Monday, December 31, 2018

Podwoloczysk Records - New Answers and New Questions

New records from AGAD
About two weeks ago, Mark Halpern of JRI-Poland posted the following, in reference to records from east Galician towns in the AGAD archives in Warsaw. 
Earlier this week, JRI-Poland processed and added a significant volume
of new and/or extended data. This includes about 8,000 new record
indices for eastern Galicia towns as follows:

-- Borszczow 1914, 1916-1929 M
-- Chodorow 1914-1929 M
-- Dunajow 1925-1934 D
-- Kopyczynce 1877, 1879, 1880, 1883, 1885-1914, 1916-1919 M
-- Lysiec 1919-1931 D
-- Mielnica 1898-1914, 1917-1929 M; 1910-1920 D
-- Podwoloczyska 1921-1934 M; 1920-1922 D
-- Sokal 1916-1935 D
-- Szczerzec 1917 B; 1916-1926, 1938, 1930-1932, 1934-1935 D
-- Zalozce 1914, 1916, 1920-1924 M; 1916, 1918-1921 D
-- Zbaraz 1914-1917 B; 1930-1937 M
Some of these towns are of interest to my Pikholz families and my Kwoczkas lived in Zalozce, but many of our families had left their home towns by the time we get to these records. There are some records that add a bit of information, but not much of real significance

But in Podwoloczysk, there are six records of interest, some answers and some raising new questions. (I keep expecting that new records will only provide answers, but no.)

1. The Kiwetz marriage
Tema Pikholz and Zvi Kiwetz, of Skalat, had twelve children almost all of whom lived into adulthood. Of those, only their son Yitzhak survived the Holocaust, losing his wife and three children. Another Holocaust survivor is the daughter of his brother Chaim and eventually that daughter was brought up by Yitzhak and his second wife in Haifa. The daughter was born in 1939 and I have met her, though the last time I looked for her I was not able to find her.

The new Podwoloczysk include her parents' marriage. We know them to be Chaim Kiwetz and Pinie Podhorcer, a variation of Podhoretz. She told me that her mother's mother was also a Kiwetz, a relative of her father.
In fact she is incorrect. Her mother Pinie Podhorcer is the daughter of Menachem Kiwetz and Ester Podhorcer. Her parents' fathers are brothers.

2. There are Picks in Zbarazh
When I first began looking at AGAD records nearly twenty years ago, I saw a Zbarazh couple Lewi and Malka Dwojre Pick with two children born in the 1850s. At the time, I had no idea if this Pick (sometimes Pik) family was part of the Pikholz family of Skalat so I recorded what I found. Soon enough I became convinced that this is not our family but I continue carrying them in my database. There are a few others as well, who probably fit together, but I have not put any work into this family.

I have not found any of them alive during or after the Holocaust, but frankly I have never really looked.

The new Podwoloczysk records include a marriage of a younger member of the Pick family - Israel Jakob Kahane born to Reisel Pick and her husband Nuchim Kahane in 1899. This is the youngest member of this family that I have run across.

3. Josef's son Chaim
Josef Pikholz of Klimkowce (the grandson of Nachman Pikholz of Skalat) who has been mentioned here from time to time, lost his wife Lane Feldman in 1885 at age thirty-two. Soon after, he married his first cousin Sure Elka Pikholz and we have birth records of the children they had together. We know nothing about any of them. (These are half brothers of Jacob Laor's grandfather.)

The new Podwoloczysk records include a 1926 marriage for Chaim. I have suggested to Jacob that he have a look at the Yad Vashem records to see if any of Chaim's family are listed under his wife's surname.
4. The death of Syma Pikholz
Josef's father Arie Leib (1829-1901) also lost his wife in 1885 and afterwards he married a woman named Syma Friedmann. They had a son Nachman David in 1891, about whom we know nothing. Jacob wondered not long ago whatever happened to Syma. We now have her death record; she died in 1920 at age seventy.
5. Is this our Chana?
The Podwoloczysk records have a 1920 death for Chana Halpern.  The record does not identify her parents or her husband or her house number or her home town but she appears to be the daughter of Gabriel (the son of Nachman) and Sara Pikholz of Husiatyn, the wife of Joel Halpern. Her age on the death record is 64 which means she was born about 1856.
The problem is that our Chana's father Gabriel died in 1852. So either this is not our Chana or the age on the death record is incorrect. For now, I am not going to attach this death record to our Chana, but I shall make a note that it might be our Chana with an incorrect age.

