Ultimate Jewish Genealogy:

The City of Our Foreparents - Hevron

The first recorded purchase by our forefathers in what came to be known as Eretz Israel, the Land of Israel, was the Cave of Machpela in Hevron, which was purchased by Avraham as a burial place for his wife Sarah. The purchase - including the surrounding field - and the burial are recorded in the Torah portion that Jews everywhere read yesterday.

David Wilder reports on Facebook that more than 30,000 visitors spent Shabbat in Hevron yesterday to celebrate that purchase.

The Cave of Machpela is the burial place not just for Sarah, but also for Avraham and for Yitzhak & Rivka and Yaakov & Leah, and those couples at the top of our Jewish family tree lived in Hevron. So it is that a visit to Hebron and the Cave is an ultimate genealogy tour.

I have mentioned Hevron in this space on several occasions, with some detail here.

As it worked out, I had the occasion to be in Hevron last Wednesday and I made a long overdue visit to the cemetery in the Ramat Yishai neighborhood. Some years ago, I took it upon myself to record the main Hevron cemetery - that part that has been in use since 1967.

My Hevron Cemetery website, as it appeared until this week, with over two hundred graves and markers

For awhile I had made a point of visiting the cemetery at least twice a year and updated the website and JOWBR accordingly. Today the Hevron cemetery serves the small neighboring community of Kiryat Arba and the even smaller Hevron community itself, so each update would be just a handful of new graves. But it has been two and a half years so I expected perhaps two dozen additions..

The Cave of the Patriarchs

Since my last visit, there are a lot more signs in the city directing traffic to the various Jewish sites and neighborhoods. Among other things, you no longer go down the narrow street in front of the Cave itself unless that is where you are heading. I did not stop there this time but went directly to the Ramat Yishai neighborhood at the top of the hill.

On previous visits, I would drive up the steep hill to the point where you turn left to the neighborhood and right to the cemetery. There were generally two soldiers and I would tell them where I was going, and be on my way. Now it is different. If you want to go to the cemetery you have to wait for them to call for an armed escort. As I waited, I watched the playful interaction between the soldiers and the Arab children who lived in the area.

Hallel Yaffa Ariel, May G-d avenge her blood

Eventually they said I could proceed and I let myself into the cemetery. Two armed soldiers  showed up a few minutes later and I apologized for taking them away from whatever else they had been doing. I felt a bit silly being guarded on what I considered to be friendly turf. The two soldiers followed me closely at first, asking questions, such as why are there stones on the graves. It turned out that these soldiers were not Jews but Druze and they were happy for the opportunity to learn about our burial customs. I pointed out to them several terror victims, including two father and sons killed in drive-by shootings. Although they were a few years ago, they knew of them. Of course they certainly remembered the terrible incident of the thirteen and a half year old Hallel Yaffa Ariel stabbed by a terrorist while in her bed only a few months ago. Her grave is at the top to the left of the Torah scrolls, right where you enter. You can't miss it. You mustn't miss it.



There is one new soldier - Major Benaya Sarel, who was killed in battle in Operation Protective Edge. His story (in Hebrew) can be found at the IDF site for fallen soldiers. He is survived by his parents, four sisters, three brothers and his fiancee.

The other new graves are down a flight of stairs to a new section next to the old rabbinic section. That required a bit of redesign of the web page and it now looks like this. (I know, it requires a more professional hand.)

Yosef Pachuau's epitaph is partly in Mizo

All the new graves - except one which I seem to have skipped - appear on the website with translations. Well, mostly with translations. Some years ago when some of the Bnei Menashe community began coming to Israel from India, a large contingent settled in Kiryat Arba. These are descendants of the tribe of Menashe who have been living in northeast India for more than 2500 years. They speak a language called Mizo and several of the newer graves have epitaphs in Mizo in addition to the Hebrew. GoogleTranslate doesn't do Mizo.

