For the first time, a panel wholly dedicated to Jewish genealogy was held at the triennial Congress of the World Union of Jewish Studies (Jerusalem, August 2–6, 2009). That precedent-setting event was sponsored by the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy. Four outstanding scholars delivered papers—one addressing theoretical aspects of the subject and three reporting on research in the spheres of both pure and applied Jewish genealogy. The following is a slightly modified version of the theoretical lecture. Details of the other presentations can be found on the Institute’s website at <www.iijg.org>—Ed.

In this paper, I address two issues: First, does contemporary Jewish genealogy meet strict academic standards? Secondly, does it merit a recognized and distinct place in the evolving world of academic Jewish Studies? My aim is to demonstrate that it does so on both scores, especially the latter.

Background and Wider Context

It is almost paradoxical that the status of Jewish genealogy within Jewish Studies should be a matter for discussion. For Leopold Zunz, the father of Jewish Studies, there was no question but that the subject was an obvious dimension of Jewish history and an integral part of the “Science of Judaism,” as he called it. Indeed, in 1822, his second contribution to the Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums¹ was a pioneering essay on Rashi in which, among other things, he investigated the famed commentator’s pedigree in a historical framework and in the context of biblical interpretation.²

Zunz’s followers were of the same mind. The Index volume of the long-running scholarly journal, Monatsschift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums,³ for the period 1851–1938 lists almost 70 entries under “Genealogie,” with studies of leading Jewish families and personalities ranging from Maimonides to Isserles, and from Glückel of Hameln to Dreyfuss.⁴ Zunz’s own lineage and his Frankfurt family background, circa 1550 onwards, were extensively researched by the editors of the Monatsschift in 1894.⁵

Within the wider academic community, however, an intellectual parting of the ways occurred between historians and genealogists in the course of the 19th century. Their gradual estrangement is well known. Historians adopted the scientific method and developed standards for research and historiography. Most genealogists were probably unaware of, if not happily oblivious to, these advances. They tended to remain amateurs, often engaged in little more than ancestor hunting or self-aggrandizement. Among them, no doubt, were also cranks and crooks, some convinced of the mythical or divine origins of their roots, others bent on asserting claims to family fortunes or worse.

Historians came to look askance and with reserve upon genealogists. At best, genealogists were seen as dilettantes, engaged in an antiquarian or filiopietistic pursuit, collecting reams of meaningless names, devoid of conceptual framework, disciplinary focus, and critical analysis

Jewish genealogists probably were not regarded much differently by the 19th-century maskilim (scholars belonging to the Enlightenment Movement). It may have been unfortunate that in Hebrew a “family tree” is called a k’tav yichusin. In aspiring for yiches (family distinction), Jews often sought connections with great rabbinic dynasties, the so-called Jewish “aristocracy”—better still, links to Rashi and, through him, to King David himself. In Germany, Jewish genealogy, both scholarly and hobbyist, later fell prey to Nazi ideology and its theories of eugenics.⁶ If genealogy itself was not racist, it could be exploited by racists and rabid anti-Semites. It became a dangerous pursuit, one to be eschewed.

Formalizing What Is Genealogy

The frenzy of interest in “popular genealogy,” sparked by Alex Haley’s Roots (1976), especially among minority groups such as Afro-Americans, Native Americans—and also Jews—probably only heightened the professional historian’s disdain for what was regarded as an essentially amateurish and partisan hobby. On the other hand, serious genealogists, who already had a well-established infrastructure of professional societies, peer-reviewed journals, and accreditation bodies, felt directly challenged. Some, inspired by Donald Lines Jacobus (whose advocacy of scholarly genealogy predated the Haley era), gradually began to re-evaluate their goals and consider the possibility of gaining a recognized place for the subject in academia.⁷

In so doing, the obvious connection between genealogy and family history was emphasized. The fashionable trend in historical research of focusing on the common man was another direction taken. Elizabeth Shown Mills, at the Institute of Genealogical and Historical Research at Samford University, promoted academic genealogy in 2003 as a form of “generational history,” defined as “an interdisciplinary study of the development of individual families across generations—analyzing the dynamics of ethnicity, intermarriage, status, and migrations in economic, legal and social contexts” [italics added].⁸ As for the goal of genealogical research, Mills wrote five years later in a similar vein: “The end-product toward which serious genealogists must strive is a narrative study that explores [the] family’s role in society and places its members in historical, socio-economic, and political contexts” [italics added].⁹

