Many Ashkenazim believe they have deep Sephardic ancestry based on:
- Family Traditions
- Research
- Surnames
- Interpretation of genetic results
- Looks or Instinct
The issue was discussed by an expert panel at the 2023 conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. It was also previously discussed at a meeting of the Sephardic Genealogical Society.
Origins of Ashkenazim and Sephardim
A Sephardic World talk on Jewish genetics reported that, expressed simply, both Ashkenazim and Sephardim descend from Jews from the Italian peninsula. The Ashkenazi community formed from relatively few individuals in the Rhineland in western Germany and largely migrated east.
Many Ashkenazi Jews settled in the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. Called “heaven for the Jews”, Poland-Lithuania was a massive European country that at its greatest extent in 1619 more or less included the modern states of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus and Ukraine. It’s neighbours were the Protestant Swedish Empire, Orthodox Christian Russia, the Muslim Ottoman Empire, Catholic Hapsburg Austria and the then-insignificant state of Brandenburg-Prussia.
Family Traditions
Ashkenazi Rabbinic Traditions of Sephardic Origins
Branches of a number of Ashkenazi rabbinic dynasties have traditions of Sephardic ancestry. Some examples include:
- Spira (Shapira)
- Luria (Luria-Nadworna)
- Katznellenbogen
There are dozens of others. I have even seen the claim that the Chabad Lubavitch dynasty were of Sephardic origin.
As far as I understand, there is no evidence of any of these traditions in medieval times. In the same way that royal families are sometimes claimed to be descended from Biblical kings or pagan gods, it is possible that the claims of Sephardic ancestry were invented in early modern times to enhance certain rabbis’ status.
Medieval Spain was the home of great Jewish philosophers and theologians, and so we can see how a rabbinic dynasty may want to claim physical and well as intellectual descent.
Other Family Traditions of Sephardic Ancestry
Some time around the Millennium I heard from someone in the United States who sent me a document called the Mendelson Family Society History Write-Up. This reported that a Mendelevitch family from Butin, Russia, adopted the surname Mendelson on settling in the United States in the early 20th century.
Before emigrating, Abe Mendelson visited an elderly relative, Schmule Meyer, who kept an “asafir hazichranus” meaning a book of memory or diary. The transcribed notes say that the earliest ancestor was called Israel Mendoza, a merchant who was murdered in 1650 near Tevely while returning home from Lodz to Kobrin. His grandson Arya Labe adopted the surname Mendelevitch “which is the Russian name for Mendoza”.
What do are we to make of this? It is very specific. Hopefully a male member of this American Mendelson family will take a y-DNA test with the Avotaynu DNA Study.
Genealogical Research
Sephardic Talalay family?
The only claimed Sephardic ancestry in eastern Europe that has been made from a genealogical platform is, I believe, the Talalay family. The family lived in Mogilev, today in Belarus. The source has claimed that a number of other families in Mogilev have Sephardic ancestry, but I am unaware of any evidence being advanced for them.
It has been reported there was a Talalay family tree that traced back to the mid 18th century. This was either destroyed in a fire or was thrown out. This tree apparently stated Sephardic ancestry.
The hypothesis is that the family originated in 14th century Catalonia, where a family with a similar sounding name has been identified. Presumably it is believed that the family migrated across Europe, possibly crossing countries like France from which Jews were banned. They apparently remembered the surname for four hundreds years until Jews in the Russian Empire were required to adopt surnames under the 1804 decree. As far as I know, there are no archival evidence to support any part of this hypothesis.
Such claims are not compliant with genealogical standards. It seems more likely that the surname was adopted locally from Russian or Ukrainian families of that name, or from the eponymous village in northern Ukraine. There also also villages called Talalay in Iran and India, but ancestry is not claimed there.
Sephardic Abramovich Family?
The offer of Spanish and Portuguese citizenship to people of Sephardic origin led to many applications from Ashkenazi Jews with known ancestry entirely from the Pale of Settlement. Some of these applications were successful.
Of these successful applications by Ashkenazim, the Jewish Telegraph Agency has published a link to the documents that were apparently used in the successful Portuguese citizenship application of Roman Abramovich, a wealthy Russian businessman and owner of Chelsea Football Club. The documents do not provide proof compliant with the Genealogical Proof Standard.
Surnames
Dr Alexander Beider is the expert on Jewish surnames, and I will always defer to his opinion.
Some Ashkenazi and Sephardic families have the same or similar sounding surnames. Some names, such as variant spellings of Cohen and Levy, are intrinsically Jewish and may not help differentiation between Ashkenazi and Sephardi. For some others, some people choose to believe there is a relationship. It is possible, but evidence is required to prove the claim.
The surname Israel in Western Sephardic usage may indica
Lee is both a Chinese and English surname. These families do not share common ancestry.
Interpretation of genetic results
I am not a geneticist, so this is second hand information. I suggest watching videos on Jewish genetic genealogy. The presentations by Adam Brown are most relevant to this issue.