Others in the newest section are from the old Soviet Union, the US, Argentina, and elsewhere including of course native Israelis. Ashkenazim and Sepharadim. Old and young. Mostly men, some women. One whose stone is blank, but an epitaph of sorts appears on the wall next to the grave.

Housekeeping notes

We pray for all those affected by the terror fires here in Israel. We have just begun asking for rain and here we have another reason to do so. And may this scourge be eradicated from our land.

Program chairs - and people who know program chairs - please note. I have some available dates during my coming US trip, particularly the weekdays between 23 January and 2 February, in the east and midwest and perhaps 14-16 February in the NY/NJ area  Perhaps even Sunday the nineteenth. Several topics are available including the Lazarus-Endogamy talk which I presented in Seattle and a new one about Uncle Selig where DNA is not the main point of interest.

The following programs are set, with some others under discussion:

22 January 2017, 1:30 – JGS of Maryland, Baltimore County Public Library, 1301 Reiserstown Road, Pikesville
Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?
29 January 2017, 1:30 – JGS of Greater Philadelphia, Main Line Reform Temple 410 Montgomery Avenue, Wynnewood
Lessons in Jewish DNA: One Man’s Successes and What He Learned on the Journey
5 February 2017, 1:30 – JGS of Cleveland, Park Synagogue East, 27500 Shaker Blvd,  Pepper Pike
Lessons in Jewish DNA: One Man’s Successes and What He Learned on the Journey
10 February 2017, 11:00 – ROOTSTECH2017,
Jewish DNA: Successes and Lessons from the Journey
12 February 2017, 1:30 - Orange County JGS - details to follow.
13 February 2017, 7:30 - JGS of Los Angeles, American Jewish University, 15600 Mulholland Drive
Why Did My Father Know That His Grandfather Had An Uncle Selig?

Fiftieth Reunion, Genealogy, Young Cousin Matt, Geni - and More About Marla's family

My Class Reunion
The fiftieth reunion of my high school class (Taylor Allderdice, in Pittsburgh) is planned for the

No, I do not plan to attend

end of the summer. I never had much to do with my 462 fellow graduates during the two years I was there, but it's amazing what happens when you fill in your profile on the reunion website and write "Occupation: Genealogist."

This one writes to me and tells me what his family name was in Europe and throws in some Hebrew ("Shalom Chaver") for good measure. That one remarks on how interesting it must be for me. Others had questions about their families or how to do this or that.

There are also a few whom I approached, because their unusual surnames had some family connections with me. Or with my wife. In one case, a classmate has the same rare name as my wife's late husband. In another, the surname is almost surely from my ancestral town Skalat. (Actually, I think the family of my wonderful fourth grade arithmetic teacher at Linden School may also have been from Skalat.)

The truth is there may be some meaningful communal genealogy to be done among my classmates and others in my home community, based on their towns of emigration.

Zalosce and Podkamen
My great-grandfather, Hersch Pickholz, was probably born in Podkamen, though his family had been from Skalat. Other Pittsburgh families that I knew were also from Podkamen - the Klahrs and the Steins, for a start. But there are no Podkamen records, so I could not do anything on that front.

Hersch Pickholz married Jutte Lea Kwoczka from neighboring Zalosce and their older children were born there. His brother and one of his sisters also raised their families in Zalosce. When JRI-Poland came out with indexed birth from Zalosce for 1877-1890, I was eager to see them. I went through the lists and saw so many names that I knew from Pittsburgh, including from school and the neighborhood. Kweller, Lewinter, Papernik, Chotiner, our own Braun and Kwoczka, Charap, Schwadron, Wachs and others.

There must have been a lot of chain migration from the Zalosce area to Pittsburgh in the 1890s. I don't know if the chain was mostly intra-family or just people who knew each other. There is at least one person is my class whose (great-)grandparents were from two families on the list above.