6. Brane's husband
This is the most problematic of the new records, so let me start with a bit of background. Chana Pikholz, whom I just mentioned above, and her husband Joel Halpern had a daughter Brane on 13 January 1893 in Podwoloczysk. 

In 1919, Brane had a son in Vienna. On the birth record she is identified unambiguously by her known birthplace and birth date. The father is not named.

That son, who went by Pickholz, ended up in Israel and I have visited his grave. The tombstone has the correct date of birth but the wrong year and identifies his father as Avraham. He has three children, all in Israel, who flat out refuse to talk to me - other than to say "We are not from Galicia. We are from Vienna!" If they would talk to me, I would ask about the identity and surname of Avraham, whether there were additional children, when their father came to Israel, what happened to Brane and more.

Be that as it may, the story seems clear. Brane was born in Podwoloczysk, went to Vienna, married Avraham and had a son in 1919.

But the new record in Podwoloczysk throws a monkey wrench into all of that.
On 29 September 1922, a Friday three days before Yom Kippur, in Podwoloczysk Brane Halpern the daughter of Joel Halpern and Chancie Pickholz, married Isak Siegel, the son of Chaim and Hinde Siegel. Brane's birth date is as we know it and Isak is a few months younger. (This is not the Isak Siegel of Bredowicz who is a Pikholz descendant himself.)

There is no mention in the record of her having been married previously or of her living in Vienna.

Perhaps there is an error someplace, though I cannot imagine where it might be. Might Isak and Avraham be the same person with a double name? I doubt it. What else might explain the documents?

Perhaps she didn't live in Vienna but went there to deliver her child, a child who did not have the benefit of married parents. Then she came home, married and returned to Vienna. Perhaps I should be looking in Vienna for Brane and Isak Siegel - maybe with additional children.

Housekeeping notes
I shall be speaking, in Hebrew, for the Rishon LeZion branch of the Israel Genealogical Society on Monday, 14 January at 7 PM at the Rishon LeZion Museum, 2 Ahad Haam Street. This is not a DNA presentation, though there are a few DNA references. The topic is


מֵעֵבֶר לְסָפֵק סָבִיר
מה שיודעים, לעומת מה שאפשר להוכיח
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
What We Know vs. What We Can Prove

Wednesday, December 26, 2018

A Letter from Soviet Russia - 1930

Souscha Chana (left) and
her step-sister Shayna Liba.
Photo probably from 1906-7.
A few days ago, I discussed a set of letters sent from Russia to Brooklyn New York ninety years ago, one of which described some of the hardships of life in Stalin's Soviet Union. Because of its general interest, I bring the translation here, in full. I am not sure who did the translation, but it was arranged by Cousin Ethel Klavan. I suspect that the translator had some problems with pronouns.

The letter was written by my grandmother's step-sister Sonya (Souscha Chana) Resnikov to her brother Yakov Bandes in Brooklyn. It is not clear where Sonya lived. She was not in Moscow or Penza (where her mother was).
My comments appear as footnotes.


30 September 1930

Dear Brother Yankev,1

May you and your wife and children live and be well!

I don't think it is necessary to tell you what a joy it was to get your letter. I got a letter from our mother which I am sending to you. You should know she keeps waiting to hear from you. If you would see how she looks, you would write to her often, as we do. I write to her twice a week, every week. If you wrote even once a month, it would ease her life in her old age.

Now I'll tell you the journey your letter took. First it went to Moscow to Bome2, as our son is called, and he sent it on to us in an envelope right away. When I wrote to him asking him to inquire at the post office as perhaps the letter had not yet been sent back. You will read the answer in Mother's letter. Now I will tell you why Bome got your letter and not Yoche3. Yoche, as you know, is a doctor. So she was sent away to a village to be a _________ in a sort of ________. One cannot refuse to go if told to. Her husband Monya is now in a "camp." He is an engineer but he is in the military reserve - a reservist commander and must go to a military camp every summer. Bome is in Moscow two years already, where he is a driver. Two years ago he took the examination for the university from which engineers and architects graduate. He passed his examinations but they did not accept him because he is not the son of a worker. Now he is a worker himself so perhaps they will accept him now. Meanwhile he is alone and doesn't have enough to eat. From here we can't send mail during the summer but an acquaintance of ours was going to Moscow so we sent him some food. That is why Mother asks if he received the parcel.

