Do you know the history of your surname? Can you believe that there are tons of your relatives around? In search of his roots, the Jewish.ru columnist visited the People of Memory Institute in Tel Aviv and found out why family legends are more important than archives, how to find out that the Schiffs are really Cohens, who wanted to be a ship, not a boat, in Germany, and whether it is scary to go under the surgeon’s knife with the surname Barber.
– Institute “Am a-Zikaron ” (“People of Memory”) was established back in 1998 Alexander Widgop. He came from Leningrad, and he was not satisfied with the version of his family’s origin that he heard from his relatives in the 60s and 70s of the last century,” he says. Malka Haguel. – With a certain degree of madness, he began to “dig up” the history of the Widgop family and soon realized that the reality was quite different from the family legend he had heard. Having collected stories from the mouths of 35 of his relatives, Alexander Vidgop realized that only on their stories genealogical tree will not make a genealogical tree, and turned for help to various archives. But then it turned out that some of the documents had disappeared, some of them were in such a state that it was impossible to make them out, and some archives simply refused to cooperate. And then he had to start developing a methodology or, if you will, a system for restoring the genealogy of Jewish families in a situation where there are many so-called information lacunas. Then for development of such methodology our institute was created, and work in this direction continues to this day – along with restoration of history of concrete Jewish surnames. Today we already have a data bank on the origin and history of thousands of Jewish families, so we are very likely to be able to reconstruct the family history of a significant part of those who would like to address us with such a request.
– What is the basis for this methodology?
– Its main principle is that no information, no family legend can be rejected, no matter how incredible or irrelevant it may look at first glance. That is, there is always some rational grain in such legends. For example, if a family claims that its surname comes from a general of Napoleon’s army, then if not a general, then Napoleon’s soldier was definitely there. An insanely rich negociant who came from Persia to Russia to start a new Jewish dynasty may end up being a small merchant, but he did come from Persia to Russia. So we never ignore a single story, and of course the most important source of information for us is the people. Each of them can name one or another of their cousins or second cousins and knows at least something of the family history…
– Wait, so oral histories are more important to you than documents?
– Yes, first of all, people are important to us. That is, the family name could change, but the family tradition and the names accepted in the family were preserved.
– There are many modifications of one and the same Jewish surname, often very divergent from each other, – enters into conversation another employee of the Institute, and at the same time poet, novelist and researcher Daniel Kluger. – And in the course of the work we just and establish whether the bearers of those or other consonant or even sometimes not very consonant surnames are relatives or not. Take, for example, the famous family name Shif, whose representatives are cohens, that is, descendants of the high priest Aaron. At first, of course, they had the surname Cohen or Cohn, but when they found themselves in Germany, they changed it to Kahn. And “Kahn” is German for “boat.” However, then one of the branches of this family became very rich, and its representatives were indignant: we are not some “boat” – we are a big ship, “schiff”. And a new surname was born.
– This is especially true of Russian Jews,” Malka continues. – In Russia, during the period when Jews were obliged to take surnames, the closest relatives often took different surnames. For example, two brothers who had already started a family were required to have different surnames in order not to be confused. Therefore, if one of the brothers from the Eljukim family took, for example, the surname Lyukimson, the other had to take, say, the surname Lyukimovich. The brothers, two pillars of Hasidism – Rabbi Elimelech from Lizhansk and Rabbi Zyusha from Anipol – also had different surnames, but this does not cancel the family connection between their descendants. In addition, children were hidden from being drafted as cantonists by changing their surnames. Sometimes children were transferred on certain conditions to the family of close relatives, for example, a childless sister. Therefore, the main source of information is, of course, people. And the older the better, and women, as a rule, were preferable to men.
– Why is that?
– Because, as statistics shows, women know all the family “mays” much better than men. Even the history of her husband’s family, they often know better than he does, because more and more frankly communicate with his relatives. Yes, and whatever relationship would connect the daughter-in-law with her mother-in-law, she is sure to tell her something yes. And women for some reason such stories are imprinted in memory much better than men. And so on the basis of these stories, as well as from quite open databases on the Internet, in the same museum “Yad Vashem”, we reconstruct the history of a particular Jewish family for the last 150-200 years, and if we are lucky – for more time. The history of its migration, the geography of settlement of its representatives, and so on. And only at the last stage of the search do we ask for help from archives to clarify the information.