After WWI, Rabbi Wolf Leiter, the son of the rabbi of Zalosce, came to Pittsburgh where he served until his death in 1974. His memoirs helped me solve a major family relationship in a different town. A story for another time.

Enter Matt
One of the girls in my class (I am allowed to say "girls" in this context even though the next big birthday will be 70, right? Nana always called her friends "The Girls.") tells me that her grandfather came from a town called Nasielsk, not far from Warsaw. The grandfather died here in Israel and is buried in Petah Tikva. She has never been here.

I am not sure how much effort I am interested in putting here, but I figure I can do a bit of poking around to see what comes up.

The grandfather is listed in the cemetery website and appears on JOWBR, with a photo.

His grave is the next section over from my parents, so it's easy enough to visit, next time I am there.

Anyway, just as she and I are corresponding, I meet Matt. Matthew Saunders is newly married to Jessica Gordon, whose late father David is my first cousin. Jessie and Matt were visiting from New York and spent Shabbes here, together with her brother and sister-in-law Ari and Bobbi, who live here in town with their baby daughter Devorah. We had a lovely time, full of Torah and genealogy, as Matt is very much into both of these.

So Friday afternoon we are sitting at the computer talking and Matt says something about his grandfather's having come from Nasielsk. I had him write a note to the girl from my class right there on the spot. We'll see if that leads anywhere.

Matt and I also discussed Geni.com, which he uses. Some of my thoughts on that appear here. It turns out that despite what Geni says, Matt and my mother-in-law are NOT related. There is a chain leading from one to the other, but as soon as I saw that it depends on a "brother-in-law relationship" in the middle, I knew they could not be truly related.

Speaking of Geni
Which reminds me, I received a note from an experienced genealogy researcher in the US purporting to show how we are related. I removed the names aside from my own, leaving the initials of the fellow who sent me this.

As you can see, there are twenty-one steps here from him to me, including half a dozen in-law relationships, which jump bloodlines It misspells my name and includes a photograph of me that I don't think I have ever seen before; I certainly didn't authorize its use on Geni.

It's hard to take this stuff seriously. But we have to, if only to protect ourselves. And laughter can be oh so effective.


Leftovers from last week
After posting last week, I added a comment, which I revisit here with some illustrations and further explanation.

If Marla and her brother match nineteen Pikholz descendants between them, but their mother matches only seventeen, we must consider that there are some who would match on Marla's father's side. (There are also two that only the mother matches, but that is not a problem.)

The four that the mother doesn't match are Bonnie, Gene, Gadi and Micha. Bonnie and Gene are third cousins from Skalat and Gadi and Micha are from Rozdol. The only interesting overlap involving those four is on chromosome 19, where Bonnie has a 5.97 cM match with Marla and Gadi has a 6.33 cM match, with a large overlap between them.

Marla as background, from top to bottom:
Marla's brother, mother, uncle, Bonnie, Gadi

In fact all four of Marla's group match the entire length of chromosome 19, so I thought that perhaps there was some kind of testing anomaly such that Marla's mother did not match Gadi and Bonnie.

But I ran them against Marla's uncle - who as I say matches them with Marla as a background. But he in fact does not match them on chromosome 19 at all, even though FTDNA calls them remote matches.

Here with Marla's uncle as background,
Bonnie and Gadi disappear entirely.

So it is clear to me that at least Bonnie and Gadi match Marla on her father's side.

Marla's father is deceased so we have to see if she has anyone else on his side who can test.

Her brother did a Y-37 test last week. It was always a longshot, but their surname has a meaning that is related to wood and maybe around 1800 two brothers chose different wood-related names, perhaps as a reflection of their family occupation..There was no match. Too bad. I liked the theory.

Oh, and one other thing for the consideration of the professional explainers. Since both Bonnie and Gadi have an overlapping match on chromosome 19 on Marla's father's side, a chromosome check of either Gadi or Bonnie that includes the other should show that both match Marla and her brother.

