM[12]. His father, Szlama, was identified as the erstwhile beadle in the synagogue of Kransobrod.  Abram, two of whose sons lived in Lublin, was identified by virtue of grandchildren with the telltale names, Szlama and Gryna, as well as from his 1832 death record in Jozefow Ordynacki[13], henceforth refered to simply as Jozefow.  Because Szlama was born ca 1800, this provides an upper limit to the death year of Shlomo Tzvi.  Another son, Kopel, was identified by virtue of his death record in 1848 in Jozefow[14].  The last son, Majer ELENBAUM, living in Zelechow, was the son of Szlama Jankelewicz[15].  Jankel is, of course, the Yiddish endearment for Yakov [Kopel].  We also considered whether a certain Michla, nee ELBAUM, who died in 1825 in Jozefow[16], could be a daughter of Szlama, given that she named grandchildren Szlama and Gryna; but ultimately we rejected this possibility (see below for a deeper analysis).

At this point, we realized that, even though Gryna had never before been identified prior to our study, nor any of her children, nevertheless Shlomo [Tzvi] Elbaum was known in the literature as a son of Yakov Kopel Lukover.  Meir Wunder’s study[17] of Shimon Maryles, the Chassidic Rebbe of Jaroslaw, devotes a chapter to Yakov Kopel Lukover and his then known children.  An outline of Yakov Kopel’s family tree, based on Wunder’s work (2010) and showing two sons – Shlomo Tzvi (who lived in Krasnobrod, unbeknownst to historians) and Israel Leibs (who lived in Jozefow) – is given in Figure 3, below.

Fig. 3. The first three generations after Yakov Kopel Lukover, as per ref. 16. 

The boxes shaded in blue are for three early Chassidic leaders

We see that both sons of Yakov Kopel carried the surname Elbaum (written in one of its variant forms).  Only one of Israel’s own sons, Shimon (and his descendants), deviated from this practice because of the desire to commemorate the latter’s father by using the acronym, MARYL’S, i.e. Mi-Avinu-R’Yisroel Leibs. 

Wunder recounts the family tradition that Yakov Kopel was a learned Kabbalist but lived in the tiny agricultural village of Lukowa close to Tarnograd.  Although a scholar, he did not have a Rabbinic position, but rather operated a wayside inn where he generously offered hospitality to Jewish travellers.  His fame as a scholar spread to the point where he was offered the position of Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam – which he rejected.  Although he was an opponent of Chassidism, Yakov was approached by the Ba’al Shem Tov (d. 1772) the founder of the Chassidic movement, who asked him to intercede with Yakov’s friend, the Pope in Rome, in a quest to act favourably towards the Jews of Poland.[18] 

Yakov Kopel died in 1769 and was buried in nearby Tarnograd.  Although his headstone is no longer extant, the inscription was recorded prior to World War 2[19].  Ours, the first English translation, is given below:

“And Jacob went out from Be’er Sheva,

He would provide for every wayfarer,

and now he has gone on his way in holiness.  He was a saint.

In the year [5]529 [i.e. 1769] on Wednesday on the minor Shushan Purim,

the luminaries were removed, and the Holy Ark was captured.

And the scholar, superb in Torah learning and in acts of kindness,

was summoned to heaven.  Famed in praise, our teacher, Yakov Kopel,

son of the recently deceased Kalonymus”.

It is not surprising that the surviving children, immersed in Torah scholarship, too, compared Yakov Kopel to the Biblical forefather and namesake, Jacob, who also left the family well of Torah nourishment, towards his encounter with destiny.

We shall not repeat details of the family history described in Wunder’s study, which essentially concentrated on the life and works of Shimon and his descendants.  We wish to underline only two key points relevant to our study of Shimon’s siblings and of the father Jakob:  1) Yisroel Leibs family migrated deeper into Galicia, while his siblings remained in Poland proper; and 2) The headstone, shown below in Fig. 4, is miraculously still extant in the Jewish cemetery of Jozefow; and it has been transcribed by Trczinski[20]. Wunder[21], too, reproduced the inscription in Hebrew of the headstone of Yisroel Leibs as first published in Dvar Chein (p. 178).  It reads:

Fig. 4. The headstone of Yisroel Leibs [ELBAUM], in front of one of the present authors (DE) in Jozefow

Inscriptions for illustrious scholars are usually very poetic with Biblical references; and this headstone is no exception.  This one is a partial quote from the Biblical episode of the gathering of the 12 sons of the patriarch, Jacob (i.e. Israel), around his deathbed to listen to the final words of the father.  Ours, the first English translation is very instructive:

Gather around your father Israel

And cry over him with embittered souls

And let your tears roll down ceaselessly [for]

Him who led you in the [path of the] fear of God all his life

The honest learned scholar who walked in the footsteps of his forefathers

…..  our teacher and Rabbi, Israel,

son of the famous Kabbalist,

referred to as a holy man of God,

our Rabbi and teacher Yakov Kopel LUKOVER.

May the memory of this Tzaddik be a blessing for ever.

He passed away on the second day of Pesach [5]572 [1812]

May his soul be bound up in the bonds of everlasting life.

From this, we note, the deceased’s real name was merely Israel / Yisroel; and so the descriptive additive, Leibs, must refer to the name of his father-in-law, a common grammatical construct for such cases when ambiguity might otherwise arise from multiple marriages.  Furthermore, in order to complete the parallel Biblical allusion we naturally conclude that Yisroel Leibs must have also had 12 sons (and an unknown number of daughters), whereas at the outset of this study we knew of only four. This directs us to further research on that part of Yisroel’s family which might have remained in Poland proper.  By studying all available Polish civil registration data that do not connect to Shlomo Tzvi and his brothers, we believe, we have uncovered 11 of the twelve sons of Yisroel and at least two daughters and their families, thereby fleshing out most of the history of the descendants of Yakov Kopel Likover who, by the end of the 19^th century, spread out over most of Poland and Galicia and even into Hungary and Moldavia.  Four were already known and were described by Wunder.

The remainder, discovered by us and shown in Figure 5, were discovered raising families in various Polish towns. According to Wunder (ref. 16), Yisroel was married to a Hinda, daughter of Leyb[22].  However, we have found records where his (second) wife was Ruchl; and this is consistent with giving birth to children as late as 1785.  Many of these children were living in Jozefow or nearby. In approximate chronological order we have found:

1. Szmul ELBAUM (born ca 1755) was married to Ruchl.  He was identified by the death of his son, Majer (1775-1850), recorded in Tarnow and Zwolen[23].  Since a religious Jew would not marry a woman with the same name as his mother, we tend to believe that Szmul was the son of Yisroel Leibs’ first wife, Hinda.  However, the issue is complicated by the existence of at least three contemporary men named Szmul / Samuel ELBAUM, one of whom was a likely an early son of Yakov Kopel himself. For now, we attach the Szmul in question to Yisroel Leibs.  See further, below.

2. Leyzor ALBAUM (b ca 1760) and his wife, Sura, were the parents of Zelman ALBAUM (1784-1839)[24], Rabbi of Kazanow. We have connected Leyzor to Yisroel Leibs by virtue of a grandson, named Izrael in 1

3. Fayga ELBAUM, born ca 1760, was married to Chaim WOLBEDACHT. Their son, Szmul, married Zora / Sora, the daughter of Berek ELBAUM, born ca 1775, and Frayda FYNKEL[25], in 1818 in Jozefow.  Fayga and the WOLBEDACHTs were from Jozefow, which was Yisroel Leibs’ homestead.  Since a granddaughter was named Ruchl, we suspect that Fayga was the daughter of Yisroel Leibs second wife.  Berek’s provenance is a bit murky.  His children were being married in Jozefow, Sokolow Podlaski and Szczebrze

4. Boruch EJLBOJM (born ca 1765) appeared in the 1850 census of Krements as the father of Szymon of Radziwill, in the region of Galicia[26] where Yisroel Leibs’ known children lived

5. Oszer Anczel (born ca 1765) a tailor from Jozefow, and married to Malka Chana Herszkowicz, had two sons – Leyzor ELBUM and Majer ALBUM – living in Kosow Lacki[27]. 

    Another son, Eliye OELBAUM, was married off in Szczebrzeszyn.  Their marriage and death records mention Oszer as their father. Again, the association with Jozefow or nearby, links Oszer to Yisroel Leibs.

6. Another possible son, is Salomon ÖHLBAUM from Jozefow and born ca 1775.  His daughter,

    Feige SCHLEFRIG, died in 1886[28], in the nearby Galician town of Jaroslaw.  Salomon’s son,

    Berek, born in 1800, married a second time to Katzl / Katja IZAAK (45 years his junior) of

    Bargszas in Hungary. Berek must have been from a very prestigious family for such a match.

7. Etl ELBAUM (1777-1853) was married to Nuchym SZECHTER of Jozefow.  Etl’s death record[ explicitly states that her parents were Izrael and Ruchl.
[1]

8. Icyk Eyzyk ELBAUM (ca 1785 – > 1832) of Zelechow and his wife, Ester, married off a son, Izrael, in Konskie in 1832[30].  Since Izrael was born in 1813 – one year after the death of Yisroel Leibs – it seems clear that Icyk Eyzyk was a late-born son of Yisroel Leibs. record[29] explicitly states that her parents were Izrael and Ruchl.

9. Berek ELBAUM, born ca 1775, was likely a brother of Fayga (#3 above).  Their children who married each other were thus likely first cousins to each other. If more distantly related than that, they could not be children of Yisroel Leibs, but rather of Yakov Kopel himself. This is not possible since Yakov Kopel had already died by 1769.  When Berek married off his daughter, Zora, in 1818, he was a resident of Jozefow[31].  But when Zora remarried in 1822 (in

    Szczebrzeszyn), Berek was described as already a resident of Jerusalem!![32]

Fig. 5. Likely children of Yisroel Leibs ELBAUM.  Names in colored boxes were deduced in the present study.

We now address the question of origins, both of the name Elbaum as well as of the family itself.

The first mention of the surname Elbaum does not occur in Polish civil registration or parish records, but rather in a Hebrew Prenumeranten (subscription) list printed in Zolkiew in 1804.  Virtually all of the notable scholars in Poland and Galicia subscribed to this book, Sefer Yere’im.[33]  The ones from Jozefow are shown below in Figure 6. These are the town scholars.

Fig. 6. List of subscribers for Sefer Yere’im (1804) living in Jozefow

We recognize our Yisroel ELBAUM and note that his given name does not contain the added Leibs, thus confirming our interpretation above.  Both he and his relative, Dov Ber[34], used the Yiddishized version of the name Elbaum, namely “Eilboim”.  In addition, Yisroel described himself as being from Lukowa, a village which he had left 46 years earlier, in 1758, in order to marry and settle in the town of Jozefow.  Clearly, sometime between the death of Yakov Kopel in 1769 and 1804 the name Elbaum suddenly appeared.  One must ask why, then, if there was still an emotional attachment to the descriptive Lukover, was there a fairly universal switch to a new surname, Elbaum. We believe that the name change was compelled by the 1787 Austrian Familianten laws and surname edicts.

We can also recognize three other personalities on the list:

1. Yisroel Volbedachter who shows up in the civil registration records as Zrul WOLBEDACHT

    (d 1834)[35].  This is the same family as the one that Fayga ELBAUM (child # 3, above) married into. It appears that Zrul (son of Josef) was the nephew of Fayga. 

2. Furthermore, Zrul was married to Toba LERNER, the daughter of Josef LERNER, who was probably related to Leibish Lerner who also appears on the list. 

3. Betzalel Wax is also a fascinating person.  He was a member of the family which founded a  

    publishing house in Jozefow[36].  He was also the progenitor of a famous Rabbinic family[37]. 

    And most likely, he was a grandson of Yakov Kopel Lukover.[38] So far, the subscription list appears to contain members of an extended family; and this tends to confirm that Berek was indeed the brother of Fayga (#9 above) i.e. a son Yisroel Leibs.   We would not be surprised if the others on the list were also relatives of Yisroel Leibs.[39

In 1772, the towns in which most of Kopel’s children were living, became part of Galicia.   All descendants living at that time were Austrian subjects.  In 1787 Austria decreed that all its Jews had to adopt German surnames[40].  Place names like Likover (lit. from Lukowa) were forbidden. Kopel’s living children suddenly had to replace LIKOVER with a Germanic name.  But in 1809 Napoleon shrunk the size of Galicia. The towns, in which Elbaums were living, were suddenly no longer subject to Austrian laws.  By then it was too late:  Yisroel Leibs and Ber ELBAUM seem to have obediently chosen their surname, certainly by the 1804 publication of Sefer Yere’im. Nevertheless, since the Austrians would be interested in legal documents alone, Yisroel felt able to revert, in such a non-public setting, to the old toponym, Likover, which appears also on his headstone.  

The question which remains is why the name Elbaum, in particular, was chosen.  We hypothesize that in 1787 the family cleverly transformed the toponym into a surname via a 2-stage process:  1) applying an anagram (ie. re-arrangement of letters or words in phrases –   especially common in Kabbalah; and 2) applying a calque (i.e. a literal translation, a copy, from one language to another).  Any family, like Kopel’s, which was mystically inclined, felt comfortable doing so. Thus Likowa (cf Likover) was transformed into Oliwka which, in Polish can mean olive or olive tree. The latter version translates directly into the German ÖLBAUM / OELBAUM. This double trick allowed Yakov Kopel’s sons to preserve their original “surname” without offending the Austrian laws. By 1809, when the more liberal Polish regulations were in force, the surname was already established, and there was no natural desire to deviate from a surname which actually served its purpose, namely to honor the family’s famous ancestor

Having successfully traced the family from 1769 to modern times[41], we now turn our attention to additional children of Yakov Kopel Lukover beyond Shlomo Tzvi and Yisroel Leibs.  Some clarification is needed for two of the known important children or grandchildren.  Part of the fallout from this investigation allows us to penetrate to earlier times and locations.  We also end up discovering 4 or 5 previously unknown children of Yakov Kopel.

a) Matel

One of the known daughters of Yakov Kopel, named Matel (b ca 1725), married Avraham Elazar Horowitz who became the Rabbi of the town of Jozefow.  Their son, Yakov Yitzchak Horowitz, known as the “Chozeh” of Lublin, literally meaning “seer” or “visionary” in Hebrew, was a charismatic miracle-worker. He was popularized by his great intuitive powers and his penetrating gaze, and was thereby responsible for the early spread of Chassidism via his many disciples who took leadership roles in various towns throughout Poland.  Indeed, he mentored his first-cousin, Shimon, Rebbe of Jaroslaw.  And he was also responsible for the marriage of his much younger aunt (see below) to Alexander Sender Safran, the Rebbe of Komarno / Chmielnik, and indirectly of their son, Eyzyk, progenitor of a branch of the Zidichover Rebbes to his distant cousin[42].  We focus on the Seer because of the peculiarity of his given name, Yakov, so-named in 1745 during the lifetime of his grandfather, Yakov Kopel. The family lore, presumably initiated by Kopel himself, is described by Alfasi[43].  He was spared by the Angel of Death in the year 1744, and given an extra 25 years of life with the opportunity to marry off his eldest daughter, Matel, to see the birth of his grandson the future Seer, and to attend the latter’s marriage in 1765.[44] In fact, Kopel insisted on raising the young Yakov Yitzchak in his own home in Lukowa and then Tarnograd, away from the youth’s own parents.  How could a Polish Jew tolerate the naming of a grandson in his own lifetime[45] and, indeed in his own presence?  The answer must be the same as that for why there was in fact, another grandson of Kopel who was given the name Yakov. That was Jakob Elbaum of Kutno, born approximately in 1744[46].    

But this mystery is only part of a larger puzzle: Why would the Amsterdam community choose a relatively unknown innkeeper from the agricultural village of Lukowa to be their Rabbi?  How could a Polish village innkeeper develop his skills as an accomplished kabbalist in isolation without any masters?  How could a simple Polish village innkeeper learn Italian well enough to intercede with his acquaintance, the Pope, on behalf of his fellow Jews? 

Generally, the only Jews who name boys after their living grandfathers are Sefardi or Italian Jews.  Consequently, we believe that Kopel or his father was an Italian or Sephardic Jew, possibly from Padua, Amsterdam or Venice where Kopel would be close to centers of Kabbalah and where he could have developed a friendship with the future Pope; and then moved to Lukowa 54 km from Zamość (“Padua of the North”) because of ties to Italian relatives. This certainly explains the naming anomaly. Why Zamość, though?  It turns out that this was the home to Italian artisans and Sephardic and /or Italian Jews,[47] who had exclusively been invited by its owner, the nobleman Jan Zamoyski, to settle and develop his town Zamość in an Italian style in 1588.  After his death in 1605, the Sephardic Jews are thought to have scattered or to have assimilated among Ashkenazi Jews. However, it seems just as plausible that they moved to other family holdings within the estate (Zamość, Goraj, Janów Lubelski, Kraśnik, Krzeszów, Szczebrzeszyn, Tarnogród, Tomaszów Lubelski, and Turobin, as well as 157 villages which presumably included Lukowa.)[48]  The holdings of the family expanded considerably.  Until 1775 distant Kutno, too, was owned by Andrzej Zamoyski.  We presume that after the original Zamość estates fell under Austrian rule in 1773, many Jews from that area may have moved to privately owned Kutno, which was under Prussian control from 1793 to1807, in order to avoid increasingly oppressive Austrian laws, for family ties, or for economic reasons.  In Kutno there is mention of, not only Elbaums, but also of other exclusive Zamość area families living in Kutno, (e.g. KIBEL, SPERLING, ELBAUM, ROK / RAK, SZLAJFER, GAJST). This could explain the sudden blooming of the Elbaum records in Kutno, including the death of Yakov, a grandson of Kopel born ca 1744, a member of a family which was apparently still observing Mediterranean customs. 

In principle, we can go further and try to find Kopel’s family in Western Europe.  The major centers for Kaballah in the late 17^th early 18^th century were Venice and Amsterdam. A major hotbed of Kabbalah at the time was Padua[49] (Bonomi personal communication). Prominent Kabbalists of the time were Moses ben Mordecai Zacuto of Amsterdam; and Moshe Chaim Luzzatto of Venice and Amsterdam – a younger contemporary of Kopel Lukover.  Mantua is also a strong possibility since many prominent Italian Kabbalists were buried at Mantua.[50]

Tracing Kopel’s father, Kalonymus, (Calimani in Italian) within these circles is a work in progress.

The possible Sefardi connection suggests the need to participate in Y-DNA testing. The Elbaums belong to Haplogroup G2b-M377[51]. This includes two Elbaums, one Ohlbaum, one Albom and one Olivinbaum who have been tested. The Elbaum subclade is G-Y15861[52] and is unique to the Lukover-Elbaum family. According to Beider[53] the name Olivenbaum was adopted in Jaroslaw; however, we could not find family records there.  Instead, we found Copel Leib Olivenbaum, born in 1840, living in the city of Iasi[54]. The Y-DNA tests verify that the Olivenbaums must have been originally Elbaums who had changed their surname to Olivenbaum by the time they reached Moldavia.  

b) The Safrin Dynasty

The identity of the mother of Yitzchak Yehuda Yechiel SAFRIN, the Chassidic Rebbe of Komarno, has been somewhat controversial until the present study. Family lore merely asserts descent from Yakov Kopel Lukover.  Wunder[55] claims that she was Chana, the granddaughter of Kopel. Others claim, again without justification, that she was Chawa[56], an actual daughter of Kopel. One would think that civil registry records ought to clarify the issue; however, it appears that researchers were scouring, in vain, the archives of Safrin, Hungary from where his family came, or else the original family surname, EICHENSTEIN, of Zydaczow where he was brought up.  We have, however, uncovered the 1822 Pinczow marriage record of the 20-year old Yitzchak Yehuda Yechiel, the future Admor of Komarno[57] (signing as Eyzyk Sender, i.e. son of Sender, and living in Chmielnik, as expected), to 19-year old Gitl (the daughter of the Admor of Pinczow, Avraham Mordechai HOROWICZ, again as expected).  An image of this record (Figure 7, below) shows that the groom’s mother is named Rochl z Koplow. 