– I would also like to add,” says Nelly Rosenberg, “that very often the information gaps in Jewish genealogy that we are talking about are restored with the help of religious literature, rabbinic writings, and sometimes the Talmud. For centuries, representatives of the so-called rationalist school in Jewish genealogy from Hertz to Dubnov denied the value of these sources, considered them extremely unreliable and untrustworthy. But, firstly, often even the prefaces and dedications to such books are a real treasure trove of Jewish genealogy – as a rule, they list the entire corpus of family names of this family. And secondly, it turns out that what was considered by rationalists to be a fairy tale or fiction is actually true. For example, the claims that this or that family traces its lineage back to King David or to this or that prominent rabbi mentioned in the Talmud are confirmed. Another important source of reconstructing the links between Jewish families, sometimes bearing different surnames, is names. For the simple reason that surnames could indeed change, but a certain set of names in almost every Jewish family was preserved from generation to generation. We see this already in the Tanakh, on the example of the families of kohen and Levites. Later, as we know, it became customary to give the same names within the same family. In Ashkenazi Jews they were given, as a rule, in honor of deceased relatives, in Sephardim – in honor of a living respected relative, in Mountain Jews the first-born child received his father’s name, and this then became a family surname, but the principle, as we see, is the same. In recent decades, it became customary for the Jews of the USSR to give non-Jewish but close-sounding names or names with the same first letter, but it is still possible to get to the truth.
– I would like to emphasize that the Institute’s task is not to reconstruct the history of every single Jewish family. All these genealogical trees eventually come down to certain families, and our institute deals with the history of Jewish families from their origins to the present day,” Malka Haguel continues the conversation. – And through the history of Jewish clans it is possible to restore the history of the Jewish people as a whole. That is, if all existing Jewish genealogies usually end in 1760, because before that Jews simply had no surnames, our work here is just beginning.
– But the whole question is how many of them there were, these births. You can’t really cover a lot of ground .
– The point is that the number of Jewish genera is finite. Moreover, it is relatively small. We cannot yet give an exact figure, but it is already clear that there are only a few dozen large clans, which then in the course of history were divided and separated.
– Still, what is at least an approximate figure?
– Different researchers come to different conclusions. For example, Bar-Ilan believes that there are about 20 clans of Ashkenazi Jews. That is, all those sitting in this room now belong to one of these clans and are likely to be distant relatives of each other.
– Well, the Ashkenazim are more or less self-explanatory. They have been beaten and thrashed throughout history. What about the Sephardic Jews?
– And there are actually very few genera there, and they often overlap with Ashkenazi ones. It should be taken into account that until the 19th century, 70% of the world’s Jews were Ashkenazi Jews. Thus, there are very few genera indeed. Surnames, of course, much more, as the clans branched off, surnames were modified. But their number is also, again, of course. I am not going to name the exact figure again, but we are talking about about 20,000 surnames, no more. Not counting, of course, their phonetic modifications.
– A classic example is the history of the De Porto family,” explains Daniel Kluger. – De Porto, aka Benvenista. In the course of branching, some of them returned to the original family name of Halevi, some remained Benvenista, and others gave rise to the famous baronial family name Ginzburg. And when one of the Halevi descendants from Geronda reached the town of Horvitz (now Horzowice), he gave rise to the surname Gurewicz. So it is very important to draw on the family tradition of names. Names, as already mentioned, are given in honor of respected relatives.
– Yes, Jews didn’t usually name their children after their neighbor! – Malka Haguel remarks. – Yes, but now, in modern Israel, this tradition is gradually disappearing. Our children prefer to give their children Hebrew or currently popular purely Israeli names, often recently invented.
– I don’t think that tradition is going away,” Kluger replies. – Our observations suggest otherwise. Even if there is some kind of backsliding in favor of fashion, it will eventually come back. But we should rather talk about its modification. The same process was observed before, when traditional Jewish names were calcified into the language of those peoples among whom Jews lived, and then again superimposed on Jewish names. This is how all these Tzvi-Girshi, Aryeh-Leiba, etc. came into being.
– Is there a history of at least one Jewish family that you have reconstructed, what is called, to the end?
– Yes. This is the history of the Friedman family, which we traced back to the Babylonian Gaons. We also reconstructed the history of the Rothschild and Pozner families (aka the Pevzners). The latter, for example, turned out to have Sephardic roots.
