CATALOG The Family Tree and Circle
Siegel, Richard
CATALOG The Family Tree and Circle Richard Siegel WHY? We are a nation of wanderers living in a country founded by wanderers in a time of emotional and psychological wandering. T o know how...
...And the sons of Benjamin: Bela, and Becher, and Ashbel, Gera, and Naaman, Ehi, and Rosh, Muppim, and Huppim...
...And the sons of Naphtali: Jahzeel, and Guni, and Jezer, and Shillem...
...The former we can learn from teachers and books...
...Happy are we...
...2. Try to locate the place of birth or path of migration the individual may have taken...
...Historical consciousness has been a cement, binding countless generations of Jews separated from one another in every other way...
...What has bound each successive generation...
...The ones in my family circle were the paternal grandparents of the woman who developed the chart...
...all the souls were seven...
...Perhaps ideal, but almost inconceivable, would be a family circle for each branch of the family tree...
...As a balance to computerized ID cards, we need to assert our place in time, within a context of duration, past and future...
...However, what is most astounding to me is that this is less than 1/ 16th of my " f a m i l y . " I have never felt such a sense of belonging and kinship...
...There have been close to fifty additions to this particular chart since its completion, through marriage and births...
...When called to the Torah, how many of us know our parents' Hebrew names, let alone our grandparents...
...The other is a family circle which works from a particular set of ancestors and follows all of their branches...
...Today, in a society marked by loneliness and alienation, we need to recapture the sense and the purpose of the extended community...
...Sinai to receive the Torah, it means this not only metaphorically, but in the very real sense that a part of us, members of our own ancestral family, whose blood still passes through our veins, participated in these events...
...Simply work ouf the branches, asking relatives to supply needed information...
...We have been wandering, off and on, for 4000 years...
...all the souls of his sons and his daughters were thirty and three...
...HOW...
...And we are charged, as individuals and as...
...and in our day"—and if not in our day, then in our children's...
...This also is part of our past and part of our consciousness...
...The family circle is a bit more difficult...
...all the souls were fourteen...
...This consciousness is, perhaps, more important now than ever before...
...And the sons of Perez were Hezron and Hamul...
...The latter puts you on one of the peripheral circles and provides a sense of generational development...
...And the sons of Ashen lmnah, and Ishvah, and Ishvi, and Beriah, and Serah their sister...
...Everyone counts...
...Do not rush...
...We have experience...
...Two models are immediately available...
...For those who engage in the actual research and information retrieval, the process can be exciting, illuminating, gratifying...
...Genesis 10 and 46...
...And the sons of Joseph, who were born to him in Egypt, were two souls...
...I would like, therefore, to suggest the reactivation of a time-honored custom — the creation of Family Trees and Circles...
...And the sons of Simeon: Jemuel, and Jamin, and Ohad, and Jachin, and Zohar, and Shaul the son of a Canaanite woman...
...It is almost inevitable that someone will know someone on some stage of some branch, and with diligence, perseverence, patience, and much correspondence, it should be possible to piece it all together...
...The future lay as an intangible dream, but the past lay exposed, known, and shared for both its joys and tragedies...
...What has held us together...
...These will often provide genealogies or particular names which can unblock an otherwise dead-end...
...Since it only locates a particular percentage of relations (i . e . , those from particular ancestors), you can imagine the true enormity of all of your family contacts...
...There have been serious breaks in the links from both external and internal causes...
...And the sons of Zebulun: Sered, and Elon, and Jahleel...
...The latter, once lost, we can never recover...
...all the souls of the house of Jacob, that came into Egypt, were threescore and ten...
...This begins with you, and works back...
...And the sons of Reuben: Hanoch, and Pallu, and Hezron and Carmi...
...How goodly is our portion, how pleasant our lot, how beautiful our inheritance...
...a people, with the inherited responsibility of passing on the tradition, of adding links until the Messianic Age ( " M a y that time come soon This column derives its title—and its editor—from THE JEWISH CATALOG, the best selling guide to Jewish living which was published by the Jewish Publication Society and reviewed in these pages last month...
...The people who possessed the knowledge may already have died...
...Beyond names and relationships, you will undoubtedly discover personal histories, migrations, professions, familial insight, and, perhaps, friendships unanticipated at first...
...Family contacts, however, are the prime resource, which is as it should be...
...Although the basic source of knowledge should be clear ( i . e . , family members), two other places should not be overlooked — old pictures and old books, particularly Bibles...
...If nothing else, it will eliminate embarrassment in being called to the Torah...
