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recent laws in Portugal and Spain enacting the right for descendants of Iberian Jews to reclaim nationality that had been revoked by the Expulsion.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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Jewish Genealogical Resources in France
Jews probably followed the Roman armies into France; evidence of their residence dates back more than a millenium. Many rue de la juiverie (street of the Jewish district) or rue des Juifs testify to their former presence as does a […]
Announcing the “Dictionary of Sephardic Given Names”, by Mathilde Tagger
Mathilde Tagger’s legacy to Jewish genealogy continued even after her death last December. At that time, she and Avotaynu were working on her next (and eighth!) book: Dictionary of Sephardic Given Names. Fortunately she made final corrections before her death, and […]
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 […]
The Jews of the Crimea and their Names
The ancient history of Jewish settlement in the Crimea (in Russian, “Krym”) dates back over 2,000 years to the time of the Bosporan Kingdom, a Roman client state (438 BC-370 AD). From the eighth to the tenth centuries, the Crimea fell […]
Shealtiel Family World Reunion in Mexico City, July 1st – 5th, 2015
The Shealtiel Family World Association is delighted to announce its exciting 8th World Family Reunion from July 1 – 5, 2015 in Mexico City. The reunion, packed with interesting activities from beginning to end, is an opportunity for cousins from […]
“Sousa Mendes’s List” — The Search for Survivors
The Sousa Mendes Foundation actively seeks families who received lifesaving visas from the Portuguese diplomat Aristides de Sousa Mendes in the Spring of 1940. Sousa Mendes, stationed in Bordeaux, France, rescued thousands from the Holocaust by providing them visas to […]
Jewish Families and the Habsburg Tobacco Monopoly
Tobacco was unknown in Europe before the discovery of America. However, unlike other imports from the Americas that enriched European cuisine and coffers, European society did not uniformly embrace tobacco. At first welcomed as a miracle drug and cherished as a […]
A Brief History and Detailed Listing of the Jews of Tàrrega, Spain, Before and After the Black Death and Pogrom of 1348
Maria Jose Surribas Camps The Jewish community or aljama of Tàrrega, on the Royal Road between Barcelona and Lleida, dates back to 1278 or earlier.[1] What follows is a description of that community from a genealogical perspective, from its earliest […]
12 Exciting Tours and Research Visits Prior To This Summer’s IAJGS conference in Jerusalem! by Garri Regev
The organizers of this year’s conference in Israel of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies have announced a variety of exciting research and touring options for Sunday, July 5th, the day immediately preceding the 35th Annual IAJGS Conference on Jewish […]
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 […]
In Search of the Family Name Tarica
This article first appeared in Sephardic Horizons, Vol. I, Issue 1, Fall 2010. It is reprinted with permission—Ed. For many years, undoubtedly like many other Sephardim, I often wondered where my patronymic name came from, what it meant, and who […]
Book Review: Pleasant Are Their Names: Jewish Names in the Sephardic Diaspora, by Aaron Demsky, editor
Pleasant Are Their Names: Jewish Names in the Sephardic Diaspora. Bethesda, Md.: University Press of Maryland, 2010, $35.00 Professor Aaron Demsky, editor of this new book focusing on Jewish names in the Sephardic diaspora, serves as director of Bar-Ilan University’s […]
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 […]
The Six Lives of Gregory Meisler: Jew, Warrior, and Polish Patriot
The deeds of man, when unconfirmed by the voices of the witnesses or written documents, are bound to pass swiftly away and disappear from memory. Prince Boleslaw V the Pious The history of the Holocaust is never ending. Every […]
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 […]
Methods and Resources for Sephardic Genealogical Research: The Example of Antebi Family Research
The Antebi family’s roots go back to the expulsion from Spain in 1492. Some members of the family settled in a small town in Turkey, Ein-Tab (“the Good Fountain”), known today as Gaziantep. After migrating from Ein-Tab to Aleppo, the […]
Benjamin Nathan Cardozo: The Story of a New Christian
Among the most important positions in the American political establishment is that of Justice on the United States Supreme Court. Since the Court’s founding in 1789, only 7 of the 110 judges have been Jewish, and none was chosen before […]