Posts by E. Randol Schoenberg
46 posts
Further update to my remarks on Sephardic Jews in Prague: in the very recently published book "Migration and Mobility in Prague's Jewish Community during the transition from the Middle Ages to the Modern Period" (July 2025), edited by Marie Buňatová, there is a chapter on "Sephardic Jews in Prague."It begins:We must also address the presence of Sephardic Jews in Prague, which keeps appearing as a ...
I've done more research this week and need to revise some of my comments on alleged Sephardic Jews in Prague. It turns out that the TODROS family had graves in Prague that used an acronym for מזרע יהודים אנוסים which apparently means "from the seed of forced Jews."My 9g-grandfather David Todros, who died before 1614, is apparently the first of the family in Prague. https://www.geni.com/people/D...
I stumbled across a reference to David de Mercado in Prague in 1674-6. Can anyone help identify him?https://zayt.org/collections/pragapublica/2281?p=104
Am in Venice this week, so working on some Venetian families, namely Calimani, and came across this little nugget, where Google translate mis-transcribed Nunes Henriques as "Nunish Inarkish." :-) Thought you'd enjoy it if you don't already know it.Interestingly, it lists a different father for the bride Rachel, Benjamin Nunes Henriques, rather than the guardian Abraham Nunes Herniques who is lis...
I received today an interesting document from Anton Pinschof, a descendant of the Pereira-Arnstein family. It is a typed history of the Pereira family that refers to a long legal case following the death of Elijah Pereira in 1776. Can the case files be located? In the document it claims that Heinrich (Aron) Pereira (born 1773-4 in Amsterdam) who moved to Vienna and founded the Pereira-Arnstein ...
I could use some help disambiguating the family trees of one or more Juda Obedientes. https://www.geni.com/people/Judah-Obediente/6000000085946243922In 1663 Juda Obediente born 1631 marries Sara Obediente born 1635 of Florence. (Not to be confused with the 1709 marriage of the younger Juda Samuel Obediente b. 1684 and Sara Jacob Obediente b. 1692.). There are apparently two older Juda Obedientes...
For those researching in Venice, there is a dissertation by Sofia Locatelli describing all the old gravestones. See https://amsdottorato.unibo.it/8770/#
I am looking for the manuscript source for the big Venice cemetery book by Aldo Luzzatto. They cannot find it at the Italian Temple museum in Jerusalem and think it might have been transferred to Florence, in case anyone can help me find it.
Never mind. :-)Has anyone researched the Zay family in Metz, supposedly Sephardic?https://www.geni.com/people/Rabbi-Lazard-Eliezer-Zay/6000000007066633739?
I bought a copy of "Die Memoiren des Ascher Levy aus Reichshofen im Elsaß (1598-1635)" published in 1913 (and not available on Google Books, as far as I can tell) and am exploring the genealogy there, which includes at the top a Jacob ha-Levi in Landau, an exile from Spain. It looks like the source document has a transcription of the tombstone. There appear to be y-dna male-line descendants. Ha...
SOLVED: Does anyone know how to connect Masaod Bueno de Mesquita to the rest of the Bueno de Mesquita family?https://www.geni.com/people/Massaod-Bueno-Mesquita/6000000091234092306
I believe this is an early version of the Sephardic myth from the family tree of Rabbi Eleasar Fleckeles (1754-1826) of Prague. The second paragraph on page 388 discusses his ancestor Moshe Chaim Todros (1634-1709). It comes from a handwritten document from the rabbi found and published in 1893 by David Kaufmann. Kaufmann, Der Stammbaum des R. Eleasar Fleckeles, Monatsschrift für Geschichte und...
Ton Tielen, while working on your Touro corrections, I stumbled back into Gabay Faro, in case you want to take a look and try to make some improvements there. Two children of Abraham (v. Juda?) Touro, Joseph d. 1734 and Ester, marry two children of Moses Gabay Faro (or Farro) d. 1706. See the tree on Geni.
I was copied on an inquiry about the Henriques Valentine family in London on Geni, where there is a large, undocumented tree with some date discrepancies (in case anyone wants to help fix it). I could only find a few references on dutchjewry.org.See the tree at [https://www.geni.com/list/descendants/6000000019599864181#6](https://www.geni.com/list/descendants/6000000019599864181#6)I see only a fe...
Working on Pereira (who become Pereira-Arnstein in Vienna). So, who was the husband of Ester Henriques-Valentin (married 1706)? Elisa v. David or Eliau v. David?[https://www.geni.com/people/Ester-Pereira/6000000147732159823](https://www.geni.com/people/Ester-Pereira/6000000147732159823)
Dario Gabbai (b. Sep 2, 1922 Salonika), perhaps the last surviving Auschwitz Sonderkommando, died last week. He was a cousin of Shlomo Venezia, another famous surviving member of the Sonderkommando, but I cannot figure out how exactly they were related. Can anyone help?[https://www.geni.com/people/David-Gabbai/6000000128469669828](https://www.geni.com/people/David-Gabbai/6000000128469669828)[htt...
At UCLA Young Research Library. Caption reads “Group Photograph of Children from the Temple, circa 1932-1936”. Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel Records, Collection LSC-2340.
This Isaac Israel (Antonio) Lopes Suasso (alias Philippe Mathias en Guilhermo Del Monte) b. 1614 Bordeaux, d. 1685 Amsterdam, looks sort of interesting. Uncle is Isaac Delmonte. Married 1654. Wife Rachel de Pinto from Antwerp is widow of Isaac Israel Pereira.Found him attached to a wrong tree on Geni, so I severed him and am trying to figure out how he connects to everyone else.[https://www.geni...
Colonel Mendes Cohen in the St. Louis Museum of Art[https://www.geni.com/people/Mendes-Cohen/6000000016228660945](https://www.geni.com/people/Mendes-Cohen/6000000016228660945)
Is this Portugaler ancestor of the Lubavitcher Rebbe an invention or someone real? Her name is supposedly Rachel Portugaler/Batlan, daughter of Boruch.[https://www.geni.com/people/Rachel-Loew/6000000006887872016](https://www.geni.com/people/Rachel-Loew/6000000006887872016)
Are these two Judah Monis the same? One has a child who died in Amsterdam 1708. The other is the one who came to America and taught Hebrew at Harvard. Are they the same?See [https://www.dutchjewry.org/phpr/amsterdam/port_isr_gem_burials/amsterdam_port_isr_gem_burials_view.php?editid1=16580](https://www.dutchjewry.org/phpr/amsterdam/port_isr_gem_burials/amsterdam_port_isr_gem_burials_view.php?ed...
I'd love to see some other YFull SNP Match Reports (YF6136) so I could understand my own better. Adam Brown thinks my Hungarian Schoenbergs must be originally be Sephardic. I'm not yet convinced. I have only one post-Inquisition match and it is to a Peiper family from Krakow. All the rest are much more distant, branching off 1800 or more years ago. But there are a lot from Portugal, Spain, Co...
Helping a friend and found at the top of her tree Rachel daughter of Aharon da Costa, wife of Moses Isaacs, mother of Woolf Isaacs (1805-1849 Whitechapel, London). Can we connect them to one of the da Costa families? [https://www.geni.com/people/Rachel-Isaacs/6000000000987583207](https://www.geni.com/people/Rachel-Isaacs/6000000000987583207)
Barbara Wright, a descendant of Jacob Rodrigues Pereyra (d. 1806 Philadelphia), asked if we could find out anything more on her family. Apparently there was a marriage to Rachel de Leon in Amsterdam around 1769.https://www.geni.com/people/Jacob-Rodrigues-Pereyra/6000000093445062926