“All Jews are one big family”. Global Jewish genealogy project reveals new facts about our Jewishness
Steve K. Waltz, Jewish Press correspondent in Israel
Date: Wednesday, August 03, 2011
Jewish genealogy is no longer a passing fashion. A combination of genetic research by scientists, excavations by various genizot around the world, and good old-fashioned preparatory work by academics and people simply interested in their heritage has led to some exciting personal discoveries.
Yitzhak Fuchson, an associate professor of physics at Tel Aviv University, took the process a step further with his work at the Am HaZikron Institute, which helps Jews find family connections.
In an interview with The Jewish Press, Fuchson talked about the genesis of the project and its ultimate goals.
The Jewish Press: How and why did this project begin?
Fucson: This story began about thirteen years ago when Alexander Jonathan Widgop, one of the founders of the Am HaZikaron Institute, started with thirty-five known relatives, found another 1,500 people who were related to him, and thus created his genealogical tree. As he worked on his genealogy, he drew attention to the fact that although many of his relatives had been unaware of the existence of other family branches for almost 100-120 years and had lived not only in different countries but even on different continents, their spheres of activity and life histories were not only very similar but often repeated.
These unusual facts could have been a strange coincidence, but they provided the initial impetus for the Am HaZikaron Institute for Jewish Science and Heritage, based in Israel, to begin collecting material to verify similar strange coincidences in other Jewish clans.
What are some of the most interesting discoveries you’ve made?
The study showed that every Jewish clan has some dominant traits that have not changed over the centuries and due to which every Jewish clan has its own unique strategy of existence and survival. Further analysis showed that every Jewish clan has its own special mission in this world, which almost every member of the clan fulfills steadily (often without realizing it).
How do people get involved in your project?
We would like people to take an interest in their family history and let that history speak to them. Everyone will hear something unique, but there is a message for everyone. We realize that there is an initial lack of information about family history, and we help people in a variety of ways to find that information. First, we hold a workshop – Generations– that allows participants to experience Jewish history through the history of their own families. Each participant receives a personalized surname certificate that explains the origins of the surname, who the first people with the surname were, how family members migrated from country to country over the centuries, and who were prominent people from the clan.
This is made possible by conducting a special study for each participant during the two weeks prior to the seminar. In this way, we give every Jew the opportunity to learn about personal family history, filling a gap in information. Individuals can participate by attending and supporting the workshop as an important element of Jewish education and identity. Certificates can also be ordered on the Institute’s Web site at www.amhazikaron.org.
We also invite people to participate in the project through the website www.jewage.org. The site is built on the principles of Wikipedia, allowing Jews to build their family trees and collect artifacts of their family history with their relatives from around the world. An important element of this site is that it is trilingual, allowing scattered Jewish families to unite while working on common roots. Uniquely, users can ask questions and get help from us in researching their family history.
Finally, the community can get involved by supporting our projects that will benefit the entire Jewish people.
Tell us about the Heavenly Jerusalem project, which is raising huge expectations.
“Heavenly Jerusalem, which we are developing right now, is a multimedia web project that will help Jews find their place and the place of their families among the millions of Jews who lived in the past and who live today. The goal of the project will be to visualize in a single virtual space all Jews who have ever been recorded in history, from Abraham to the present day. The Jews will be visualized as stars of the virtual Heaven according to the biblical passage, “… I will multiply your [Abraham’s] offspring as the stars of heaven” (Genesis 23:17). The stars will be connected by rays denoting the family ties between the people the stars represent. One will be able to recognize which celebrities and famous people he or she is related to, and feel that all Jews are one big extended family by recognizing how he or she is related to any other Jew. One can learn that most modern Jews are descendants of several medieval rabbinical families. Overall, this project will open our eyes to how closely we are all connected.