Now about us. We are living in a military area where Shaya4 is serving at this time. I am writing now because I have a chance to send the letter. For two years we really struggled. There were times when there was simply nothing to eat.  But now Shaya gets 100 ruble a month so he gives everyone what they need to buy in our cooperative - so we can live. One pound of meat costs 2 rubles and a pound of butter costs 25 kopecks and a glass of milk costs 20 kopecks and a pound of bread is 40 kopecks. A pair of shoes is 50 ruble. So you can see it is very hard to live but we are not dying of hunger. Bella5 is also serving. She wanted to study music but they had to sell the piano to live so she signed up and earns 30 rubles. So you can see, my dear brother, how it hurts me that my children have to work so hard.. But I hope that the children will still get the opportunity to go to Moscow and study there. Shaya would be able to get 100 rubles in Moscow too, and with Bella's 30 and Bome's 70 - but one room there costs 50 or 70 rubles a month and food also costs money - so they can't manage it. I hope my dear brother, you understand everything I am writing to you. Yoche sends mother 30 rubles. 

Mother writes in her letter that she received money from Bella from her salary. We all send a little. Twice a year Chaim Bentche6 sends $15. You realize she cannot live on that. That is the news here. Thank G-d I have very good children. They understand that they had to work. 

I thank you for your post card photos. If you can send a good photo - where we could see your faces well. It is hard to see the faces on them. One thing that we can see is that the children are tall. May they be well.

Jakov, if you want to send Mother money you should get Mother's address from Chaim Bentche. When he sends, it arrives with no problems. Write either to Mother or to Mera. Check if the money you sent before came back.

We wish all of you stay well. Regards from Shaya and Bella. Why don't you write to your sister? Answer right away. We look forward to getting your letters.

My comments:
The grave of Sonya, her husband & children
1. Yankev is a Yiddish pronunciation of Yaakov (=Jakob).

2. Bome (two syllables) is a common nickname for Avraham, which we know to be Sonya's son's name. He was born about 1911, so is not yet twenty when this was written.

3. I do not know who Yoche is. She is a doctor, as was Mera. And her husband was called Monya, surely a nickname.  Mera's husband is Max. So I thought Yoche must be (somehow!) Mera. But later Sonya mentions Mera by name, so Yoche must be someone else. I have learned that Sonya and Jakob had a sister - maybe that is Yoche. Mera is a half sister to both my grandmother and to Sonya/Jakob. ("Monya" is probably a bad transliteration and should be "Munya.")

4. Sonya's husband is Saveli (=Saul). The translator calls him "Shaya" (=Yeshaya") but looking at the Yiddish I see "Shiya" (=Yehoshua).

5. Bella is Sonya's daughter. Born 1914, so age sixteen when this was written.

6. Chaim Bentche is my grandmother's brother (aka Uncle Hymen), a step-brother of Sonya and Jakob. It is interesting that in discussing money, no one ever mentions either my grandmother Sarah (in Vandergrift PA) or Yenta's husband, Israel David Rosenbloom, who was with her in Penza.

Sunday, December 23, 2018

The Rosenbloom Envelopes From Penza


Testing artifacts
The age of genetic genealogy has featured two basic verbs - "spit" and "swab." It's how we submit our DNA samples to the testing companies. The two have one thing in common. The subject must be alive, or at least dead-but-not-yet-buried.

We would like to know the DNA of our dead ancestors and several analytical tools have helped with that. I have had success with GEDmatch's Lazarus based on a combination of descendants and non-descendant relatives. Others have phased a missing parent, using children and the available parent. Visual Phasing works out grandparents based on grandchildren. But these are indirect methods that don't produce the full set of chromosomes for the missing ancestor.

The genetic genealogy community has been talking and asking about artifacts almost from the beginning. Grampa's hat has a bit of hair. Can we do anything with that? Only if there are follicles - and it would be a special, expensive project.