Gadi matches Marla and her brother,
on their father's side, but not Bonnie

Bonnie matches Marla and her brother
on their father's side, but not Gadi

So does this mean that Bonnie and Gadi are on different sides of Marla's father?

So much to learn.

Housekeeping notes
1. As a result of what I consider a nearly-confirmed relationship with Marla's family, I had a look at how her family connects DNA-wise with some of the other non-Pikholz families who also match with many of us. We have had an ongoing discussion among half a dozen such families the last few days and I would like to think that we will eventually nail something down. As I write this, several others of the non-Pikholz have joined our surname project at FTDNA, making it easier to do these comparisons.

2. I ordered four books from Amazon to help prepare for the GRIPitt.org course on Practical Genetic Genealogy in July. Matt brought one of them. My cousin Linda will be here next month and already has the other three. I am really placing alot of faith in this course.


GRIPitt has spaces available in some of the other courses.

3. PIT-ORD flight booked. ORD-SLC-ORD flights booked. International flights will wait until I am more certain of when I want to travel. Prices are way higher than last year.- more than 50% higher.

THE ADIVI CEMETERY

Zygmundt Migden
Back at the beginning of my research, I found a Page of Testimony at Yad vaShem in the name of Gustaw Migden of Tarnopol. He was killed in Tarnopol in 1943.

The Page listed Gustaw's wife - Freida Pickholz, born in 1886 - and three unnamed children. There was no other information about Freida and I did not recognize her from my work to that time.  The Page was sumbitted in 1956 by their son Zygmundt, a resident of Beer Sheva.

I made some inquiries and eventually learned that Zygmundt had lived in Ashkelon and had died in 1986. But the local burial society didn't have him - not in the old cemetery and not in the newer one. Zygmundt had been born in Tarnopol in 1913 and had made aliyah in 1936, a single man.

I renewed my search for Zygmundt from time to time and the road kept leading to Ashkelon, where it ended abruptly.

In the meantime, new records became available and I found the marriage record for his mother Freida Pickholz. She was born 25 November 1885 to Josef Pickholz and Sussel Gruberg. We knew Sussel, who died in Karlsbad in 1928, but did not (and still do not) know anything about Josef's family. Eventually, I found Freida's two brothers and younger sister. One of the brothers seem to have died young, but the other two lived in Lwow and their small families included several physicians.

According to the Page of Testimony, Zygmundt was one of three children, but all I found was an older sister who died as a child, before Zygmundt was born.

Eventually, I came back to the burial society in Ashkelon and I spoke with someone in the office who looked once again and found nothing. Then she said "Wait a minute" and she gave the phone to an older gentleman who had just walked in. I asked him my question and he said "I think he is in Adivi."

The Adivi Cemetery
Rehavia Adiva was the first mayor of Ashkelon (1965-1972) and when his married daughter died at age twenty-four in 1953, he bought a piece of an orange grove near the cemetery and buried her there. Over the years, he and his wife were buried there as well as assorted others.  Over forty in all.

Rivka Yaakoba Goldberg,
Adivi's daughter

He gave me directions and I went to the site. Follow the dirt road around the side of the old cemetery, then further along a dirt road to the right. Look for the cemetery inside an orange grove on the left.

And there it was. Hidden inside the orange grove. No sign or anything.

I spent the better part of an hour, recording the names on the stones and taking photographs of the four Migden graves. They are side by side - Zygmundt, his wife Helena, their fourteen year old son Gedalyahu and Zygmundt's forty-seven year old unmarried brother Dr. Meir Migden. Meir's grave has a plaque in memory of Gustaw.

When JewishGen inaugurated JOWBR, I decided that I should enter all the graves in this cemetery, but Ashkelon is not on the way anywhere, so it waited.

Adivi Today
About sixteen months ago, I was in Ashkelon with my wife and youngest son and we decided to photograph the whole cemetery. It was easier to find this time, as the orange grave was gone. There were still the dirt roads, but you could see the cemetery from a distance.