...And the sons of Dan: Hushim...
...The more common is the family tree, a form for which is shown here...
...We always kept records...
...These are the sons of Rachel, who were bom to Jacob...
...And it was not until I studied the chart that all the mysterious names and various great-aunts to whom I had been introduced during my life made any sense to me...
...This is useful in determining, for instance who is a secondcousinonce-removed...
...Don't we all...
...When tradition says that we all, here and now, left Egypt with Moses or stood at Mt...
...The process of locating information for both models is basically the same although the specifics will be different...
...These are the sons of Bilhah, whom Laban gave unto Rachel his daughter, and these she bore unto Jacob...
...Unfortunately, the handing-down and passing-on is in jeopardy...
...This is our personal, as well as our ethnic, inheritance...
...It is important to locate this information soon...
...Each newly discovered relative is a potential source for more information...
...Although it may take years to complete, the process is well worth the effort and perhaps even more important than the product...
...And aside from saying "Somewhere in Russia or Lithuania," how many of us know where we have come from...
...These are the sons of Zilph, whom Laban gave to Leah his daughter, and these she bore unto Jacob, even sixteen souls...
...And the sons of Judah: Er and Onan, and Shelah, and Perez, and Zerah...
...When I received my Family Circle, shown here, I suddenly understood the Rabbinic commentary that the killing of one person is equivalent to killing an entire world, for you kill not only the person, but all future generations...
...but Er and Onan died in the land of Canaan...
...CATALOG The Family Tree and Circle Richard Siegel WHY...
...We have always remembered where we have been...
...And unto Joseph in the land of Egypt were born Manasseh and Ephraim, whom Asenath the daughter of Poti-phera priest of On bore unto him...
...More important even than losing the traditions which have been handed down from parent to child, we have lost the memory of those who did the handing down...
...We are all in the family...
...My particular chart took three years to compile...
...There may be dead-ends because of the elimination of entire families or branches in the Holocaust...
...One component, at least, is clear and can be adopted as a guide in our present day wanderings...
...It has not been easy to live scattered around the world...
...Then set out the other children of the center pair and begin writing letters...
...As a personal note, I am located on the fourth generation at about 9:00...
...And the sons of Levi: Gershon, Kohath, and Merari...
...and the sons of Beriah: Heber, and Malchiel...
...And the sons of Gad: Ziphion, and Haggi, Shuni, and Ezbon, Eri, and Arodi, and Areli...
...from the Morning Prayers...
...All the souls belonging to Jacob that came into Egypt, that came out of his loins, besides Jacob's sons' wives, all the souls were threescore and six...
...1. Besides including the English names of the members, try also to locate the Hebrew names...
...and Ard...
...And the sons of Issachar Tola, and Puvah, and lob, and Shimron...
...One hazard—the circle is dynamic, thus almost always out of date...
...Our prayers invoke the names of " O u r fathers, Abraham, Isaac, and J a c o b , " yet we have forgotten the names of our grandparents...
...Ideally, we could each trace OUT own lineage back to one of the 12 tribes of Israel...
...The first puts you at the center and all of your ancestors and descendants as extensions...
...T o know how to wander is to know how to live in the contemporary world...
...There are three additions I would make to this project...
...And these are the names of the children of Israel, who came into Egypt, Jacob and his sons: Reuben, Jacob's first-bom...
...The sons of Rachel Jacob's wife: Joseph and Benjamin...
...By every reasonable standard, the Jews should have disappeared long ago...
...3. Although there may be some ambivalences to the older class structure, try to determine whether the individual was a Cohen, Levi, or Yisrael...
...Flesh out your particular line, since it should be the easiest...
...The family tree is fairly straightforward...
...This is actually the model used in Genesis (cf...
...Besides, it provides an intimation of the vast chain of familial relationships...
...In this manner, we can minimize the inevitable loss of memory which is caused by time, recapture for ourselves some of the immediacy of our past, and forge a more certain link between our grandparents and our grandchildren, in every generation...
...Genesis 46: 8-27...
...For those who receive completed charts, the effect can be transforming...
...These are the sons of Leah, whom she bore unto Jacob in Paddan-aram, with his daughter Dinah...
...How many of us can trace our line back more than one generation...
...Though I do not mean to be an alarmist, one factor instills a sense of urgency into the project...
...Before I received this, I was unaware that I had relatives in Israel...
...Unless these are reinforced, the entire chain may become nothing more than an illusion...
...First isolate one set of ancestors...
Vol. 1 • June 1975 • No. 2