But what about that same spit that we already use, if applied to an envelope flap or a stamp. On one hand, this DNA is protected from the elements. On the other hand, how do we even know that the envelope was sealed and stamped by the actual letter writer. More than five years ago, Roberta Estes wrote about her attempts to get DNA from her long-deceased father and serendipitously acquired letters mailed by her grandfather. Roberta writes:
At the time my grandfather mailed those letters to my father, in the 1960s, my grandfather was living alone, so he should have licked the envelope and the stamp himself.
I called Bennett Greenspan at Family Tree DNA.  He referred me to a private lab that “does things like this,” called Trace Genetics.  Before you start googling, the company was subsequently sold and has now been defunct for years.  However, at that time they were doing custom processing of private forensic samples.
Yes, anything like that is considered forensic.  Anything you have to extract DNA from before you can have it processed in a regular lab is forensic work.
So, I got an estimate, took out a loan, and told them to go ahead.  You think I’m kidding, but I’m not.  The cost was in the $2000 range FOR EACH ATTEMPT.  So, we tried the envelope first.  No DNA.  Then we tried the stamp.  We got DNA, but it was female, so we knew it was contaminant DNA.  Think of how many people handle an envelope in the processing and delivery of mail, not to mention all the people who had handled it since.
Then we tried a second envelope.  No dice.
TWO THOUSAND DOLLARS! With less than 50% chance of success! Even if it's the person we think it is. For most of us, that is off the table.

Letters from Penza 
We actually have nine envelopes sent from Penza (Russia) where my great-grandfather lived his last years. Sometime during or (more likely) after the First World War, my great-grandfather and namesake Israel David Rosenbloom left - or was exiled from - Borisov (Barysaw) in today's Belarus and ended up in Penza, 680 miles away. With him were his second wife Yenta and her daughter Sonia (Sousha Chana) Resnikov and her family. The daughter they had together, Mera, was probably with them at first but by 1929, she was a physician living in Moscow. Also in Moscow was Israel David's daughter Alta Kaplan, from his late first wife Etta Bryna.

Israel David and Etta Bryna had two other children in the United States - my grandmother Sarah in Vandergrift Pennsylvania and Chaim Benzion (Uncle Hymen) who lived in Brooklyn. There was correspondence between the family in Russia and the family in the US during the 1920s, but only Uncle Hymen's copies survive.

I have nine envelopes and five letters addressed to Uncle Hymen. Fortunately he opened most of them with a letter opener, so the sealed flaps are largely intact. I scanned the nine envelopes and sent them to a company who offers this service and between three and seven were considered suitable for DNA extraction. The ones I list here as "maybe" were the result of comments like "if this was your only sample for this person we would attempt extraction on it."
Three are considered suitable for DNA extraction. Maybe four others. The identity of Mendel Wolfson is unknown.














There are five letters. I have copies of the Yiddish originals and translations into English of all five. I think that they are numbered in the order they were translated. Translations were done by various people, all arranged and paid for by Uncle Hymen's daughter, Cousin Ethel Klavan.

Letter #1
A six-page letter dated 30 September 1930 and opens "Dear Brother Yankev," so it would have been
Lieber Bruder Yankev
written by the step-daughter Sonia Resnikov. She mentions writing to their mother - whom we know to have been in Penza - so she was elsewhere. We knew that her brother had come to the US but never had much success looking for him. She mentions his wife and children, whom we know nothing about. In any event, this doesn't appear to be from one of the nine envelopes. It is an interesting snapshot of life in Stalin's USSR and perhaps I shall post the translation separately.

I don't know why Uncle Hymen had this letter. Perhaps his step-brother lived with him for a time, though they are not together in the 1930 census. The same census has a Jacob Bandes family living on Eastern Parkway, about two miles away, who may or may not be the step-brother.

Letter #2
"Israel David Rosenbloom" in his own hand?
A two-page letter from Israel David Rosenbloom to his son Uncle Hymen ("Chaim Bentshe"). He mentions that his grandson "Alta's Jakov" visited, met a girl and married her and that they have a daughter, making him a great-grandfather. The implication is that this is the first great-grandchild. This daughter died in childhood, and we do not know exactly when she was born.

The family knows that Jakov's wife Fania Pinskaya was from Penza and this confirms my assumption on how that came about.

Letter #3
A letter that is less than a page and a half in the same handwriting as letter #2. The letter is undated but the translation is stapled to a copy of the December 1928 envelope. I am not sure if that attribution is correct. The letter thanks Uncle Hymen for the $10 that he sent for Passover, eight months earlier than the date on that envelope.