Fig. 7. Image of a portion of the 1822 marriage record of Yitzchak [SAFRIN], son of Rochl, daughter of Kopel

In the style of the Codex Napoleon for such records, this means that Rochl was the daughter of Kopel, presumably Kopel LUKOWER.  However, the name is Rochl rather than Chana or Chawa.  One possible explanation is that it is the groom’s maternal grandmother who is cited rather than his mother herself – a rather odd procedure or clerical error.  Alternatively, in principle, it could be that both mother and grandmother were each daughters of different Kopels.  However, in Chassidic circles it is taboo for a girl to marry a man with the same name as that of her father. On the face of it, therefore, it appears that it was Kopel’s daughter, Rochl, born not much later than ca 1765, who married Sender SAFRIN, born supposedly ca 1765.  If so, that means that Rochl was born to an elderly Kopel from a second wife. She was orphaned in 1769. By the time that Rochl was ready for marriage around 1785 to the Chozeh’s disciple, Sender, she was probably under the guardianship of her nephew, the Chozeh, who was 20 years older than she was.  It would only be natural to find a groom from the Chozeh’s circle.  The Chozeh’s strong interest in Rochl’s well-being continued for many years. According to the family lore of the Komarno dynasty, the Chozeh certainly advocated for the engagement of Sender’s and Rochl’s son, Eyzyk, to Gitl HOROWITZ in 1815 when Eyzyk was only 13, i.e. very shortly before the Chozeh died[58].  The marriage took place seven years later in 1822 in Pinczow.  But why choose a bride from Pinczow of all places?  Aside from the fact that Gitl’s father, Avraham Mordechai HOROWITZ, the Admor of Pinczow, was also a disciple of the Chozeh, someone on the spot in Pinczow must have proposed the match to the Chozeh.  It turns out that the Chozeh had prior ties to Pinczow:  One of the Chozeh’s own grandsons, Szmul Szaja SZTERNFELD, married Ita Riwa GOLDKORN of Pinczow during his own lifetime.  There is also the likelihood that Mindl (1752-1812), a previously unknown sister of the Chozeh living in Pinczow, was in a position of influence.  Mindl had married a certain Icyk (d 1818) son of Fiszel LUBELSKI 

(indicating an origin in Lublin Guberniya.) The LUBELSKIs had settled in Pinczow prior to 1775.  The Pinczow records indicate explicitly that Mindl was the daughter of Abram Leyzor [HOROWITZ] and [Matel ELBAUM][59].  It is not surprising, therefore, that Mindl named one of her daughters Matel (presumably after her own mother). Descendants of this branch of the LUBELSKIs are, therefore, previously unknown descendants of Kopel LUKOVER.  Figure 8 shows the time scales for Kopel’s daughters, Matel and Rochl.

Fig. 8 Kopel Lukover’s daughters linked by the Chozeh of Lublin

c) Michla

Michla was the wife of Zrul (i.e. Izrael) ZYSBRENNER of Josefow.  (The surname indicates that he was a brandy producer, a trade which complemented that of Yakov Kopel Lukower). Figure 9, below, shows that when Michla died in 1825 at the age of 76 her maiden name was given as ELBAUM[60]. (Thus she was born in 1749.) Moreover, she named a son Kopel in 1777 who married Szajndl Jenta WAKS (brother of the Cala WAKS described earlier, who signed the subscription list.)  These two facts indicate that Michla was the daughter of Yakov Kopel himself.  In truth, some of her children moved to Krasnobrod, and named two grandchildren Gryna; and so one might think that Michla was the daughter of Shlomo Tzvi (son of Kopel) and Gryna of Krasnobord, rather than of Kopel directly.  However, we think this is a coincidence since Gryna seems to have been an ancestral name of the WAKS family too.[61]  Furthermore, Shlomo Tzvi was born in 1736, and his wife, Gryna, was born in 1738, dates which make it impossible for them to be the parents of a Michla born in 1749. 

Fig. 9. 1825 death record of Michla ELBAUM, daughter of Yakov Kopel Lukover, the only official record that associates Kopel with ELBAUM

d) Chaja Sora

In our discussion of the WAKS family, above, we noted the cousin marriage between Ryfka Matl (daughter of Szajndl Jenta nee WAKS) and Szmul WAKS (son of Ankel WAKS). Szajndl Jenta and Szmul were siblings, both being children of Lejb WAX and Chaja Sora.  We also suggested that, where there was one cousin marriage, there was probably an earlier cousin marriage – namely the one between Szjandl Jenta herself and Kopel ZYSBRENNER.  As described above, since Kopel ZYSBRENNER was a grandson of Yakov Kopel, then so too was Szajndl Jenta a grand-daughter, thus making Chaja Sora a daughter of Kopel Lukover. She could not have been the daughter of Yisroel Leibs or of Szlama, since these sons were roughly the same age as Chaja Sora.  However, we cannot rule out that she was the daughter of Szmul, below.

e) Szmul

As mentioned above, we believe that the distant town of Kutno was a secondary homestead of the early ELBAUMs.  They seem to have moved there (along with other longstanding residents of the district of Zamość, tied together by family), out of a desire to find new economic advantages under the protection of the Zamoyski family, which had recently acquired this private town.  The time-mapping of Figure 1 indicates that this happened very early, namely before the end of the 18^th century. Therefore, we believe that the ELBAUM family which was living in Kutno were part of the first generation after Yakov Kopel.  The earliest members of that branch who are mentioned explicitly in the Kutno records are Jakob ELBAUM (1744-1814)[62] and his son, Samuel ELBAUM (1763-1825)[63] married (second time) to Ester SZLAYFER[64].

Around the same time that Jakob’s family was establishing itself in Kutno, a second related family began raising a family there:  When Juda [Lejb] Hersz OELBAUM[65] (b 1794) named a son Szmul [ben] Leyb in 1820, the birth was witnessed by the father’s uncle, also similarly named Szmul Lejbuszowicz ELBAUM (born in 1770)[66].  Consequently, it makes sense that the head of this branch of the family was a Leybusz ELBAUM, born around 1745 to 1750. He was a contemporary of Jakob ELBAUM, described above — possibly his brother.  We do not know for sure where Leybusz himself was living. All we know is that one of his sons was from Kutno.  However, there is proof that Szmul Leybuszowicz ELBAUM’s son, namely Hersz Leyb ELBAUM was born in Ciepielow[67], but was raising a family in Granica, Tarlow and Gniewoszow.  Consequently, it seems that Szmul Leybuszowicz was living at one point in Ciepielow. 

We can summarize to this point by saying that there were two first-cousins with similar names – Hersz Lejb of Ciepielow and Juda Leyb Hersz of Kutno, both grandsons of Leybusz ELBAUM of Kutno, a likely brother of Jakob of Kutno.  Now, we note that both of these brothers (Leybusz and Jakob) named a son Samuel / Szmul around the same time.  Consequently, it makes sense to say that the two brothers were sons of an early Szmul ELBAUM, born around 1720. 

Who was this early Szmul?  We can only speculate.  There were two contemporary Szmuls named after him in Kutno: a) one born in 1770, who was the son of Leybusz; and b) one born in 1763, who was the son of Jakob.  And there was actually a third contemporary Szmul (1777 – 1836), son of Berek ELBAUM of Warsaw (see below).[68]  Since the earliest Szmul was born ca 1720, this means that the very early Szmul died rather young, prior to 1763.  Given the year of birth, the most obvious conclusion is that Szmul could only have been a previously unknown son of Yakov Kopel Lukover.

f) Berek

We have come across records of three early Berek ELBAUMs. 

1. Berek (1781-?), a hatmaker who was raising a family in Kutno.[69] We have no record which enables us to identify him conclusively.  However, he is most likely a son of Jakob of Kutno whose family also occupied itself with hatmaking.
2. Berek (ca 1775-?) of Jozefow and Jerusalem, whom we have identified as a son of Yisroel Leibs of Jozefow.  He was married to Frayda FYNKIEL.
3. A very early Berek (ca 1740 – >1812) of Warsaw, who was married to Brandl. They had sons, Szmul ELBAUM (1777-1836) and Szlama ELBAUM (b ca 1770).  This early Berek could not have been a son of Shlomo Tzvi or of Yisroel Leibs (sons of Yakov Kopel) because these two were born around the same time as Berek.  Berek could only have been a son of Szmul of Kutno, born ca 1720 or earlier, or a son of Yakov Kopel Lukover himself. Both are equally possible from the point of view of birth years. We believe, though, since the name Szmul was transmitted through the generations in Berek’s family, then it is more logical to conclude that this early Berek was a son of the early Szmul of Kutno.  However, we cannot definitively rule out that Berek was a previously unknown son of Yakov Kopel. 

Leaving out the details for the four previously known children of Yakov Kopel, we can now reconstruct a speculative family history in Figure 10 below, focusing mostly on the early generations of the various Szmuls and the various Bereks involved.

Fig. 10. Reconstructed family history of some descendants of Yakov Kopel Lukover, emphasizing the first generation, the various Bereks and the branch from Kutno.

There are many more additional ELBAUM families throughout our regions of Poland, born in the 18^th century, who must be connected to Yakov Kopel. However, for lack of data, we are unable to definitively make the links. Therefore we have not included them in Figure 10.

Notable among such early personalities are, in chronological order of birth year: Izrael Icyk ELBAUM (ca 1740- ) of Sierpc; Mosiek ELBAUM (ca 1750- ) of Zareba Koscielne; Lejb ELBAUM (1757-1817) of Bilgoraj; Icyk ALBOIM (1759-1829) of Przytyk; Eyzyk ELBAUM (ca 1760- ) of Konskawola; Abram EHLBAUM (ca 1765- ) of Krasnik; Szymel ELBOIM (ca 1765- <1830) of Parczew; Salomon ELBAUM (ca 1775- ) of Jaroslaw and Jozefow, probably a son of Yisroel Leibs; Szymon ELBOIM (ca 1775 -) of Parczew; Icek ELBAUM (ca 1780- ) of Wladowa); Leyb ELBAUM (1780 -) of  Szczebrzeszyn; Moszek Josek ELBAUM (ca 1780 -) of Wlodawa; Kopel ELBAUM (1781-1839) of Zarnowiec; Abram ELBOIM (1786- ) of Komarow; Jankiel ELBAUM (ca 1790-<1861) of Glowno; Ayzyk ELBAUM (ca 1790 – >1832) of Konskie; and Leyzor ELBAUM (1793- ) of Zolkiewka. The only ones who could qualify as additional sons of Yakov Kopel are those born prior to 1769. There are three Icyks / Eyzyks among them. At most one of them would qualify. It is important to emphasize that all of the personalities born prior to 1788 would mostly have been born in Zamość county, and they have been assigned the name Elbaum retroactively.

Summarizing, we see that Yakov Kopel was having children as early as 1720 (Szmul ca 1720, Matel ca 1725) and as late as ca 1765 (Rochla). In between those limits he had 4 previously known children, and 3 newly-discovered children (Michla, Chaja Sora and Szmul) and as many as 4 more from the list, above.  Clearly, Yakov Kopel was married at least twice.  However, there are no records revealing the name of either of his wives.

DNA Analysis

The following glossary might be useful for readers without prior background in genetics:

Y-DNA – The portion of DNA passed uniquely down the male-to-male path.

Nucleotide – a building block of DNA consisting of arrangements of 4 chemicals symbolized by

                     A, G, C, and T

STR – Short Tandem Repeat—pattern of repeating nucleotides, such e.g. “AGAT”

SNP – Single Nucleotide Polymorphism—difference in one nucleotide (letter) from the reference

Haplogroup – A group of individuals who share a common SNP that defines a branching point of the human genetic tree

Subclade – a downstream haplogroup (subclade), i.e. a smaller (newer) haplogroup that a particular SNP defines as a more recent branch (“descendant”) of a larger, older haplogroup.

Haplotype – An individual’s genetic markers

MRCA – Most Recent Common Ancestor

tMRCA – Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor.  This is usually a statistical estimate +/- 5%

ybp – years before present.

BAM file – a binary format for storing genetic sequence data

Autosomal DNA – DNA which is inherited from the numbered chromosomes, in distinction from the sex chromosome

Histocompatibility complex – a large region of DNA responsible for formation of proteins needed for the immune system.

Allele – one of the possible forms of a gene (e.g. dominant or recessive)

The possible Sefardi / Italki connection, discovered above, suggests the need to participate in Y-DNA testing. The test group included two Elbaums, one Ohlbaum, one Albom and one Olivenbaum.  The names Ohlbaum and Albom can be considered dialectic versions of Elbaum.  Olivenbaum is a little more questionable.  According to Beider[70] the name Olivenbaum was adopted in Jaroslaw; however, we could not find family records there.  Instead, we found Copel Leib Olivenbaum, born in 1840, living in the city of Iasi[71]. The Y-DNA tests verify that the Olivenbaums must have been originally Elbaums who had changed their surname to Olivenbaum by the time they reached Moldavia.  These tests, conducted by FamilyTree DNA are based on an analysis of up to 111 STRs.  Those tests, taken so far, do indeed confirm the validity of our surname paper trail, as they all match that of a pedigreed descendant of Yakov Koppe

In order to delve further into the genetic and geographic origins of the ELBAUM family, we undertook whole genome sequence (WGS) analysis of a saliva sample provided by a 101-year old Holocaust survivor, Boruch Elbaum (A”H), born in 1917.  It was carried out by Open Genomes Foundation[72].  The entire set of results and methodology, as applied to Boruch Elbaum, can be seen on its website[73].  In short, the procedure used was an Illumina 150 base-pair paired-end read Build 38 (hg38) 40x read depth whole genome sequence (WGS) analysis, which produced an excellent (99.85%) Y-coverage.  Open Genomes Foundation uploaded a Y-DNA BAM file to YFull[74], a company that analyzed the Elbaum Y-subclade.  Figure 11 shows the basic results of the Y-DNA analysis alone. 

Fig. 11. Y-DNA map of the branches of G-Y15861* (a subclade of G-Y12975, a subclade of G-M377). G-Y12975, also denoted as AB-056 contains 4%-6% of Ashkenazi Jews and is one of largest Ashkenazi Haplogroups[75].

Yaakov Kopel Likover was in a basal branch of Y-DNA, G-Y15861[76], which split off from the G-Y12975 branch of the G2b1-M377[77] trunk.  Subsequently, its subclade, denoted by id:YF14448  (location listed as POL-LB = Polish-Lubelski) branched off, and it is unique to the Lukover-Elbaum family, i.e. no other Sephardi, Ashkenazi, or Gentile male DNA has been found to match this Y-DNA subclade.  No other matches at all exist to tell us where this Y-DNA came from.  Until such time as other families are tested in the same way and found to be members of this sub-clade, we can say only that the ELBAUMs’ ancestors of id:YF14448 migrated independently of other branches of G-Y15861.

The time to the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) of G-Y12975 is 1050 ybp i.e. 970 CE , which would just predate the settlement of Ashkenazi Jews in the Rhineland in the year 987 CE. The tMRCA of G-Y15861* itself is 850 ybp, i.e. 1170 CE,  which predates the documented influx of Jews into Poland and Lithuania in 1350 CE, i.e. right after the Black Death massacres of 1348-1349 in the Holy Roman Empire.   We do not know where in Central Europe the ELBAUM ancestors were living, say, in 1250 CE, since there are multiple scenarios. Possibilities include France, Italy, or the Rhineland.

Additional Y-SNP testing could help to find other subjects from Y15861 and thus pinpoint a specific route to Poland. These living trees are continuously updated, as new SNPs are discovered; and we can also expect that once more subjects are tested, we would be able to determine a genetic signature of Yakov Kopel LUKOVER from the SNP analysis.

The whole genome SNP array data for autosomal DNA too was extracted by Open Genomes, and uploaded to Gedmatch and Family Finder.  This is a particularly interesting analysis because Boruch Elbaum’s ancestry along maternal lines, using archival records from the same region surrounding Zamosc county, is known.  We had found that Boruch Elbaum descends from Yakov Kopel Lukover in several additional directions – via the aforementioned Waks, Kagan, Rozner, and Kupferstein families, as discussed above, i.e. also along maternal lines. Therefore the results are relevant also for the spouses of the early male ELBAUM ancestors.

The following ancestral components, based on a Monte Carlo averaged analysis of Boruch Elbaum’s Eurogenes Global25 principal components (compared to those of all 500 Jewish samples tested) shows that there is no sign of native Iberian ancestry as would be common among Sephardim, even compared to some other Ashkenazi Jews.  Boruch Elbaum’s ancestry is somewhat analogous to that of a German Jew, without any detectable Slavic ancestry, much like most Polish and Russian Jews have.

Figure 12.  Admixture Analysis Showing No Native Iberian Ancestry

Finally, we also analyzed Boruch Elbaum’s Major Histocompatiblity Complex (MHC) Class I alleles (HLA-A*26 – HLA-B*38 – HLA-C*12).  As can be seen from Figure 13, they are the most common haplotype combination among a large set of Ashkenazim[78]. 

Figure 13. Ashkenazi Jews in the Allele Frequencies in Worldwide Populations. The order of the haplotypes is from most frequent among Jews to less frequent.

In closing, all three tests – YDNA, autosomal DNA, and allele frequencies indicate that Boruch Elbaum had Ashkenazi ancestry with no overt signs of a Sephardic lineage.

Conclusion

Starting from a classical reconstruction of a family tree in the particular town of Krasnobrod, we have succeeded in tracking the entire family of Shlomo Tzvi Elbaum, in linking him to the kabbalist, Yakov Kopel Likover, and in deducing the latter’s previously unknown descendants.  We have examined family tombstones and the subscription list of an important scholarly work, thereby learning more about the family. The peculiar geopolitical history of the main towns of residence in relationship to Austrian naming laws allowed us to determine the etymological origin of the surname, Elbaum.  The naming of grandchildren of the progenitor of the family during his lifetime, along with peculiar aspects of the hagiography allowed us to determine the possible Italian provenance of the family. 

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to JRI-Poland for making available its very extensive database of extracts of vital records, as well as to Petje Schroeder for her professional extracts of hard-to-find parish records, and to Tadeusz Przystojecki of Grodzka N.N. for finding and translating lost records. We also acknowledge Ted Kandel of the Open Genomes Foundation, Sinai Putter and Nardo Bonomi for their valuable input.  

[1] a) Beider, Alexander (1996) A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland. New Haven Ct: Avotaynu.

  b) Beider, Alexander (2008) A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire, revised. New Haven Ct.: Avotaynu. 

  c) Beider, Alexander (2004) A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia, revised. New Haven, CT: Avotaynu.

  d) Hanks, Frederick & Hodges, Flavia and Gold, David L. (1988) A Dictionary of Surnames, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  e) Guggenheimer, Heinrich Walter and Guggenheimer, Eva H. (2007) Jewish Family Names and Their Origins: An Etymological Dictionary. Hoboken, NJ.: Ktav Pub. House.

[2] The spelling of the surname is quite variable – ELBAUM, OELBAUM, OHLBAUM, ALBAUM, EILBAUM, OLBAUM, EJLBAUM, AJLBAUM, ALBOM versions exist, among others.  Consistent spelling was not of interest to Jews in the early19^th century, when civil records started to come into existence.  Nor did Polish clerks care too much about precision. Therefore, for the sake of standardization in this work, we shall simply choose ELBAUM as representative in our text, except when citing other sources. 

[3] By profession he was a leaseholder of a large farm in Lukowa and operated a tavern and inn there.

[4] https://www.facebook.com/groups/52505850457/

[5] Lublin archive 35 Fond 1745; Zamość archive 88, Fond 777

[6] Lublin archive 35 Fond 1848, sygn. 0/1/(3 to 74)

[7] https://www.familysearch.org now available in digitized form at http://broadcast.lds.org/fhd/FH_Find_Digital_Records_A4_WEB.pdf

[8] https://szukajwarchiwach.pl/

[9] https://jri-poland.org/jriplweb.htm 

[10] https://jri-poland.org/maps/jrimap_s2.asp

[11] 1848 death akta 162, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1790. The clerk recorded the name of his parents as Szmol

    and Gryna; but other records, found later by us, reveal the father’s real name to be Szlama, i.e. Shlomo

[12] 1828 marriage akta 2, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1790

[13] PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/7. 1832 death akta 14. Although three granddaughters were named Ruchl Laja, we attribute this to their being named after a common grandmother, Abram’s mother-in-la

[14] 1848 death akta 18, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/23.

[15] See the 1822 marriage record 1, Archive 35 Fond 1879.  Although Majer was from Zelechow, his daughter, Chaja Cyrl, married in Miedzyrzec Podlaski. The naming pattern is somewhat contorted.  Although Majer named Jankelewicz, his wife is named in reference to her husband as Szlomowicz Meierow. Therefore it appears as if Majer was the son of Szlomo who was the son of Jankel. 

[16] 1825 death akta 23, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1834/0/1/48.  According to the clerk, Michla was 76 years old at her death, making her birth year too close to that of Szlama’s.  Considering that she was also identified by the patronym Kopelowicz, she was more likely a daughter of Jakob Kopel himself.

[17] Wunder, Meir (2010), Ohel Shimon – Tol’dot HaTzaddik HaKadosh HaRabbi Rav Shimon MiYaroslav. Collated together with Sefer Torat Shimon HaShalem  Jerusalem: HaMachon leHantzachat Yahadut Galitzia

[18] This could possibly be referring to the blood libel of Jampola in 1758 when indeed a certain Yakov Zelig did appear in Rome for this purpose.  However, it might be referring to a second unrelated issue and a different Yakov.

[19] a) Rabbi Yitzchak Harif (of Ulianow and Sambor) (1987) “Pnei Yitzchak”, Introduction, Jerusalem: Avraham Tzvi Lifshitz.

    b) Walden, Moshe (1911) “Nifla’ot HaRebbi”, p. 5, Jerusalimski: Bilgoraj

    c) Alfasi, Yitzchak (1969) HaChozeh MiLublin, Rabbi Yakov Yitzchak HaLevy Horowitz, p. 20. Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook Publishing.

[20] Trzciński, Andrzej, and Sady, Malgorzata (1990) The Traces of Monuments of Jewish Culture in the Lublin Region, Lublin: Wojewódzki Ośrodek Informacji Turystyczne

[21] (note 11 on p. 12 of Ohel Shimon, footnote 17, above)

[22] In his youth, Yisroel was a student of Leyb MARGULES, who later became the Rabbi of Jozefow.  Therefore there is a good likelihood that Yisroel married the daughter of his teacher, and moved to Jozefow at this along with his teacher.  This is the likely source of the descriptive “Leibs”.

