FAMILY TREE

JUDAISM as MATRIARCHAL CULTURE : JEWISH GENEALOGY

Walking the dog, I got into a conversation with a new neighbor who happens to be an obstetrician and Jewish.  Still delivering babies though well past the usual retirement age, the joke goes that he's seen half the town naked - because he delivered them. Must say, he is up on genetic testing as well as invitro. He mentioned that he delivered a woman's grandchild, she being the surrogate for her daughter. He also told me - and I had not heard this before - WHY Jewish culture is matriarchal.  Simply, "The men were taken away as slaves and the women had to carry on."

Jewish genealogy is extremely popular and there are many cooperative projects.  Some of this, I feel, is part of the urge towards Americans finding their roots after forgetting about them for a couple generations, some of it is surely because of the devastating effect of the Holocaust on the Jewish people. DNA is adding an interesting aspect to genealogical research because some people are using it to try to confirm Jewish ancestry just as some are using it to try and confirm Native American ancestry.

My experience is that while some European Jewish records are superior to Christian records, because they give interesting information not found in most Baptismal records, overall there are special challenges.  For instance the name of the midwife and/or the name of the Rabbi who did a circumcision, which may indicate the congregation or temple a family belonged to, is listed.  This seems to be about a concern that the baby be handled in a kosher way and a certainty of Jewishness.

I once had a student who started the class with a negative attitude, that because her family had all "perished" she could not do genealogy. This is simply not true.  Genealogy like history is so niche specific. At the time I was teaching that class there were websites for people to register themselves as survivors similar to the ones that match birth parents with children they gave up for adoption. I showed this woman where she could let the world know she survived and possibly someone would find her. 

Today I find the Yad Vashem website to be increasingly comprehensive and a wealth of information.

Truly it seems as if there is more information on Jewish people of the holocaust era than ever.

C 2019 Ancestry Worship Genealogy - All Rights Reserved

SLAVE NARRATIVES - HISTORY and TESTIMONY FOR GENEALOGY

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS - INFORMATION ON SLAVE NARRATIVES

Born in Slavery: Slave Narratives from the Federal Writers' Project, 1936-1938  DIGITAL IMAGES ONLINE OF TYPED NARRATIVES.

FROM THE SITE: 2300 first person accounts of slavery and 500 black and white photographs of former slaves... The published volumes containing edited slave narratives are arranged alphabetically by the state in which the interviews took place and are there under by the SURNAME of the INFORMANT (i.e. the slave).... Federal field workers were given instructions on what kinds of questions to ask their informants and how to capture their dialects. The result of which may sometimes be offensive to today's readers...

COMMENTARY:  

Realize that the slaves interviewed were old people in their 80's and 90's. 

I've had ONE genealogy project in which I believed I'd found the FAMILY of the owner of a slave who gave a narrative.  The ex-slave's story was about being cruelly abused by a certain man who was likely one of this family's members in South Carolina. The North Carolina branch of this family had not owned slaves and my client said he'd been told by his father that they did not believe in slavery.

What a find if your ancestor is one of the 500 ex slaves whose photos appear.

For many Americans with Southern U.S. roots (though there were slaves in states not thought of as Southern) slave owners and/or slaves are part of their ancestry.  

I suggest you scan through this collection just to get a feel for it. The collection is NOT inclusive of every ex-slave, just a sampling of those still alive and willing to be interviewed. Try scanning for names in your family. Tie this in with whatever census information.  The place of interview is NOT always the place the person was enslaved.

The interviewing writers were told what questions to ask and did their best to record the stories as part of a Works Projects Administration job.  If you have reason to believe one of your family members worked on this assignment, the writer's names appear also.

C 2019  Ancestry Worship Genealogy BlogSpot

LIFE TIMES by FREDERICK LENZ : ANCESTRY WORSHIP GENEALOGY BOOK REVIEW

Some people who do genealogy research or who are into family history collecting wonder if they are like any of their ancestors, ones they never met, whose photo they will never see.

Some wonder if perhaps they have reincarnated into the same family or if their soul was once embodied by a great grandparent or other ancestor.  

Why do we meet someone and have emotions about them that make no sense such as feeling instant empathy for them or greatly disliking them?

If you read around reincarnation hoping to encounter more fascinating or even stunning stories, you may find a few in Frederick Lenz's Life Times : True Accounts of Reincarnation.  A small collection of testimonials in this book are in the category of spontaneous recall, a category that does not require hypnotic regression and seems to me to be the most creative and thus unbelievable. There's a bit about Buddhism and Hinduism here too and the beliefs that are more alike than not. Since I know a bit more than the author when it comes to the belief in karma, let's just say that the author's understanding is not complete and I sense this book was intended to be a short one so there wouldn't be room for that explanation anyway...

For purposes of this blog, which I long ago promised to be a bit unconventional and spiritual, I think my readers would most be interested in defining Twin Souls,  Soul Mates, and Karma-Connected Souls.  The words karma and soul mates have entered our American vocabulary and are used by those who are not Buddhist, Hindu or who are ignorant of their meaning.  I'll paraphrase:

Twin Souls:  People with similar talents or interests who have incarnated with each other for many lifetimes or who are joined by experiences they shared.  They are not necessarily compatible but may enjoy their time together inventing, learning, collaborating on a project.  (page 130)

Soul Mates:  Feeling magnetically drawn to a person is an indication that you actually had a close personal relationship in another life time(s), and implied that this was romantic.  "It would appear that one can have more than one soul mate, and that soul mates can be of either the same or the opposite sex." (page 135)

Karmic Connection: "Karmically connected souls are persons whose karma (actions) have temporarily joined them,until such time as their actions together have been completed. The link between karmically connected individual s is not so highly developed as the bonds between twin souls or soul mates."  (page 145)

C 2019 Review and Excerpts  Ancestry Worship Genealogy

THREE MORE YEARS TILL THE RELEASE OF THE 1950 CENSUS

It's not too soon to learn a bit about this census, the seventeen United States Census, which will include the BABY BOOM generation. It will be released April 1, 2020. Work has already begun on the project to index it.  Here's some information!  STEVE MORSE 1950 CENSUS PROJECT UPDATE

UPDATE July 2019.  The release without indexing.  You'll be able to locate the ENUMERATION DISTRICT of ancestors who you may already know of from the 1940 to get to images prior to Indexing.

Click on the tab  Genealogy Help - 1950 Census to bring up the series!