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Genealogy Corner of B'nai Shalom

The thrill of discovery

The joy of finding a new generation of names teaches us our heritage, our origins and our roots. Perhaps a great grandparent can whisper to us, 'Now I can be found'. This way we can honor and respect our ancestors by adding their names in their correct places in our family tree.

Family Search and various Jewish Geneology Societies have been working closely together.

Your friends don't need to be Jewish or even to have Jewish ancestry to join a Jewish Genealogical Society. Some are just interested in the subject matter. If ancestors were from Eastern Europe and not Jewish, a person might learn some special things. The Jewish Gen of WA, which met in an LDS meetinghouse, had some wonderful presentations.

PAST: 26th Annual East European Research Conference, in Salt Lake City August 5-9, 2019
Great Reference: https://feefhs.org/search/google?keys=Tracing+your+jewish+ancestors

Sephardic, Ashkenaz: Just a start

Until the more relevant page is created from something really sloppy - sorry: https://www.mormonsandjews.org/asp/Sephardic-Ashkenazic.asp. The page URL will change !

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2000/12/mistaken-identity-the-case-of-new-mexicos-hidden-jews/

https://www.the-scientist.com/daily-news/genetic-roots-of-the-ashkenazi-jews-38580

Endogamy-ashkenazi-jewish: A different thought

Over the centuries: Some mixing. Check it out. https://familylocket.com/endogamy-ashkenazi-jewish-case/.

Plagiarized from the article: Heidi Mathis writes: "As genealogists we want to understand our match lists; identify the matches that will give us the solid clues we need to make progress on our target ancestor’s family tree. Endogamy and its close cousins, pedigree collapse and multiple relationships, complicates that."

"Endogamy refers to when intermarriage has occurred over many generations (centuries) in a community, whereas pedigree collapse occurs in a much shorter time frame... Since my own family tree has ancestors of varying levels of endogamy (i.e. low for German, moderate for Irish, and high for Ashkenazi Jewish), I have needed to access these different levels to make progress."

DNA is, of course, a big subject.

Loats of excitement, lots of adverts. Enough confusion. We find our "resident expert", Mary Kozy, responding to a bit of confusion. She offered the below to one who had confusing results to explainthe moving target:

"[Sister], the real truth is that (as I’ve said before), these ethnicity estimates are getting better, but thy are far from perfect. When my husband tested at FTDNA it said he was 100% Eastern European, even though he has 25% Scandinavian. And our son (who is definitely half me according to the test!) was also 100% E European. I’M mostly British and W Europe.

"At this point, I’d focus on the places your family was from and research there. They could change their algorithm in 6 months and it could shift to Ashkenazi. When they updated last time, my husband’s Scandinavian showed up (and I showed up in my son!). But other folks’ results got worse.... Matches are more important, but endogamy tends to make Jewish DNA matches tricky.

"Ancestry just updated their ethnicity estimates too, and about as many people are happy that are unhappy. Here’s a good blog post about these types of results (and applies to ALL companies): https://dna-explained.com/2018/09/13/ancestry-2018-ethnicity-update/."

Annual International Jewish Genealogy Conferences

The next annual conference will be in Cleveland, Ohio 28 July-2 August. See for much information.

The 2018 conference was in Warsaw, but see http://www.iajgs2018.org/ to see what they had. It was co-Hosted By POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute of Warsaw, In Cooperation With The Polish State Archives

Other past international conferences have been in Seattle and in Israel.

Utah Jewish Genealogical Society (http://ujgs.org)

A member of the LDS Family Search staff is the president of this oganization.

Home page: http://ujgs.org/blog/ Look for "Calls" to future meetings.

Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State

Most JGSWS meetings are held at the LDS Factoria Building in Bellevue, with easy access from I-90 and I-405. The address is 4200 124th Ave. SE, Bellevue.

Home page: http://www.jgsws.org/index.php. Browse around.

Browse Handouts from some of the wonderful presentations.

Mary Kozy, of the Kent Washington stake, is a Jewish Genealogy specialist in the Seattle area. She is a member and past president, always an active organizer and presenter. She is very competent on genealogy methods and all aspects of technical internet use for this research. She has specifically presented many times on the DNA subject. Her e-mail:genmail@marykozy.net

Much more will be added to this page, but immediately, you will find good resources at the handouts page: https://www.jgsws.org/handouts.php Owned by and residing on the Washington State Jewish Genealogical Society site

"Surnames in the Russian Empire":
https://www.jgsws.org/Handouts/11-9-15_The%20HistoryAdoptionAndRegulationOfJewishSurnamesInTheRussianEmpire.pdf

Handwriting Analysis for Genealogists - list of books:
http://www.jgsws.org/Handouts/2-8-16_HandwritingAnalysisForGenealogists_Arons.pdf

Research in Hungary/Transylvania/Romania and Adjacent Areas of Ukraine:
http://www.jgsws.org/Handouts/4-11-16_HungarianResearchWebsites_VivianKahn_handout.pdf

"Ships of Our Ancestors":
http://www.jgsws.org/Handouts/3-13-17_ShipsOfOurAncestors_HalBookbinder.pdf

Kahlile Bliss Mehr was one who had a big part in getting that started.

The following is from his bio when he spoke at Bnai in October 2016.

Video of his presentation, gathering https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y9s9bQBBv74

Kahlile worked in the Family History Department for 32 years and in the Church History Department for 3 years. For ten years he investigated genealogical records in East European archives to ensure the most valuable records were acquired for the Family History Library Collection. Concurrently, he investigated the early history of the Church in that part of the world.

Kahlile Bliss Mehr is a retired librarian and author. He has published over fifty articles or book reviews and authored: Hearts Turned to the Fathers: A History of the Genealogical Society of Utah 1894-1994, Mormon Missionaries Enter Eastern Europe, and “Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors” (http://feefhs.org/guides/Finding_Jewish.pdf). For BYU Studies, he wrote an extensive history of the development of Israel studies leading to BYU's Jerusalem Center, edited by Bnai Shalom here. And we find traces of his talent for Eastern European history in other writings.

Kahlile is a past member of the board of directors and coordinator of the IAJGS management sessions at annual conferences. Kahlile brought experience from serving on the board of The Federation of Eastern European Family History Societies (FEEFHS) to the IAJGS. Before his recent retirement, Kahlile was Manager of the Slavic Collection Management and Cataloging at FamilySearch. Kahlile fostered the IAJGS’s relationship with FamilySearch which has been an ongoing sponsor of our annual conference and the sponsor of IAJGS LIVE! (conference video streamed and on-demand).

For twenty years he visited archives throughout Eastern Europe. He has often lectured at IAJGS conferences on genealogical sources and records availability and at the meetings of various Jewish Genealogical Societies.

Nechamas List

Nachama's List
This, by Nancy Goodstein Hilton is a detailed description of 635 titles of filmed Jewish genealogy records.

Detailed Description and How to Use It

Examples of Records and of Formats

Countries, States, Languages Which Are Included

In The Past: Consultants Nancy, Robert

In past years, Nancy Goodstein Hilton has been the geneology specialist for the national/world wide organization of B'nai Shalom. Nancy has a particular wealth of experience in working with the Church (family history department and missions).

Robert Neu is a past president of the Jewish Genealogy Society, and is also available as a resource. Robert can give you history of Jewish migration in depth.

Guide for Ordinances Who You Can Do Ordinances For

A few tips on reading family information from German text: https://www.familytreemagazine.com/premium/understanding-german-language-and-surnames/

Legacy Genealogy Pages How to do Family History, Etc. - By Charles Smith 2000

There are many relevant articles relating to Jewish Gen on Family Search.