[23] 1850 death akta 34, PSA Archive 58, Fond 194

[24] 1839 death akta 12, PSA Archive 58, Fond 185

[25] 1818 marriage akta 13, PSA Archive 58, Fond 194.  She subsequently remarried in 1822 in Szczebrzeszyn, akta 1, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1834/0/1/1

[26] District Revision Lists.  LDS microfilm #s 2313479-482, 486, 487, 2234586,  Retrieved from jri-poland.org

[27] 1859 death akta 8, PSA Archive 62, Fond 185; and 1890 death akta 1, PSA Archive 62, Fond 185; and 1830 marriage akta 1, PSA Archive 35, Fond 177

[28] 1886 death akta 66, PSA Archive 56, Fond 2136

[29] 1853 death akta 49, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/28

[30] 1832 marriage akta 12, PSA Archive 21, Fond 555

[31] 1818 death akta 13, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1834/0/1/18

[32] 1822 marriage akta 1, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1930 We are actively searching for Berek’s headstone.

[33] Rabbi Eliezer of Metz (1804 edition) p. 10. Zolkiew: Rabbi Gershon Literis Publ.  Retrieved 2019 from https://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=32706&st=&pgnum=10&hilite=

[34] Berek is the diminutive form for Ber, while Dov is its Hebrew kinnui. He is probably the same as the Berek Elbaum of Jozefow and Szczebrzysyn, i.e. Yisroel Leib’s son, who was described in 1822 as living in Jerusalem.

[35] 1834 death akta 30, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/9

[36] Corinne Appleton transl., from: Pinkas Hakehillot: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Poland, Volume VII (2003). Jozefow, pp 256-258. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. Retrieved fromhttps://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_poland/pol7_00256.html. The chapter on the early Rabbis states that “at the beginning of the [19^th] century, probably 1824, Dawid Saadia and Szaja Waks founded a Hebrew printing press [in Jozefow].” Szaja WAKS (ca 1790 – ) does appear in the civil registration records of Jozefow, as a clergyman and as a son of Cala (Betzalel) WAX (1770-1828).  See 1828 death akta 6, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/3.  Cala is described as a dealer in paper, a convenient if not a necessary affiliation to a printing house.  He is also known to have been a wealthy owner of an agricultural estate in the village of Hamer outside of Tarnograd, although he was described in the records as living in nearby Hrubieszow, where indeed we have found records of the rest of the extended family. 

[37] The history of the WAKS family is described in the introduction to Chaim Elazar Waks (2006) Nefesh Chaya. Part 2 of Ginzei Avot, edited by his descendant R’Yehoshua Eibeshitz (1916-2019), Jerusalem: HaMachole Limudei HaShoah. See especially p. 180.  Chaim Elazar Waks (1822-1889) was the Av Beit Din (Head of the Rabbinical Court) in Tarnograd (near Lukowa) from the age of 18 until 1859, succeeding his father, Abram Lejb (a son of Cala); and then he became the Av Beit Din of Kalisz, from where his fame as halachic arbiter spread throughout Poland. (Interestingly, in the civil registry records of Kalisz his surname is given as GERYMTER-WAKS a couple of times for no apparent reason, except that it literally means “the illustrious” in Yiddish, apparently to distinguish him from the many other (unrelated) WAKSes living in Kalisz.  But we note that Szaja WAKS, the clergyman from Jozefow and uncle of Chaim Elazar, married off a son into the GERYMTER family of Jozefow.  So the GERYMTER part of the surname was not the original family surname, but nevertheless not totally invented. See also Rosenstein, Neil (2008) Avotaynu, Vol 24 for a related interpretation. Chaim Elaza WAKS was the son-in-law of Yehoshua Trunk, the Rabbi of Kutno, an ELBAUM outpost. Chaim Elazar’s father, Abram Lejb (b ca 1795), was the son of the Betzalel (Cala) WAKS appearing in the subscription list. The editor of Nefesh Chaya was not personally aware of the parentage of Cala (private communication) prior to our research. 

[38] Cala (Betzalel) was the son of Leib WAKS of Hrubieszow and of Chaja Sora.  Leib must have been born ca 1745 or earlier.  Numerous descendants of Cala’s siblings were named Cala, suggesting that Leib’s father was probably named Cala (b. ca 1720 or earlier).  Now, Leib’s daughter, Jenta Szajndl, married a Kopel ZYSBRENNER (b.1777) who, it turns out (see below), was a grandson of Yakov Kopel Lukover himself, via a previously unknown daughter, Michla.  Jenta Szjandl’s daughter, Ryfka Matl (1827 marriage akta 4, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/2) married Cala WAKS’ nephew, Szmul in 1827, son of [J]Ankiel WAKS (born 1780).  This was most likely a cousin marriage, suggesting that Jankel (akaYakov) too was a grandson of Yakov Kopel Lukover. The only obvious explanation is that Chaja Sora was another previously unknown daughter, or else the original Betzalel WAKS (b ca 1720) was a previously unknown son-in-law of Yakov Kopel.

[39] We can give two examples:

   1) Frojm KUPFERSZTEJN (1784-1824) married Serl WAKS, a probable sister of Cala.  Also, Cala himself married Chana KUPFERSZTEJN, daughter of Chaim and Basia.  So it is recorded in her death record.  In earlier records she was surnamed HAMER; but that was most likely because she must have come from or lived in HAMER, the estate that Cala owned.) Unfortunately, we do not know the relationship between Frojm and Chaim to Moshe KUPFERSZTEJN of the distribution list, as the latter is not mentioned in the parish records. We surmise The simplest conclusion is that Moshe must have died between the writing of the distribution list in 1804 and the first records in 1810.  However, the available records are not complete.  So we reserve judgment.

   2) We have also deciphered a headstone inscription in the Jewish cemetery of Jozefow, the image of which was kindly provided by Prof. Trzciński. It  describes the deceased, Yakov Yitzchak HaKohen (1847-1878) benMordechai, as a descendant of Yakov Kopel Lukover.  Although no real surname appears on the headstone, we found his marriage record (1869 marriage akta 1, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736)  in the civil registry records of Jozefow, which revealed that his parents were Mordka KAHN (1800-1854) and Chana ROZNER.  The latter’s marriage record (1823 marriage akta 23, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/9) showed Mordka’s parents to be [Szmul-] Zanwel KAHAN / KACHAN (ca 1775 – 1834) and Ryfka (d. 1817).  The death record (1834 death akta 28, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1834) revealed Szmul Zanwel’s parents to be Mortko KACHAN (ca 1750 – bed 1800) and Ryfka.  It turns out that Szmul’s sister, Zeftel, married Tewel ELBAUM from Krasnobrod). 

       Therefore, not only is there a marriage into Yakov Kopel’s family but also, according to the 1878 headstone, the KACHAN’s were also independently descended from Yakov Kopel. Since the original Mordko KACHAN was a Kohen, he could not be a son of Kopel. However, Mordko’s wife Ryfka born ca 1750 or earlier might well have been yet another unknown daughter (or granddaughter) of Kopel. In the context of the subscription list we note that one of the signators was Shmuel, son of the Rabbi Mi-Kachan.  We are tempted to identify him as our Szmul Zanwel KACHAN, were it not for the extra letter “Mi”.  It is also not beyond the realm of possibility that the first name on the list, Rabbi Eliezer HaKOHEN, might have had a connection to the KACHAN / HaKohen family – perhaps even the father of Mortko.

[40] Patent. “Die Führung bestimmter Geschlechtsnamen von 1-ten Jäner 1788 bei fer Judenschaft betrefend” [Austrian German version] or „Uniwersał. Aby każdy z Żydów od 1 stycznia roku 1788 stałe przezwisko przybra.

[41] In this article we have not bothered to provide family trees beyond the 3^rd or 4^th generation for lack of space.

    sobie” [Polish version]. From „Continuacya wyroków y rozkazów powszechnych w Galicyi i Lodomeryi”, 1787 (General rulings and orders in Galicia and Lodomeria continued, 1787

[42] Teitelbaum, Heshel (2020) The Circle of the Keter Kehuna in Pinczow, in preparation for publication.

[43] Alfasi, Yitzchak (1969) HaChozeh MiLublin, Rabbi Yakov Yitzchak HaLevy Horowitz, p. 20. Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook Publishing

[44] The Seer’s first marriage, which failed, took place in or near Krasnobrod, according to family lore reported by  Alfassi, op cit.  This match was possibly arranged by the Chozeh’s uncle, Shlomo Tzvi of Krasnobrod.

[45] No historian has actually ever addressed this obvious problem. One possible explanation is that Jakob Kopel encouraged the naming of grandsons after himself in order to fool the Angel of Death and to reinforce the latter’s not killing him prematurely in 1744. This stratagem would have been designed to convince the Angel of Death not to waste his time. After all, Kopel must already be already dead if grandsons are being named after him.

   Although this is a fanciful explanation, it is certainly in keeping with the worldview of mystics, of Kabbalists (for whom events on Earth are mirrored up in Heaven) and of those ensconced in a spiritual sphere of existence.  Nevertheless, we give an additional, more plausible hypothesis below.

[46] The Birth year of 1742 is estimated from his age of 72 reported by the clerk in Kutno in 1814.

[47] Since The early study by Nathan Michael Gelber (1963) “Letoledot HaSefaradim bePolin” in Otzar Yehudei Sefarad Vol. 6 pp. 88-98. Over a dozen out of the 39 supposedly Sephardic Jews listed clearly came from Italy. The question of Sephardi Jews in Poland is a current topic of discussion. See for example, see Efron, Noah J. (2006

    Case of Zamość: a Sephardic Enclave in the Heart of Poland (Part I)”, The Jewish History Channel, 

    ha-historion.blogspot.com/2012/12/series-sephard-in-ashkenaz-and-ashkenaz_30.html; Beider, Alexander (2017)

    Judaism and Science: A Historical Introduction. Westport: Greenwood Press;  Davidi, Joel S. W. (2012)“The Many Sephardic Jews Aren’t Actually ‘Sephardic’” Retrieved fromhttps://forward.com/opinion/world/387971/many-sephardic-jews-arent-actually-sephardic/;

    Beider, Alexander (1996) Sephardim in Eastern Europe in A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland. New Haven Ct: Avotaynu, Retrieved from http://www.avotaynu.com/sephardim.htm; and Beider,   

    Pseudo-Sephardic Surnames from Italy –  Exceptional Ashkenazic Surnames of Sephardic Origin; Avotaynu Vol 33 (4) pp 3-5. Beider argues that Italian Jews of the times were mixtures of those whose ancestors had lived in Italy since Roman times, of Jews expelled from France in 1394, of Provencial and Spanish Jews who arrived at the turn of the 15th and 16th centuries; and of North African Jewish immigrants during the mid-18th century.  Gradually they all merged with the segments who followed Sephardic tradition.

[48] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamoyski_Family_Fee_Tail

[49] Nardo Bonomi (personal communication)

[50] See https://www.thejc.com/news/world/plan-to-redevelop-site-where-eminent-italian-kabbalists-are-buried-  1.434944

[51] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_G-M377

[52] https://www.yfull.com/tree/G-M377/

[53] Beider, Alexander (2004) A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia, revised. New Haven, CT: Avotaynu.

[54] Moldavia Marriages & divorces  retrieved from https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/jgdetail_2.php

[55] Wunder, Meir (2010), Ohel Shimon – Tol’dot HaTzaddik HaKadosh HaRabbi Rav Shimon MiYaroslav. Collated together with Sefer Torat Shimon HaShalem  Jerusalem: HaMachon leHantzachat Yahadut Galitzia

[56] https://www.geni.com/people/Chava-Safrin/6000000006712214075

[57] Marriage Akta 7 (1822) Archive 21 Fond 2341,  LDS film 0,716,158

[58] Toldos Komarno in the book Chayim Yakov Safrin (2006-7) Shalsheles HaKodesh Jerusalem: Machon Otzar HaBrachah  

[59] 1820 marriage akta 10, PSA Archive 21, Fond 2335

[60] Jozefow death Akta 23 (1825) Archive 35, Fond 1834/0/1/48

[61] It may very well be that Shlomo Tzvi’s wife, Gryna, and the early Gryna of the WAKS family were related.

[62] 1814 death akta 25, PSA Archive 39, Fond 1539

[63] 1825 death akta 10, PSA Archive 39, Fond 1539

[64] The SZLAJFERs were also from Jozefow

[65] The father was variously known as OELBAUM, ALBAUM and ELBAUM. Kutno was under Prussian control at this critical time, and the Germanic version of the surname probably must have gained some traction then.

[66] 1820 birth akta 166, PSA Archive 39, Fond 1539

[67] 1834 marriage akta 6, PSA Archive 58, Fond 184

[68] 1836 death akta 196, PSA Archive 72, Fond 180. To complete the picture, we recall that there was yet a fourth Szmul (born ca 1755) married to Ruchl whose son, Majer (1775-1850), was living in Tarnow and in Zwolen (see above).  We had already concluded tentatively that this fourth Szmul was a son of Yisroel Leibs.  Now we can confirm that this conclusion must be correct, because there was nobody else who could be a candidate as a Yakov Kopel had already named a son Szmul ca 1720; the latter’s son Berek of Warsaw (b ca 1735) had also named a son Szmul, much later in 1777; and there is no evidence that Shlomo Tzvi had a son Szmul. 

[69] e. g. 1811 birth akta 48, PSA Archive 39, Fond 1539. See also 1796 census Archive 39 Fond 51

[70] Beider, Alexander (2004) A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia, revised. New Haven, CT: Avotaynu.

[71] Moldavia Marriages & divorces  retrieved from https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/jgdetail_2.php

[72] http://www.open-genomes.org/  

[73] http://www.open-genomes.org/genomes/personal/Elbaum/Elbaum_Genetics.html, courtesy of Ted KandelKandell.

[74] https://www.yfull.com/;  https://yfull.com/tree/G-Y12975. 

[75] STRs collected for G-M377 can be seen at https://jewishdna.net/AB-056.html

[76] https://www.yfull.com/tree/G-M377/

[77] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_G-M377

[78] Cox, S. T. et al, HLA‐A, ‐B, ‐C polymorphism in a UK Ashkenazi Jewish potential bone marrow donor population, HLA Immune Response Genetics, 53, 1, (41-50), (1999).

On the occasion of the 250^th anniversary of the death of Yaakov Kopel Lukover*

Abstract

Keywords

Yaakov Kopel Likover (ca.1695-1769) a well-known kabbalist, scholar, tavern owner and progenitor of at least three Chassidic dynastic legacies is the progenitor of the Elbaum surname. Starting from a classical reconstruction of a family tree in the particular town of Krasnobrod, we have succeeded in tracking the entire family of Shlomo Tzvi Elbaum, in linking him to Yakov Kopel Likover, and in deducing the latter’s previously unknown descendants.  We have examined family tombstones and the subscription list of an important scholarly work, thereby learning more about the family. The peculiar geopolitical history, particularly of the Zamość District, of the main towns of residence in relationship to Austrian naming laws allowed us to determine the etymological origin of the surname, Elbaum.  The unusual naming of grandchildren of the progenitor of the family during his lifetime, along with peculiar aspects of hagiography, i.e. idealized biographies, allowed us to determine the possible Italian provenance of the family. DNA analysis indicates that the family was Ashkenazic with minimal (or no) evidence of Sephardic ancestry.

Rabbinic genealogy, Kopel Likover, origin of surnames, tombstone inscriptions, prenumeranten lists, family reconstruction, DNA studies

*Presented in part at the 38^th IAJGS, Warsaw, Aug. 2018

A. Introduction

The origin and development of Jewish surnames in Poland has been the subject of several modern treatises^[1].  The studies are based on religious, historical, philological and etymological principles. By and large the forced adoption of surnames took effect only over a 20-year period, regardless of regulations, during which time there was a transition from the age-old system of patronyms to one of invented surnames.  As Jews became used to the new order, identities sometimes vacillated between two or more invented surnames until the names became invariant by about 1830.  Not so ELBAUM^[2], which seems to have appeared sometime around 1788 and remained fixed thereafter. Furthermore, as we found out from the present study, no unrelated family seems to have adopted that surname. Aside from its uniqueness, ELBAUM is also a prime example of a Jewish family whose members lived almost entirely in the Lublin Guberniya, specifically in the Zamość and Tamoszow districts of Galicia in 1788.   Its near geographic isolation allows us the opportunity to study the history of the family without having to stretch our resources too widely. The progenitor of the family, known to historians, was Yakov Koppel Lukover (ca 1695-1769). He had a reputation as a scholar and kabbalist; and he was also famous for his kindness to his guests and to all travelers stopping at his tavern in the Polish village of Lukowa near Tarnograd.^[3]  Lukover was, therefore, a toponym.

The purpose of this study is to, not only flesh out the genealogical history of the ELBAUM family, but also to trace the origin of the surname.  The surname appears to have remained stubbornly unchanged for the most part, even as those of other contemporary families evolved or changed dramatically during the 19^th century.  Its establishment is partly a quirk of history and geography, subject to religious custom.  We are fortunate that the progenitor of the family, Yakov Kopel Lukover, is a well-known religious figure with even more well-known descendants who were religious leaders and who left behind oral and written records.  This helps us to track the family history throughout the ages.  Hagiography in these writings luckily provides us with clues to the family history prior to its arrival in Poland without those authors necessarily knowing such details.  The only other source of information which we have encountered regarding the origin of the family dates back to 1935 with the establishment of the Oelbaum Family Society^[4] which has a tradition of descent from Kopel Lukover. We believe that ours, however, is the first comprehensive and systematic study. 

B. Procedure

     a) Record extraction

Since the original aim of the project was restricted to reconstructing the family history of one particular Elbaum family living in Krasnobrod (Lublin guberniya), we started with the extraction of genealogical data available in the Polish State Archives for that town starting from 1826 when birth, marriage and death records were kept in separate books for Jews^[5].  A single monolithic family was revealed. This exercise was extended to the vital records kept in the mixed Catholic / non-Catholic parish records covering the years 1810 to 1825^[6]. This is sometimes referred to as the patronymic era because, at least for Jews, surnames were most often absent and, instead, Jews were denoted as X son/daughter of Y.  We were surprised, however, to see the Elbaum surname being in use as early as 1810.  The data had been extracted from the records which had been originally microfilmed in the past^[7] or from images available on the Polish State Archives website^[8], many of which are also available at the website of Jewish Records Indexing – Poland (JRI-Poland.org) ^[9].  The family reconstruction indicated that all Elbaums living in Krasnobrod were related.  The reconstruction was subsequently augmented by studying the records from neighboring towns.  Printed family histories placed this Krasnobrod clan into a larger framework.

An important headstone, still extant in the Jewish cemetery of Jozefow Ordinacki, helped us enormously with the reconstruction, as it spread further afield in Lublin province.

     b) Geographic provenance of the Elbaum surname

One of JRI-Polands’s tools is a time-and-space mapper^[10] indicating the density of the use of any given surname during any particular decade after 1810. The application to the surname, Elbaum, indicates that its use showed up in Zamość county and in very distant Kutno. (See Figure 1, below).  We shall argue that the Kutno branch transported its name when it migrated from the Zamość area to Kutno after about 1788.  In each case, the family spread outward concentrically from these locations as the generations progressed.  No registry data was available prior to 1808, leaving us with the uncertainty of whether or not there were two unrelated Elbaum clans originating simultaneously in two different regions.  Therefore, the next step was to examine the history of these two locations.  An important Prenumeranten (subscription) list helped us to answer this question. 

1811-1820

1831-1840

1851-1860

Fig. 1. Time- and space-distribution of ELBAUM family events during the early period of record-keeping in Poland.

Reproduced with the kind permission from JRI-Poland.

c) Austrian surname laws

Zamość county was, at one point in this critical time period, located within the Austrian Empire.  Therefore, we examined the legal use of surnames within the region, subject to the historical framework of rapidly changing borders.

    d) Origin of the Elbaum family itself

We then examined family lore recorded by the Rabbinic branches themselves in order to understand the broader picture including the geographical origin of the Elbaum family prior to its arrival in Poland. 

C. Results and Discussion

At first, the analysis of the civil registry records led us to most of the children of Josef ELBAUM  (1768-1818) of Krasnobrod. The patronymic era records revealed that the parents of Josef were Szlama and Gryna^[11].   With such an unusual combination of given names, it was not difficult to expand the scope to nearby towns, thus revealing several additional Elbaums whose parents were Szlama and Gryna.  A chart resulting from this earliest analysis is shown in Figure 2, below.

Fig. 2.  Children of Shlomo Tzvi Elbaum

Moszek, a teacher, was identified by virtue of his (second) marriage in 1828 in Zamość to Fayga BRAM^[12]. His father, Szlama, was identified as the erstwhile beadle in the synagogue of Kransobrod.  Abram, two of whose sons lived in Lublin, was identified by virtue of grandchildren with the telltale names, Szlama and Gryna, as well as from his 1832 death record in Jozefow Ordynacki^[13], henceforth referred to simply as Jozefow.  Because Szlama was born ca 1800, this provides an upper limit to the death year of Shlomo Tzvi.  Another son, Kopel, was identified by virtue of his death record in 1848 in Jozefow^[14].  The last son, Majer ELENBAUM, living in Zelechow, was the son of Szlama Jankelewicz^[15].  Jankel is, of course, the Yiddish endearment for Yakov [Kopel].  We also considered whether a certain Michla, nee ELBAUM, who died in 1825 in Jozefow^[16], could be a daughter of Szlama, given that she named grandchildren Szlama and Gryna; but ultimately we rejected this possibility (see below for a deeper analysis).

