“There is, unfortunately, little knowledge of Sephardic history among Ashkenazim,” Malka says, noting that some genealogical resources for the groups are the same, and others differ because of their different locations. Rabbi Malcolm Stern’s pivotal work on early Colonial families demonstrates the prominence of Sephardim, although few of their descendants today are Jewish. Early synagogues in New York, Philadelphia, Newport, Charleston, Savannah and New Orleans were Sephardic. And beginning with the first 23 Jews who arrived in New Amsterdam (today, New York) in 1654 from Recife, Brazil, the American Jewish population was mostly Sephardic for nearly two centuries. Fourteenth-century Seville, Spain, was home to 12,000 Jews, versus 1,200 in Prague. Malka’s research, confirmed by leading Jewish demographer and statistician Sergio Della Pergola of The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, reveals that 12,000 Jews lived in 12th-century Toledo, Spain, to Frankfurt’s 700. “Sephardic Jews constituted 90 percent of all Jewry up to the 12th century.” “For most of recorded history, Jewish history was essentially the history of Sephardim, which comes as a great shock to those alive today,” says award-winning author Jeffrey S.
Sephardim, a lesser-known group to which my family belongs, originated in Spain and Portugal. When most genealogists think about Jewish ancestry, they’re probably thinking of Ashkenazim-those who generally lived in assimilated Europe, speaking secular languages, or in Eastern Europe, where Yiddish was the lingua franca. Our Talalay family always heard that “This was our name in Spain,” and that we were Sephardic in origin-no matter how long we’d lived in Eastern Europe, specifically in Mogilev, Belarus. I looked down at the coastline and understood the longing Sephardim took with them on their exile in 1492. On a sunny afternoon during my first visit to Barcelona, I stood at the top of Mount Tibidabo. Jacobo Bibas with his wife Mesodi Tobelem and their children Simi, Estrella, León, Esther and Jaime, from Misiones Province, circa 1900. Family Tree Templates and Relationship Charts.Best UK, Irish and Commonwealth Genealogy Websites.Best African American Genealogy Websites.Surnames: Family Search Tips and Surname Origins.Preserving Old Photos of Your Family History.
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