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 […]
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 […]
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. […]
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 […]
Inferring Sephardic Origins for Rabbi Meir Katzellenbogen from his Published Philosophies
Rabbi Meir Katzenellenbogen, the Maharam of Padua, remains an influential religious and historical figure both for his contributions to Talmudic and rabbinical interpretation and for his role as the father of several noteworthy rabbinical lineages. Jewish genealogists as well as […]
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 […]
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 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 […]