The Computer that Finds Your Family

by Daniella Ashkenazy

DOROT (generations) - the Douglas E. Goldman Jewish Genealogy Center - is part of the Diaspora Museum, an institution dedicated to preserving and portraying the history of the Jews in the Diaspora. The museum is located on the campus of Tel Aviv University. In the twelve years since DOROT was founded, the center, operating in a tiny wing back-to-back with the Diaspora Museum's permanent exhibit of synagogues, has registered 3,000 Jewish family trees with some 700,000 names.

Diana Sommer, DOROT's director, explains that Douglas Goldman, a direct descendant of Levi-Strauss - founder of the famous jeans dynasty - established the facility when, as a medical student at Tel Aviv University, he approached the Diaspora Museum to register his family tree. Discovering there was no way to do so, Goldman asked how much it would cost to set up a Jewish genealogy center and promptly donated $200,000 to establish DOROT.

A "quorum" of ten well-known families - headed by Levi-Strauss - was registered in July 1985 to inaugurate the center. DOROT is open, though, to all Jewish families, big and small, little-known and illustrious. There is public access to general information such as names, dates, places, migrations, marriages and occupations.

Many family trees contain non-Jewish mates. In fact, one can even find Sir Oliver Cromwell in the database, as a direct relative of the wife of an English Jew whose family tree is registered here. Some trees - like the Shaltiel family's - reflect a growing problem of assimilation. The Shaltiels, whose ancestors were financiers of the Spanish crown, left Spain in 1391, a hundred years before the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. Moreover, the family can trace their ancestry back to the year 1067! Most of the Amsterdam and Soloniki branch of the family did not survive the Holocaust, yet Shaltiels are today spread throughout twenty counties and meet periodically for international reunions. Among those who proudly attend are a Protestant minister and devout Mormon from Salt Lake City, father of six children, disclosed Sommer - who helped connect branches of the family through DOROT's computerized database and was subsequently invited, all expenses paid, to join the most recent Shaltiel reunion, where she delivered a lecture and workshop on building family trees.

Each individual listed may have up to five lines of text to sum up his life - listing occupation, outstanding achievements, awards, degrees, and so forth. What constitutes vital information to "memorialize their family history, and serve as a resource for ages to come" is largely in the eyes of the beholder - from citing a scientific breakthrough or the award of a Nobel prize to a notation that the individual was "proposed to at the zoo."

About half of DOROT's trees are submitted by Israelis, the other half come from all parts of the Diaspora. Family trees have been received from such far-flung localities as Sri Lanka.

Many non-Jews have approached DOROT seeking Jewish roots, real or imaginary. A good percentage of the requests originate in Spain and South America, from Christians who suspect their ancestors were marannos - those who practiced Judaism in secret during the Spanish inquisition. Some, like a young woman whose family had been Catholic for centuries and whose grandmother's surname is Espanoza, write DOROT asking whether the name is of Jewish origin. DOROT's answer to this woman was in the affirmative: Espanoza is definitely a Jewish name.

Constructing a family tree to register it in the DOROT database requires time and dedication. While in the past DOROT set a minimum of five generations and fifty entries to be listed, today families are encouraged to register what they know now - even if it is only half a dozen names of immediate family spanning two or three generations. Additional data can be sent later. A registration fee of $1 a name is required if the data has to be entered manually, but large trees receive a significant discount. If data is computerized using commercial software with a GEDCOM interface, registration is free. DOROT sells its own software and in late 1997 will debut a Windows 95 version for about $50.

Who are the individuals who tackle the task of putting together a family tree? Some are persons with a long-standing interest in their own family's genealogy, but most fall into two categories - young people and old people - the former prompted by school "roots" projects, the latter retired persons with the time to devote to such a project. Sommer says, however, that today more and more of those compiling family trees are in their twenties. This is due partially to a growing emphasis on diversity and ethnicity within the society - particularly in the US. It is also partially linked to the fact that young adults have the computer skills to employ genealogy software and access to the Internet, which has a number of Jewish genealogy web sites. Moreover, there is a growing awareness that those who do have the information about the family's origins are now in their seventies or eighties, and recording the information for future generations can thus be done now - or never.

For further information please contact:

DOROT
The Diaspora Museum
P. O. Box 39359
Tel Aviv 61392
Tel: (972)-3-646-2061
Fax: (972)-3-646-2034
e-mail: bhgnlgy@post.tau.ac.il