[This subject matter of this announcement is presently in the pre-publication process and will be published in full with accompanying data following peer review.] The Avotaynu DNA Project is pleased to announce that its advanced genetic testing of men from […]
Avotaynu DNA Project Discovers ~11,000 Year Old Neolithic Lineage
The Neolithic yDNA Haplogroup J-P58 has been a topic of research interest since its discovery over 15 years ago (Hammer & Behar, et al, 2009[1]; Chiaroni, et al, 2010[2]; Sahakyn, et al, 2021[3]). Amplified by a little understood population bottleneck […]
Index of Jewish Surnames in Beirut
[This index is dedicated to the memory of Ambassador Isaac Levanon (1944-2023)] As with other Jewish communities in the Levant, the size of the Beirut Jewish commnity during the 20th century can only be estimated. The Jewish population of the […]
Aleppo Jewish Surnames Index
The slow decline of the Aleppo Jewish community began during the 19th century following the opening of the Suez Canal in 1869 and was accelerated following the turmoil of World War I and the collapse of the Ottoman Empire in […]
The Surprising Origins of the Coryell Family of Colonial New Jersey
[The following article is reprinted by permission of the New England Historic Genealogical Society. The article originally appeared in the Winter 2023 edition of AMERICAN ANCESTORS on pages 27-31. For more information about AMERICAN ANCESTORS magazine and the New England […]
Genealo-J Days – Paris 11/19-20/2022
The Cercle de Généalogie Juive is pleased to invite you November 19 and 20, 2022, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. at the Genealo-J Days.to be held at Musée d’Art et d’Histoire du Judaïsme, 71 rue du Temple – Paris […]
À la rencontre de nos ancêtres Juifs Marocains et Algériens : NAJMA, la nouvelle association de généalogie dédiée aux juifs du Maroc et d’Algérie.
La présence de Juifs au Maroc et en Algérie est attestée dès le IIe siècle de l’ère moderne. Arrivés avec les Phéniciens, les Romains, les Arabes, ou à la suite des expulsions d’Espagne et du Portugal, ils forment un patchwork […]
Origine ancestrale des Juifs marocains par l’étude du chromosome Y
Comment identifier nos origines ancestrales ? Il existe malheureusement très peu de sources historiques, familiales ou documentaires pour identifier nos ancêtres Juif marocains. Au mieux, nous avons connaissance d’un ou de deux ancêtres nés au 18e ou au 19e siècle parce qu’ils […]
Surname list of the Jews of Damascus: 2021 update
Like many other Jewish communities in the Levant, that of Damascus declined from a thriving community with 12,000 members in 1943 to only a handful by 2010. Its members largely left for Mandatory Palestine, and later to the State of […]
Sephardic Genealogy Society Announced
While everyone has been locked indoors, the Sephardic online community has been thriving. This is largely thanks to weekly Sephardic World talks hosted by Ton Thielen and David Mendoza, which have reached an international audience. Sephardic World was put together […]
Index of Jewish Surnames in Alexandria in the 20th Century (updated December 2022)
Like the Jewish community in Cairo, the community in Alexandria increased from few thousand members at the end of the 19th century to a vibrant body of around 40,000 members at its peak in 1948.Many factors contributed to this fast […]
Index of Jewish Surnames Found in 20th Century Cairo – Updated December 2022
The last two decades have witnessed a remarkable surge of publications, both academic and literary, about Jewish life in Egypt during the 20th century. The latest is the Ph.D. thesis by Dr.Liat Maggid Alon from the Ben Gurion University, a summary […]
Avotaynu DNA Lecture Materials
Jewish Gen Lecture December 2, 2020 To view a recording of Adam Brown’s lecture to JewishGen viewers on , 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 […]
Consolidated Baghdadi Jewish Surnames Index (1874-2001)
[updated June 25, 2023] Like most of the Jewish communities in the Levant, Baghdad’s Jewish population too was not properly indexed so far. The community which counted in 1947 about 77,000 members downsized by more than 90% in 1951 due […]
Étude du Chromosome Y des Hommes Juifs Marocains
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 […]
A Consolidated Index of Jewish Surnames in 20th Century Damascus
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 […]
Principes directeurs du projet Avotaynu
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 […]
Étude Génétique des Hommes Juifs Sefardes et Mizrahi
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 […]
The Avotaynu DNA Global Census of the Jewish People – March 2020 Update
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 […]
Avotaynu DNA Seeks Sephardi & Mizrahi Study Participants!
