Genealogy: we repeat each other’s fates.
– What did you say? What was your great-great-grandmother’s last name? Krol?! We have another boy in the project with that family name. Make sure you write to him! You’re 100% related! All the Krols, Krols you can find in the archives… put them all in your family tree! There aren’t that many of them in the world! And they’re all your ancestors!
This is roughly how my close relationship with Malka Haguel began. She researches family archives of very different people: from world-famous billionaires to me, an ordinary student who suddenly decided to start researching her family.
Metaclan theory or mysticism in everyday life
Malka Haguel is a very energetic woman, she has a sharp tongue and a fiery temper. As a teenager, she was shy and afraid to speak in public. Audiences of more than two people scared her. Now – just give a hall, and Malka will give a lecture, and more than one. Such a radical change occurred when she found herself in her profession. After graduating from university with a degree in biology and biomedical engineering, Malka went to serve two years in the Israeli army. After her service, she set her sights on finding a job that would pay for housing and cover her car expenses. She started working in marketing in the medical supply industry.
– I can’t say that this job really appealed to me in any way, it was just making money for a living,” Malka says. – I can’t say that this job appealed to me in any way, it was just making money for a living,” Malka says.
At one of her medical seminars, Malka met Alexander Yonatan Widgop, founder of the Am Azikaron Institute (which means “people of memory” in Hebrew – author’s note), who told her about the Metaclan theory:
– Family history is not only interesting in terms of history in a broad sense. It is certainly interesting as history, but for the person who looks into that history, it is like looking into a mirror that is not there in life. When you reconstruct a small or huge puzzle of the past, you begin to understand yourself: your own motivations, why you make certain decisions, why you like this and that, why you like this and that, why you have such habits and not others, why you have such abilities and so on. In general, the whole range of questions that a person is bound to have one day. There are answers to all these questions, which are carefully preserved in the family history.
Malka had always been interested in digging into other people’s pasts. No negative connotations. It’s just that life can be lived in many different ways, but the problem is that you only have one. And this way you can see how there’s more. So Malka came to work at Alexander’s institute and started studying family trees at the “pro” level. During her work, she realized that behind the archives and rare mentions in history books of some family facts, a whole (the word “otherworldly” is appropriate here) world opens up.
– You know, I don’t want to get too mystical. But in Judaism, there is such a thing as “heavenly Jerusalem.” There’s Jerusalem in heaven, and there’s Jerusalem on earth. And it seems that up there, there is not only one Jerusalem, but something more. And digging into the birth, into the history, it’s like you’re getting closer to these concepts. It’s like Solomon said: “What has been is what will be, what has been is what will be.” There is no past or present, there is a certain, I will not be afraid of this word, being, which somehow manifests itself in our world, and I, as a person, am one of these manifestations.
Twins from the past and present
While working on her first tree, Malka made a surprising discovery. She was struck by the almost identical repetition of fates. It was as if some colorful characters were always roaming through one genealogy or another. If you imagine a literary hero, not in any specific details and his physical attributes, but with a recurring life storyline, they are twin characters with the same fates.
There were, and still are, people with the surname of Verheimer. Initially, talented rabbis were born in it, but over time generations with a business sense began to appear, who became successful bankers. One of the representatives of this family, who lived in Austria-Hungary in the XVII century, like many of his relatives, was very rich. But it was not only wealth that fascinated him. He was extremely concerned about the uneducated children of today. In his spare time, he spent his evenings writing treatises on enlightenment, in which he spoke of the need to educate everyone, to give them knowledge that would help them in their professions.
One day, sitting in front of the TV, Malka came across a speech by an Israeli politician and businessman. She didn’t really listen at first, but after a couple of minutes, she did pay attention to the talking screen. Proposition by sentence, line by line, paragraph by paragraph, the modern politician repeated the treatise on education that her research team had found in the archives a couple days ago. The same thoughts echoed from the 17th century to the 21st. The name of that Israeli was Steif Verheimer. And he was not a direct descendant of his ancestor, but a great-great-great…great-grandson on one of the side lines. But the thoughts and ideas that they tried to promote to the masses were repeated, despite the fact that today’s Israel is strikingly different in terms of the standard of living in Austria-Hungary almost four centuries ago.
Studying one famous family with surnames (Michelson, Michels and derivatives), the workers of the institute tried hard to find from whom they came. And they found one very bright character.
In the sixteenth century in Germany, there lived Michel Yud. At that time, life for Jews in Europe, and in Germany in particular, was not the easiest. They were deprived of their rights, moved into Jewish neighborhoods only one small street long, and then kicked out of the city altogether. This story was repeated everywhere. Despite the hard times, when it would seem that being a Jew, in the literal sense of the word, it is better not to show your nose, our hero Mikhel leads a rather strange way of life. He lives in Saxony and, being a well-to-do man, shows off his wealth in every possible way: he rides in a gilded carriage, wears gold suits, often goes to the opera and makes acquaintances with the noble people of his town and the surrounding area. He is close to many barons, dukes and aristocrats. Michael Yud is an adventurer by nature, and therefore it was not difficult for him, being already at a conscious age, a grown man who has long celebrated his adulthood, to offer one duke to adopt himself. Understanding the character of our hero, it is not difficult to guess that this deal was successful. What can not be said about the way he ended his life: in prison, beggar, sick, he was abandoned by all relatives and friends.