– I would like to note the following,” Alexander Vidgop, the founder and scientific director of the Institute, finally intervenes in the conversation. – Tracing the history of the clans, one can involuntarily see the confirmation of the idea of the Tanakh that each Jewish clan has its own mission, its own clan professions, which are passed on from generation to generation. And, as a rule, the representatives of these clans reach great heights in these fields. Here, say, such a well-known surname as the Barber. Its ancestor received it because he was a doctor, and since then, many of Tsirulniki from generation to generation – doctors. So, if you find yourself on the operating table and you are operated by a surgeon with this surname, you can be almost certain that you are in good hands.
– And how do you explain the appearance among Jews of such an abundance of purely Russian surnames? For example, where do Jews with the surname Ivanov come from?
– Well, Ivanov is very simple,” smiles Kluger. – This surname is a distortion of the surname Evnov. And Yevnov is from the name Yevno, the same name worn by the notorious Azef. But with the Jewish surname Voronov the story will be more interesting. Ravens in the Tanakh are likened to Levites – they fly to the Torah and are greedy for its study, like crows. By the way, the famous legend that the Prophet Eliyahu was fed by ravens while he was hiding in a cave is most likely inspired by the fact that he was fed by Levites. Eliyahu himself, as is known, belonged to the family of the Kohen, that is, also went back to the Levites. Another interesting example of the origin of the surname is Gelfand. That is, “elephant.” This surname was worn by many prominent scientists, as well as the popular Gesya Gelfand. And the origin of the family name comes from Frankfurt, where one of the houses was instead of the number of the image of an elephant carrying a load. And it meant, according to the symbolism of the Kabbalists, that the owner of the house was a very God-fearing person, who bore the burden of the commandments of the Torah like this elephant.
– By the way, have you tried correlating Jewish genealogy with Jewish anthropology? I mean, is it possible to determine from a Jew’s appearance to which family or clan he belongs?
– We do not do this, as it is a separate job, but I will tell you a story. As part of our projects, we help young people who come on Taglit projects to touch their roots, to learn the history of their family. They do it on their own here, then each of them gets a folder with the part of their family tree that they have managed to dig up, but of course we do some preliminary work. We receive names and photos of those who come to us, and very often guys from different countries turn out to be distant and sometimes not so distant relatives. For many it becomes a real shock. And then one day we see that Taglit has to bring together two girls who are seven or eight cousins of each other. One of the girls lives in the United States, in a well-to-do family. The other is from the Russian countryside, from a middle-class family. Both sent their pictures from their high school graduation party. When they were put side by side, we thought they were sisters, if not more – twins. But not only that: both chose the same hairstyle for the evening, dresses of the same style and almost the same color, and even the same shade of lipstick. In other words, they were not only alike in appearance, they also had the same tastes.
– So Bulgakov was right: “blood is a great thing”?
– It appears so,” Malka agreed.
– By the way, let’s talk a little bit more about your projects.
– On youth work, we have three main projects. “Generations”, in the framework of which, as already mentioned, we help the guys who come under youth programs to try to restore the history of their surname and family. In the course of another project – “RodNya ” – we help to reconstruct the family tree of Jews living in different countries by communicating with them over the Internet and at the same time involving them in research work. As part of this project, we recently gathered a whole group of young people named Shapiro in the German town of Speer – because all Shapiros trace their ancestry back to a common ancestor who lived in this town. This creates a very special sense of intergenerational connection. The third project, “Sefer a-Dorot ” (“Book of Generations”), allows young Jews living in different countries to do independent research on family history, and in the end to get the very “Book of Generations” – with information about the origins of the family, relatives, migrations of ancestors and so on.
Of course, the conversation at the institute “Am a-Zikaron” turned out to be long, and it makes no sense to retell it in its entirety. Jewish genealogy is an endless topic. But lastly, I cannot help but recall my recent conversation with a Lithuanian diplomat. “Here,” he said, holding out a luxurious album to me as a gift. – We issued this for the 1000th anniversary of Lithuania. When we were preparing it, we were so proud of the antiquity of our people. And only when I was in Israel and started reading books on Jewish history, I realized how wrong we were. Compared to you, Jews, we, and other European nations, are just children still digging in the sandbox.”
Pyotr Lyukimson