Alexander Yonatan Vidgop is the creator of the Am haZikaron Institute for Science and Heritage of the Jewish People, which is unique in the world.), which researches the origin of Jewish clans and the roots of modern Jews, conducts scientific activities on this subject, implements various international projects around the world, and in the last fourteen years has been reuniting Jewish families and restoring kinship ties around the world (a kind of Israeli “Wait for Me” off TV).
We talked to Alexander about the connection between generations in modern Israel, where Russian-speaking Jews came from and returned to their historical homeland, and how the connection with their roots allows them to feel like real Israelis.
– Sasha, let’s start right off the bat. Is it true that Russian Jews are descendants of the Khazars?
– No, not true on all sides. This theory has been around for some time. Even Koestler devoted a whole novel to it, and now there are enough fabrications on it. This fashionable in some senses theory appeared, I think, from what: it is known that the Khazars adopted Judaism, it is known that among the Khazars in the Khaganate were quite a lot of Jews. The question that worried many, “where did these very Khazars go?” – There was a Khaganate, there were Khazars, and then it disappeared with them – hung in the air, and then it was concluded that since we do not know where the Khazars are, then, most likely, they are Russian Jews. This is such an uncomplicated conclusion! By the way, recently an extensive genetic study was made, which found neither Turkic nor any other roots in Eastern European Jewry.
– In that case, whose descendants are the Russian Jews?
– This is a question that is perhaps a little easier to answer. Russian Jews are not really Russian. Russia got the vast majority of its Jews in the next partition of Poland. All the vast number of Jews that lived there piled into Russia. Or to Russia. Namely Catherine the Great. And before that they were Polish and Lithuanian Jews. In turn, their origin is no less interesting: some came from Germany, some from Bohemia, and in Lithuania one of the first migration waves came from Iraq (that is, from Babylon). Many families were found to have Spanish, i.e. Sephardic roots. For example, it is commonly believed that the Ginzburgs, the Rappoports, the Epstein’s and many others are Ashkenazi. But no! They are all descendants of well-known Sephardic families. Therefore, when we say that Russian Jews are a monolithic concept, it is absolutely not true.
– Moving from Russia to Israel: how much of a generational connection is felt in Israel? What does it manifest itself in?
– I think it’s about preserving traditions. If a person has parents who are, for example, Dutch Jews, the person behaves differently than someone whose parents come from, for example, Morocco or Yemen. You can see that they come from different communities. Even though everyone who was born here speaks the same Hebrew and likes hummus the same way. It is clear that each aliyah had a strong cultural accent that everyone recognized. Now, the current generation doesn’t have any accents, but I suppose the mental differences are still there. They are not so pronounced and conspicuous, but what was in the family, it is passed on: manner of behavior, style of communication, culinary preferences.
– You head the Am Hazikaron Institute for the Study of Jewish Families. As far as I know, it all started with a study of your own family history (the walls of one of the rooms in the Institute’s office are a continuous Widgop family tree – editor’s note). What unexpected discoveries have you made about yourself and your family?
– Everything I learned was one big unexpected discovery. I thought my ancestors were Bolsheviks, but on the contrary, they turned out to be those from whom the Bolsheviks had taken everything away. It was a very big discovery for me (laughs). Then it turned out that my dad was born not in Russia, but in Turkey, and that was also a big discovery for me. It turned out that my relatives lived not only in the USSR, but also, for example, in China! Further it turned out that part of my family went there in 1905, which was hard to even imagine. Some went to America, Australia and so on. One even became rector of the University of Sydney, and another entered the American book Who is who.
– What is the mission of the institute, and what is its main achievement to date?
– Look, the name of the Institute is “Am Hazikaron”, that is “The People of Memory”. I think that if memory disappears, everything disappears. One of the worst diseases is amnesia. There’s a novel by Japrizo called The Cinderella Trap. It shocked me at the time. There a girl gets into a car accident, wakes up in the hospital and does not remember who she is. Then the detective begins: she is told that she is her friend, but she does not know who she is and takes everything on faith. There was a wonderful Antonioni movie “Profession – reporter” on the same theme. It’s as if a person doesn’t know who he is. And when a person doesn’t know, he can take on any role… He will be told that he is a murderer – and why shouldn’t he believe it? Or they’ll tell him he’s a hero. Why shouldn’t he believe that too? Outside of memory, a person is practically nothing. Its absence is disappearance. Memory is the material for creation. Memory is perhaps the stuff of which life is made. If we all suddenly become infected with amnesia (which is sometimes so tempting to get sick), our people will lose their historical memory. This is well illustrated by the history of the Bolsheviks. Not those of them who were perfect bandits. But those who believed in something. The very idea that “as soon as we destroy the whole old world and build a paradise in its place” – and it is then that “he who was nothing will become everything” – is insane in its essence. Because he who was nothing cannot become everything. He can only become nothing. Out of nothing, something cannot be born. So, our mission and our main task is the preservation of memory. And memory is not an abstract value. People’s memory is a very concrete value, which is passed on in the family, from generation to generation. And, strangely enough, this memory is contained in the genealogy in the broad sense of the word. I think that the Jews were the first who gave such importance to the genealogy. Already the Torah is full of family trees, that is, even then it was extremely important for the people. In the 19th century in the localities, for example, no bride could marry without providing the groom’s parents with her family tree. And today we understand why.
– What discoveries have been made as part of the Institute’s research activities?
– Working with Jewish families, we saw the amazing structure of the Jewish people. We came to understand how this structure works and why it is needed. I think we would like to make this structure of the people from hidden to manifest. So that every Jew could see it: he could go somewhere, it doesn’t matter where – the Internet, the Family History Center – and see his family tree. This is something more utilitarian, simple. On a deeper, spiritual level – so that everyone could understand their place in the structure of the Jewish people. We wrote a big research paper on ancestry, and we even won an award for it. In it we try to describe what a clan is. And it turns out that regardless of place, time, epoch in one clan people choose no more than four spheres of activity, they have repeated destinies, characters, they have repeated choice of partners. There are only nine signs by which, it turns out, you can determine to which clan a person belongs. These are regularities, from which no one can escape. And it does not matter whether a person knows about them or not. Most often, of course, he does not know about them. After all, it is not a series of “my father was a turner, and I will be a turner”. No, it is a matter of absolutely other surprising things. Osip Mandelstam, for example, is surprising. Both his father and mother were modest enough talents. Where would genius abilities come from? And, at the same time, if we look at the whole family as a whole, we will see that this family, which got from Spain to a small Lithuanian place, gave out a lot of talented people. Every person from this family is a star in some humanitarian field, up to the most famous Israeli poetess Rachel. It turns out that Mandelstam’s genius is only one of the fruits on the family tree of this extremely talented family. And this is only one tiny example.
– When I was at Taglit, one of the highlights was participating in the Generations project. How did you come to this project? –
In 2007, the Genesis Foundation started its activities in Israel. And they had the idea to create a project dedicated to family history for children coming to Israel under the Taglit program. We were looking for a long time for a form in which we could get young people interested in learning about their own roots. From what you say, we succeeded. Over the years, almost 15 thousand people have passed through our project. The stories are often quite incredible. For example, four cousins who had no idea of their kinship meet during the program, and a romance develops between them… To conclude this topic, we can say that today, thanks to this project, we have absolutely unique information about the origins of Jewish families in the USSR