As I understand, autosomal (‘family finder’) DNA is currently only helpful for researching five or six generations, which is insufficient for this type of research. Unfortunately, on any genealogy forum if an Ashkenazi Jew mentions a percentage of DNA attributed to anywhere around the Mediterranean, someone frequently will volunteer that their ancestors must have been Sephardim who “fled the Inquisition”. Why research when we have a romantic interpretation on tap?
Mitochondrial DNA, inherited from our mothers, mutates so rarely that it is normally also unhelpful.
This leaves us researching yDNA that men inherit from their fathers. The key project, testing yDNA with FamilyTreeDNA is the Avotaynu DNA Study.
Surviving Ashkenazi Jewish male lineages descend from a relatively small number of men probably mostly living in the early medieval Rhineland. So, Ashkenazi Jewish DNA is relatively easy to identify.
Sephardic Jews have the opposite issue. There is a relatively small community descended from a large ancestral group.
My understanding is that there appears to be some Sephardic influence in the areas adjacent to the former borders between the Catholic Austrian Hapsburg and Muslim Ottoman Turkish Empires. Also a single person who tested in eastern Europe has a Sephardic lineage.
It is probably too early to draw conclusion but if there were many Ashkenazim of Sephardic origin, we would expect to this reflected through the genetic tests.
Looks or Instinct
Speaking on Who Do You Think You Are?, the celebrity cook Nigela Lawson wondered if her family might have Sephardic ancestry due to her sister’s looks. Both Sephardim and Ashkenazim come in all shapes and sizes, and we can’t tell origins through looks.
Instinct is a strange one. As with some elements of crypto-Judaism, there are Ashkenazim who have decided they have Sephardic ancestry based on how they feel. Sometimes this is connected with beliefs about how people coped with Inquisition. It is a psychological rather than genealogical response.
How could Sephardim have settled in Ashkenazi lands?
Sephardim in Zamość
Sephardic Jews – apparently from the Ottoman Empire and Venice – settled in the newly established Polish town of Zamość in 1588. A wooden synagogue was built in the 1590s, to be replaced by a stone structure after 1610. By the 1620s the Sephardic community had disappeared. The balance of probability is that they left, but there may have been ‘inter-marriage’ with the local Ashkenazi population.
Trade with Hamburg/Altona or Amsterdam?
It is possible there was a Baltic trade involving the Hamburg Sephardic community. If there was, I have seen no evidence.
The Dutch had a substantial trade with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, including importing grain. Judging by the 20 million pages of the Amsterdam Notarial Archives, there was little or no Amsterdam Sephardic Jewish involvement in this trade. But…
Western Sephardim in Danzig / Gdanzk
Ton Tielen uncovered the 1660-1662 confession of a Francisco Domingo de Guzmán AKA Samuel Aboab to the Madrid Tribunal of the Spanish Inquisition in which he revealed the names of around 5,000 Jews, including a small number living in Poland (AHN, Inquisition Archives, Liber 1127).
Above, we discussed Israel Mendoza being murdered in 1650 near Tevely, which is 500km from Gdansk. Might there be a connection?
Jewish Community Archives
As far as I am aware there are no Sephardic records in Poland. The records described below are all from Western/Portuguese Sephardic congregations.
The records of the Amsterdam Dotar marriage charity researched by Ton Tielen shows dowries being provided to Sephardic brides all over the world, but none in eastern Europe.
The Despacho records of Amsterdam and London provide details of both Ashkenazim and Sephardim being funded to travel to their homes in different parts of the world. There are Ashkenazim being funded to travel to eastern Europe but no Sephardim.
Genealogical Standards
The important thing to be remembered by Ashkenazim researching possible Sephardic ancestors is that normal rules of genealogical research apply. You research back one generation at a time, relying on authoritative sources. A family tradition is interesting, and should be carefully recorded, but is not evidence. This includes Hassidic dynasties claiming Sephardic ancestry. You may not jump generations in ‘proving’ Sephardic ancestry.
Conclusions
In Western Europe, Western Sephardic and Dutch/German Ashkenazi families have lived in close proximity since early modern times. We know of ‘intermarriages’ from the second half of the 18th century, and other relationships even earlier.
Clearly it is possible that Sephardic Jews migrated to eastern and central Europe. The evidence we have suggests that any migration was very small scale. It seems more likely that migrants would be Eastern Sephardim from the Ottoman Empire rather than Western Sephardim from the Atlantic World.
The Morpurgo family is a famous example of an Ashkenazi family (from Marburg in Austria) that joined a Sephardic community in Venice and was absorbed into the Sephardic world. Currently there is little evidence proving traffic in the other direction, but that might change with more research.
What is the basis of the Ashkenazi belief in Sephardic ancestry?
There are likely to be many reasons. Possibly Ashkenazi rabbinic dynasties claimed Sephardic ancestry because it was felt to bestow legitimacy by claiming direct transmission from medieval sages.
The Haskalah, the Ashkenazi Jewish Enlightenment, was clearly influenced by the Western Sephardim they saw integrated as Jews into their host communities. Later philanthropists such as Sir Moses Montefiore visited eastern Europe to work to improve the conditions of Jews living there. Possibly there was an association of (Western) Sephardim with wealth and progress, and so to claim such ancestry was to put oneself a step above one’s compatriots. This is one of a number of possible explanations to explain a fascinating
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