There was a sign - a sure indication that someone had taken responsibility for maintenance. In this case, the Council for Preservation of Historic Sites and the City of Ashkelon.

There didn't seem to be any preservation going on - no fence or anything and no obvious maintenance. There has been a bit of vandalism.

We took photographs and made handwritten notes on the ones where the epitaphs were not clear. When I got home, I saw that some of those photos were not good enough, so another visit would be needed before submitting it to JOWBR.

The oppotunity for that came a few days ago. I went to Ashkelon with Dvorah Netzer, to meet my putative cousin Vladimir. Dvorah's Russian-speaking Medved cousins generously agreed to host the meeting and to help with the communication.

After that meeting, Dvorah and I went  to the cemetery to finish the photography and I passed on the pictures and the data to JOWBR that same evening. Occasionally, something actually gets crossed off my to-do list.

Housekeeping notes:
1. Next week begins a three-part series on the huge breakthrough on our family structure, based on DNA testing.

2. A colleague of mine in Europe writes as follows:

I am writing to you because I have an iPhone / iPod / iPad etc game developed, the name is Famble. It is the classical word search game - but the words you are looking for are Jewish surnames. It is so funny if you have to find your ancestral surnames, my wife, who is neither a big genealogy fun, nor plays around with computer games, laughed out when she tried Famble and found both times a friends' names popping up. Here is the link:
 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/famble/id543534434?l=hu&ls=1&mt=8

It is also possible to add one's family names to the game, currently it has some 3,000 names in it.

I don't have any of these devices, so cannot venture an opinion. Just passing it on.

HEVRON

At the beginning of last week, I had a phone call from an old friend, Zvi Ofer, who lives in Kiryat Arba, right outside Hevron. Zvi and Celia's second son Uri would be making a brit on Thursday.

Uri and his family live in the Admot Yishai neighborhood of Hevron, quite near the cemetery. They live in the upper floor of a building called Beit Zechariya, which had been purchased by the Jewish Community of Hevron seven years ago, but that purchase has fallen under threat of  cancellation by the Supreme Court. (See more about that here.) The brit was to be in another apartment in the building, with the festive meal in the small park adjacent to the building.

Admot Yishai is named for the father of King David. He and his grandmother - the Biblical Ruth - are buried there.

There is something special about a brit during the nine days leading up to Tish'a beAv, the fast which commemorates the destruction of both Holy Temples in Jerusalem, as well as other national tragedies. During the nine days we do not eat meat or drink wine, have weddings or make music, go to the beach - and according to some customs we don't shave or do laundry. A brit overrides some of that - the meat and the wine and the music - and generally mitigates the sense of bad omen usually ascribed to the period.

A personal good omen too - a few weeks ago, when I was planning my coming blog posts, I set this week's subject as Hevron. It seemed to fit the theme of mourning and coming redemption associated with Tish'a beAv. And besides, the eighteenth of Av is the eighty-third anniversary of the massacre. I do not feel competent to retell this story, but here it is in one sentence.

The local Arabs slaughtered their Jewish neighbors and the British overlords took that as an excuse to snuff out a vibrant Jewish community, hundreds of years old.

You can - and really should - read more about that in dozens of sources including here and here and here.

(It also fits into the current discussion about the refusal of most of the world to acknowledge the murder of the eleven Jewish athletes at the Munich Olympics.)

Hevron remained Judenrein for the remaining nineteen years of British rule and throughout the nineteen years of Jordanian occupation. When the Jews returned, many of the murderers were still there and they feared vengeance.