At this point, we realized that, even though Gryna had never before been identified prior to our study, nor any of her children, nevertheless Shlomo [Tzvi] Elbaum was known in the literature as a son of Yakov Kopel Lukover.  Meir Wunder’s study^[17] of Shimon Maryles, the Chassidic Rebbe of Jaroslaw, devotes a chapter to Yakov Kopel Lukover and his then known children.  An outline of Yakov Kopel’s family tree, based on Wunder’s work (2010) and showing two sons – Shlomo Tzvi (who lived in Krasnobrod, unbeknownst to historians) and Israel Leibs (who lived in Jozefow) – is given in Figure 3, below.

Fig. 3. The first three generations after Yakov Kopel Lukover, as per reference 17.  

The boxes shaded in blue are for three early Chassidic leaders

We see that both sons of Yakov Kopel carried the surname Elbaum (written in one of its variant forms).  Only one of Israel’s own sons, Shimon (and his descendants), deviated from this practice because of the desire to commemorate the latter’s father by using the acronym, MARYL’S or MARYLES, i.e. Mi-Avinu-R’Yisroel Leibs. 

Wunder recounts the family tradition that Yakov Kopel was a learned Kabbalist but lived in the tiny agricultural village of Lukowa close to Tarnograd.  Although a scholar, he did not have a Rabbinic position but rather operated a wayside inn where he generously offered hospitality to Jewish travelers.  His fame as a scholar spread to the point where he was offered the position of Chief Rabbi of Amsterdam – which he rejected.  Although he was an opponent of Chassidism, Yakov was approached by the Ba’al Shem Tov (d. 1772) the founder of the Chassidic movement, who asked him to intercede with Yakov’s friend, the Pope in Rome, in a quest to act farably towards the Jews of Poland.^[18] 

Yakov Kopel died in 1769 and was buried in nearby Tarnograd.  Although his headstone is no longer extant, the inscription was recorded prior to World War 2^[19].  Ours, the first English translation, is given below:

“And Jacob went out from Be’er Sheva,
He would provide for every wayfarer,
and now he has gone on his way in holiness.  He was a saint.
In the year [5]529 [i.e. 1769] on Wednesday on the minor Shushan Purim,
the luminaries were removed, and the Holy Ark was captured.
And the scholar, superb in Torah learning and in acts of kindness,
was summoned to heaven.  Famed in praise, our teacher, Yakov Kopel,
son of the recently deceased Kalonymus”.

It is not surprising that the surviving children, immersed in Torah scholarship, too, compared Yakov Kopel to the Biblical forefather and namesake, Jacob, who also left the family well of Torah nourishment, towards his encounter with destiny.

We shall not repeat details of the family history described in Wunder’s study, which essentially concentrated on the life and works of Shimon and his descendants.  We wish to underline only two key points relevant to our study of Shimon’s siblings and of the father Jakob:  1) Yisroel Leibs family migrated deeper into Galicia, while his siblings remained in Poland proper; and 2) The headstone, shown below in Fig. 4, is miraculously still extant in the Jewish cemetery of Jozefow; and it has been transcribed by Trczinski^[20]. Wunder^[21], too, reproduced the inscription in Hebrew of the headstone of Yisroel Leibs as first published in Dvar Chein (p. 178).  It reads:

Fig. 4. The headstone of Yisroel Leibs [ELBAUM], in front of one of the present authors (DE) in Jozefow

Inscriptions for illustrious scholars are usually very poetic with Biblical references; and this headstone is no exception.  This one is a partial quote from the Biblical episode of the gathering of the 12 sons of the patriarch, Jacob (i.e. Israel), around his deathbed to listen to the final words of the father.  Ours, the first English translation is very instructive:

Gather around your father Israel
And cry over him with embittered souls
And let your tears roll down ceaselessly [for]
Him who led you in the [path of the] fear of God all his life
The honest learned scholar who walked in the footsteps of his forefathers
…..  our teacher and Rabbi, Israel,
son of the famous Kabbalist,
referred to as a holy man of God,
our Rabbi and teacher Yakov Kopel LUKOVER.
May the memory of this Tzaddik be a blessing forever.
He passed away on the second day of Pesach [5]572 [1812]
May his soul be bound up in the bonds of everlasting life.

From this, we note, the deceased’s real name was merely Israel / Yisroel; and so the descriptive additive, Leibs, must refer to the name of his father-in-law, a common grammatical construct for such cases when ambiguity might otherwise arise from multiple marriages.  Furthermore, in order to complete the parallel Biblical allusion, we naturally conclude that Yisroel Leibs must have also had 12 sons (and an unknown number of daughters), whereas at the outset of this study we knew of only four. This directs us to further research on that part of Yisroel’s family which might have remained in Poland proper, as opposed to those sons who were known to have moved to Eastern Galicia.  By studying all available Polish civil registration data that do not connect to Shlomo Tzvi, we believe, we have uncovered 11 of the twelve sons of Yisroel and at least two daughters and their families, thereby fleshing out most of the history of the descendants of Yakov Kopel Likover who, by the end of the 19^th century, spread out over most of Poland and Galicia and even into Hungary and Moldavia.   As mentioned above, four were already known and were described by Wunder.   As part of this exercise, we have come across extra personalities who could only have been additional children of Yakov Koppel himself (discussed further, below.)

The remainder, discovered by us and shown in Figure 5, were discovered raising families in various Polish towns. According to Wunder (ref. 16), Yisroel was married to a Hinda, daughter of Leyb^[22].  However, we have found records where his (second) wife was Ruchl; and this is consistent with giving birth to children as late as 1785.  Many of these children were living in Jozefow or nearby. In approximate chronological order we have found:

1. Szmul ELBAUM (born ca 1755) was married to Ruchl.  He was identified by the death of his son, Majer (1775-1850), recorded in Tarnow and Zwolen^[23].  Since a religious Jew would not marry a woman with the same name as his mother, we tend to believe that Szmul was the son of Yisroel Leibs’ first wife, Hinda.  However, the issue is complicated by the existence of a least three contemporary men named Szmul / Samuel ELBAUM, one of whom was a likely an early son of Yakov Kopel himself. For now, we attach the Szmul in question to Yisroel Leibs.  See further, below.

2. Leyzor ALBAUM (b ca 1760) and his wife, Sura, were the parents of Zelman ALBAUM(1784-1839)^[24], Rabbi of Kazanow. We have connected Leyzor to Yisroel Leibs by virtue of a grandson, named Izrael in 1838.

3. Fayga ELBAUM, born ca 1760, was married to Chaim WOLBEDACHT. Their son, Szmul, married Zora / Sora, the daughter of Berek ELBAUM, born ca 1775, and Frayda FYNKEL^[25],in 1818 in Jozefow.  Fayga and the WOLBEDACHTs were from Jozefow, which was YisroelLeibs’ homestead.  Since a granddaughter was named Ruchl, we suspect that Fayga was the daughter of Yisroel Leibs second wife.  Berek’s provenance is a bit murky.  His children were being married in Jozefow, Sokolow Podlaski and Szczebrzeszyn.

4. Boruch EJLBOJM (born ca 1765) appeared in the 1850 census of Krements as the father of Szymon of Radziwill, in the region of Galicia^[26] where Yisroel Leibs’ known children lived.

5. Oszer Anczel (born ca 1765) a tailor from Jozefow, and married to Malka Chana Herszkowicz, had two sons – Leyzor ELBUM and Majer ALBUM – living in Kosow Lacki^[27].  Another son, Eliye OELBAUM, was married off in Szczebrzeszyn.  Their marriage and death records mention Oszer as their father. Again, the association with Jozefow or nearby, links Oszer to Yisroel Leibs.

6. Another possible son, is Salomon ÖHLBAUM from Jozefow and born ca 1775.  His daughter, Feige SCHLEFRIG, died in 1886^[28], in the nearby Galician town of Jaroslaw.  Salomon’s son Berek, born in 1800, married a second time to Katzl / Katja IZAAK (45 years his junior) of Bargszas in Hungary. Berek must have been from a very prestigious family for such a match.

7. Etl ELBAUM (1777-1853) was married to Nuchym SZECHTER of Jozefow.  Etl’s death record^[29] explicitly states that her parents were Izrael and Ruch

8. Icyk Eyzyk ELBAUM (ca 1785 – > 1832) of Zelechow and his wife, Ester, married off a son, Izrael, in Konskie in 1832^[30].  Since Izrael was born in 1813 – one year after the death of Yisroel Leibs – it seems clear that Icyk Eyzyk was a late-born son of Yisroel Leibs.

9. Berek ELBAUM, born ca 1775, was likely a brother of Fayga (#3 above).  Their children who married each other were thus likely first cousins to each other. If more distantly related that, they could not be children of Yisroel Leibs, but rather of Yakov Kopel himself. This is not possible since Yakov Kopel had already died by 1769.  When Berek married off his daughter, Zora, in 1818, he was a resident of Jozefow^[31].  But when Zora remarried in 1822 (in Szczebrzeszyn), Berek was described as already a resident of Jerusalem!!^[32]

Fig. 5. Likely children of Yisroel Leibs ELBAUM.  Names in colored boxes were deduced in the present study.

We now address the question of origins, both of the name Elbaum as well as of the family itself.

The first mention of the surname Elbaum does not occur in Polish civil registration or parish records, but rather in a Hebrew Prenumeranten (subscription) list printed in Zolkiew in 1804.  Virtually all of the notable scholars in Poland and Galicia subscribed to this book, Sefer Yere’im.^[33]  The ones from Jozefow are shown below in Figure 6. These are the town scholars.

Fig. 6. List of subscribers for Sefer Yere’im (1804) living in Jozefow

We recognize our Yisroel ELBAUM and note that his given name does not contain the added Leibs, thus confirming our interpretation above.  Both he and his relative, Dov Ber^[34], used the Yiddishized version of the name Elbaum, namely “Eilboim”.  In addition, Yisroel described himself as being from Lukowa, a village which he had left 46 years earlier, in 1758, in order to marry and settle in the town of Jozefow.  Clearly, sometime between the death of Yakov Kopel in 1769 and 1804 the name Elbaum suddenly appeared.  One must ask why, then, if there was still an emotional attachment to the descriptive Lukover, was there a fairly universal switch to a new surname, Elbaum. We believe that the name change was compelled by the 1787 Austrian Familianten laws and surname edicts.

We can also recognize three other personalities on the list:

1. Yisroel Volbedachter who shows up in the civil registration records as Zrul WOLBEDACHT (d 1834)^[35].  This is the same family as the one that Fayga ELBAUM (child # 3, above) married into. It appears that Zrul (son of Josef) was the nephew of Fayga.

2. Furthermore, Zrul was married to Toba LERNER, the daughter of Josef LERNER, who was probably related to Leibish Lerner who also appears on the list.

3. Betzalel Wax is also a fascinating person.  He was a member of the family which founded a publishing house in Jozefow^[36].  He was also the progenitor of a famous Rabbinic family^[37]. And most likely, he was a grandson of Yakov Kopel Lukover.^[38] So far, the subscription list appears to contain members of an extended family; and this tends to confirm that Berek was indeed the brother of Fayga (#9 above) i.e. a son Yisroel Leibs.   We would not be surprised if the others on the list were also relatives of Yisroel Leibs.^[39]

In 1772, the towns in which most of Kopel’s children were living, became part of Galicia.   All descendants living at that time were Austrian subjects.  In 1787 Austria decreed that all its Jews had to adopt German surnames^[40].  Place names like Likover (lit. from Lukowa) were forbidden. Kopel’s living children suddenly had to replace LIKOVER with a Germanic name.  But in 1809 Napoleon shrunk the size of Galicia. The towns, in which Elbaums were living, were suddenly no longer subject to Austrian laws.  By then it was too late:  Yisroel Leibs and Ber ELBAUM seem to have obediently chosen their surname, certainly by the 1804 publication of Sefer Yere’im.  Nevertheless, since the Austrians would be interested in legal documents alone, Yisroel felt able to revert, in such a non-public setting, to the old toponym, Likover, which appears also on his headstone.  

The question which remains is why the name Elbaum, in particular, was chosen.  We hypothesize that in 1787 the family cleverly transformed the toponym into a surname via a 2-stage process:  1) applying an anagram (ie. re-arrangement of letters or words in phrases –   especially common in Kabbalah; and 2) applying a calque (i.e. a literal translation, a copy, from one language to another).  Any family, like Kopel’s, which was mystically inclined, felt comfortable doing so. Thus Likowa (cf Likover) was transformed into Oliwka which, in Polish can mean olive or olive tree. The latter version translates directly into the German ÖLBAUM / OELBAUM. This double trick allowed Yakov Kopel’s sons to preserve their original “surname” without offending the Austrian laws. By 1809, when the more liberal Polish regulations were in force, the surname was already established, and there was no natural desire to deviate from a surname which actually served its purpose, namely to honor the family’s famous ancestor

Having successfully traced the family from 1769 to modern times^[41], we now turn our attention to additional children of Yakov Kopel Lukover beyond Shlomo Tzvi and Yisroel Leibs.  Some  clarification is needed for two of the known important children or grandchildren.  Part of the fallout from this investigation allows us to penetrate to earlier times and locations.  We also end up discovering 4 or 5 previously unknown children of Yakov Kopel.

a) Matel

One of the known daughters of Yakov Kopel, named Matel (b ca 1725), married Avraham Elazar Horowitz who became the Rabbi of the town of Jozefow.  Their son, Yakov Yitzchak Horowitz, known as the “Chozeh” of Lublin, literally meaning “seer” or “visionary” in Hebrew, was a charismatic miracle-worker. He was popularized by his great intuitive powers and his penetrating gaze, and was thereby responsible for the early spread of Chassidism via his many disciples who took leadership roles in various towns throughout Poland.  Indeed, he mentored his first-cousin, Shimon, Rebbe of Jaroslaw.  And he was also responsible for the marriage of his much younger aunt (see below) to Alexander Sender Safran, the Rebbe of Komarno / Chmielnik, and indirectly of their son, Eyzyk, progenitor of a branch of the Zidichover Rebbes to his distant cousin^[42].  We focus on the Seer because of the peculiarity of his given name, Yakov, so-named in 1745 during the lifetime of his grandfather, Yakov Kopel. The family lore, presumably initiated by Kopel himself, is described by Alfasi^[43].  He was spared by the Angel of Death in the year 1744, and given an extra 25 years of life with the opportunity to marry off his eldest daughter, Matel, to see the birth of his grandson the future Seer, and to attend the latter’s marriage in 1765.^[44] In fact, Kopel insisted on raising the young Yakov Yitzchak in his own home in Lukowa and then Tarnograd, away from the youth’s own parents.  How could a Polish Jew tolerate the naming of a grandson in his own lifetime^[45] and, indeed in his own presence?  The answer must be the same as that for why there was in fact, another grandson of Kopel who was given the name Yakov. That was Jakob Elbaum of Kutno, born approximately in 1744^[46].   

But this mystery is only part of a larger puzzle: Why would the Amsterdam community choose a relatively unknown innkeeper from the agricultural village of Lukowa to be their Rabbi?  How could a Polish village innkeeper develop his skills as an accomplished kabbalist in isolation without any masters?  How could a simple Polish village innkeeper learn Italian well enough to intercede with his acquaintance, the Pope, on behalf of his fellow Jews? 

Generally, the only Jews who name boys after their living grandfathers are Sefardi or Italian Jews.  Consequently, we believe that Kopel or his father was an Italian or Sephardic Jew, possibly from Padua, Amsterdam or Venice where Kopel would have been close to centers of Kabbalah and where he could have developed a friendship with the future Pope; and then moved to Lukowa 54 km from Zamość (“Padua of the North”) because of ties to Italian relatives. This certainly explains the naming anomaly. Why Zamość, though?  It turns out that this was the home to Italian artisans and Sephardic Jews,^[47] who had exclusively been invited by its owner, the nobleman Jan Zamoyski, to settle and develop his town Zamość in an Italian style in 1588.  After his death in 1605, the “Sephardic” and/or Italian Jews are thought to have scattered or to have assimilated among Ashkenazi Jews. However, it seems just as plausible that they moved to other family holdings within the estate (Zamość, Goraj, Janów Lubelski, Kraśnik, Krzeszów, Szczebrzeszyn, Tarnogród, Tomaszów Lubelski, and Turobin, as well as 157 villages which presumably included Lukowa.)^[48]  The holdings of the family expanded considerably.  Until 1775 distant Kutno, too, was owned by Andrzej Zamoyski.  We presume that after the original Zamość estates fell under Austrian rule in 1773, many Jews from that area may have moved to privately owned Kutno, which was under Prussian control from 1793 to1807, in order to avoid increasingly oppressive Austrian laws, for family ties, or for economic reasons.  In Kutno there is mention of, not only Elbaums, but also of other exclusive Zamość area families living in Kutno, (e.g. KIBEL, SPERLING, ELBAUM, ROK / RAK, SZLAJFER, GAJST). This could explain the sudden blooming of the Elbaum records in Kutno, including the death of Yakov, a grandson of Kopel born ca 1744, a member of a family which was apparently still observing Mediterranean customs. 

In principle, we can go further and try to find Kopel’s family in Western Europe.  The major centers for Kaballah in the late 17^th early 18^th century were Venice and Amsterdam. A major hotbed of Kabbalah at the time was Padua^[49]. Prominent Kabbalists of the time were Moses ben Mordecai Zacuto of Amsterdam; and Moshe Chaim Luzzatto of Venice and Amsterdam – a younger contemporary of Kopel Lukover.  Mantua is also a strong possibility since many prominent Italian Kabbalists were buried at Mantua.^[50]

Tracing Kopel’s father, Kalonymus, (Calimani in Italian) within these circles is a work in progress.

b) The Safrin Dynasty

The identity of the mother of Yitzchak Yehuda Yechiel SAFRIN, the Chassidic Rebbe of Komarno, has been somewhat controversial until the present study. Family lore merely asserts a descent from Yakov Kopel Lukover.  Wunder^[51] claims that she was Chana, the granddaughter of Kopel. Others claim, again without justification, that she was Chawa^[52], an actual daughter of Kopel. One would think that civil registry records ought to clarify the issue; however, it appears that researchers were scouring, in vain, the archives of Safrin, Hungary from where his family came, or else the original family surname, EICHENSTEIN, of Zydaczow where he was brought up.  We have, however, uncovered the 1822 Pinczow marriage record of the 20-year old Yitzchak Yehuda Yechiel, the future Admor of Komarno^[53] (signing as Eyzyk Sender, i.e. son of Sender, and living in Chmielnik, as expected), to 19-year old Gitl (the daughter of the Admor of Pinczow, Avraham Mordechai HOROWICZ, again as expected).  An image of this record (Figure 7, below) shows that the groom’s mother is named Rochl z Koplow. 

Fig. 7. Image of a portion of the 1822 marriage record of Yitzchak [SAFRIN], son of Rochl, daughter of Kopel

In the style of the Polish clerks of the time – this means that Rochl was the daughter of Kopel, presumably Kopel LUKOWER.  However, the name is Rochl rather than Chana or Chawa.  One possible explanation is that it is the groom’s maternal grandmother who is cited rather than his mother herself – a rather odd procedure or clerical error.  Alternatively, in principle, it could be that both mother and grandmother were each a daughter of different Kopels.  However, in Chassidic circles, it is taboo for a girl to marry a man with the same name as that of her father. On the face of it, therefore, it appears that it was Kopel’s daughter, Rochl, born not much later than ca 1765, who married Sender SAFRIN, born supposedly ca 1765.  If so, that means that Rochl was born to an elderly Kopel from a second wife.  She was orphaned in 1769. By the time that Rochl was ready for marriage around 1785 to the Chozeh’s disciple, Sender, she was probably under the guardianship of her nephew, the Chozeh, who was 20 years older than she was.  It would only be natural to find a groom from the Chozeh’s circle.  The Chozeh’s strong interest in Rochl’s well-being continued for many years. According to the family lore of the Komarno dynasty, the Chozeh certainly advocated for the engagement of Sender’s and Rochl’s son, Eyzyk, to Gitl HOROWITZ in 1815 when Eyzyk was only 13, i.e. very shortly before the Chozeh died^[54].  The marriage took place seven years later in 1822 in Pinczow.  But why choose a bride from Pinczow of all places?  Aside from the fact that Gitl’s father, Avraham Mordechai HOROWITZ, the Admor of Pinczow, was also a disciple of the Chozeh, someone on the spot in Pinczow must have proposed the match to the Chozeh.  It turns out that the Chozeh had prior ties to Pinczow:  One of the Chozeh’s own grandsons, Szmul Szaja SZTERNFELD, married Ita Riwa GOLDKORN of Pinczow during his own lifetime.  There is also the likelihood that Mindl (1752-1812), a previously unknown sister of the Chozeh living in Pinczow, was in a position of influence.  Mindl had married a certain Icyk (d 1818) son of Fiszel LUBELSKI (indicating an origin in Lublin Guberniya.) The LUBELSKIs had settled in Pinczow prior to 1775.  The Pinczow records indicate explicitly that Mindl was a daughter of Abram Leyzor [HOROWITZ] and [Matel ELBAUM]^[55].  It is not surprising, therefore, that Mindl named one of her daughters Matel (presumably after her own mother). Descendants of this branch of the LUBELSKIs are, therefore, previously unknown descendants of Kopel LUKOVER.  Figure 8 shows the time scales for Kopel’s daughters, Matel and Rochl.