While telling this story to a young lady with the maiden name Michelson, Malka noticed that the girl’s face changed.
– What happened? – Malka asked.
– You don’t understand! – The girl exclaimed in surprise. – This is my grandfather! He lived in the Baltics in pre-war capitalist Latvia. He was very talented and could pull off some incredible deal, make crazy money, and then catch a cab, go to Riga and blow it all on girls. He came home with nothing. I’m listening to you and I have a lump in my throat, I feel like this story is about my grandfather! There were other funny coincidences. When researching one not the most ancient family, which appeared in the XVIII century, the staff of the institute could not find any information. Of course, there were records that someone was born, someone died, but these findings were negligible. As suddenly.
– I found them! – shouted Malky’s colleague with joy. – You have no idea, I opened the court archives. And they are ALL here. These weirdos have been suing each other for two centuries in the Russian Empire. This one underbid this one, and the other one took a bite out of this one. In the early 20th century, they moved to America. And, surprisingly, they do the same thing there! A mother sues her son, a niece sues her uncle, an uncle sues her cousin….
This family had a hypertrophied sense of justice. It is true that justice in their concept is not always objective, but for “subjective justice” they were ready to gnaw at each other in courts day and night.
How are patterns caught?
Ancestry as well as genealogy are very definite words that imply documented reconstruction of a generation. This can be done as long as there is archival data, i.e. 200-250 years ago. Beyond that, there is simply no documentation to provide continuity. So what the researchers at Am Azikaron are doing is somewhat different from our usual idea of a family tree.
– We say beseder (“well” in Hebrew – author’s note). Yes, there is a problem that documents dating earlier than the 18th century simply do not exist. But the Jews didn’t appear 250 years ago! – Malka is indignant. – What we can do is to find and identify, perhaps not a literal ancestor, but it is quite realistic to trace the family line, thanks to the family narrative, which is present in every rabbinical book. There is no linear succession from one generation to the next, but it is possible to pick out distinctive features by which one can identify that this person belongs to the Landau lineage and not to the Cohen lineage, for example. Malka calls a rabbinical book basically any Jewish book. According to the calculation of the Institute’s researchers: Jews have written about two hundred thousand books in their history, not counting the Torah (the totality of Jewish traditional religious law or the Old Testament), the Tanakh (collections of sacred texts in Judaism) and the Talmud (a set of legal and religious-ethical provisions of Judaism). Two hundred thousand books on various fields, ranging from the exact sciences to pseudosciences like astrology and numerology. This list also includes literature, or rather theological poetry. These poems talk about the love of God, or practical things like the rules of kashrut (a term in Judaism meaning the permissibility or suitability of a particular food) or hygiene. “All these books, thank G-d,” Malka exclaims, “are all on the Internet, well, or most of them. There are holy people from New York and Jerusalem who have scanned all the books and put them on the Internet.”
According to Malka, 75% of these books begin with the author expressing gratitude. To whom? First, to the Almighty for being born. Then he thanks his parents, who were born and educated in city N. This is where the family narrative comes in. This is not a genealogy in its purest form, but from these words one can identify the traits of a particular family. The story about the parents is followed by thanks to the sister’s husband for providing a stipend while she was working on the book and a “thank you” to the uncle for the money to publish the book at the printer, and so on. In this way, the author of the book outlines her story and the whole family clan along with it.
While working in this way, Malka and her colleagues traced the emergence of two families. The first, already familiar, is the Michelsons. This family is so vivid, its representatives so numerous, that it was possible to catch certain signs in the most ancient years. The patrimonial history of the Michelsons is known from the destruction of Jerusalem in the 73rd year, whence they were taken out by the Romans. The second ancient clan bears the surname – Friedman. Researchers found their origin before the Torah sages who lived in Israel in the 3rd century CE. Then they moved to Babylon, where they became heads of local yeshivas (the name of the highest religious institute where the Talmud is studied – author’s note) and academies. From Babylon the representatives traveled throughout the Middle East, and from there they moved to Austria. They received the surname only in the sixteenth century, before that they were called by other names.
– When you do genealogy, you realize that you can tell a story about every family like this. And it’s very definite,” Malka concludes. – This family is like this, and this family is like that, and you can never confuse them. For me, it’s the ultimate thrill! Every person who does genealogy is putting together their own little family puzzle. And I have the crazy privilege of putting together a puzzle of all the Jews! I have a lot of these stories. And it makes the whole world around me seem even bigger.