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 […]
Elbaum as an Example of the Adoption of Jewish Surnames in the Shadow of 18th c. Austrian regulations
On the occasion of the 250th anniversary of the death of Yaakov Kopel Lukover* Abstract Keywords Yaakov Kopel Likover (ca.1695-1769) a well-known kabbalist, scholar, tavern owner and progenitor of at least three Chassidic dynastic legacies is the progenitor of the Elbaum […]
The Avotaynu DNA Global Census of the Jewish People – March 2020 Update
For three years the Avotaynu DNA Project has been spearheading a collaborative international DNA project that includes academics at leading institutions such as the Technion, New York University Winthrop Hospital, the University of Colorado, the University of Haifa and others […]
Avotaynu DNA Seeks Sephardi & Mizrahi Study Participants!
The Avotaynu DNA Project seeks male participants for a study of Sephardi and Mizrahi paternal DNA lineages. The project, led by pioneering genetic genealogist Dr. Karl Skorecki of the Technion, aims to shed light on the origins of the Sephardim […]
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. […]
Contested Origins of Eastern European Jewry: Clues from History, Linguistics and Onomastics
Formally speaking, for Jews who lived during the 18th–20th centuries in Eastern Europe (in the territories of present-day Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Moldova, Latvia, and Russia), we cannot take for granted that all their ancestors necessarily dwelled in the region […]
The Genetic Origins of Ashkenazi Jews
Ashkenazi Jews (from the Hebrew word for “German”) are the largest of the Jewish groups and number some 10 to 11 million people today in a worldwide Jewish population of 13 million people (Reviewed in Ostrer, 2001; Ostrer, 2012). During […]
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 […]
Surnames of “Portuguese” Jews as a Tool for Analyzing Basic Aspects of Their History
Originally published in Avotaynu Volume XXXV, Number 1 (Spring 2019), pp. 7–12. Reductionist Approaches Numerous publications deal with the “Anusim” and/or “Portuguese” Jews addressing their motivations to profess Judaism, secretly for the first and openly for the second, and peculiarities […]
DNA Testing for Newbies
So, you have made a lot of progress on your family tree and you ask, “What can DNA testing do for me?” In this short essay, I won’t answer your question by delving into the fascinating details of DNA testing, […]
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 […]
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 […]
Personal Journey: In Search of the Lost Life and Art of Marie Rosenthal Hatschek
About 20 years ago I was contacted by a man I didn’t know who wanted to share a family history with me, and also pay me a visit. I was back East and he was out West, but he was […]
A New Genealogy for Rabbi Isaac Mayer Wise
In the past years, a wealth of 18th and 19th century Jewish genealogical resources have become available for Bohemia, the western half of Czechia (the new name for the Czech Republic, formerly Czechoslovakia). As a result, a large number of […]
Personal Journey: The Early Badrians of Oberschlesein
I have known about my family history since childhood, but only segments of it. My parents, Lothar and Irma Gärtner (nee Badrian) migrated to Australia from Nazi Germany in 1938, the only passengers on a German cargo boat out of […]
The Y-DNA Genetic Signature and Ethnic Origin of the Twersky Chassidic Dynasty [AB-069]
Throughout the centuries, the Jewish people have always prided themselves on their yichus (lineage, distinguished birth, or pedigree). Yichus was especially important for rabbinical families, and many of them have created genealogy charts or family trees in which they have […]
Personal Journeys: Finding Mr. Katz
This article is a sequel to my earlier article in Avotaynu Online, entitled “From One Photograph to Journeys of Research and Discovery,”, in which I described how I uncovered and researched the romance of my great uncle Moshe and Paula Lichtzier, […]
Personal Journeys: Cousin Hillary Rodham Clinton
At my home, we refer to Hillary Rodham Clinton as Cousin Hillary. More precisely, the correct term would be step-cousin. Detailed research demonstrates that Hillary’s grandmother married my father’s fifth cousin. But let’s start at the beginning. In August 1999, […]
The 20th Century Jewish Community of Havana, Cuba
The organized Jewish community in Cuba lasted about 50 years during the first half of the 20th century and was composed of three essentially separate groups, the North Americans, the Sephardim and the European Ashkenazim. Together they built a vibrant […]
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