Fig. 8 Kopel Lukover’s daughters linked by the Chozeh of Lublin

c) Michla

Michla was the wife of Zrul (i.e. Izrael) ZYSBRENNER of Josefow.  (The surname indicates that he was a brandy producer, a trade which complemented that of Yakov Kopel Lukower). Figure 9, below, shows that when Michla died in 1825 at the age of 76 her maiden name was given as ELBAUM^[56]. (Thus she was born in 1749.) Moreover, she named a son Kopel in 1777 who married Szajndl Jenta WAKS (brother of the Cala WAKS described earlier, who signed the subscription list.)  These two facts indicate that Michla was a daughter of Yakov Kopel himself.  In truth, some of her children moved to Krasnobrod, and named two grandchildren Gryna; and so one might think that Michla was a daughter of Shlomo Tzvi (son of Kopel) and Gryna of Krasnobord, rather than of Kopel directly.  However, we think this is a coincidence, since Gryna seems to have been an ancestral name of the WAKS family too.^[57]  Furthermore, Shlomo Tzvi was born in 1736, and his wife, Gryna, was born in 1738, dates which make it impossible for them to be the parents of a Michla born in 1749. 

Fig. 9. 1825 death record of Michla ELBAUM, daughter of Yakov Kopel Lukover, the only official record that associates Kopel with ELBAUM

d) Chaja Sora

In our discussion of the WAKS family, above, we noted the cousin marriage between Ryfka Matl (daughter of Szajndl Jenta nee WAKS) and Szmul WAKS (son of Ankel WAKS). Szajndl Jenta and Szmul were siblings, both being children of Lejb WAX and Chaja Sora.  We also suggested that, where there was one cousin marriage, there was probably an earlier cousin marriage – namely the one between Szjandl Jenta herself and Kopel ZYSBRENNER.  As described above, since Kopel ZYSBRENNER was a grandson of Yakov Kopel, then so too was Szajndl Jenta a grand-daughter, thus making Chaja Sora a daughter of Kopel Lukover. She could not have been the daughter of Yisroel Leibs or of Szlama, since these sons were roughly the same age as Chaja Sora.  However, we cannot rule out that she was a daughter of Szmul, below.

e) Szmul

As mentioned above, we believe that the distant town of Kutno was a secondary homestead of the early ELBAUMs.  They seem to have moved there (along with other longstanding residents of the district of Zamość, tied together by family), out of a desire to find new economic advantages under the protection of the Zamoyski family, which had recently acquired this private town.  The time-mapping of Figure 1 indicates that this happened very early, namely before the end of the 18^th century. Therefore, we believe that the ELBAUM family which was living in Kutno were part of the first generation after Yakov Kopel.  The earliest members of that branch who are mentioned explicitly in the Kutno records are Jakob ELBAUM (1744-1814)^[58] and his son, Samuel ELBAUM (1763-1825)^[59] married (second time) to Ester SZLAYFER^[60].

Around the same time that Jakob’s family was establishing itself in Kutno, a second related family began raising a family there:  When Juda [Lejb] Hersz OELBAUM^[61] (b 1794) named a son Szmul [ben] Leyb in 1820, the birth was witnessed by the father’s uncle, also similarly named Szmul Lejbuszowicz ELBAUM (born in 1770)^[62].  Consequently, it makes sense that the head of this branch of the family was a Leybusz ELBAUM, born around 1745 to 1750. He was a contemporary of Jakob ELBAUM, described above — possibly his brother.  We do not know for sure where Leybusz himself was living. All we know is that one of his sons was from Kutno.  However, there is proof that Szmul Leybuszowicz ELBAUM’s son, namely Hersz Leyb ELBAUM was born in Ciepielow^[63], but was raising a family in Granica, Tarlow and Gniewoszow.  Consequently, it seems that Szmul Leybuszowicz was living at one point in Ciepielow. 

We can summarize to this point by saying that there were two first-cousins with similar names – Hersz Lejb of Ciepielow and Juda Leyb Hersz of Kutno, both grandsons of Leybusz ELBAUM of Kutno, a likely brother of Jakob of Kutno.  Now, we note that both of these brothers (Leybusz and Jakob) named a son Samuel / Szmul around the same time.  Consequently, it makes sense to say that the two brothers were sons of an early Szmul ELBAUM, born around 1720. 

Who was this early Szmul?  We can only speculate.  There were two contemporary Szmuls named after him in Kutno: a) one born in 1770, who was the son of Leybusz; and b) one born in 1763, who was the son of Jakob.  And there was actually a third contemporary Szmul (1777 – 1836), son of Berek ELBAUM of Warsaw (see below).^[64]  Since the earliest Szmul was born ca 1720, this means that the very early Szmul died rather young, prior to 1763.  Given the year of birth, the most obvious conclusion is that Szmul could only have been a previously unknown son of Yakov Kopel Lukover.

f) Berek

We have come across records of three early Berek ELBAUMs. 

1. Berek (1781-?), a hatmaker who was raising a family in Kutno.^[65] We have no record which enables us to identify him conclusively.  However, he is most likely a son of Jakob of Kutno whose family also occupied itself with hatmaking.
2. Berek (ca 1775-?) of Jozefow and Jerusalem, whom we have identified as a son of Yisroel Leibs of Jozefow.  He was married to Frayda FYNKIEL.
3. A very early Berek (ca 1740 – >1812) of Warsaw, who was married to Brandl. They had sons, Szmul ELBAUM (1777-1836) and Szlama ELBAUM (b ca 1770).  This early Berek could not have been a son of Shlomo Tzvi or of Yisroel Leibs (sons of Yakov Kopel) because these two were born around the same time as Berek.  Berek could only have been a son of Szmul of Kutno, born ca 1720 or earlier, or a son of Yakov Kopel Lukover himself.  Both are equally possible from the point of view of birth years.  We believe, though, since the name Szmul was transmitted through the generations in Berek’s family, then it is more logical to conclude that this early Berek was a son of the early Szmul of Kutno.  However, we cannot definitively rule out that Berek was a previously unknown son of Yakov Kopel. 

Leaving out the details for the four previously known children of Yakov Kopel, we can now reconstruct a speculative family history in Figure 10 below, focusing mostly on the early generations of the various Szmuls and the various Bereks involved.

Fig. 10. Reconstructed family history of some descendants of Yakov Kopel Lukover, emphasizing the first generation, the various Bereks and the branch from Kutno.

There are many more additional ELBAUM families throughout our regions of Poland, born in the 18^th century, who must be connected to Yakov Kopel. However, for lack of data we are unable to definitively make the links. Therefore we have not included them in Figure 10.

Notable among such early personalities are, in chronological order of birth year: Izrael Icyk ELBAUM (ca 1740- ) of Sierpc; Mosiek ELBAUM (ca 1750- ) of Zareba Koscielne; Lejb ELBAUM (1757-1817) of Bilgoraj; Icyk ALBOIM (1759-1829) of Przytyk; Eyzyk ELBAUM (ca 1760- ) of Konskawola; Abram EHLBAUM (ca 1765- ) of Krasnik; Szymel ELBOIM (ca 1765- <1830) of Parczew; Salomon ELBAUM (ca 1775- ) of Jaroslaw and Jozefow, probably a son of Yisroel Leibs; Szymon ELBOIM (ca 1775 -) of Parczew; Icek ELBAUM (ca 1780- ) of Wladowa); Leyb ELBAUM (1780 -) of  Szczebrzeszyn; Moszek Josek ELBAUM (ca 1780 -) of Wlodawa; Kopel ELBAUM (1781-1839) of Zarnowiec; Abram ELBOIM (1786- ) of Komarow; Jankiel ELBAUM (ca 1790-<1861) of Glowno; Ayzyk ELBAUM (ca 1790 – >1832) of Konskie; and Leyzor ELBAUM (1793- ) of Zolkiewka. The only ones who could qualify as additional sons of Yakov Kopel are those born prior to 1769. There are three Icyks / Eyzyks among them. At most one of them would qualify. It is important to emphasize that all of the personalities born prior to 1788 would mostly have been born in Zamość county; and they have been assigned the name Elbaum retroactively.

Summarizing, we see that Yakov Kopel was having children as early as 1720 (Szmul ca 1720, Matel ca 1725) and as late as ca 1765 (Rochla). In between those limits he had 4 previously known children, and 3 newly discovered children (Michla, Chaja Sora and Szmul) and as many as 4 more from the list, above.  Clearly, Yakov Kopel was married at least twice.  However, there are no records revealing the name of either of his wives.

D. DNA Study

The following glossary might be useful for readers without prior background in genetics:

Y-DNA – The portion of DNA passed uniquely down the male-to-male path.

Nucleotide – a building block of DNA consisting of arrangements of 4 chemicals symbolized by A, G, C, and T

STR – Short Tandem Repeat—pattern of repeating nucleotides, such e.g. “AGAT”

SNP – Single Nucleotide Polymorphism—difference in one nucleotide (letter) from the reference

Haplogroup – A group of individuals who share a common SNP that defines a branching point of the human genetic tree.

Subclade – a downstream haplogroup, i.e. a smaller (newer) haplogroup that a particular SNP defines as a more recent branch (“descendant”) of a larger, older haplogroup.

Haplotype – An individual’s genetic markers

MRCA – Most Recent Common Ancestor

tMRCA – Time to Most Recent Common Ancestor.  This is usually a statistical estimate +/- 5%

ybp – years before present.

BAM file – a binary format for storing genetic sequence data

Autosomal DNA – DNA which is inherited from the numbered chromosomes, in distinction from the sex chromosomes

Histocompatibility complex (HMC) – a large region of DNA responsible for the formation of proteins needed for the immune system

Allele – one of the possible forms of a gene (e.g. dominant or recessive)

The possible Sefardi / Italki connection, discovered above, suggests the need to participate in Y-DNA testing. The test group included two Elbaums, one Ohlbaum, one Albom and one Olivenbaum.  The names Ohlbaum and Albom can be considered dialectic versions of Elbaum.  Olivenbaum is a little more questionable.  According to Beider^[66] the name Olivenbaum was adopted in Jaroslaw; however, we could not find family records there.  Instead, we found Copel Leib Olivenbaum, born in 1840, living in the city of Iasi^[67]. The Y-DNA tests verify that the Olivenbaums must have been originally Elbaums who had changed their surname to Olivenbaum by the time they reached Moldavia.  These tests, conducted by FamilyTree DNA are based on an analysis of up to 111 STRs.  The tests, taken so far, do indeed confirm the validity of our surname paper trail, as they all match that of a pedigreed descendant of Yakov Koppel.

In order to delve further into the genetic and geographic origins of the ELBAUM family, we undertook whole-genome sequence (WGS) analysis of a saliva sample provided by a 101-year old Holocaust survivor, Boruch Elbaum (A”H), born in 1917.  It was carried out by Open Genomes Foundation^[68].  The entire set of results and methodology, as applied to Boruch Elbaum, can be seen on its website^[69].  In short, the procedure used was an Illumina 150 base-pair paired-end read Build 38 (hg38) 40x read depth whole genome sequence (WGS) analysis, which produced an excellent (99.85%) Y-coverage.  Open Genomes Foundation uploaded a Y-DNA BAM file to YFull^[70], a company that analyzed the Elbaum Y-subclade.  Figure 11 shows the basic results of the Y-DNA analysis alone.

Fig. 11. Y-DNA map of the branches of G-Y15861* (a subclade of G-Y12975, a subclade of G-M377). G-Y12975, also denoted as AB-056 contains 4%-6% of Ashkenazi Jews and is one of the largest Ashkenazi Haplogroups^[71].

Yaakov Kopel Likover was in a basal branch of Y-DNA, G-Y15861^[72], which split off from the G-Y12975 branch of the G2b1-M377^[73] trunk.  Subsequently, its subclade, denoted by id:YF14448  (location listed as POL-LB = Polish-Lubelski) branched off, and it is unique to the Lukover-Elbaum family, i.e. no other Sephardi, Ashkenazi, or Gentile male DNA has been found to match this Y-DNA subclade.  No other matches at all exist to tell us where this Y-DNA came from.  Until such time as other families are tested in the same way and found to be members of this sub-clade, we can say only that the ELBAUMs’ ancestors of id:YF14448 migrated independently of other branches of G-Y15861.

The time to the most recent common ancestor (tMRCA) of G-Y12975 is 1050 ybp i.e. 970 CE , which would just predate the settlement of Ashkenazi Jews in the Rhineland in the year 987 CE. The tMRCA of G-Y15861* itself is 850 ybp, i.e. 1170 CE,  which predates the documented influx of Jews into Poland and Lithuania in 1350 CE, i.e. right after the Black Death massacres of 1348-1349 in the Holy Roman Empire.   We do not know where in Central Europe the ELBAUM ancestors were living, say, in 1250 CE, since there are multiple scenarios. Possibilities include France, Italy, or the Rhineland.

Additional Y-SNP testing could help to find other subjects from Y15861 and thus pinpoint a specific route to Poland. These living trees are continuously updated, as new SNPs are discovered; and we can also expect that, once more subjects are tested, we would be able to determine a genetic signature of Yakov Kopel LUKOVER from the SNP analysis.

The whole-genome SNP array data for autosomal DNA too was extracted by Open Genomes, and uploaded to Gedmatch and Family Finder.  This is a particularly interesting analysis because Boruch Elbaum’s ancestry along maternal lines, using archival records from the same region surrounding Zamosc county, is known.  We had found that Boruch Elbaum descends from Yakov Kopel Lukover in several additional directions – via the aforementioned Waks, Kagan, Rozner, and Kupferstein families, as discussed above, i.e. also along maternal lines. Therefore the results are relevant also for the spouses of the early male ELBAUM ancestors.

The following ancestral components, based on a Monte Carlo averaged analysis of Boruch Elbaum’s Eurogenes Global25 principal components (compared to those of all 500 Jewish samples tested) shows that there is no sign of native Iberian ancestry as would be common among Sephardim, even compared to some other Ashkenazi Jews.  Boruch Elbaum’s ancestry is somewhat analogous to that of a German Jew, without any detectable Slavic ancestry, much like most Polish and Russian Jews have.

Figure 12.  Admixture Analysis Showing No Native Iberian Ancestry

Finally, we also analyzed Boruch Elbaum’s Major Histocompatiblity Complex (MHC) Class I alleles (HLA-A*26 – HLA-B*38 – HLA-C*12).  As can be seen from Figure 13, they are the most common haplotype combination among a large set of Ashkenazim^[74]. 

Figure 13. Ashkenazi Jews in the Allele Frequencies in Worldwide Populations. The order of the haplotypes is from most frequent among Jews to less frequent.

In closing, all three tests (Y-DNA, autosomal DNA, and allele frequencies) showed that Boruch ELBAUM had Ashkenazi ancestry, with no overt signs of Sephardic lineage.

E. Conclusion

Starting from a classical reconstruction of a family tree in the particular town of Krasnobrod, we have succeeded in tracking the entire family of Shlomo Tzvi Elbaum, in linking him to the kabbalist, Yakov Kopel Likover, and in deducing the latter’s previously unknown descendants.  We have examined family tombstones and the subscription list of an important scholarly work, thereby learning more about the family. The peculiar geo-political history of the main towns of residence in relationship to Austrian naming laws allowed us to determine the etymological origin of the surname, Elbaum.  The naming of grandchildren of the progenitor of the family during his lifetime, along with peculiar aspects of the hagiography allowed us to determine the possible Italian provenance of the family.  DNA analysis indicates that the family was Ashkenazi with minimal (or no) evidence of Sephardic ancestry.

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to JRI-Poland for making available its very extensive database of extracts of vital records, as well as to Petje Schroeder for her professional extracts of hard-to-find parish records, and to Tadeusz Przystojecki of Brama Grodzka Teatr NN for finding and translating lost records.  We also acknowledge Ted Kandell of the Open Genomes Foundation for his invaluable help in the DNA analysis, Sinai Putter, and Nardo Bonomi for their valuable input. 

^[1] a) Beider, Alexander (1996) A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland. New Haven Ct: Avotaynu.

  b) Beider, Alexander (2008) A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire, revised. New Haven Ct.: Avotaynu.

  c) Beider, Alexander (2004) A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia, revised. New Haven, CT: Avotaynu.

  d) Hanks, Frederick & Hodges, Flavia and Gold, David L. (1988) A Dictionary of Surnames, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

  e) Guggenheimer, Heinrich Walter and Guggenheimer, Eva H. (2007) Jewish Family Names and Their Origins: An Etymological Dictionary. Hoboken, NJ.: Ktav Pub. House.

^[2] The spelling of the surname is quite variable – ELBAUM, OELBAUM, OHLBAUM, ALBAUM, EILBAUM, OLBAUM, EJLBAUM, AJLBAUM, ALBOM versions exist, among others.  Consistent spelling was not of interest to Jews in the early19^th century, when civil records started to come into existence.  Nor did Polish clerks care too much about precision. Therefore, for the sake of standardization in this work we shall simply choose ELBAUM as the representative in our text, except when citing other sources.

^[3] By profession he was a leaseholder of a large farm in Lukowa and operated a tavern and inn there.

^[4] https://www.facebook.com/groups/52505850457/

^[5] Lublin archive 35 Fond 1745; Zamość archive 88, Fond 777

^[6] Lublin archive 35 Fond 1848, sygn. 0/1/(3 to 74)

^[7] https://www.familysearch.org now available in the digitized form athttp://broadcast.lds.org/fhd/FH_Find_Digital_Records_A4_WEB.pdf

^[8] https://szukajwarchiwach.pl/

^[9] https://jri-poland.org/jriplweb.htm 

^[10] https://jri-poland.org/maps/jrimap_s2.asp

^[11] 1848 death akta 162, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1790. The clerk recorded the name of his parents as Szmoland Gryna; but other records, found later by us, reveal the father’s real name to be Szlama, i.e. Shlomo

^[12] 1828 marriage akta 2, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1790

^[13] PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/7. 1832 death akta 14. Athough three granddaughters were named Ruchl Laja, we attribute this to their being named after a common grandmother, Abram’s mother-in-law.

^[14] 1848 death akta 18, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/23.

^[15] See the 1822 marriage record 1, Archive 35 Fond 1879.  Although Majer was from Zelechow, his daughter, Chaja Cyrl, married in Miedzyrzec Podlaski. The naming pattern is somewhat contorted.  Although Majer is named Jankelewicz, his wife is named in reference to her husband as Szlomowicz Meierow. Therefore it appears as if Majer was the son of Szlomo who was the son of Jankel.

^[16] 1825 death akta 23, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1834/0/1/48.  According to the clerk, Michla was 76 years old at her death, making her birth year too close to that of Szlama’s.  Considering that she was also identified by the patronym Kopelowicz, she was more likely a daughter of Jakob Kopel himself.

^[17] Wunder, Meir (2010), Ohel Shimon – Tol’dot HaTzaddik HaKadosh HaRabbi Rav Shimon MiYaroslav. Collated together with Sefer Torat Shimon HaShalem  Jerusalem: HaMachon leHantzachat Yahadut Galitzia.

^[18] This could possibly be referring to the blood libel of Jampola in 1758 when indeed a certain Yakov Zelig did appear in Rome for this purpose.  However, it might be referring to a second unrelated issue and a different Yakov.

^[19] a) Rabbi Yitzchak Harif (of Ulianow and Sambor) (1987) “Pnei Yitzchak”, Introduction, Jerusalem: Avraham Tzvi Lifshitz.

    b) Walden, Moshe (1911) “Nifla’ot HaRebbi”, p. 5, Jerusalimski: Bilgoraj

    c) Alfasi, Yitzchak (1969) HaChozeh MiLublin, Rabbi Yakov Yitzchak HaLevy Horowitz, p. 20. Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook Publishing.

^[20] Trzciński, Andrzej, and Sady, Malgorzata (1990) The Traces of Monuments of Jewish Culture in the LublinRegion, Lublin: Wojewódzki Ośrodek Informacji Turystycznej.

^[21] (note 11 on p. 12 of Ohel Shimon, footnote 17, above)

^[22] In his youth, Yisroel was a student of Leyb MARGULES, who later became the Rabbi of Jozefow.  Therefore there is a good likelihood that Yisroel married the daughter of his teacher, and moved to Jozefow at this time along with his teacher.  This is the likely source of the descriptive “Leibs”.

^[23] 1850 death akta 34, PSA Archive 58, Fond 194

^[24] 1839 death akta 12, PSA Archive 58, Fond 185

^[25] 1818 marriage akta 13, PSA Archive 58, Fond 194.  She subsequently remarried in 1822 in Szczebrzeszyn, akta 1, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1834/0/1/18.

^[26] District Revision Lists.  LDS microfilm #s 2313479-482, 486, 487, 2234586,  Retrieved from JRI-poland.org

^[27] 1859 death akta 8, PSA Archive 62, Fond 185; and 1890 death akta 1, PSA Archive 62, Fond 185; and 1830 marriage akta 1, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1773.

^[28] 1886 death akta 66, PSA Archive 56, Fond 2136

^[29] 1853 death akta 49, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/28

^[30] 1832 marriage akta 12, PSA Archive 21, Fond 555

^[31] 1818 death akta 13, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1834/0/1/18

^[32] 1822 marriage akta 1, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1930 We are actively searching for Berek’s headstone.

