If you're trying to research a possible Jewish
link in your family, you'll soon find out that
Jewish genealogy is just like all other
genealogy, only more so!
The great wave of Jewish immigrants came over
to the UK in the last quarter of the 19th century.
They initially congregated in the towns where
they arrived, and many of them living in the East
End of London. This meant that many communities
lived in close proximity to family, friends,
landsleit (people coming from the same village)
and co-religionists. As late as my childhood in
the 1950s, people lived within 'pram-pushing'
distance of their mothers. This meant a closeness
of family life and knowledge of cousins, great
aunts and uncles that only began to lessen as
subsequent generations became more prosperous and
started to move out to the suburbs and beyond.
With a visit to the various Jewish cemeteries as
part of the yearly religious cycle (for adults at
least), with barmitzvahs, weddings, Passover and
Friday night family meals, there was a
consciousness of an extended family and networks
that all newly arrived immigrants develop for
mutual support. Tapping into this wealth of
family knowledge can get you off to a great start
but, for every genealogist who is fortunate
enough to be able to access this information,
there will be another whose family organisation
and memories didn't seem to conform to this
pattern or who feels they started their research
too late.
The two main problems that most people
encounter are where their ancestors came from and
whether they changed their names. Even a brief
study of the history or political geography of
Eastern Europe will show how often borders and
administrations changed. My grandmother said she
came from Austria. It was actually a region of
the Austro-Hungarian empire called Galicia. Today
it is in the Ukraine but, at some point in its
history it was in Poland. So, many of its records
are in the Polish State Archives in Warsaw while
others are in Lvov (also known either now or in
the past as Lwow, Lviv or Lemberg).
Probably the best thing that happened to me
was learning, right from the beginning, the names
of the towns where my great grandparents came
from: Kalisz, Kolo, Biala Podlaska (all in Poland)
and Husiatyn (Galicia). Discovering that there
were microfilms of Polish Jewish birth, marriage
and death records available through the Mormon
Family Historv Centre here in England was a
revelation. I used to think that all these
records would have been destroyed in the turmoil
of life in Eastern Europe during the last two
centuries. I recognise now that bureaucrats
didn't go to a lot of trouble to collect
information, only to destroy it. They kept it for
tax collection, for military and conscription
reasons and sometimes, unfortunately, for more
menacing purposes. Where records have been lost,
it is more often through neglect and lack of
funds and equipment to preserve archives.
The first time I saw some of these Polish
records on microfilm, my elation turned to
disappointment. I was initially discouraged by
difficulties in understanding the narrative
'Napoleonic' format of the records, the
frequently dreadful handwriting and the poor
condition of some of the records filmed. I was
rescued by a wonderful book on translating 19th
century Polish records written by someone from
the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois. It
was certainly the best investment of any that
I've made in terms of genealogical books and
materials. Have I mentioned, by the way, that
after 1867, all the Polish records are written in
Russian (Cyrillic) characters? No? Well that's
another steep learning curve that I'll have to go
through at some point. Contrary to popular
The grave of Gershon
son of Jacob which gave me his father's name
mythology, name changes were not usually made
at the point of entry to a country by immigration
officials too lazy or ignorant to understand
foreign names. Most passenger lists would have
been compiled in the country of origin by people
familiar with these names. Where there were
rigorous immigration procedures, particularly in
the USA, officials would themselves either have
first hand knowledge of the language, would use
interpreters or would have become familiar with
the spellings of foreign names over time. The
immigrants therefore often made name changes
themselves. Mainly these were made to fit in to
the local business and social community. In times
of strong anti German feeling (for example during
the First World War), it was not only Jews who
changed their surnames to avoid becoming targets.
Name changes may be spelling simplifications -
my own name of Fajfer changing to Fifer - or
direct translations as when Grunfeld became
Greenfield. Sometimes the name will just be
shortened as in Green. Levy (often written as
Lewy in Polish), can become Lewis. And often
there is no apparent reason for the change as
when someone in my mother's family changed his
surname from Vogel to Lester. Thank goodness for
my Klinger family who kept their name, both here
and in the USA. This enabled me to get
documentary evidence of my grandmother's town of
origin from information about her cousins on US
passenger lists, census and naturalisation
documents, all of which contrasted starkly with
the lack of similar evidence available in this
country.
Things don't get much easier when you look at
forenames. In Poland, in particular, many Jews
used a variety of names for business, religious
and social purposes. These too were often changed
or simplified after a period in the new country.
Baruch might become Barnett or Barney or Bernard.
