I was born into a Roman Catholic family in Havana, Cuba, but from a young age, I felt Jewish and inexplicably was drawn to all things Jewish. After converting to Orthodox Judaism at age 34, I found clues along my […]
Announcing “A Nação Hebrea: A Relational Prosopographic Database of the Portuguese Jewish Nation 1500-1800
In today’s world, interest in Sephardic Jewry is greater than ever before, particularly with the recent laws in Portugal and Spain enacting the right for descendants of Iberian Jews to reclaim nationality that had been revoked by the Expulsion. The […]
Avotaynu Plans A Sephardi Y-DNA Study at the Seattle IAJGS Conference
The Avotaynu DNA Project managed by Adam Brown, Raquel Levy-Toledano and Michael Waas of the non-profit Avotaynu Research Partnership LLC has entered its second phase and now seeks male participants for a study of Eastern Sephardi paternal yDNA lineages, specifically […]
200 Years of Scottish Jewry: A Demographic and Genealogical Profile
The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem is attempting the first-ever demographic and genealogical study of a national Jewry as a whole, from its inception to the present day. This article describes the project, its aims, methodology and preliminary […]
The Y-DNA Fingerprint of the Shpoler Zeida, a Tzaddik Who Touched the World [AB-068]
Yehuda Leib of Shpola (c.1725 – 1811) – better known as the Shpoler Zeide (Yiddish for “Grandfather of Shpola”) or Saba Kadisha (Hebrew for “Holy Grandfather’) – was a beloved Chassidic folk rebbe, great kabbalist, and a revered tzaddik (saintly or holy […]
An Analytical Approach to Decoding Jewish Tombstones and Other Artifacts
Twenty years ago I accidentally discovered my own great-grandmother’s matzeva (tombstone) in a small cemetery in Kezmarok, Slovakia, a town by then devoid of living Jews. This astounding discovery spurred me to examine thousands of other abandoned, unvisited, ignored, […]
Geni.com Announces Integration of DNA Into Its World Family Tree
Geni.com, host of the online World Family Tree, and Family Tree DNA, a global leader in genetic genealogy, announced today that they have partnered to integrate Family Tree DNA test results into Geni’s World Family Tree. Today the partners activated a […]
An Alternative Path To Emancipation: Jewish Merchants and Cross-Cultural Networks in the 18th Century Italian Ghettos
On January 10, 1774, two Jews –Moïsè Beniamino Foà (1730-1821) and Emanuele Sacerdoti (1719-1804) – met somewhere in the ghetto of Modena – the capital city of the Este Duchy in Northern Italy – with a specific purpose. They founded the “Nuova […]
MyHeritage Launches Book Matching
Books have always been one of the best resources for family history: they are often very organized and well-researched, and many of them were written by contemporaries of our ancestors. But for those of us who have spent countless hours […]
The Y-DNA Genetic Signature and Ethnic Origin of the Katzenellenbogen Rabbinical Lineage [AB-030]
Introduction According to Arthur Kurzweil: “For the Jewish people, our royal families have been those of the illustrious rabbis.”[1] If that is true, then the Katzenellenbogen rabbinical lineage is foremost among these noble families. For centuries, Jewish men and women […]
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 […]
Genealogy for Students: Connecting the Jewish Future to Its Past
We in the genealogical community regularly experience the rush that comes with genealogical discovery. We know well the feeling of triumph at seeing a name or date we’ve been seeking for more than a decade. We know the borderline (or […]
First Fruits of the ‘Reclaim the Records” Access Project Are Obtained!
As previously written about on Avotaynu Online (http://adam.learnpress.esy.es/2015/10/breaking-news-ny-municipal-archives-throws-in-the-towel-in-public-access-fight/) Brooke Schreier Ganz and Reclaim the Records were successful in their Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) case about obtaining the New York City indexes for 1908-1929 marriage licenses and affidavits. All but […]
Autosomal and Mitochondrial DNA Together Solve A Family Riddle
In November 2014, I happened across an Ancestry.com online tree featuring Sarah Pikholz, her husband Eisig Baar and twelve children. The tree had them in Czechoslovakia but I quickly found the first three births in Yahilnytsya (Jagielnica) in east Galicia, […]
Subscribe to IAJGS Records-Access Alert!
In February 2013, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS), started a new announcement list, the IAJGS Records Access Alert. At that time it was decided to open the Alert only to subscribers that were members of IAJGS member […]
The Most Powerful Genealogical Research Tool of All: Jewish Genealogical Societies
I grew up in what I considered to be a large extended family in Toronto, my birthplace, and Montreal, my hometown. Understanding family relationships was simple, or so I thought. My maternal family was in Montreal and my paternal […]
Breaking News! NY Municipal Archives Throws In the Towel in Public Access Fight!
Reclaim the Records Won! Brooke Won! The Public won! Records Access won! In Early September I posted on Avotaynu Online about how one genealogist can make a difference-(see http://adam.learnpress.esy.es/2015/09/public-records-access-one-genealogist-can-make-a-difference/) when Brooke Schreier Ganz and Reclaim the Records filed a legal […]
Researchers band together to index records from Visokaye, Belarus
In the best tradition of Jewish genealogy, a number of the members of the Wysokie-Litewskie Internet mailing list have pooled their resources in a three-stage initiative to obtain genealogically relevant records from the town of Vysokaye (Visoko-Litovsk), Belarus. While the cost […]
Crypto-Jewish Conference Enjoys Record Attendance
Rave reviews continue to pour in from speakers and attendees of the 25th Anniversary Conference of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies (SCJS) held in Miami, Florida in July 2105. The Society was formed over 25 years ago to help facilitate […]
Public Records Access: One Genealogist Can Make A Difference!
This past Thursday, September 3, 2015, a legal petition was filed at the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York. Brooke Schreier Ganz and ReclaimTheRecords.org [Petitioner] vs. New York City Department of Records and Information […]
Book Review — “Zagare: Litvaks and Lithuanians Confront the Past”, by Sara Manobla
The Lithuanian Link: Sara Manobla explores her family roots in the town of Zagare On July 13, 2012, veteran Israel Radio broadcaster Sara Manobla served as master of ceremonies at a memorial ceremony in the Lithuanian town of Zagare for the […]
The Jewish Surname Process in the Russian Empire and its Effect on Jewish Genealogy
Did you ever wonder why your autosomal DNA and Y-DNA genetic match lists contain so many unfamiliar surnames? Did you ever question where the myriad number of bewildering and unexpected surnames, even among your close genetic matches, comes from? If […]
Let’s Put All Our Eggs in One Basket
At an ever-increasing pace, creators of genealogically useful databases are posting them on the Internet—and scattering them in a variety of different locations. Some may be found on the website of a Jewish genealogical society; others are on JewishGen; still […]
Polygamy in the Jewish and Western Tradition: Religion, Culture and Class
Why Are We So Hung Up On Polygamy? In the March 2015 elections in Israel, two Muslim polygamists were elected to the Knesset on the United Arab list. Numerous news outlets reported this fact and questioned whether it would be […]
Privacy Issues with Online Trees
The right to privacy is a relatively recent legal construction, and one that is still evolving. As genealogists, people whose goal is to learn and write about personal details of other people, we often hear complaints about invasion of privacy. […]