^[33] Rabbi Eliezer of Metz (1804 edition) p. 10. Zolkiew: Rabbi Gershon Literis Publ.  Retrieved 2019 fromhttps://www.hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=32706&st=&pgnum=10&hilite=

^[34] Berek is the diminutive form for Ber, while Dov is its Hebrew kinnui. He is probably the same as the Berek Elbaum of Jozefow and Szczebrzysyn, i.e. Yisroel Leib’s son, who was described in 1822 as living in Jerusalem.

^[35] 1834 death akta 30, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/9

^[36] Corinne Appleton transl., from: Pinkas Hakehillot: Encyclopedia of Jewish Communities, Poland, Volume VII(2003).  Jozefow, pp 256-258. Jerusalem: Yad Vashem. Retrieved from https://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/pinkas_poland/pol7_00256.html. The chapter on the early Rabbis states that “at the beginning of the [19^th] century, probably 1824, Dawid Saadia and Szaja Waks founded a Hebrew printing press [in Jozefow].” Szaja WAKS (ca 1790 – ) does appear in the civil registration records of Jozefow, as a clergyman and as a son of Cala (Betzalel) WAX (1770-1828).  See 1828 death akta 6, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/3.  Cala is described as a dealer in paper, a convenient if not a necessary affiliation to a printing house.  He is also known to have been a wealthy owner of an agricultural estate in the village of Hamer outside of Tarnograd, although he was described in the records as living in nearby Hrubieszow, where indeed we have found records of the rest of the extended family.

^[37] The history of the WAKS family is described in the introduction to Chaim Elazar Waks (2006) Nefesh Chaya. Part 2 of Ginzei Avot, edited by his descendant R’Yehoshua Eibeshitz (1916-2019), Jerusalem: HaMachonle Limudei HaShoah. See especially p. 180.  Chaim Elazar Waks (1822-1889) was the Av Beit Din (Head of the Rabbinical Court) in Tarnograd (near Lukowa) from the age of 18 until 1859, succeeding his father, Abram Lejb (a son of Cala); and then he became the Av Beit Din of Kalisz, from where his fame as halachic arbiter spread throughout Poland. (Interestingly, in the civil registry records of Kalisz his surname is given as GERYMTER-WAKS a couple of times for no apparent reason, except that it literally means “the illustrious” in Yiddish, apparently to distinguish him from the many other (unrelated) WAKSes living in Kalisz.  But we note that Szaja WAKS, the clergyman from Jozefow and uncle of Chaim Elazar, married off a son into the GERYMTER family of Jozefow.  So the GERYMTER part of the surname was not the original family surname, but nevertheless not totally invented. See also Rosenstein, Neil (2008) Avotaynu, Vol 24 for a related interpretation. Chaim Elazar WAKS was the son-in-law of Yehoshua Trunk, the Rabbi of Kutno, an ELBAUM outpost. Chaim Elazar’s father, Abram Lejb (b ca 1795), was the son of the Betzalel (Cala) WAKS appearing in the subscription list. The editor of Nefesh Chaya was not personally aware of the parentage of Cala (private communication) prior to our research. 

^[38] Cala (Betzalel) was the son of Leib WAKS of Hrubieszow and of Chaja Sora.  Leib must have been born ca1745 or earlier.  Numerous descendants of Cala’s siblings were named Cala, suggesting that Leib’s father was probably named Cala (b. ca 1720 or earlier).  Now, Leib’s daughter, Jenta Szajndl, married a Kopel ZYSBRENNER (b.1777) who, it turns out (see below), was a grandson of Yakov Kopel Lukover himself, via a previously unknown daughter, Michla.  Jenta Szjandl’s daughter, Ryfka Matl (1827 marriage akta 4, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/2) married Cala WAKS’ nephew, Szmul in 1827, son of [J]Ankiel WAKS (born 1780).  This was most likely a cousin marriage, suggesting that Jankel (akaYakov) too was a grandson of Yakov Kopel Lukover. The only obvious explanation is that Chaja Sora was another previously unknown daughter, or else that the original Betzalel WAKS (b ca 1720) was a previously unkown son-in-law of Yakov Kopel.

^[39] We can give two examples:

   1) Frojm KUPFERSZTEJN (1784-1824) married Serl WAKS, a probable sister of Cala. Also Cala himself married Chana KUPFERSZTEJN, daughter of Chaim and Basia.  So it is recorded in her death record.  (In earlier records she was surnamed HAMER; but that was most likely because she must have come from or lived in Hamer, the estate that Cala owned.) Unfortunately, we do not know the relationship between Frojm and Chaim to Moshe KUPFERSZTEJN of the distribution list, as the latter is not mentioned in the parish records. The simplest conclusion is that Moshe must have died between the writing of the distribution list in1804 and the first records in 1810.  However, the available records are not complete.  So we reserve judgment.

   2) We have also deciphered a headstone inscription in the Jewish cemetery of Jozefow, the image of which was kindly provided by Prof. Trzciński. It describes the deceased, Yakov Yitzchak HaKohen (1847-1878) ben Mordechai, as a descendant of Yakov Kopel Lukover.  Although no real surname appears on the headstone, we found his marriage record (1869 marriage akta 1, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736)  in the civil registry records of Jozefow, which revealed that his parents were Mordka KAHN (1800-1854) and Chana ROZNER.  The latter’s marriage record (1823 marriage akta 23, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1736/0/2/9) showed Mordka’s parents to be [Szmul-] Zanwel KAHAN / KACHAN (ca 1775 – 1834) and Ryfka (d. 1817).  The death record (1834 death akta 28, PSA Archive 35, Fond 1834) revealed Szmul Zanwel’s parents to be Mortko KACHAN (ca 1750 – bef1800) and Ryfka.  It turns out that Szmul’s sister, Zeftel, married Tewel ELBAUM from Krasnobrod). Therefore, not only is there a marriage into Yakov Kopel’s family but also, according to the 1878 headstone, the KACHAN’s were also independently descended from Yakov Kopel. Since the original Mordko KACHAN was a Kohen, he could not be a son of Kopel. However, Mordko’s wife Ryfka born ca 1750 or earlier might well have been yet another unknown daughter (or granddaughter) of Kopel. In the context of the subscription list we note that one of the signators was Shmuel, son of the Rabbi Mi-Kachan.  We are tempted to identify him as our Szmul Zanwel KACHAN, were it not for the extra letter “Mi”.  It is also not beyond the realm of possibility that the first name on the list, Rabbi Eliezer HaKOHEN, might have had a connection to the KACHAN / HaKohen family – perhaps even the father of Mortko.

^[40] Patent. “Die Führung bestimmter Geschlechtsnamen von 1-ten Jäner 1788 bei fer Judenschaft betrefend”[Austrian German version] or „Uniwersał. Aby każdy z Żydów od 1 stycznia roku 1788 stałe przezwisko przybrał sobie” [Polish version]. From „Continuacya wyroków y rozkazów powszechnych w Galicyi i Lodomeryi”, 1787 (General rulings and orders in Galicia and Lodomeria continued, 1787.)

^[41] In this article we have not bothered to provide family trees beyond the 3^rd or 4^th generation for lack of space.

^[42] Teitelbaum, Heshel (2020) The Circle of the Keter Kehuna in Pinczow, in preparation for publication.

^[43] Alfasi, Yitzchak (1969) HaChozeh MiLublin, Rabbi Yakov Yitzchak HaLevy Horowitz, p. 20. Jerusalem: Mossad HaRav Kook Publishing.

^[44] The Seer’s first marriage, which failed, took place in or near Krasnobrod, according to family lore reported by  Alfassi, op cit.  This match was possibly arranged by the Chozeh’s uncle, Shlomo Tzvi of Krasnobrod.

^[45] No historian has actually ever addressed this obvious problem. One possible explanation is that Jakob Kopel encouraged the naming of grandsons after himself in order to fool the Angel of Death and to reinforce the latter’s not killing him prematurely in 1744. This stratagem would have been designed to convince the Angel of Death not to waste his time. After all, Kopel must already be already dead if grandsons are being named after him. Although this is a fanciful explanation, it is certainly in keeping with the worldview of mystics, of Kabbalists (for whom events on Earth are mirrored up in Heaven) and of those ensconced in a spiritual sphere of existence. Nevertheless, we give an additional, more plausible hypothesis below.

^[46] The Birth year of 1742 is estimated from his age of 72 reported by the clerk in Kutno in 1814.

^[47] The early study by Nathan Michael Gelber (1963) “Letoledot HaSefaradim bePolin” in Otzar Yehudei Sefarad Vol. 6 pp. 88-98.   The author used the term Sephardi loosely, not distinguishing between Iberian and Appenine Jews, since over a dozen, out of the 39 supposedly Sephardic Jews listed, clearly came from Italy.

Since that early study, there has been a sudden renewed interest in Sephardic Jews in Poland starting about 25 years ago. See, for example, Beider, Alexander (1996) Sephardim in Eastern Europe in A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland, New Haven Ct: Avotaynu (http://www.avotaynu.com/sephardim.htm);  Efron, Noah J. (2006) Judaism and Science: A Historical Introduction. Westport: Greenwood Press;  Davidi, Joel S. W. (2012) The Case of Zamość: a Sephardic Enclave in the Heart of Poland (Part I), The Jewish History Channel, ha-historion.blogspot.com/2012/12/series-sephard-in-ashkenaz-and-ashkenaz_30.html;  Beider, Alexander (2017) Many Sephardic Jews Aren’t Actually ‘Sephardic’, retrieved fromhttps://forward.com/opinion/world/387971/many-sephardic-jews-arent-actually-sephardic/; Beider, Alexander(2017) Pseudo-Sephardic Surnames from Italy, Avotaynu Vol 33 (3) pp 3-8;  Beider, Alexander (2017);Exceptional Ashkenazic Surnames of Sephardic Origin, Avotaynu Vol 33 (4) pp 3-7; Davidi, Joel S. W. (2019).  Actually, a Significant Number of Ashkenazim are Descended from Sephardim.  The Times of Israel; retrieved from https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/actually-a-significant-number-of-ashkenazim-are-descended-from- ; and Beider, Alexander (2019), Italian Jewish Surnames with Non-Trivial Etymology, Avotaynu Vol 35 (3) pp 24-28. Beider argues that Italian Jews of the times were mixtures of those whose ancestors had lived in Italy since Roman times, of Jews expelled from France in 1394, of Provencal and Spanish Jews who arrived at the turn of the15th and 16th centuries; and of North African Jewish immigrants during the mid-18^th century. Gradually they all merged with the segments who followed Sephardic traditions.  

^[48] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zamoyski_Family_Fee_Tail

^[49] Nardo Bonomi (personal communication)

^[50] See https://www.thejc.com/news/world/plan-to-redevelop-site-where-eminent-italian-kabbalists-are-buried- 

^[51] Wunder, Meir (2010), Ohel Shimon – Tol’dot HaTzaddik HaKadosh HaRabbi Rav Shimon MiYaroslav. Collated together with Sefer Torat Shimon HaShalem  Jerusalem: HaMachon leHantzachat Yahadut Galitzia.

^[52] https://www.geni.com/people/Chava-Safrin/6000000006712214075

^[53] Marriage Akta 7 (1822) Archive 21 Fond 2341,  LDS film 0,716,158

^[54] Toldos Komarno in the book Chayim Yakov Safrin (2006-7) Shalsheles HaKodesh Jerusalem: Machon Otzar HaBrachah  

^[55] 1820 marriage akta 10, PSA Archive 21, Fond 2335

^[56] Jozefow death Akta 23 (1825) Archive 35, Fond 1834/0/1/48

^[57] It may very well be that Shlomo Tzvi’s wife, Gryna, and the early Gryna of the WAKS family were related.

^[58] 1814 death akta 25, PSA Archive 39, Fond 1539

^[59] 1825 death akta 10, PSA Archive 39, Fond 1539

^[60] The SZLAJFERs were also from Jozefow

^[61] The father was variously known as OELBAUM, ALBAUM and ELBAUM. Kutno was under Prussian control at this critical time and the Germanic version of the surname probably must have gained some traction then.

^[62] 1820 birth akta 166, PSA Archive 39, Fond 1539

^[63] 1834 marriage akta 6, PSA Archive 58, Fond 184

^[64] 1836 death akta 196, PSA Archive 72, Fond 180. To complete the picture, we recall that there was yet a fourth Szmul (born ca 1755) married to Ruchl whose son, Majer (1775-1850), was living in Tarnow and in Zwolen (see above).  We had already concluded tentatively that this fourth Szmul was a son of Yisroel Leibs.  Now we can confirm that this conclusion must be correct because there was nobody else who could be a candidate as a father: Yakov Kopel had already named a son Szmul ca 1720; the latter’s son Berek of Warsaw (b ca 1735) had also named a son Szmul, much later in 1777; and there is no evidence that Shlomo Tzvi had a son Szmul. 

^[65] e. g. 1811 birth akta 48, PSA Archive 39, Fond 1539. See also 1796 census Archive 39 Fond 51

^[66] Beider, Alexander (2004) A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia, revised. New Haven, CT: Avotaynu.

^[67] Moldavia Marriages & divorces  retrieved from https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/jgdetail_2.php

^[68] http://www.open-genomes.org/  

^[69] http://www.open-genomes.org/genomes/personal/Elbaum/Elbaum_Genetics.html, courtesy of Ted Kandell.

^[70] https://www.yfull.com/;  https://yfull.com/tree/G-Y12975. 

^[71] STRs collected for G-M377 can be seen at https://jewishdna.net/AB-056.html

^[73] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haplogroup_G-M377

^[72] https://www.yfull.com/tree/G-M377/

^[74] Cox, S. T. et al, HLA‐A, ‐B, ‐C polymorphism in a UK Ashkenazi Jewish potential bone marrow donor population, HLA Immune Response Genetics, 53, 1, (41-50), (1999).

Enquêteurs principaux: Brown, A. [1], Waas M. [2], Penninx, W. [3], Skorecki, K [4].

Résumé: Une étude sur des hommes qui ont prouvé leur ascendance paternelle parmi les membres des communautés séfarades et autres communautés non-ashkénazes du monde entier. Des signatures détaillées des séquences d’ADN du chromosome Y seront obtenues à partir de la cohorte. Il s’agit de la première étude génétique sur les descendants de ces communautés juives d’importance historique. L’étude peut également fournir des informations sur les origines génétiques de la communauté ibérique médiévale et peut-être révéler des personnes et des communautés à travers le monde de descendance séfarade.

Contexte: L’expulsion des Juifs des royaumes de Castille et d’Aragon en 1492 a été suivie de près de cent années de persécution, y compris des conversions forcées et volontaires. Un groupe d’exilés s’est déplacé vers les pays de la Méditerranée, principalement dans l’empire ottoman.

Cette étude vise à établir un panel de référence de signatures hautement résolues basées sur des marqueurs SNP du chromosome Y correspondant aux lignées paternelles ayant des origines généalogiques proches parmi les populations juives dans les autres régions du monde.

Hypothèse: Une étude de l’ADN sur les descendants masculins directs de la population juive identifiée, séfarade et mizrahi, servira d’outil de référence utile pour identifier la dispersion mondiale contemporaine de l’ancienne population juive ibérique dans d’autres régions du monde.

Objectif 1: À l’aide de techniques généalogiques standard, cette étude cherchera à identifier une cohorte d’au moins cinquante descendants documentés d’hommes juifs dont la lignée paternelle descend des communautés de la région indiquée ci-dessus.

Objectif 2: Une fois que les descendants juifs séfarades et mizrahi auront été identifiés et que les consentements auront été obtenus, l’étude collectera des frottis buccaux de tous les participants. Les écouvillons seront traités dans un laboratoire d’essais agréé, universitaire. Après l’amplification standard de l’ADN, l’assurance qualité et les techniques d’analyse, un sous- ensemble initial de séquençage complet du chromosome Y de l’échantillon sera effectué afin d’identifier de nouveaux variants SNP basse fréquence ou précédemment décrites qui délimitent une lignée donnée du chromosome Y. Le chromosome Y est transmis presque intégralement de père en fils, bien que des mutations uniques mais génétiquement limitées se produisent de temps en temps, rendant chaque lignée distincte de toute autre lignée et, partant, utile sur le plan généalogique. Ces SNP seront ajoutés à un panel standard d’au moins 100 marqueurs du chromosome Y pour le génotypage de l’ensemble des échantillons. L’étude inclura également l’analyse d’une série de marqueurs STR, étant donné que bon nombre des bases de données et des publications généalogiques actuellement accessibles au public incluent de tels marqueurs STR dans leurs désignations de lignage.

Pertinence: une étude ADN peut donner un aperçu de la dispersion internationale de la communauté sépharade, ainsi que des origines génétiques de la communauté juive ibérique. Parallèlement aux recherches généalogiques conformes à la norme de généalogie, aux recherches historiques et à d’autres disciplines universitaires, cela peut servir de point d’ancrage à une étude plus approfondie des populations juives de l’ancienne péninsule ibérique. Étant donné le nombre relativement limité de générations, les marqueurs autosomiques correspondants dans cette cohorte pourraient servir à l’avenir de référence pour le mélange de population.

Soutien: L’étude génétique sur les hommes juifs sépharades est soutenue par la Fondation Avotaynu (New Haven, CT), l’Institut international de généalogie juive (Jérusalem) et la Fondation Brown (Teaneck, NJ).

Confidentialité:

Les informations recueillies pour cette étude sont uniquement à des fins de recherche pédagogique et historique. Aucune donnée d’importance médicale ne sera traitée ou obtenue et il n’y a aucune intention de commercialiser les résultats. Le programme peut contacter les participants pour obtenir des informations historiques dans le cadre de cette étude. Une fois l’étude terminée, une base de données publique associée à l’étude du répertorie le nom de famille de chaque participant, le nom et le lieu de naissance de son ancêtre masculin le plus éloigné, ainsi que les résultats de son ADN. Aucune information d’identification supplémentaire pour un participant ne sera partagée sans sa permission. Les participants seront informés de leur numéro de kit.

Consentement à la participation:

https://avotaynuonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Consentement-à-la-participation-2020-05-11.pdf

Pour une version .pdf de cet article:

https://avotaynuonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/Microsoft-Word-2020-05-11-ETUDE-GENETIQUE-DES-HOMMES-JU-IFS-SEFARADES-ET-MIZRAHI.docx.pdf

Enquêteurs principaux:

[1] Adam R. Brown, J.D., Administrator, AvotaynuDNA Research Partnership and Managing Editor, www.AvotaynuOnline.com, PO Box 30, Englewood, NJ 07631-0030 USA, Email: Adam.Brown@AvotaynuDNA.org

[2] Michael Waas, M.A. candidate, University of Haifa, Department of Jewish History. Email: mwaas1989@gmail.com

[3] Wim Penninx, PhD., Delft, Zuid-Holland, Netherlands

[4] Karl Skorecki, M.D., Rappaport Faculty of Medicine & Research Institute and Rambam Medical Center, Technion-Israel Institute of Technology Haifa, 31096 Israel, Email: Skorecki@tx.technion.ac.il

Francaise 2018-11-16

Le projet Avotaynu a pour objectif d’étudier les origines et les migrations du peuple juif à travers les âges en s’aidant de l’ADN. Il est dirigé par une équipe multidisciplinaire, principalement universitaire, constituée de scientifiques, de généalogistes et d’historiens. Au cours des trois dernières années, de nombreux tests ADN ont été réalisés chez des volontaires, membres de communautés juives des six continents. Ce projet a été établi¹, dès le départ, sur des principes directeurs.

Principe 1. Nous nous concentrons sur des objectifs concrets.

Les tests d’ADN aujourd’hui disponibles fournissent des informations sur les 23 chromosomes non sexuels — qui permettent d’identifier les cousins génétiques —, sur l’ADN mitochondrial, transmis de la mère à ses enfant, par la lignée strictement maternelle, et sur le chromosome Y transmis du père à ses fils, par la lignée strictement paternelle. Dans ce projet, nous avons décidé de nous concentrer sur le chromosome Y (ou ADN-Y), notre objectif principal étant  de développer un catalogue exhaustif de l’ensemble des chromosomes Y des hommes juifs de par le monde.

Dans notre catalogue, nous incluons tous les chromosomes Y d’hommes juifs, indépendamment de l’origine de leurs ancêtres masculins, qu’ils aient vécu à l’époque biblique ou à d’autres périodes pendant lesquelles le judaïsme acceptait des hommes extérieurs à la communauté. Sur la base de l’ADN-Y, nous avons pu ainsi identifier 518 chromosomes Y différents dans la population masculine juive d’aujourd’hui. Ce nombre continue d’augmenter avec le nombre de tests réalisés dans de nouvelles communautés juives à travers le monde.

Habituellement, les résultats des tests d’ADN sur le chromosomes Y utilisent la nomenclature adoptée par la Société internationale de généalogie (ISOGG), qui attribue des haplogroupes tels que J-M172 ou R-M269 en fonction de certains marqueurs identifiés sur l’ADN-Y. Malheureusement, ces haplogroupes se basent sur des mutations qui se sont produites bien avant l’avènement du judaïsme et sont donc insuffisantes pour identifier des chromosomes Y transmis par les hommes qui ont fondé le peuple juif et qui sont arrivés au judaïsme après la période biblique. La technologie de tests ADN de nouvelle génération (Next Generation Sequencing²) a, en seulement quatre ans, permis d’identifier plus de 100 000 nouvelles mutations sur le chromosome Y, permettant des descriptions plus spécifiques des haplogroupes Y. Par ailleurs, de nouvelles mutations continuent d’être découvertes quotidiennement. Cela conduit à constamment réviser les descriptions des haplogroupes d’ADN-Y. Malheureusement, le manque de coordination entre les laboratoires qui effectuent ces tests multiplie le nombre de variantes d’ADN-Y découvertes qui, souvent, décrivent la même mutation.