Sometimes it helps to know the meaning of the
original name as when Blume became Flora. Many
people changed their names for secular purposes
but retained their Hebrew names for religious
purposes. These names can often be found on
gravestones in the Hebrew writing and they are
useful because they are written in the form of
patronymics and thus give you the father's name (in
Hebrew at least).
It was (and often still is) customary in
Ashkenazic families (those who came from Eastern
Europe in contrast to the Sephardim from Spain,
Portugal, North Africa and Holland) to name
children after deceased grandparents. They are
rarely named after living relatives. This often
enables you to pinpoint when someone died since a
number of cousins born shortly after that time
will all bear the name of their common
grandparent. This use of naming patterns can be
very helpful in tracing back different family
lines, particularly when combined with the names
'inherited' from the spouse's side of the family.
This is all the more important since Eastern
European Jews often didn't use surnames until
they were legallv required to do so at the end of
the eighteenth century. Working backwards from
the age of his death record in 1836, I can
estimate that Lewka Pfeiffer (my 4 x great
grandfather) was probably born in 1748. However,
even if I could find records from that period, it
is unlikely that he or his family were using the
Pfeiffer surname at that time. All I could hope
would be that the patronymics used would be
sufficiently unusual to help me in my task.
The President of the Jewish Genealogical
Society of Great Britain tells how he got
interested in genealogy as a young boy when he
saw a family tree of the Kings and Queens of
England. He asked his father why their family
didn't have such a tree and, being dissatisfied
with the answer, set out to rectify the matter.
While there are no royal lines in Jewish
genealogy (anyone who tells you that he has
traced his ancestry back to King David is
probably spinning you a line) the next best thing
is if you are descended from a rabbi, preferably
one of the famous ones. Their genealogies are
well documented and there are a number of people
who specialise in this field.
In some cases, you may be researching a single
Jewish ancestor who 'married out' and who
subsequently maintained few or no links with
their family or the Jewish community. In other
cases there are families who have hidden their
Jewishness from their children and grandchildren.
At the International Seminar on Jewish Genealogy
held in London this summer, there were some very
moving stories of people who had discovered
Jewish roots initially through their family
history research. This kind of research can be
difficult but is not impossible.
The Holocaust was, and continues to be, a
defining event in Jewish history and
consciousness. Even for those of us who did not
lose immediate family members, we know that there
will be lines in our family trees which we may
pick up in the research for our roots but which
we know will be cut short as we try to research
these lines forward into the 193os and 1940s. For
many of us, the creation of a family tree can act
as a memorial both to the known and the unknown
dead. In some cases family history research has
enabled Holocaust survivors to find out more
about their roots and even to discover branches
of their families that they didn't know existed -
a wonderful blessing that can give real impact
and meaning to the research activity.
Much of the support and information available
to help Jewish researchers comes through various
societies and on-line support groups. The
American Jewish genealogical research community
is particularly strong and well-organised in this
respect and there are some wonderful examples of
international indexing projects for Polish
records, burial records and other activities to
which we can all contribute. Many of these are
hosted by Jewishgen on the Internet at and, if
you have never visited this site, I urge you to
look here for both databases and a very useful
series of help and information files for
beginners. Here in the UK we also have an
excellent website at which will tell you about
our publications, library and activities (wwwjgsgb.ort.org/).
Since Jewish researchers are often more
widespread both in their current locations and in
their research interests, the Internet has been a
boon in bringing people together and helping them
to share their knowledge and interests.
I am conscious that I have focused this
article on the research for Jewish ancestors in
Poland, the area where my own interests lie. I
have not discussed research for those whose Anglo-Jewish
roots go back much further than mine, sometimes
to the time of Cromwell. I have also not covered
those areas with which I am less familiar such as
research in Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Western
European countries, South Africa or even the USA.
Many of these have their own Special Interest
Groups (SIGS) with newsgroups on the web,
newsletters and annual get-togethers at the
International Seminars (to be held in Toronto
next year and in Washington in 2003). We may not
all be related, but we all feel like mishpocheh (defined
in Leo Rosten's book The Joys of Yiddish as '..family,
including relatives far, near, remote and
numerous').
References
Judith Frazin, A
Translation Guide to igth-Century Polish Language
Civil-Registration Documents (Birth,
Marriage and Death Records). The Jewish
Genealogical Society of Illinois, 1989, ISBN 0-9613512-1-7
Leo Rosten, The Joys of Yiddish. Penguin
Books, 1971, ISBN 0-14003068-9