In parallel, academically trained genealogists introduced greater rigor and professionalism into their work. Encouraged by the (American) Board for Certification of Genealogists, their methodology became more scientific. An accepted terminology evolved. The need to work with primary sources was stressed. Stricter standards for the citation of evidence were put in place. Critical evaluation of data and its proper interpretation were demanded. Pertinent research questions were to be asked and working hypotheses tested.¹⁰ In effect, the genealogist brought his work and methods into line with that of the qualified historian and social scientist.

With a growing appreciation of the fact that the goal was to contribute to the humanities and social sciences in general, the academic genealogist came to understand that he was working at the macro-, and not solely the micro-, level. Thus, horizons widened and broader topics could be envisaged—from the impact of conflict and migration on kinship groups to the societal forces leading to the rise (and fall) over time of families of fame and eminence, by way of simple illustration. In the process, the academic genealogist came to recognize that his was not a “stand-alone” field of research and that, more often than not, his inquiries had to be carried out on an interdisciplinary basis. At the Inaugural Symposium of the International Institute of Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem in 2006, Professor Thomas Jones, editor of the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, delivered a paper on the “Post-Secondary Study of Genealogy” in which he listed 45 academic areas to which genealogy is related.¹¹

Where a narrow focus was retained, the genealogist attempted to demonstrate that a single family, or defined kinship group, was illustrative of a significant segment of society, not merely in a single generation but over time and place. The object was not to produce a litany of names but a well-worked narrative, squarely situating the representative family or kinship group in a wider context, whether historical, social, economic, demographic, religious or other.

In sum, the goal of the scientific genealogist became—and remains—to understand the past better, not merely to gather random facts about it—and this, with a view to providing significant insights into that heritage from an original and very human perspective. This scholarly endeavor is on a par with other relatively new branches of history, such as gender and minority studies. Therein lies its importance—seeking, as it does, to complement and supplement work done by other scholars, by using different analytical frames of reference and techniques, and thus grow and enhance the common body of human knowledge and understanding.

Contemporary Jewish Genealogy

    Present-day Jewish genealogy has made similar advances, in parallel with those in the wider field, and indeed has gone through the same fundamental transformation in terms of goals and methodology.

In the 1980s, the quest for “roots” fired the imagination of thousands of American Jews who, for the most part, had labored for almost a century to discard their East European origins. Whatever the reasons for this phenomenon, it was assisted by highly successful “how-to” books by Dan Rottenberg,¹² Arthur Kurzweil, and others.¹³ Later in the decade, the pursuit drew further impetus, however unconscious and inarticulate, from the growing preoccupation among Jews with the issue of continuity and the future of the Jewish people. In the 1990s, newly available access to archives in Eastern Europe, after the eclipse of the Soviet Union, coupled with the advent of the personal computer, escalated the numbers of Jews researching their roots.

Largely amateur and lacking in professional training, these cohorts of enthusiasts rendered—and continue to render—sterling service to the scholarly Jewish genealogist and the academic world at large. In parallel with the invaluable work done by others, they have generated large websites for research in the field of Jewish genealogy, led and inspired by JewishGen. They have databased countless records from previously inaccessible archives—the ambitious Jewish Records Indexing (JRI)-Poland project with millions of entries is a prime example. Source books and resource guides have made their appearance—some geographic,¹⁴ some by topic¹⁵, and some a combination of both.¹⁶ Within this category, the impressive series on Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova, Poland, Lithuania, and Belarus by Miriam Weiner stands out.¹⁷ Reference works such as gazetteers and bibliographies, both general and specialized,¹⁸ are increasingly available.