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 […]
Working by the Book in Sephardic Research: The Gedalia Family of Nis, Serbia
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 […]
Jewish Emigration from Aleppo In the 19th and 20th Centuries
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 […]
History and Genealogy of the Jews of Tuscany
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, […]
London’s Portuguese Jewish Community
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 […]
Genealogy and the Settlement of Jews in Brazil
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 […]
The Lost Jews of St. Maarten
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. […]
Contested Origins of Eastern European Jewry: Clues from History, Linguistics and Onomastics
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 […]
The Genetic Origins of Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews (from the Hebrew word for “German”) are the largest of the Jewish groups and number some 10 to 11 million people today in a worldwide Jewish population of 13 million people (Reviewed in Ostrer, 2001; Ostrer, 2012). During […]
Guiding Principles of the Avotaynu DNA Project
The AvotaynuDNA-sponsored Genetic Census of the Jewish People enters its third year with active DNA testing being carried out within Jewish communities on six continents. As described previously in the pages of AVOTAYNU, the purpose of the project is to […]
DNA Testing for Newbies
So, you have made a lot of progress on your family tree and you ask, “What can DNA testing do for me?” In this short essay, I won’t answer your question by delving into the fascinating details of DNA testing, […]
Sephardi Tombstones found in Suriname – Index of Surnames
For the benefit of the genealogical community, AvotaynuDNA team member Rachel Brown has compiled an alphabetized index of all surnames found in the outstanding volume Remnant Stones: the Jewish Cemeteries of Suriname: Epitaphs by Aviva Ben-Ur and Rachel Frankel, available […]
Baghdadi Female Given Names -A Crowd-Sourced Fragmental List
Little attention was dedicated so far to the research of female given names of the Jews in the Levant. The most recent dictionary by the late Mathilde A. Tagger[1] deals mainly with Sephardic given names and barely touches the given […]
The Avotaynu DNA Project Advances to Its Second Phase
One year ago we announced the new Avotaynu DNA Project AVOTAYNU, Fall 2016), an initiative managed by Adam Brown, Raquel Levy-Toledano and Michael Waas of the Avotaynu Research Partnership LLC that intends to compile a database comprising the DNA test […]
The Role of the Jewish Genealogist In Medical and Genetic Family History
Genealogists not only have been documenting their family histories, but have become the repository of vital medical and genetic history for their families. With the advent of widely available genetic testing, the giant leaps in disease identification, the dramatic growth […]
The Jews of Tetuan, Morocco: Genealogy and Iconography
Tetuan Jewry, founded at the end of the 15th century by Spanish-speaking Jews, is a community apart in Morocco. Most other Moroccan Jewish communities were created much earlier and spoke Arabic. In this article, we review the major genealogical resources […]
Spanish-Jewish `Nobility’ of Aleppo, Syria
As recently as 1992, more than 4,000 Jews were being held against their will in Syria, unable to leave and kept under watch, branded as “Mussawi,” followers of Moses. At that time, 50,000 Jews from Syria lived in Brooklyn’s Flatbush […]
Tip of the Iceberg: What Y-DNA Lineages Can Tell Us About Jewish History and Migration
A screencast (video) is now available for those who were unable to attend the lecture with this title that I delivered at the IAJGS 2016 Conference due to the small capacity of the room, or for those who were unable to […]
Given Names of the Jewish Women of Damascus – 1583-1909
Among the many challenges one faces in Jewish genealogical research is the paucity of sources relating to female given names and surnames. This was clearly illustrated at the lecture of Dr. Lea Haber–Gedalia in the 2015 IAJGS Annual Conference in Jerusalem [1]. There are […]
Announcing the Avotaynu DNA Project!
DNA testing is an unparalleled genealogical resource, yet 15 years after the inception of genetic genealogy many genealogists and family historians remain unclear about its use. As a result, DNA testing is underutilized and potential knowledge goes unrealized. To remedy […]
Opinion: “To Define The Terms Is to Win the Argument:” How Genealogical Jargon Hinders Our Research
How Research Happens “To define the terms is to win the argument.” I first heard that saying in my childhood, and it impressed me greatly; how could terms have such a large impact on success? As I have grown I have […]
From IIJG: Sephardi and Mizrahi Elite Families in Eretz Israel From 1800 to1948
Introduction With the support of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and Paul Jacobi Center, we have completed two years of data collection, organization and analysis of material relating to two Sephardi elite families in Jaffa – the Chlouches and […]
Genealogy of Yanniote Jews (Jews from Ioannina, Greece)
Ioannina, a small city in northwestern Greece near the Albanian border, was home to Jews for more than 1,300 years from the eighth century until the present.1 Due to its location west of the Pindos Mountain Range, the community was […]
A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames in Bulgaria: A Window on Its History
The result of six years of work, my Dictionary of Jewish Bulgarian Surnames, with 803 individual names, has been uploaded on the web at <www.sephardicgen. com/databases/BulgarianSurnamesSrchFrm.htmldatabases. html>. Details given for each surname are: Surname All known variants Language from which […]
Georgette and Raphael Cohen Collection of Family Trees from Meknes, Morocco
This collection of family trees, as well as its extensive photographic material, has been entered into the Beit Hatefutsot database and currently is accessible to all onsite researchers. Hundreds of Sephardic surnames and tens of thousands of individuals from all […]
History and Genealogy of the Jews of Rhodes and Their Diaspora
From the Ottoman Turkish conquest of Rhodes in 1522 until the Holocaust, a vibrant Judeo-Spanish community flourished on this Mediterranean isle. Many books and articles richly chronicle the history of this relatively small community.1 From antiquity, a Romaniote (Greek-speaking) Jewish […]
Successful Quest for Ancestors in Aleppo and Baghdad and for Kinsmen in Calcutta
After more than 20 years of sporadic research carried out with the help of others, I can now report the success of my quest to trace the mutual relationships of the members of the Gubbay family of Aleppo, to identify […]
JGSLA
Slides from Adam Brown’s talk to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles on August 29, 2021: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1FgFQ-sk9YBQCyJ_yeXwL30JDHFiv6-xm/view?usp=sharing
IAJGS 2021
The Genomic History of the BronzeAge Southern Levant, by Lily Agranat-Tamir et al. We are posting here references cited today during Adam Brown’s talk today on the Genetic Origins of the Jewish People: The Genomic History of the Bronze Age […]
How to use Y-DNA and Geni.com to Improve Your Family Tree <>
When most people talk about using DNA for genealogy research, they are talking about autosomal DNA, which is DNA that one inherits from both parents. It can be challenging to use autosomal DNA for genealogy because the matching segments can […]
Visitors at the Leipzig Trade Fair as a Genealogical Source: The Example of Hungarian Jews from Huncovce 1740-1763
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 […]
Elbaum as an Example of the Adoption of Jewish Surnames in the Shadow of 18th c. Austrian regulations
On the occasion of the 250th 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 […]
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