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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Bene Israel of India
The Bene Israel of India is one of the world’s oldest known Jewish communities. This article briefly describes the group’s historical tradition, its current status, the origin of its family names and a project to develop a communal family tree […]