            Beyond that, important aids to research have made their appearance, especially in the area of onomastics. Here mention must be made of Alexander Beider’s major works on Jewish surnames in the Russian Empire, the Kingdom of Poland, and Galicia which embody a high level of scholarship and provide comprehensive historical, etymological, and linguistic background to the subject matter.¹⁹ For Sephardic names, one could mention works by Guilherme Faiguenboim and Baruh Pinto, among others.²⁰

Finally, these grass-roots hobbyists have uncovered a plethora of sources of real potential for the serious Jewish genealogist and others. Hardly an issue of the leading Jewish genealogical review, AVOTAYNU, goes by without a discussion of a new archival collection that is generally well off the professional historian’s beaten path.²¹

Amateur Family Historians Have Improved
Quality of Genealogical Research

• The reconstruction of town-wide genealogies, as for instance in Mattersdorf, Hungary, over a period of 240 years.²³
• Prussian transit migration, resulting from migratory decisions made by Litvak Jews in the 19th century.²⁴

At the other end of the scale, one might cite a meticulously documented piece of research showing what can be done with archival material to fill significant gaps in earlier family monographs. ²⁵

As for book-length studies, one could mention several recent works that illustrate not only the growing breadth of current Jewish genealogical research, but also a receptivity on the part of major academic publishing houses such as Princeton²⁶ and Indiana²⁷ to publish it and related topics. As examples of studies that interweave family history and academic historical research in a highly effective manner, one can point to:

• A “generational history” of the Jewish Community of Schneidemühl over 300 years²⁸
• Two works situating Jewish lives and lineages in comparable contexts within rural Germany^{29, 30}
• An innovative work on five Sephardic elite families, making exquisite use of New Jersey local history³¹

International Institute for Jewish Genealogy
And Paul Jacobi Center

    In the light of these trends, it is perhaps not surprising that by the second half of the 1990s, voices were sounded in various quarters suggesting the formation of an academic center for Jewish genealogy and that some tentative steps were made in that direction.³² It took several years, however, for this vision to materialize and for the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and Paul Jacobi Center to open its doors in January 2006, within the Jewish National and University Library (now the National Library of Israel) on the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram Campus in Jerusalem.

Research

    In striving to advance the status of Jewish genealogy in the scholarly world and in seeking a recognized place for the subject within the realm of Jewish Studies, the Institute has sought to win its spurs primarily by engaging in scientific research. Committed to standards of academic excellence, it has established a number of criteria for the selection of projects:

• Projects of broad interest to not only Jewish genealogists but also to a range of other scholars
• Projects based on primary sources, whose scope goes beyond information gathering and retrieval and require critical evaluation and analysis of data
• Studies whose resultant narratives are firmly positioned in a pertinent Jewish Studies context, whether historical, social, economic, cultural, religious, or other
• Projects that expand the scope of Jewish genealogical inquiry—taking it, for example, into the realm of the exact sciences, particularly computer science³³
• Proposals that are interdisciplinary and envisage mutually beneficial synergisms between Jewish genealogy and other academic disciplines.

In its first three and a half years, the Institute has launched 11 projects that today have reached differing levels of maturity. In the category of “pure genealogy,” the Institute is sponsoring four historical and socio-economic genealogical studies that range in time from the medieval to the modern periods and in place from Cervera in Spain, through Ancona and Modena in Italy, to Lithuania and Ottoman Palestine.³⁴ In terms of focus, these studies examine issues such as:

• Kinship as the central building-block in the shtetl determining a Jew’s residence, his occupation, and his social and economic networks
• Behavioral patterns and life-styles of different strata of Jewish families and their interaction with the wider environment
• Formation of alternative commercial and economic networks parallel with those in non-Jewish societies
• Challenges to those networks and their stability posed by processes such as urbanization, migration, and modernization.

