{"id":3338,"date":"2025-04-13T15:13:20","date_gmt":"2025-04-13T15:13:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amhazikaron.org\/about\/our-history\/"},"modified":"2025-12-10T16:48:34","modified_gmt":"2025-12-10T16:48:34","slug":"our-history","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/amhazikaron.org\/en\/about\/our-history\/","title":{"rendered":"Our history"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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This story began nearly 30 years ago, when one of the founders of \u201cAm HaZikaron\u201d<\/em>, 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.<\/p>

Since the reconstruction of his genealogy, he noticed something remarkable: although many of his relatives had lived unaware of each other\u2019s existence for over a century – scattered across different countries and even continents – their life paths and professions weren\u2019t only strikingly similar but, in many cases, virtually identical.<\/p>


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.<\/p>

In 1998, \u201cAm HaZikaron\u201d<\/em> was formally established as a research institute dedicated to the scientific exploration of intergenerational connections within the Jewish people.<\/p>

Institute researchers reconstructed Jewish family trees stretching back as far as 900 years and systematically analyzed the data.<\/p>

After 10 years of meticulous work by researchers acting as empiricists, the Institute\u2019s 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 \u201cZeiti Yerushalaim\u201d (Olive of Jerusalem) medal for contributions to Jewish heritage and endorsed by a distinguished support committee of 55 Nobel Laureates.<\/p>

\u201cAm HaZikaron\u201d<\/em> managed to prove that members of a single Jewish family lineage preserve distinctive traits unique to that lineage over the course of centuries.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

This opens the possibility of speaking about a mission<\/em> 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.<\/p>

Building on this theory of familial mission, \u201cAm HaZikaron\u201d<\/em> researchers examined the genealogies of extraordinary individuals and uncovered striking insights into the nature of genius.<\/p>

Imagine Jewish families that, once every few generations, \u201cproduce\u201d a genius. In certain areas such as in mathematics, in physics, in commerce. It\u2019s a regularity and these families help shape not only Jewish history, but world history.<\/p>

The Institute has since expanded into the field of demographic genetics, building detailed portraits of Jewish communities through time.<\/p>

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.<\/p>

To understand how vital this is for young Jews in the Diaspora, one need only witness what happens at the Institute\u2019s seminars, when participants discover who they really are, who stood at the origins of their family line, what brilliant people were in their family\u2026<\/p>

It often leads to a kind of emotional shock – a profound sense of having one\u2019s memory and family restored. The journey to self-identification begins with one\u2019s family, and with the story it carries.<\/p>

\u201cAm HaZikaron\u201d<\/em> is a research institute devoted to the history and heritage of Jewish families. Its mission is to restore the family narrative.<\/p>

What does that mean in practice? In Yiddish, there is a beautiful word – yikhes<\/em>. It stems from the Hebrew yichus<\/em>, meaning \u201crelationship\u201d or \u201cconnection.\u201d In Hebrew, yohasin<\/em> refers to genealogy.<\/p>

Not merely a literal family tree, but the story of a family\u2019s connections, its origins and its legacy.<\/p>

Yiches <\/em>is that which to a greater extent determined Jewish life and the life of the entire Jewish people as a whole.<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This story began about 30 years ago…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2720,"parent":3330,"menu_order":3,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-3338","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","hentry"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nOur history - Am haZikaron<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/amhazikaron.org\/en\/about\/our-history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Our history - Am haZikaron\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"This story began about 30 years ago...\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/amhazikaron.org\/en\/about\/our-history\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Am haZikaron\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:publisher\" content=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/jewage\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2025-12-10T16:48:34+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/amhazikaron.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/04\/history-1-clr.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"500\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"333\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:site\" content=\"@AmhaZikaron\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/amhazikaron.org\\\/en\\\/about\\\/our-history\\\/\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/amhazikaron.org\\\/en\\\/about\\\/our-history\\\/\",\"name\":\"Our history - 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