The letter concludes "Regards from Alte and her children. She already has 2 grandchildren from her two sons, both girls." The second granddaughter is still living (in Moscow) and she says that she was born 23 August 1928.
I think the handwriting is the same on all three of these letters.
Letter #4
Lieber Kinder - Dear Children
This two-page letter opens "Dear Children" is specifically signed "Your mother, Yente." It is confusing and that may be the fault of the translator. The date "27th" appears at the top. The handwriting is the same as in letters 2 and 3, so it appears that one of the couple did the writing for both of them.

Letter #5
This two-page letter is definitely from daughter Mera to Uncle Hyman and it is dated 13 October 1929. The translation does not cover the entire letter. Mera thanks him for sending regards with someone named Mendel and that may be the man whose name appears on the last envelope. Mera lived in Moscow, so perhaps none of the envelopes are hers.

The card
There is also a card which records the receipt in Penza of seventy-eight francs on 23 April 1929 by Israel David Rosenbloom. My cousin Katya translated the card and added "due to his illiteracy in accordance to his personal request it is signed by (signature)." The reverse side says that it was sent to my great-grandfather in Penza.

I assume that he may have been illiterate in Russian but surely he read and wrote Yiddish. Katya suggests that perhaps "he decided that in 1929 it was safer to pretend being illiterate." I mention this because it may be relevant to the question who addressed and sealed the Rosenbloom Penza envelopes


totheletter DNA
Recently there have been new developments. Blaine Bettinger blogged about this a few weeks ago and has since revised it with updates. Blaine himself has sent envelopes to an Australian testing company called totheletter DNA. This is the company to whom I showed my nine scans. Their testing process has multiple stages:
  • You send them scans of the front and back of the envelope and they tell you if it appears to be suitable for DNA extraction. That part of the service is free.
  • You place the order for A$781.50 (=US$559.90) and send them the envelope.
  • They attempt to extract DNA, which costs A$140 (=~US$100). That part of the cost is non-refundable, regardless of the results.
  • If the extraction is successful, the actual genotyping costs A$621.50 (~US$445). That is refunded if the extraction is unsuccessful.
  • The last A$20 is for the cost of returning the envelope to the customer.
The company will upload the autosomal results to GEDmatch (Genesis) as part of the service.

(MyHeritage has announced that they will be offering a similar service, but they have not yet said what their prices will be and what exactly they will be offering. Nor are they willing to give a timetable for providing these details.)

The Mission
I would love to try this extraction and genotyping on at least one of the envelopes, but US$560 each is beyond my budget. Perhaps some of my family members would like to step up and help out. I think I would send the three envelopes which they deem "suitable" and let the company itself choose the one that looks the best for a start. If that one shows matches with us - the fifteen tested great-grandchildren - of 600-1000 cM, we would know it is Israel David's DNA. If not, we could consider whether to try another. We have the advantage here of knowing that none of the other of the Penza Rosenblooms (except Mera who lived in Moscow) has any of our Rosenbloom DNA.

The three "suitable" envelopes. One even has a bit of a stamp.
Housekeeping notes
I shall be speaking, in Hebrew, for the Rishon LeZion branch of the Israel Genealogical Society on Monday, 14 January at 7 PM at the Rishon LeZion Museum, 2 Ahad Haam Street. This is not a DNA presentation, though there are a few DNA references. The topic is


מֵעֵבֶר לְסָפֵק סָבִיר
מה שיודעים, לעומת מה שאפשר להוכיח
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
What We Know vs. What We Can Prove

Thursday, December 6, 2018

Dawid Wolf Pikholz of Rozdol

To mark twenty years of the Pikholz Project - the goal of which is to identify and reconnect all Pikholz descendant wherever they are - let me revisit one of our first records. Because my older self has some things to say to my younger self.

Dawid Wolf and Rachel
Even before I met Ephraim Pickholz and Jacob Laor twenty years ago, they had ordered forty Pikholz birth records from the Lwow archives with the help of Alex Dunai. Those records covered the period 1829-1868. (Alex missed one more that I found later.)

Two of those records appeared to be the same couple, Dawid Wolf Pikholz and his wife Rachel. Their son Josef was born 3 January 1862 in house 222 and Meilech was born 16 December 1864 in house 65. Dawid Wolf's name appears in full on Josef's birth record but on Meilech's he is called "Wolf." There are no other births to this couple through the end of that set.