In the category of “applied genealogy,” the Institute has initiated:

• A study on Sephardic DNA and migration that yielded unexpected results regarding the travels throughout the Mediterranean basin of a sampling of Jews who held that their lineages dated back to pre-Inquisition Spain.³⁵ These findings are now being incorporated into a larger study of Sephardic DNA being conducted by researchers at the Universities of Arizona and Haifa.
• An attempt at A Genealogical Reconstruction of Destroyed Communities that seeks to recreate kinship groups in countless Jewish communities wiped out during the Shoah.³⁶ While still in its early phases, this project has generated a unique soundex system called “Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching” in the first instance for the identification of Ashkenazic surnames. This system has already been applied to the Ellis Island Database and other large databases.³⁷

Under the broad heading of “tools and technologies,” the Institute has produced:

• An innovative standard for recording “Names, Dates and Places in a Genealogical Database” (not specific to Jewish genealogy)³⁸
• A hand-list and, separately, an annotated inventory of the late Dr. Paul Jacobi’s extensive genealogical studies into some 400 leading Ashkenazic families³⁹
• Algorithms that enable the merging of diverse genealogical datasets.

In addition, the Institute is currently working on Ethical Standards for Jewish Genealogy, and a Glossary of Genealogical Terms in Hebrew.

Teaching

    The next area for the Institute to address is the teaching of Jewish genealogy at the university level. A major university in the United States has already expressed interest in offering a one-year undergraduate course in the subject and, at present, the Institute’s Teaching Committee is elaborating its academic guidelines for that purpose. The aim is to offer the course in the academic years 2010–11. If successful, it should attract the attention and interest of other universities and colleges, so that courses in Jewish Genealogy will gradually find an accepted place in Jewish Studies programs worldwide.

Conclusion

    Taken together, these projects and activities show the range of advanced genealogical work being conducted by the Institute in conjunction with scholars elsewhere. They are making a tangible contribution to the growing corpus of genealogical knowledge currently emerging about Jews over the centuries. It is to be hoped that the Institute’s lead in this enterprise will serve both as a model for others and a spur to new collaborative projects in a range of disciplines of relevance to Jewish Studies. Thereby, Jewish Genealogy will make strides towards reassuming its once-unquestioned position in the realm of Jewish Studies. It is already on the way.

I am indebted to Prof. Eric Goldstein of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, who rigorously challenged my thinking on this topic over the past two years.

