This story began nearly 30 years ago, when one of the founders of “Am HaZikaron”, Alexander Jonathan Vidgop, began with a known list of 35 relatives and went on to trace over 1,500 more, building an extensive family tree.
Since the reconstruction of his genealogy, he noticed something remarkable: although many of his relatives had lived unaware of each other’s existence for over a century – scattered across different countries and even continents – their life paths and professions weren’t only strikingly similar but, in many cases, virtually identical.
What might have seemed like an uncanny coincidence instead served as the spark for creating a nonprofit institution dedicated to systematically investigating whether such patterns occurred in other Jewish lineages.
In 1998, “Am HaZikaron” was formally established as a research institute dedicated to the scientific exploration of intergenerational connections within the Jewish people.
Institute researchers reconstructed Jewish family trees stretching back as far as 900 years and systematically analyzed the data.
After 10 years of meticulous work by researchers acting as empiricists, the Institute’s scholars uncovered unique hereditary patterns within Jewish families. Their findings – both surprising and, in some cases, groundbreaking – were published in recognized academic journals, awarded the “Zeiti Yerushalaim” (Olive of Jerusalem) medal for contributions to Jewish heritage and endorsed by a distinguished support committee of 55 Nobel Laureates.
“Am HaZikaron” managed to prove that members of a single Jewish family lineage preserve distinctive traits unique to that lineage over the course of centuries.
They are concentrated in just four or five professional spheres, share common habits and preferences – some family lines are prone to migration, while others remain rooted in one place for generations. Some lineages are marked by serial divorces, others by lifelong monogamy and much more.
This opens the possibility of speaking about a mission carried by each family within the Jewish people – affirming the Biblical idea that every Jewish lineage has a distinct role, a generational calling passed down and realized across time. Often, members of such families achieve exceptional heights in these very spheres.
Building on this theory of familial mission, “Am HaZikaron” researchers examined the genealogies of extraordinary individuals and uncovered striking insights into the nature of genius.
Imagine Jewish families that, once every few generations, “produce” a genius. In certain areas such as in mathematics, in physics, in commerce. It’s a regularity and these families help shape not only Jewish history, but world history.
The Institute has since expanded into the field of demographic genetics, building detailed portraits of Jewish communities through time.
The results obtained contain a powerful educational tool – one with the potential to profoundly impact Jews who have lost touch with their heritage and family history.
To understand how vital this is for young Jews in the Diaspora, one need only witness what happens at the Institute’s seminars, when participants discover who they really are, who stood at the origins of their family line, what brilliant people were in their family…
It often leads to a kind of emotional shock – a profound sense of having one’s memory and family restored. The journey to self-identification begins with one’s family, and with the story it carries.
“Am HaZikaron” is a research institute devoted to the history and heritage of Jewish families. Its mission is to restore the family narrative.
What does that mean in practice? In Yiddish, there is a beautiful word – yikhes. It stems from the Hebrew yichus, meaning “relationship” or “connection.” In Hebrew, yohasin refers to genealogy.
Not merely a literal family tree, but the story of a family’s connections, its origins and its legacy.
Yiches is that which to a greater extent determined Jewish life and the life of the entire Jewish people as a whole.