As Miriam put it, “For many years I have watched TV programs like Finding Your Roots and have been overcome with envy.” The daughter of the only member of her immediate family to survive the Holocaust, Miriam had long felt something gnawing in the back of her mind. Her lack of knowledge about her family seemed like a small hole inside of her. Like many Jews who wished they knew more about their past, she never suspected that the vast amount of information about Jewish families available through genealogy research would change her life.

Why Do Genealogy?

Discover Your Heritage

Genealogy research can yield information about your family history—probably much more than you ever would have imagined. For many of my Ashkenazi Jewish clients, I have been able to uncover family histories going back hundreds of years. As a genealogist, I have often been privileged to introduce clients to their great-great-great-great-great grandparents, along with countless siblings, cousins, and other relatives. Genealogical research can identify some of the villages and towns your ancestors lived in, occupations they practiced, and sometimes even the exact houses where your ancestors and relatives lived 100 to 200 years ago.

Yet family is about much more than just names and dates. It is an oft-stated truism, but families really do link us together with something larger than ourselves. Understanding who our ancestors were and how they lived can help us understand who we are and how we fit in with the grand sweep of Jewish history. The forces of Jewish history that impacted them are not merely vague abstractions. Concepts such as urbanization, industrialization, nationalism, and the vigorous debates on the Jewish Enlightenment are not only chapters that we can read about in a history textbook. This history affected our ancestors’ daily lives, shaped their destinies, and ultimately helped bring about the conditions which allowed our great-grandparents, grandparents, and parents to meet, bringing us into existence.

Uncovering our families’ stories offers us invaluable gifts to ourselves, our children, and grandchildren. Sharing them deepens their connections with us and the rest of our families, and helps strengthen our children’s links with their Jewish identity. In short, understanding our family’s past can help us come to a deeper understanding of ourselves.

Reconnect Families

Beyond the past, genealogy research can also help find living relatives you never knew you had. The excitement of making new connections is a significant part of the rewards of genealogy research. Ultimately, genealogy is not only about understanding oneself, but also about making connections. In Miriam’s case, I was able to connect her with living relatives on five continents, from a French filmmaker currently living and working in Tunisia to distant cousins in Mexico, Costa Rica, and Brazil.

Rebuilding Jewish family ties that were severed by migration, pogroms, and the Holocaust is one of the most rewarding things I do as a genealogist.

Why Hire a Professional Genealogist?

With the vast profusion of genealogical resources available, there has never been a better time to do genealogy. In recent years, genealogy has become one of the world’s leading hobbies. While there is undoubtedly a great deal that can be done on one’s own, hiring a professional genealogist offers many benefits. First, not everyone has the time or inclination to become an amateur historian. Like any undertaking, researching one’s family can take hundreds of hours and involves a vast array of knowledge and skills. Hiring a professional can allow busy people to achieve their research goals without requiring a major time commitment from them.

In addition to saving time, hiring a qualified professional genealogical researcher offers reliability. Understanding how to read and properly interpret the historic material—much of it handwritten hundreds of years ago in other countries, in languages other than English, using archaic handwriting systems, in societies vastly different from our own—is a highly specialized undertaking. Much of the material that is out there may be confusing, contradictory, and fragmentary due to the passage of time. Locating, reading, interpreting, and piecing together a story out of these primary source materials requires a considerable amount of training.

Professional Standards

With all the information available, it is very easy to get overwhelmed. If researching for yourself, how can know that you are doing it the right way? How do you know if you are going about it in the right way, or that you aren’t overlooking something important? How can you avoid the common pitfalls that often plague beginner and amateur researchers alike?

At the same time, if you decide to hire a researcher, how do you know that their results will be reliable? While you might consider asking a friend for a referral, how do you know that this friend knows enough about genealogy to be able to critically evaluate a genealogist’s professional competence?

To address important concerns like these, the genealogy discipline has devised a set of universal genealogy standards. The most important set of these is termed the Genealogical Standards of Proof. Modeled on the scientific method, the Genealogical Standards of Proof provides a rigorous framework for the establishment of genealogical conclusions. Using this set of methods allows genealogists and their clients to have faith in the conclusions they draw.

In addition to the Genealogy Standards of Proof, genealogy as a discipline has also established a wider set of professional standards. These standards cover all aspects of the field, from source documentation to research procedures and technical specifications for writing. They also cover important ethical guidelines to help protect clients. By hiring genealogists who commit to following the guidelines and professional standards set by the discipline, clients can be sure they can rely on the information they get from genealogists.

Why Choose a Specialist in Ashkenazi Jewish Genealogy?

For a variety of reasons, research on Ashkenazi Jewish families is a highly skilled sub-specialty. Unlike in America, vital records in 19th-century Europe were kept separately by religion. Due to the way they were created and maintained, Jewish records ended up in different sections of archives, sometimes in entirely different repositories. In modern times, a wide profusion of modern genealogical research tools exists—most of which focus on specific sub-sections of the population.

Once historical records have been identified, properly interpreting them is the key to unlocking the story of your family. For a wide variety of reasons, interpreting records for Jewish families requires a great deal of specialized cultural and historical knowledge. Understanding migration patterns, naming conventions, and historical demographics are just some of the requirements which allow professional genealogists with this specialization to unlock the stories hidden in these documents.

 

What Can You Expect If You Hire Me?

While every family is different, I have often been able to research my clients’ family histories to the early 1800s, sometimes even earlier. I can often ascertain from historical records what occupations my clients’ ancestors and relatives carried out, which villages and towns in Central and Eastern Europe they were living in, and other details of their lives. In some cases—particularly for large, urbanized families—I can sometimes pinpoint exact houses where ancestors or family members were living. Moreover, many of my genealogy projects uncover distant relatives, sometimes living in unexpected places.

To better understand what the results of a genealogy search might look like, please feel free to browse some examples of the kinds of results I have obtained for myself and my clients. For even more, you may wish to peruse my blog. To read what others have to say about my services, please feel free to explore my testimonials. Finally, if you would like to book a research appointment, please do not hesitate to contact me. Let’s uncover your family’s unique history and legacy!

 

Summing Up

In recent years, genealogy has become one of the most popular pastimes in the world. The kinds of information available about your family can be life changing. Learning about who your great-great-great-great-great grandparents were, understanding the contributions they made to their societies, and discovering people you never knew you were related to can change the way you see yourself.

In Miriam’s case, my research was able to trace her ancestors back to the 1750s. I was able to pinpoint the exact villages her 5-great grandfather lived in, and to discover that he owned a sawmill with his brother. I found that at the same time her great grandparents moved to Lublin in the 1880s, many of her other relatives clustered in the smaller town of Opole Lubelskie. Ultimately, I was able to connect Miriam with living relatives on five continents. In her own words, “I have a history!”

Throughout the different sections of my website, I hope that you will come to appreciate the immense value that genealogy can add to your life.