Notes

1. Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums (Periodical for the Science of Judaism), a learned publication published by the Society for the Culture and Science of Judaism (Berlin, 1822–23) and edited by Leopold Zunz.
2. Zunz, Dr.[sic], “Salomon ben Isaac, gennant Raschi”, in Zeitschrift für die Wissenschaft des Judentums, 2nd part (Berlin, 1822), 277–384.
3. Monatsschift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums (Monthly Review for the History and Science of Judaism), published throughout its existence in various locations in Germany (1851–1939)
4. 4. Gesamtregister zur Monatsschift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, 1851–1939 (Breslau, 1938; New York, 1966), p. 136.
5. Kaufmann, David, “Die Familie Zunz,” Monatsschift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, 38 (1894), 481–493; & Brann, M., “Dr. Leopold Zunz und seine Frankfurter Ahnen,” ibid., 493–500 (Zunz family tree, loc. cit., opposite p. 528).
6. For one of many references, see, for example, Steinweis, Alan E, “Studying the Jew: Scholarly Anti-Semitism in Nazi Germany” (Harvard, 2006), p. 107, re. Friedriech Wilhelm Euler and Jewish biography and genealogy.
7. 7. Greene David L., “Donald Lines Jacobus, Scholarly Genealogy, and The American Genealogist,” The American Genealogist, July/October 1997, pages 159–180.
8. 8. Mills, Elizabeth Shown, “Genealogy in the ‘Information Age’: History’s New Frontier?” National Genealogical Society’s Centennial Address, May 2003, later published in National Genealogical Society Quarterly, 91 (December 2003), p. 260, fn.1.
9. From Mills, Elizabeth Shown, in a paper entitled “History and the New Discipline of Genealogy” given on March 26, 2009, at the Annual Meeting of OAH (Organization of American Historians) in Seattle, WA.
10. Cf. “Genealogy and Social Structure: A New Course” AVOTAYNU, XIX, 4 (Winter 2003), 11–12, where J. Jona Schellekens, a professor of anthropology, described the major objective of his course at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem as “to review and test theories about the functions of genealogies in different kinds of societies.”
11. Jones, Thomas W. “Post Secondary Study of Genealogy: Curriculum and Its Contexts” at the IIJG Symposium (Jerusalem, 2006)—first posted on the IIJG website <www.iijg.org> and then published, slightly modified, in AVOTAYNU, XXIII, 3 (Fall 2007), 17–23.
12. Rottenberg, Dan, Finding Our Fathers: A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy (New York, 1977).
13. Kurzweil, Arthur, From Generation to Generation: How to Trace your Jewish Genealogy and Personal History (New York, 1980).
14. E.g. Ellman-Krüger, Angelika and Luft, Edward David, Library Resources for German-Jewish Genealogy (Bergenfield, NJ); Rosemary Wenzerul (ed.), Jewish Ancestors? A Guide to Jewish Genealogy in the United Kingdom (London, 2006); & Estelle M. Guzik (ed.), Genealogical Resources in New York (New York, 2003 [revised edition]).
15. Malka, Jeffrey S., Sephardic Genealogy: Discovering Your Sephardic Ancestors and Their World (Bergenfield, NJ, 2001).
16. E.g.Tagger, Mathilde and Kerem, Yitzchak, Guidebook for the Sephardic and Oriental Genealogical Sources in Israel (Bergenfield, NJ, 2006).
17. Weiner, Miriam, Jewish Roots in Poland: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories (New York & New Jersey, 1998); and Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova: Pages from the Past and Archival Inventories (New York & New Jersey, 1999). The chapters on archives in Lithuania and Belarus are to be found on the website of the Routes to Roots Foundation Inc. at <www.rtrfoundation.org>. Also in this category, cf. Rhode, Harold and Sack, Sallyann Amdur, Jewish Vital Records, Revision Lists and other Jewish Holdings in the Lithuanian Archives (Bergenfield, NJ, 1996).
18. E.g. Ellman-Krüger, Angelika and Ellman, Dietrich, Bibliographie zur deutsche-jüdische Familienforschung und zur neueren Regional- und Localgeschichte der Juden (Berlin, 2006).
19. Beider, Alexander, Jewish Surnames in Prague: 15th–18th Centuries (Bergenfield, NJ, 1994); A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland (Bergenfield, NJ, 1996); A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames From Galicia (Bergenfield, NJ, 2004); & A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire (Bergenfield, NJ, 2008, 2nd ed.). Beider has also worked on Ashkenazic given names—A Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names: Their Origins, Structure, Pronunciations, and Migrations (Bergenfield, NJ, 2001). Also in this category, cf. Menk, Lars, A Dictionary of German-Jewish Surnames (Bergenfield, NJ).
