Jewish Genealogy is both ancient and new. The Hebrew Bible, in addition to its religious message, is a family history covering more than three millennia. Genesis, Chapter 5, contains the lineage from Adam to Noah, and Chapter 11 has the lineage from Shem to Abraham. Almost every later person is identified by his or her pedigree. At Mt. Sinai, every Jew had to bring Moses proof of his heritage to receive the law. Throughout history, Jews have identified with their family.

However, except for a few Rabbinical dynasties, most European Jewish family histories have not been documented. Jews were periodically expelled from most countries, including England, France, various German states, Portugal and Spain. As they sought refuge elsewhere, families were separated and, after a few generations, contact was lost. Jews have been known to have lived, at least for a time, in almost every country in the ancient and modern worlds. This makes tracing families in the ‘Old Country’ a challenge, since families split and members went to several different countries, or may have gone from one country to another, to another within one generation! (My father and his eight siblings were born in three different countries!)

The first documented immigration of Jews to what became the United States was in 1654. 24 Jews arrived from Brazil after Portugal conquered the area and reinstituted the Inquisition. Jewish settlement in the U. S. was sparse until the 19^th century. Beginning in the 1820's, many German Jews immigrated and by 1850, the Jewish population was nearing 100,000. The German Jewish immigration of the early 19^th century paled beside that of the Eastern Europeans: two million between 1880 and 1914. These later arrivals were the ancestors of most of the Jews in the United States today, having displaced and absorbed the earlier arrivals through marriage and assimilation.

Except for Spanish Jews and those Rabbinical dynasties, most Jews did not adopt surnames until required to do so in the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries when they began to be granted citizenship rights in Western Europe. Napoleon’s sweep eastward led to the adoption of this requirement in Eastern Europe since it made it easier for taxation and conscription. Therefore, most Jewish names are relatively new – and since the need was for the convenience of the government, there was no special attachment to a ‘family name’. (In some localities, the names were assigned by the government and frequently had derogatory connotations.) When first promulgated, the laws were not carefully worded, so members of the same family—even brothers—took different surnames. Nor did the early laws specify that these names were to be permanent and hereditary; so until they were amended, names were frequently changed—particularly in the Russian Empire. Even later, when a family moved, the members frequently acquired a new name, identifying themselves with their prior home by taking a toponymic name. It is not uncommon to find records from Eastern Europe with records showing an a/k/a name, or sometimes one record in one name and the next one under the alternate name. When Jews came to the United States, many changed their surnames to be more American, or to accommodate teachers or employers who had difficulty spelling or pronouncing their Russian, Polish and Yiddish names. To follow the paper trail, a researcher must know the original name—or names!

The movement of Jews from place to place and country to country did not end in the Middle Ages. In addition to moves for economic reasons, the Nazi Holocaust of the 20^th century and persecutions in Romania, as well as in Russia under both the Tsar and the Soviets, led to immense disruptions of families. When I was younger, I was told that our family did not lose anyone in the Holocaust—that everyone got out. That was no more true for my families than it is for those of almost every American Jew today. Although I lost no aunts, uncles, grandparents or first cousins, my paternal Grandfather’s oldest sister and a number of his first cousins never left Russia—and although some of their descendants now live in Israel, the United States and Canada, some died during the war period and others still live in Belarus, Lithuania and Russia. In my maternal family, I have yet to find out what happened to my Mother’s aunts, uncles and cousins who never left Latvia, Lithuania and Poland.

Jewish genealogists work on collateral lines more than do our non-Jewish colleagues—and now you know why.

The ‘Old Country’ may be several old countries—in just one family. From Poland to Russia to Hungary or Romania, to England/France/ Belgium, to Argentina or South Africa, to Canada and the United States. (I have relatives today in over 15 different countries; the newsletter I publish for my paternal grandfather’s family is mailed to eleven.) We have to learn about border changes—and there were many in the past 300 years. Just think of all the county changes in the United States and multiply it! A Jewish Grandfather may have been born in Austria (Lemberg), married in Poland (Lvov) and died in Ukraine (Lviv)—but he lived in the same house his entire life and never left the town of his birth! But that is rare—most moved several times in their lifetime which makes the search for records a challenging one. I had been told that my maternal grandmother was born in Libau (Liepaja), Latvia, and that is what Grandpa’s U.S. naturalization papers say. After almost six months of searching the Latvian records, a professional researcher found an 1890 city census which showed the family had moved there from a town in Lithuania in 1882 when my grandmother was about 3 years old. Lithuanian archives had records on my great grandfather’s family which got me back to about 1780! So much for Latvia!

And last, but by no means least, try to find the records when the first names as well as the last change from record to record. My Grandfather was born Eli (pronounced Ellie or Elye) Hershel Minovitch. When he came to the U.S. his passenger list shows Hershel Freeman. Here he became Harry Friedman. His Hebrew name in the synagogue and on his tombstone was Eliahu Tsvi ben Arye. His father Arye was known outside the synagogue as Leib (Yiddish translation of Arye) so Russian documentation may show my grandfather as Gershel Leibov or Elia-Gersh Leibov or Elia Leibov – all ending with the surname Minovitch, spelled in various ways in various documents. (Note: There is no ‘h’ in Cyrillic, so a ‘g’ is substituted. Friedman was my paternal great grandmother’s maiden name, taken by my great uncle and then by his two younger brothers when they immigrated to the United States.) Tombstones are considered a treasure by Jewish genealogists because the Hebrew inscriptions almost always provide the father’s first name, and for immigrants they sometimes even give the place of birth and other personal information. But American Jewish researchers need to know that sometimes that name is not Hebrew, but Yiddish—the daily name and not the religious one. My father and a brother are buried near their father and their tombstones show their father’s Hebrew name, the same as shown on his tombstone. A few graves away lies a sister, and her father’s name on her tombstone is his Yiddish one. That combined with her married name may cause a future researcher to ‘lose’ her information when checking this cemetery.