L’utilisation d’outils statistiques mis au point spécifiquement pour l’analyse de l’ADN-Y par le biométricien de notre projet, Wim Penninx, nous a permis de développer une classification simple et claire. Chaque participant au projet est affecté à une de nos lignées de chromosomes Y déjà identifiées. Si un nouveau participant possède un chromosome Y suffisamment différent de ceux déjà répertoriés dans notre catalogue, cela indique qu’il provient  d’un ancêtre/fondateur juif distinct et nous attribuons à cette nouvelle lignée un nouveau numéro de série Avotaynu. En 2016, la première lignée non encore répertoriée a été nommée la lignée AB-001. Nous en sommes aujourd’hui à la lignée AB-518, ce qui suggère qu’au moins 518 ancêtres hommes distincts du peuple juif actuel ont été jusque-là identifiés.

Dans l’ensemble, les 518 lignées juives que nous avons retrouvées sont d’origine moyen-orientale. Un exemple caractéristique d’une lignée que nous avons identifiée est la lignée AB-033. Elle descend de la lignée J-Z640, selon la classification ISOGG, une ancienne lignée d’ADN-Y de l’âge de bronze (donc pré-juive). L’historien et archéologue de notre projet, Michael Waas, et son équipe étudient ce chromosome Y depuis plusieurs années.  Il s’est rapidement développé à la fin de l’âge de bronze, engendrant des sous-lignées que l’on retrouve aujourd’hui au Proche-Orient, dans le Caucase, en Amérique du Sud et parmi les populations ashkénazes et séfarades. Cette étude a permis d’établir la migration des populations juives et non juives de la Méditerranée au cours des 3000 dernières années et d’évaluer leur croissance numérique.

De nouvelles lignées juives sont découvertes presque chaque semaine. Ainsi, une lignée plus récente, AB-218, concerne une dynastie rabbinique d’Alep, en Syrie. Elle a été retrouvée chez deux hommes. Le premier vit aujourd’hui au Guatemala, est de traditions familiales crypto-juives. Le second est issu d’une famille séfarade qui a été active au moment de la Révolution américaine. Une autre des nombreuses lignées de chromosomes Y que nous avons identifiées, l’AB-181, correspond aux descendants d’un célèbre rabbin séfarade installé il y a des siècles en Libye, à celle d’un chrétien de Guadalajara, au Mexique, et d’un homme issu d’une famille néerlandaise arrivée à New York pendant la colonisation. Ce dernier porte le nom de Van Zandt, nom que nos historiens pensent être une traduction approximative de «de Santander», une ville d’Espagne qui avait jadis une large communauté juive.

Ce ne sont là que quelques exemples des nombreuses lignées de chromosomes Y fascinantes sur lesquelles notre équipe travaille. Sur les 518 lignées chromosomiques Y juives identifiées à ce jour, il semble que moins de 100 lignées sont retrouvées chez les ashkénazes. Toutes les autres, 418, proviennent exclusivement d’hommes juifs non ashkénazes que nous avons testés à travers le monde.

Principe 2. Nous collaborons avec des experts universitaires selon le code éthique international du Comité d’Helsinski.

Le milieu de la généalogie n’est malheureusement pas à l’abri de pratiques éthiquement discutables. Pour nous prémunir contre cet écueil, nous avons, dès le début de l’étude, inclus des partenaires universitaires et avons adopté les pratiques éthiques rigoureuses de leurs institutions. Nous respectons les normes éthiques internationales et tous les universitaires qui s’engagent dans notre projet ne le feront qu’avec l’approbation du conseil d’examen institutionnel (CISR) du Comité d’Helsinki de leur propre institution. Les exigences principales pour l’approbation d’une CISR sont le consentement éclairé et l’anonymat des échantillons d’ADN.

Non seulement nos partenaires universitaires sont des garants éthiques, mais de plus ils contribuent grandement à la rigueur de notre analyse historique et bio-statistique. Notre équipe évalue minutieusement la généalogie de tous les participants potentiels à l’étude, et compare systématiquement leurs résultats ADN à ceux de notre base de donnée.

Toute nouvelle lignée n’est ajoutée à notre catalogue qu’après avoir identifié des correspondances ADN avec des membres connus de la communauté juive ou qu’après avoir apporté la preuve que l’échantillon ADN provient d’un membre d’une communauté juive reconnue. Notre objectif étant de décrire avec précision la variation de l’ADN-Y du peuple juif, nous devons nous assurer que les individus que nous testons et qui participent à cette étude ont une ascendance juive réelle.

Nous avons adopté ces principes fondamentaux et notre projet a obtenu l’approbation de la CISR du Technion, de l’Université de Haïfa, du Winthrop Hospital de l’Université de New York et de l’Université du Colorado.

Principe 3. Nous nous concentrons sur des communautés spécifiques et avons impliqué des historiens, des généalogistes et des leaders communautaires dans l’effort de recrutement.

Dès le début du projet, nous avons constaté que les communautés juives non ashkénazes était largement sous-représentées dans l’ensemble des bases de données répertoriant les chromosomes Y. Pour identifier et recruter nous-mêmes les participants, nous avons développé une stratégie à trois volets:

• Collaborer avec des historiens pour utiliser des sources primaires, comme les cimetières et les actes d’état civil, et compiler une liste de noms de famille historiquement importants de chaque communauté,
• Travailler avec des généalogistes juifs ayant une expertise dans chaque communauté afin d’identifier des leaders communautaires susceptibles de contribuer au projet,
• Faire appel aux dirigeants communautaires pour recruter les personnes à tester.

Des participants enthousiastes se sont portés volontaires pour nous assister dans ces étapes clés. Ainsi, Hazzan Ike Azose a permis de tester plusieurs dizaines de juifs grecs et turcs lors de la conférence de l’Association internationale des sociétés généalogiques juives (IAJGS) à Seattle en 2016. De même, Sandra de Marchena a contribué à tester des garçons avec lesquels elle a grandi à Curaçao. Enfin, un clinicien d’origine Bukhari s’est proposé de tester sa communauté. Bâtir patiemment des relations avec les généalogistes et les dirigeants de chaque communauté est sans aucun doute aujourd’hui la clé de notre succès dans le recrutement de participants.

Nous nous sommes initialement concentrés sur la Méditerranée orientale. Les populations non ashkénazes testées sont les suivantes :

• Méditerranée orientale (Turquie, Grèce, Macédoine, Bulgarie, Croatie) : 194 participants
• Mizrahim (irakien, persan, afghan, Kurdes / Nash-Didan) : 85 participants
• Sépharades occidentaux (Caraïbes, Amérique du Nord, Londres, Amsterdam) : 84 participants
• Italie : 81 participants
• Levant (Syrie, Liban et Égypte) : 71 participants
• Afrique du Nord (Maroc, Algérie, Tunisie, Libye) : 79 participants
• Caucase (Daghestan, Azerbaïdjan) : 25 participants
• Boukhari (Ouzbékistan) : 20 participants

Principe 4. Nous aidons nos participants à analyser leurs résultats

Les chefs de projet d’Avotaynu sont accessibles et disponible pour aider les participants à comprendre et interpréter les résultats de leurs tests ADN-Y. Grâce à notre base de données qui comporte plusieurs milliers de participants juifs, ils peuvent rapidement identifier les lignées juives et distinguer l’origine ashkénaze et non ashkénaze du chromosome Y.

La base de données d’Avotaynu s’enrichit quotidiennement de participants du monde entier. De nombreux généalogistes, scientifiques et universitaires continuent de se joindre à nous.  Nous travaillons activement à l’identification de communautés sous-testées et au recrutement de participants.

Si vous voulez en savoir plus, visitez notre site www.AvotaynuOnline.com. Si vous souhaitez participer au projet ou pour toute question, vous pouvez contacter Adam Brown (AdamBrown@AvotaynuDNA.org), administrateur d’Avotaynu. Vous pouvez également vous inscrire sur notre portail web (www.JewishDNA.org). Si vous avez déjà été testé pour le chromosome Y sur FamilyTree DNA, il vous faudra indiquer votre numéro de kit.

Références bibliographiques

1. Brown, Adam, “Announcing the Avotaynu DNA Project, AVOTAYNU Vol. XXXI, Fall 2015 and “Avotaynu DNA Project Advances to the Second Phase, AVOTAYNU Vol. XXXII, Fall 2016.

2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DNA_sequencing#High-

throughput_methods, vendu commercialement par FamilyTreeDNA sous le nom de «BigY»

3. https://isogg.org/wiki/Y-DNA_tools

Leipzig is one of the oldest trading cities in the world and its Trade Fair (Germ. Leipziger Messe) is one of the oldest Trade Fairs in the world. Leipzig was at the crossroads of two important trade routes: Via Regia [Royal Highway], running through the center of the Holy Roman Empire from Paris to Novgorod, and Via Imperii [Imperial Road], connecting Venice with the Baltic coast. In 1497, Maximilian I (who became Emperor in 1508) granted the city imperial trade fair privileges, an advantage that led to the city’s recognition as an origin of international trade fair operations.

The city’s central location attracted Jewish traders from all over Europe to the Leipzig Trade Fair, an important event that cultivated foreign relations among European nations and served as a meeting place for politicians. There were three fairs annually: the New Year’s Fair, which began on 1 January; the Easter Fair, which began in April or May; and St Michael’s Fair, which began around 29 September. The latter two fairs attracted most visitors. Jews played a central role at the fairs. At the Easter Fair of 1756, for example, about 16 percent of the visitors were Jewish. Local merchants feared the Jewish competition. As a result, Jews were not allowed to remain in Leipzig after the fair and they had to pay a special body tax (Germ. Leibzoll) to enter the city.

Even though they had to pay special Leibzoll body taxes, close to 82,000 Jews from all over Europe are estimated to have attended the Leipzig fairs between 1688 and 1764. The fact that they contributed 719, 661 Reichsthalers to the city coffers for this privilege made their presence particularly appreciated.¹  The Trade Fair regulations of 1268 reflected this as well, as Jewish merchants were granted rights equal to the rights enjoyed by Christian merchants, and the market day was changed from Saturday to Friday in respect for the Jewish Sabbath.²

Lists of Jews who paid the tax have been preserved from 1675 to 1764. Max Freudenthal published the names of Jews who attended the fair.²  Using the Slovakian village of Huncovce as an example, this article illustrates the use of Freudenthal’s book in genealogical research.

Before 1840, Jews were excluded from certain Hungarian cities, such as the Slovakian town of Kežmarok (Hung. Késmárk). Therefore Jews often lived in nearby villages, Huncovce (Hung. Hunfalu; Germ. Hunsdorf) in the case of Kežmarok. Table 1 presents the list of visitors from Huncovce and Kežmarok, which we have adapted from Freudenthal’s book (see Figures 1-3).

There are five different names of visitors. Our analysis suggests that these names only represent four different visitors. Using additional sources, we will try to show that three of the four visitors and two of the four servants belong to the same family business, spanning three generations.

It is an irony that we know the names of Jewish ancestors who visited the fair as a result of discrimination against Jews. To find out more about the visitors, who often came “with servants” (Freudenthal: “mit D.”), we consulted two Hungarian sources, which also are the result of discrimination against Jews: the Conscriptio Judaeorum, which was a census of Jewish households; and the tolerance tax lists (Germ. Toleranzgebührer). We will discuss the visitors and their servants in chronological order.

Samuel Moses: He visited the fair in 1740 from Hundsdorf (in the county of Szepes). The 1736 census of the county of Szepes mentions him as Samuel Mojsis.³ Samuel is the first on the list of eight households. The 1746 census of Huntzdorff does not mention him anymore. Before 1736, Samuel may have lived elsewhere in Slovakia, because Freudenthal mentions a visitor from Hucina (Heczina) by the name of Samuel Moses in 1726.⁴

Josef Samuel: He visited the fair in 1741 from Hundsdorf. The 1746 census of Huntzdorff mentions him as Josephus Samuel.⁵ If Samuel is a patronymic, then he is likely to have been a son of Samuel Moses. If this is correct, then he continued the business of his father. The 1746 census also mentions Josef’s daughter Ester and son-in-law Pinkus Mojses. Pinkus is listed in the same line as his father-in-law, suggesting that they were living in the same house. Below, we will return to this son-in-law, because he is our link to the next generation.

Lazarus Polatschick: He visited the fair in 1751-54 and again in 1761, three times with his servant Pincus Moses. The 1768 census of Hunsdorff mentions Lazar and Pinkes (in Latin: “Lazar et Pinkes”).⁶ Together they head the third household in the census. No family name or patronymic is provided for the two. These must be Lazarus Polatschick and his “servant” Pincus Moses. Pincus was the son-in-law of Josef Samuel (see above). Thus, Lazar and Pinkes continued Josef’s business. The 1771 census of Huntzdorff lists the year of birth for Hungarian Jews and the year of immigration for foreign Jews (see Figure 4).⁷ Lazarus Polyatseck, who immigrated in 1740, is third on the list. Pinches Moijses, who was born in Hungary in 1726, is fourth on the list. Fifth and sixth are two sons of Lazarus (“sub No. 3^tio Polyatseck filius”): Abrahamus (born 1745) and Isaac (born 1747). The entry of Pincus between those of Lazarus and his two sons, suggests that he was more than just a business partner. Being a business partner of Pinches Moijses (in 1771) and living in the same household as Pinkes (in 1768) strongly suggests that Lazarus also was a son-in-law of Josef Samuel. We were unable to determine the exact family relationship of Lazarus with his “servant” Enoch Polatschick.

In 1754, Lazarus Polazscik and Pincus Moses claimed to have come from Kežmarok. However, Jews were not allowed to live there at the time. The 1746 and 1768 censuses confirm that they lived in Huncovce.

The 1771 census explicitly calls Pinches Moijses a (business) partner of Lazarus (in Latin: “praecedentis Polyatseck companista”). Moreover, Pinches Moijses and Lazarus Polyatseck are both listed in the 1771 census as being of good social status (in Latin: “Boni”). However, Pincus Moses visited the fair as a servant of Lazarus Polatschick! Freudenthal (page 19) explains that business partners and relatives often posed as servants, in order to benefit from a lower tax rate.

Lazarus Abraham: Lazarus Abraham visited the fair in 1762 from Kežmarok. Probably he came from Huncovce, because Jews were not allowed to live there. The 1746 census is the only one to mention him. We propose to identify Lazarus Abraham with Lazarus Polatschick. Lazarus Polyaczek is mentioned in a document from 1745.⁸ Thus, the 1746 census should have mentioned him. Instead, we find Lazarus Abraham. His patronymic suggests that he was a son of Abraham Polyacsek. The fact that Lazarus Polyaczek had a son by the name of Abraham (born 1745), also supports the identification of Abraham Polyacsek as the father of Lazarus. Abraham Polyaczek is No. 7 in the 1736 census.

There are two problems, however, with the identification of the older Abraham as the father of Lazarus and the grandfather of the younger Abraham. First, in 1771 the younger Abraham claimed to have been born in 1745, whereas in 1746 the older Abraham was still alive. Second, in 1771 Lazarus claimed to have immigrated in 1740, whereas the older Abraham is already mentioned in the census of 1736. However, retrospective information is often inaccurate. The best-known example is age overstatement.⁹ Thus, the younger Abraham may actually have been born in 1746, whereas his father Lazarus may have immigrated in 1736. The family name Polatschick (i.e. little Pole) suggests that the family came from Poland.

The 1774 and 1782 census mention Lazar Polyarcsek. The tolerance tax lists mention him for three consecutive years in 1786/87, 1787/88, and 1788/89. The 1789/90 tax list does not mention him anymore.¹⁰

Lazarus Fränckel: Lazar Frenkel is No. 2 in the 1768 census, before Lazar [Polatschick] and Pinkes [Moses], who are listed together as No. 3. Lazarus Frenckel is No. 7 in the 1771 census, immediately after the two sons of Lazarus Polyatseck. We failed to find any evidence for a family or business relationship between Lazarus Polatschick and Lazarus Fränckel. Freudenthal thought that they were one and the same person, making it difficult to determine in which year they visited the fair, without inspecting the original documents (see Figure 2). Fortunately, four times the name of the “servant” (Pincus Moses and Enoch Polatschick) enabled us to determine the identity of the visitor. This leaves 1752 and 1763 as the only two years, in which it is unclear which of the two visited the fair. The 1771 census gives his year of immigration as 1753. If this year is accurate, then Lazarus Fränckel is unlikely to have visited the fair in 1752 from Huncovce, leaving 1763 as the only year. We have not been able to identify the “servants” of Lazarus Fränckel.

The 1774 and 1782 census mention Lazar Frenkel. The tolerance tax lists only mention him once, in 1786/87.

All the visitors were already known to us from other contemporary sources. However, the list of visitors to the fair at Leipzig tied three of the four visitors together in what appears to have been a family business spanning three generations. Unfortunately, we do not know in what commodities the family traded. It is possible that there also were visitors from the same family to the fair in Leipzig in the fourth generation. However, the list stops in 1764.

Endnotes

1. Robert Allen Willingham II, “Jews in Leipzig: Nationality and Community in the 20th Century”, dissertation, the University of Texas at Austin, 2005,  page 16. Downloaded at https://repositories.lib.utexas.edu/bitstream/handle/2152/1799/willinghamr73843.pdf.

2. “The Jewish Community of Leipzig”, https://dbs.bh.org.il/place/leipzig. 

2. M. Freudenthal, Leipziger Messgäste: Die Jüdischen Besucher der Leipziger Messen in den Jahren 1675 bis 1764 (Frankfurt am Main: J. Kauffmann Verlag, 1928). Download at http://sammlungen.ub.uni-frankfurt.de/urn/urn:nbn:de:hebis:30-180015189004.

3. Monumenta Hungariae Judaica XVII, page 252. The census does not mention place names.

4. Freudenthal, page 141. Hucina may be Hucín (German: Hutzendorf; Hungarian: Gice or Gizce).

5. Monumenta Hungariae Judaica VII, page 800.

6. Monumenta Hungariae Judaica XVI, page 266.

7. LDS film #1529696.

8. Monumenta Hungariae Judaica VII, page 707.

9. Jona Schellekens (1995), “Age overstatement among European Jews”, Avotaynu XI, pp. 30-31.

10. We consulted www.jewishgen.org for the 1774 and 1782 census and the tolerance tax lists.

Like many other Jewish communities in the Levant, the Jewish community of Damascus dwindled from a thriving community with 12,000 members in 1943 until only a handful remained by 2010. Its members largely left for Mandatory Palestine and later to the State of Israel, the USA or Latin America, where they established thriving new communities founded on a rich heritage.

In this article, I aim to foster genealogical research into the Jewish families of Damascus by offering a preliminary compilation of surnames of those who lived there. In this endeavor, I have built upon the work of others:

Eliezer and Yosef Yoel Rivlin

Eliezer and Yosef Yoel Rivlin lived in Damascus during World War I and in 1926 published a book about the history of the Jews in Damascus during the 16th century[1]. In their last chapter, the Rivlins included a list of the surnames of Jewish families that lived in the city in previous centuries, as was provided to them by the city’s Rabbis. They noted that some of those families continued to reside there in the 20th century. Unfortunately, the list is only partial.

Jews Appearing Before Muslim  Courts 1583-1909

During 2015, I wrote an article for AVOTAYNU entitled “When Did Damascus Jews Start To Use Surnames?”. The source of my data was a collection of documents in the Muslim religious courts of Damascus between the years 1583-1909. My article did not try to index surnames, but rather to figure out when surnames came into use In Damascus. Because the court documents mentioned only names of Jews who appeared before them, they reflect only a fraction of Damascus surnames and only ran through 1909.[2][3]

Amon Atzmon

The first serious attempt to construct a comprehensive list of Syrian Jewish surnames was undertaken by Amnon Atzmon, who in 2014 compiled a list of surnames of Israelis born in Syria (Damascus, Aleppo, and Qamishi). The list was posted in Hebrew on the website of the “Organization of Damascene Jews (from Syria) Living in Israel”. Atzmon assembled 1,864 surnames from a variety of lists existing in Israel with Hebrew spellings apparently provided by family members. Many surnames appear multiple times with different Hebrew spellings, suggesting that the original Arabic spellings had been ignored or forgotten. Many of the families on the list carried Hebraized surnames adopted after their arrival in Israel.[4]

I was asked at a certain stage by Yossi Yavin (Yabu) whose late father hailed from Damascus to explore the Atzmon list and to offer a legal Hebrew spelling based on known rules governing transliteration from Arabic to Hebrew. Using these rules, I managed to identify and reconstruct many contemporary Jewish Syrian surnames. I found the Damascus Jewish surnames were not only of Arabic origin but Sephardic, Hebrew, and Ashkenazic origin as well.

Because many of the names had been transcribed into Hebrew based on how they sounded, some of the names on the Atzmon list required reconstruction from the Hebrew. For example, the Arabic letter Q is not pronounced in many cases, thus Qattash/ch is pronounced Attash/ch and Qubrusi is pronounced Ubrusi or Ibrisi.