20. Cf. for Sephardic names, Faiguenboim, Guilherme Dicionário sefaradi de sobrenomes (Rio de Janiero, ca. 2003); and Campagnano Dicionário Sefardi de Sobrenomes (Rio de Janiero, 2004); Pinto, Baruh, Sephardi Onomasticon (Istanbul 2005)
21. E.g. see Baston, Judy, “Morgenthau Mission to Poland to Investigate the 1919 Pogroms: A Genealogical Resource,” in AVOTAYNU, XXII, 2 (Summer 2006), 14–18; Dunai, Alexander, “Tabula Registers: An Untapped Genealogical Resource in the L’viv Archives,” loc. cit, 34–37; and Sack, Sallyann Amdur and Mokotoff, Gary “Jewish Labor Committee’s Holocaust-Era Archives,” in AVOTAYNU, XXIV, 3 (Fall 2008), 28–29.
22. E.g. the recent opening up of the ICRC’s ITS archive at Arolsen, as a result of pressure exerted by Jewish genealogists.
23. Vogel, Carole Garbuny and Yitzchok N. Stroh “Constructing a Town-Wide Genealogy: Jewish Mattersdorf, Hungary, 1698–1938” in AVOTAYNU, XXIII, 1 (Spring 2007), 30–39.
24. Leiserowitz, Ruth, “Litvak Migratory Decisions in the 19th Century and their Consequence: Prussian Transit Migration” in AVOTAYNU, XXIV, 2 (Summer 2008), 29–34.
25. Tillman, Teri D., “Identifying Benjamin W. Cohen of New York and New Orleans” in National Genealogical Society Quarterly, 95 (December 2007), 245–64; reprinted in AVOTAYNU, XXIV, 4 (Winter 2008), 23. This article treats in extenso an unexplored line in Malcolm Stern’s classic First American Families, 600 Genealogies: 1654–1988 (Baltimore, 1991 [3rd edition]).
26. Bartov, Omer, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-day Ukraine (Princeton University Press, 2007).
27. Redlich, Shimon, Together and Apart in Brzezany: Poles, Jews, and Ukrainians, 1919–1945 (Indiana University Press, 2002).
28. Cullman, Peter Simonstein, History of the Jewish Community of Schneidemühl: 1641 to the Holocaust (Bergenfield, NJ, 2007).
29. Rose, Emily C., Portraits of Our Past: Jews of the German Countryside (Philadelphia, 2001).
30. Stein, Mathilda Wertheim, The Way It Was: The Jewish World of Rural Hesse (Atlanta, GA, 2000).
31. Rosenstein, Neil, The Grandees of New Jersey: Naar, Baiz, Peixotto, Pretto & Seixas Families (Elizabeth, NJ, 2006).
32. See, for example, Lawrence Tapper, “Call to Arms”, AVOTAYNU, XI, I (Spring 1995), 3–5; Boris Feldblyum. “Jewish Treasures in the Former Soviet Union,” AVOTAYNU, XI, 2 (Summer 1995), 7–8; and Sallyann Amdur Sack, “Jewish Genealogy on the Eve of the 21st Century,” AVOTAYNU, XIII, 3 (Fall, 1997), 3–7. Private proposals are known to have been circulated separately in the late 1990s by Chanan Rapaport and Meir Wunder, both of Jerusalem. Others may also have been floated elsewhere.
33. Cf. Wagner, Daniel Hanoch & Klauzinska, Kamila, “Contemporary Jewish Genealogy: a Multi-faceted Academic Activity,” Studia Judaica, 2, 18 (2006), pp. 349–365.
34. (i) The Notarial Archive of Cervera (Catalonia, Spain), a source for the study of Jewish Genealogy, Migrations and Life in the Middle Ages, being carried out by Maria Jose Surribas of Barcelona; (ii) Crossing the Boundaries: Jewish Networks in Early-Modern Italy between the Mediterranean and the New World (16^th—18 centuries) being conducted by Dr. Federica Francesconi of the University Bologna; (iii) The Ties That Bind: Jewish Kinship Networks and Modernization in Darbėnai and Its Diaspora, carried out by Prof. Eric Goldstein of Emory University; (iv) A Genealogically Centred Approach to the Historical Geography of Eretz Yisrael during the late Ottoman and British Mandatory Periods undertaken by Prof. Ruth Kark of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and Dr. Joseph Glass of Toronto.
35. Sephardic DNA and Migration, headed by Alain Farhi of New York. Preliminary results of this study were published by Farhi, in AVOTAYNU, XXIII, 2 (Summer 2007), 9–12, “Preliminary Results of Sephardic DNA Testing.”
36. A Genealogical Reconstruction of Destroyed Communities, led by Dr. Sallyann Sack of Washington DC. For description, see Sack, Sallyann Amdur, “Reconstituting the Destroyed Communities of Europe,” in AVOTAYNU, XXII, 2 (Summer 2006), 7–9.
37. For description, see Beider, Alexander and Morse, Stephen P., “Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching: and Alternative to Soundex with Fewer False Hits,” in AVOTAYNU, XXIV, 2 (Fall 2008), 12–18.
38. Mokotoff, Gary, “A Proposed Standard for Names, Dates and Places in a Genealogical Database” in AVOTAYNU, XXIV, 3 (Fall 2008), 3–6.
39. The inventory of the Jacobi material compiled by Shalom Bronstein is available on the Institute’s website at www.iijg.org.

Dr. Neville Lamdan is the Director of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and Paul Jacobi Center at the National Library of Israel on the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram campus in Jerusalem. A former Israeli ambassador and an experienced researcher with a doctorate in history from Oxford, he is a long-time contributor to AVOTAYNU.