Who was the first Jew to return to Hebron in 1967? Who was the first Jew to enter the Cave of the Patriarchs in over 700 years? Before 1948, Muslims refused to permit Jews into the Cave of the Patriarchs, they were only allowed to pray outside on the steps to the building, the infamous "7th step"- and no further. Arab guards stationed there would beat anyone attempting to get any closer to the entrance. The first Jew in Hebron and in the Cave of the Patriarchs was the then Chief Rabbi of the Israel Defense Forces, Rabbi Shlomo Goren z"l.
Rabbi Goren was with Israeli forces as the IDF conquered the Western Wall in Jerusalem. As a general, Rabbi Goren knew that the army's next mission was Hebron. He wanted to be among the first Israeli's in the ancient City of the Patriarchs, so he joined the soldiers stationed at the recently captured Etzion Block (sic), on their way to Hebron. On the 28th of Iyar, at night, he asked to be woken-up when the soldiers began their march to Hebron the following day.
The next morning he woke-up, only to find himself alone with his driver. Realizing that he had been "left behind," he ordered his driver to begin the 20-minute journey to Hebron; he expected to meet the rest of the army, already on their way.
Rabbi Goren thought it was strange that he hadn?t met any other Israeli soldiers on the road as he reached Hebron. He thought that by now the army would be in Hebron. Driving into Hebron, Rabbi Goren was greeted by the sight of white sheets, hung from rooftops and windows, throughout the city. He was astounded, but understood. Knowing that their relatives had killed 67 Jews and wounded many more during the rioting of 1929, the Arabs of Hebron were terrified that the Jews would take revenge. So, they didn't fire a shot, instead they hung white sheets from windows and rooftops to surrender.
Rabbi Goren quickly made his way to the Cave of the Patriarchs. Finding the huge green doors bolted, he fired his Uzi submachine gun at the lock - you can still see the bullet holes in the door till this day. Finally, after getting into Cave of the Patriarchs, he blew the Shofar - ram's horn, as he had done 24 hours earlier at the Western Wall, as a sign of liberation.

Only afterwards, did Rabbi Goren discover that when he left the base at the Etzion Block, the rest of the army was on the other side of the hill, making plans for the attack on Hebron. They did not know that the Arabs would surrender. In other words, Rabbi Goren, a lone Israeli soldier, single-handedly conquered a city of almost 40,000 Arabs. Jews had returned to Hebron and to the Ma'arat HaMachpela - Cave of Machpela or Cave of the Patriarchs, the second holiest site in Judaism!  



The Cave of the Patriarchs

I have always had an affection for Hevron, preferring the Cave of the Patriarchs to the Kotel in Jerusalem. I have spent parts of Tish'a beAv there at least half a dozen times and Yom Kippur twice. My wife and I went there for a day tour one year on our anniversary. And I have taken any number of visitors from abroad on what I call Ultimate Genealogy.



The "Tombs of Yitzhak and Rivka" are
 off-limits to Jews except ten days a year.

 Before the bypass road was completed sixteen years ago, I would drive right through Hevron on my way to and from work a few times a month. Then for more than a dozen years, I drove the bypass road most every day, right around the edge of the city.

At some point I decided I had to make some contribution and when JewishGen set up its Online Burial Registry  (JOWBR), I realized how to do it.



The old Rabbinic "Reishit Hochma" section, refurbished

Thus was born my Hevron Cemetery Project, showing the precise layout of the cemetery, with grave photos and translations. My latest update had been about six weeks ago, but when Zvi called, I realized I could take the opportunity for an additional update.


They are not accepting plot purchases, but at 120 that's where I would like to be.

The brit was called for five o'clock and got underway about five-thirty. There were a few dozens of men and similar numbers of women and children. The baby was named Shai. Afterwards we adjourned to the neighboring parklet, where there were tables set up for a catered meat meal.

It was a pleasant hilltop day, away from the heat that has been oppressing us for the last few weeks. The view down the hill was the city itself - the Arab homes and the much smaller Jewish neighborhoods. Less than a hundred yards away was an Arab house, flying the flag of the Palestinian Authority. Soldiers lounged around. Just another day in another Jewish neighborhood. And another baby boy joins the ranks of the Jewish people in the place where it all began.