Rafi Asher

At this stage, Rafi Asher from Tel Aviv (whose parents hail from Damascus and who is familiar with many surnames of Jews from Damascus), offered to examine my transcription of the Atzmon surname list and to identify those specifically from Damascus. 

Asher and I verified our list and added several new surnames by corresponding with members of two Hebrew Facebook groups “Habait Hadamaskai” (The Damsacene House) [5] and “Lemoreshet Yehudei Damesek Suria u Levanon “(The Heritage of The Jews of Damascus, Syria and Lebanon) [6].  

Based on this inquiry, Asher compiled a Hebrew-language table of Damascene surnames as well as a Latin transliteration. The PDF can be viewed on the “Habait Hadamaskai” website in the files section.[7] The table displays a legend explaining how some letters and vowels were actually pronounced in Damascus. This is a remarkable contribution to the genealogy of Damascene Jewish families and will certainly serve future researchers from different disciplines.

A Consolidated Index of Jewish Surnames in 20^th Century Damascus

As the table compiled by Rafi Asher is not easily accessible to readers who are not familiar with Hebrew and Arabic, I am providing below a re-compiled version of his list using the Latin alphabet. In the process, I added further surnames.

Since a considerable number of the surnames on the list are of Arabic (and fraction from Turkish) origin, we referred to their original Arabic spellings to offer a more uniform index that was not dependent upon inconsistencies in pronunciation. In the process, discovered mainly through Latin spellings on contemporary (non-Jewish)  Syrian Facebook groups, that notwithstanding a common spelling, there is indeed more than one way to pronounce a given surname.

The updated surnames index set out below presently includes some 300 surnames and hopefully will grow as we receive feedback from the community. The Latin transliteration is not according to academic rules but tries to reflect as much as possible the way it is written. Hopefully, everyone will be able to locate the surname he or she seeks. Surnames from Arabic origin are marked by the letter A.

Notes

[1] Rivlin, Eliezer, and Yosef Yoel Rivlin. Le Korot Hayehudim Be Damesek in the Fourth Century of the Creation. Jerusalem,1926 (in Hebrew)

[2] Rosen, Jacob. “When Did Damascus Jews Start To Use Surnames?” Avotaynu 31 no. 3 (2015): 37-38

[3] Al’Ulabi, Akram Hasan. Damascus Jews in the Ottoman Period: As Reflected in Shari’ah Courts Files in the Center of Historical Documents in Damascus 1583–1909. Damascus,2011 (in Arabic).

[4] http://misham.org.il/indexecf4.html?page_id=2191[1]
 
[5] https://www.facebook.com/groups/1402681869875056/

[6] https://www.facebook.com/groups/misham/

[7] https://www.facebook.com/groups/1402681869875056/files/

Résumé : Cette étude, réalisée sous l’égide de l’Université de Haïfa et du Technion, fait partie intégrante de l’étude génétique globale des hommes Juifs sépharades et des juifs du Levant, non ashkénazes. Elle est menée sur une cohorte d’hommes d’ascendance paternelle juive marocaine récente ou, plus ancienne, originaire de la péninsule ibérique. Des signatures détaillées des séquences d’ADN du chromosome Y seront obtenues à partir de cette cohorte. Il s’agit de la première étude génétique qui porte spécifiquement sur les hommes juifs marocains.

Contexte : La grande majorité de la population juive du Maroc et, en particulier, des villes côtières et des grandes villes de l’intérieur telles que Marrakech, Fès ou Meknès, est constituée de juifs qui ont fui l’inquisition et les persécutions en Espagne pendant les XIV^e et XV^e siècles. Ce sont les Megorashim (expulsés ou voyageurs). Toutefois, la présence juive au Maroc est attestée depuis la première diaspora après la destruction du premier temple (en 587 avant notre ère) ou du second temple par les Romains en 70. Ces communautés juives se sont installées dans le Sud marocain bien avant l’invasion arabe, parfois dans des zones reculées. Certaines ont perduré plus de 2000 ans, jusqu’à leur départ massif pour Israël, dans les années 1950-1960. Ce sont les Toshavim (habitants ou résidents). Certains de ces Toshavim ont vécu pendant des siècles avec les populations locales, les Berbères avec lesquels ils avaient généralement des liens commerciaux étroits.

Hypothèse : Une étude de l’ADN mitochondrial, transmis par la lignée maternelle, portant sur des juifs non ashkénazes et incluant 149 juifs marocains suggère que l’origine maternelle ancestrale des juifs marocains est commune entre les Megorashim et les Toshavim. Elle est proche de celle des ashkénazes, marquée par une influence espagnole. Elle est clairement distincte de celle des Nord-Africains non juifs, notamment des berbères¹.

L’étude du chromosome Y des juifs marocains devrait montrer des résultats superposables à ceux de l’ADN mitochondrial. L’identification de branches familiales et la confrontation avec les données généalogiques et historiques pourraient permettre de préciser l’itinéraire suivi par ancêtres juifs marocains avant leur arrivée au Maroc et leurs différentes migrations.

Objectifs

1. Déterminer l’origine géographique et ethnique des ancêtres des juifs marocains
2. Confirmer ou infirmer l’origine commune des juifs marocains Megorashim et Toshavim.
3. Préciser l’itinéraire des ancêtres des juifs marocains avant leur arrivée au Maroc.

Méthode :

1. Confirmer l’origine juive marocaine (ou ibérique) des participants par des données historiques ou généalogiques classiques.
2. Obtenir un consentement signé par les participants volontaires.
3. Pratiquer un frottis buccal par écouvillon et analyser l’échantillon par un laboratoire agréé.
   Après l’amplification standard de l’ADN, l’assurance qualité et les techniques d’analyse, un sous- ensemble initial de séquençage complet du chromosome Y de l’échantillon sera effectué afin d’identifier de nouveaux variants SNP basse fréquence ou précédemment décrites qui délimitent une lignée donnée du chromosome Y. Le chromosome Y est transmis presque intégralement de père en fils, bien que des mutations uniques, mais génétiquement limitées se produisent de temps en temps, rendant chaque lignée distincte de toute autre lignée et, partant, utile sur le plan généalogique. Ces SNP seront ajoutés à un panel standard d’au moins 100 marqueurs du chromosome Y pour le génotypage de l’ensemble des échantillons. L’étude inclura également l’analyse d’une série de marqueurs STR, dans la mesure où de tels marqueurs sont inclus dans la désignation de lignage de certaines bases de données publiquement accessibles et documentées. 

Pertinence : L’étude du chromosome Y peut donner un aperçu de la dispersion internationale de la communauté sépharade en général et des juifs marocains en particulier, ainsi que des origines génétiques de la communauté juive ibérique. Parallèlement aux recherches généalogiques conformes à la norme de généalogie, aux recherches historiques et à d’autres disciplines universitaires, cela peut servir de point d’ancrage à une étude plus approfondie des populations juives de l’ancienne péninsule ibérique.

Soutien : L’étude génétique sur les hommes Juifs sépharades est soutenue par la Fondation Avotaynu (New Haven, CT), l’Institut international de généalogie juive (Jérusalem) et la Fondation Brown (Teaneck, NJ).

Confidentialité :

Les informations recueillies pour cette étude sont uniquement à des fins de recherche pédagogique et historique. Aucune donnée médicale ne sera traitée ou obtenue et il n’y a aucune intention de commercialiser les résultats. Le programme peut contacter les participants pour obtenir des informations historiques dans le cadre de cette étude. Une fois l’étude terminée, une base de données publique sera établie avec l’accord des participants. Elle comportera le nom de famille, le nom et le lieu de naissance de l’ancêtre masculin le plus éloigné, ainsi que les marqueurs du chromosome Y.  Aucune information d’identification supplémentaire ne sera partagée sans l’accord du participant.

Les résultats individuels seront communiqués à chaque participant incluant tout commentaire jugé relevant ou important par l’équipe de recherche.

Les principes directeurs de l’étude sont consultables à Principes directeurs du projet Avotaynu.

Pour plus d’informations, veuillez contacter raquellevytoledanomail@gmail.com

As with most Jewish communities in the pre-1948 Arab world, the surnames of Baghdad’s Jewish community have not until now been comprehensively indexed. The community, which numbered some 77,000 members in 1947,  declined by more than 90% in only four years due to mass emigration, mainly to Israel. Emigration continued during the following decades with a peak in the early 1970s. Today only a handful of Jews remain in Baghdad.

In the rush to depart, most Jewish authorities left their vital records behind. These records were obtained by the authorities and remain inaccessible to this day.

Although many books have been published about various aspects of Baghdadi Jewry and its rich heritage, none contain a systematically-researched list of surnames. Partial lists do exist, but only in Hebrew.

As I did in my recently published indexes of Cairo and Damascus surnames (see Note 1 below), I built the Baghdadi index by scouring the following eclectic collection of sources in the archives, in published works, and in social media:

Lists of Exemptions from Ottoman Military Service 1892-1899 (See Note 2 below)

During the last decade of the 19th Century, the Jewish community managed to arrange an exemption from military service in the Ottoman army for Jewish young males. This involved financial arrangements to exempt males eligible for conscription born from 1874 onwards. Two such lists for 1892 and 1899 were published by the printing house of Rabbi Shlomo Bekhor Husin and are available in microfilms at the National Library of Israel. The indexed 1892 list of 1,905 exempted me is available on the Website of the Israel Genealogical Research Association. The 1899 list contains 2,483 of men.  Notably, the two lists were written in the Arabic language in Hebrew Rash”i script, and contain not just the name of the individual exempted, but also that of his father and occasionally that of his grandfather.

It goes without saying that families in which only daughters are not represented in these lists.

The 1951 Register of Baghdadi Jews Whose Iraqi Nationality Was Withdrawn

http://www.imarawatijara.com/register_iraqi_jews/

Following the toppling of Saddam Hussein in 2003, Baghdad government offices were ransacked and many official documents were basically thrown to the streets. Among them was a volume of 530 printed pages listing the names of all Baghdadi Jews whose Iraqi nationality was withdrawn according to a law passed in 1950.

Fortunately for our present work, a copy of the volume discovered by an Iraqi national who has posted a digital scan on the web. The index contains the names of 38,000 adults born prior to 1935). Considering the average size of Jewish families in Baghdad, we may  one may estimate that total number of those who lost their nationality according to that law was approximately 70,000 persons. Unfortunately, the volume includes only Jews from the Baghdad Governorate and it would appear that supposed separate volumes for other governorates have been lost.

Iraqi Jewish Archive (IJA)

https://ijarchive.org/

Following the downfall of Baghdad in 2003, the U.S. military found in the cellars of Saddam Hussein’s Intelligence unit thousands of documents pertaining to the Jewish community for the years 1922-1971. These documents include prayer and religious books, administrative documents, school attendance records, burial society lists, and fragmental lists of households. They are written or printed primarily in Arabic (with some in Hebrew). The documents had been exposed to moisture and were discovered in very poor condition. These were transferred to the US National Archives in Washington D.C and after a long restoration process, legible material was scanned and posted on the web during 2013.

List of Baghdadi Jewish Burials 1949-20015

https://tinyurl.com/BaghdadiJewishBurials

Israel State Archives possesses a copy of a handwritten file in Arabic of all the burials in Baghdad between 1949-2001. It includes many surnames not found in the other comprehensive sources that I just described. It seems likely that the families or individuals not described in the official sources likely moved to Baghdad from other communities after the mass emigration of 1951.

“A History of the Jews in Baghdad” by David Solomon Sassoon

Sassoon,David Solomon A History of the Jews in Baghdad, Letchworth, NY (1982) and the Hebrew edition of 1955: https://www.nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ALEPH990020693500205171/NLI

This volume was published in English during 1949 and is based on the author’s extensive journey to Iraq in 1911.  During 1955, Meir Bnayahu translates Sassoon’s work into Hebrew and appended a glossary of Baghdadi surnames composed in 1911 by two respected Baghdadi scholars commissioned by Sassoon himself.  but was not included in the 1949 English edition.

Bnayahu expanded the original list, was also aware of the exemption lists of 1892-1899, and interviewed some immigrants from Baghdad who arrived to Israel in 1951. It is the first known attempt to compose a list of Baghdadi Jewish surnames, but it is only partial as we discovered in the process of compiling the present index.

Dictionary of the Baghdadi Jewish Dialect (in Hebrew) by Gila Swery-Yona

Swery-Yona,Gila  Lahag Yehudei Bavel, Hod Hasharon (2013) pp. 284-287 https://www.nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ALEPH003938400/NLI

This book appeared first in 1995 (with the 2nd edition in 2013) as a dictionary of Baghdadi Jewish words and idioms aiming to make them accessible to the second generation of Iraqi Jews who do not read or speak Arabic.  The appendixes include a list of 664 Baghdadi surnames and also lists of given names of males and females. The lists were composed of memory and in consultation with the late Rahamim Rejwan, a native of Baghdad, but did not involve systematic research of primary materials. This valuable list is not accessible to non-Hebrew readers, and even Hebrew speakers will find it a challenge to recognize surnames valiantly but imperfectly transliterated from the distinctive Baghdadi Jewish dialect.

“Preserving the Iraqi Language” Facebook Group (in Hebrew) (footnote

https://www.facebook.com/groups/zahavb/

A vibrant Israeli Facebook group with more than 70,000 members dedicated to the preservation of the popular heritage of Iraqi Jews. Most postings are about words, Iraqi music, memorabilia, folklore, proverbs, and recipes. A significant portion of the members has Baghdadi roots. In many cases, I could verify whether a certain surname is Baghdadi by simply posting a question. I also found that the ability to search prior posts within the Group, and the willingness of participants to respond to questions, enabled me to turn this wonderful social networking resource into a robust tool for future research.

The present index includes 733 Baghdadi surnames extracted from the above-mentioned sources. It is by no means a complete list and probably contains few surnames which are not Baghdadi though appear in the Baghdadi sources. Like with my previous indexes, people who will note mistakes or missing names will hopefully notify me about them.

Notes

1. See Jacob Rosen-Koenigsbuch, “A Consolidated Index of Jewish Surnames in 20th Century Damascus“, Avotaynu Online, June 21, 2020; also see Jacob Rosen-Koenigsbuch, “Index of Jewish Surnames Found in 20th Century Cairo“, Avotaynu Online, Dec 1, 2019.
3.  “Daftar Tawzi’a Badlat Alaskaria” Baghdad, Shlomo Bekhor Husin, 1892(microfilm at the National Library of Israel in Arabic in Rash”i Hebrew script) Register of Military Exemptions in 1892 https://www.nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ALEPH001866853/NLI and “Daftar Tawzi’a Rasm Badlat Alaskaria” Baghdad, Shlomo Bekhor Husin, 1899(microfilm at the National Library of Israel in Arabic in Rash”i Hebrew script) Register of Military Exemptions in 1899 https://www.nli.org.il/he/books/NNL_ALEPH004380648/NLI

Baghdadi Consolidated Jewish Surnames Index (1874-2001)

To view a recording of Adam Brown’s lecture to JewishGen viewers on December 2, 2020, visit https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QafFMkGDgVw

Skip ahead 4 minutes to catch the beginning of the talk!

To examine Adam’s slides, visit here (warning: file is huge)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/12RNhy14hk6spMBFjONkwWykf3WiN336I/view?usp=sharing

To Participate in the Avotaynu DNA Project

• If you have not yet DNA tested, please email Adam.Brown (at) AvotaynuDNA.org for information.
• If you have been DNA tested at Family Tree DNA, and wish to join our project, please log in your FTDNA kit at our FTDNA portal at www.JewishDNA.org, press “join” and then “confirm”.
• If you have been DNA tested at 23andMe, MyHeritage, or Ancestry, but not FTDNA, please download your raw data file from your provider, then visit the FTDNA Autosomal Upload Page to upload your file to FTDNA. After receiving your FTDNA kit number and password, log in to your FTDNA kit at our FTDNA portal at www.JewishDNA.org, press “join” and then “confirm”.

Further reading:

The last two decades have witnessed a remarkable surge of publications, both academic and literary, about Jewish life in Egypt during the 20^th century. The latest is the Ph.D. thesis by Dr.Liat Maggid Alon from the Ben Gurion University, a summary of which appeared recently. (See, Liat Maggid Alon, The Jewish Bourgeoisie of Egypt in the First Half of the Twentieth Century: Modernity, Socio-Cultural Practices, and Oral Testimonials, Jama‘a, vol. 24, 2019, pp.7-32) .

The summary reviews most of those recent studies and points out the paucity of archival sources as the current geopolitical circumstances prevent access to them, not only in Egypt but through the whole Middle East. This is a serious hurdle for researchers who wish to focus more on personal narratives rather than on general trends or to look into the human structures of organizations and the individuals who were members of them. In other words, they need surnames and given names to analyze who is who, what is his or her religious or ethnic background, and what can be learned and extracted from them.

The Jewish community in Cairo (as well as in Alexandria and Port Said) during the first half of the 20^th century is an example in place. There is no central depository or database which is accessible. Some of the documents of the Jewish Community which found their way out such as those at Yeshiva University in New York deal mainly with Jewish education and community affairs.

The same may be said about the “Central Archive for the History of the Jewish People”( http://cahjp.nli.org.il/content/egypt) in Jerusalem which is in possession of the same kind of materials. The main problem with those materials is that they deal mainly with the community’s dignitaries and Jewish schools and education. The Central Zionist Archive (CZA)in Jerusalem possesses lists of Egyptian Jews who emigrated to Israel but without mentioning their cities of origin. The Jewish Distribution Committee (JDC) has some lists of Egyptian Jews but with no city of origin. Those lists represent only a fraction of the Egyptian Jews because many of them were holders of European passports (Italian, British, French, Greek, and Spanish) and left Egypt independently and were not in contact with those organizations. This is the place to mention that only half of the Egyptian Jews made their way to Israel while the rest settled mainly in the USA, Brazil. Argentina, France, Italy, and Australia.

This paper intends to fill those lacunae and lists the surnames of the Jewish families, Sephardic and Ashkenazi and the Karaites, which resided in Cairo from the turn of the 20^th century with a brief survey of the available sources which were consulted and used to construct such an index.

The main source for harvesting Jewish surnames are the two weeklies in French that were published in the city between 1918-1945: “Israel” and “L’Aurore”. They are scanned and can be viewed on the website of the National Library of Israel. They can be searched online by OCR technique which, because of the print quality, misses a considerable number of surnames.

The fact that many surnames are spelled in a variety of ways necessitates a creative search methodology. However, the major drawback of these two weeklies is that they focus on Jewish communal life, institutions and Jewish schools and organizations. Unfortunately, many Jewish kids did not attend Jewish schools, and their parents were not donors to Jewish organizations and institutions, thus they fell beyond the coverage of the Jewish press.

The second source is the personal memoir books by authors who grew up in Cairo, some of whom drew literary praise and positive coverage by the media. However, they are very poor in providing surnames.  The Farhi’s Family website “Les Fleurs de L’Orient” has a large index of families that are related to the Farhi family by marriage. The index notes the place of birth, residence or death of each indexed individual thus constituting an additional source for Cairo Jewish surnames.

Another important source is the different Egyptian business and telephone directories but they require careful scrutiny to dig out the Jewish surnames keeping again in mind that only a fraction of the city’s Jews are listed in them.

The Bassatine Cairo Cemetery is only partially and indexed here and covers some 19^th-century graves but can barely contribute any useful data. See

MyHeritage offers only a small fraction of Cairo surnames and so does Findagrave website (55 graves). Yad Vashem’s database of pages of testimony offers also some surnames of victims who were born in Cairo as does the Jewish Genealogical Family Finder and also the JewishGen SIG archives.

The most promising and fast-developing source is social media, namely the several Facebook groups of Egyptian Jews which offer quick communication around the globe:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/Egyptianjews/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/189099621661090/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/696709837127562/

https://www.facebook.com/groups/1528403684101271/

The language of communication in most of them is Hebrew, French, Portuguese, English, and Arabic (some Egyptians contribute photos and comments). Many of the participants were born in Cairo and attended elementary schools there in the 1950s and hail from families that are not mentioned in the weeklies above mentioned. Their contribution to the surnames collecting process is significant as they are able to shed a light about the origin of the family before arrival to Cairo, which is a critical component for the further stages of genealogical research.

Using all those sources yielded so far, 1,854 surnames can be reviewed in the attached table. The Karaite surnames are marked K.  This is by no means a complete list and it is hoped that more will be supplemented by readers who have an intimate knowledge of the city. As previously noted, many surnames were spelled in various ways and an attempt was made to keep them together, with few exceptions in case of doubt. Considering the fact that at its peak the community amounted to around 40,000 members (See Dario Miccoli, Histories of the Jews of Egypt: AnImagined Bourgeoisie, 1880s-1950s (London and New York: Routledge, 2015), p.5) this high number of surnames reflects the dynamic mobility of the Jews in and out of the city. During my initial steps, I consulted several people who were born in Cairo and could provide surnames they remember. I would like to mention them by name: Dr. Ruth Kimche, Ilana Nahmias (the widow of Victor Nahmias), Alain Farhi, Ambassador(ret.) David Sultan, and the late Mayor of Nes Tziona Yossi Shvo (Shababo). Their help gave me a critical boost. I thank them all.

Index of Surnames Found in 20th Cairo