Much later we learned that Josef had nine children with his wife Beile Gitel Grunwald. The first two married and had children; the eldest, Rachel, has living descendants. The middle five died in childhood and for the last two we have only birth records (1897 and 1899). Josef died at the end of Passover in 1930, still in Rozdol. All we have for Meilech is his birth record.

We do not know when Rachel died, perhaps due to the absence of Rozdol death records before 1877. As Josef's eldest daughter was born in 1883 and carried the name of his mother, it appeared that Dawid Wolf's wife Rachel died sometime between 1864 and 1883, likely earlier than later.

And perhaps more important, we had nothing to indicate Dawid Wolf's parents, though we were only at the beginning of our research and had yet to understand the structure of the Pikholz family that lived in Rozdol.

Dawid Wolf and Feige Leah
Not long after that, Jacob Laor and I began our own project to acquire Pikholz records from the AGAD archives in Warsaw, particularly those from Rozdol and Skalat. Here we find five Rozdol
birth records with the father (Dawid) Wolf Pikholz and the mother Feige (Lea) Dorf or Friedman. The third and fourth died before the age of two. The birth years are from 1874 to 1883. The birth records before 1877 include less information than the later ones.

(The last of these births appears in the JRI-Poland index with the additional surname "Septimus" but I see no basis for this and I assume it is an error. I was not able to find anything that clarifies whether Feige Lea's surname is Dorf or Friedman - probably one is her father and the other her mother.)

Keep in mind that the first of these findings were nearly twenty years ago, well before I began speaking (preaching, even) about not recording conclusions that were not solidified. I made two assumptions - one that the two Dawid Wolfs are the same person with two marriages. The other was that Dawid Wolf - born probably 1840 or so, based the age of his son Josef who was born in 1862 - is the son of Moshe Pikholz and his wife Sara Steg.

Dawid Wolf's parents
Frankly I do not recall why I recorded Dawid Wolf as the son of Moshe and Sara. I may have noted that someplace. One of their descendants, Dina Ostrower, told me that they had ten children who reached adulthood and with Dawid Wolf, I had those accounted for. I have approximate birth years for some of those ten based on their death records - Fischel 1842, Gittel 1847, Josef and Perla 1854. I have recorded Dawid Wolf as the eldest.

I do not have birth or death records for Moshe and Sara, so I have no birth years or ages. Moshe's father Israel Yoel was born about 1807 and Sara's father the Rav of Skole was born about 1899. I do not know their mothers' ages. When Fischel was born about 1842, his grandfather Israel Yoel was thirty-five. That is a stretch but possible. An older brother - not so much.

But in my defense, I did not have all those dates when I recorded Dawid Wolf's parents as Moshe. And I had not yet formulated my policy of not recording what I was not sure of. I had not yet realized that once I record something, I will not revisit it unless forced to and my research heirs will likely never review it at all. This policy is the essence of my presentation "BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT - WHAT WE KNOW vs. WHAT WE CAN PROVE" which I will presenting in a few weeks in Rishon LeZion.

In the most recent batch of Rozdol records, the matter became settled.





















Dawid Wolf Pikholz died on 20 January 1904 at age 64, so was probably born in 1839. His parents are clearly identified, not as Moshe and Sara but Israel Yoel and Jutte Chana, his supposed grandparents. He was not his parents' eldest but probably his parents' second youngest, followed by Juda Gershon (1842) who became the longtime rav of Lysiec. In truth, it makes much more sense. It moves his Chicago and Israeli descendants up one generation.

This leaves me two tasks. One is to make revisions to the Pikholz Project website. We'll see when I get to that. The other is Dina Ostrower's testimony that Moshe and Sara had ten children. Now I have only nine and I shall have to consider whether one of the unconnected Rozdol families fits in as the tenth.

Housekeeping notes
I shall be speaking, in Hebrew, for the Rishon LeZion branch of the Israel Genealogical Society on Monday, 14 January at 7 PM at the Rishon LeZion Museum, 2 Ahad Haam Street. This is not a DNA presentation, though there are a few DNA references. The topic is

מֵעֵבֶר לְסָפֵק סָבִיר
מה שיודעים, לעומת מה שאפשר להוכיח
BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT
What We Know vs. What We Can Prove