24:3-4 Spring-Summer 2003 - Jewish Genealogical Society

Book Review
by Randall C. Belinfante
Sephardic Genealogy: Discovering Your Sephardic Ancestors
and Their World by Jeffrey S. Malka. Bergenfield,
NJ: Avotaynu, Inc., 2002.
Jeffrey Malka has taken on a monumental task in his new
work entitled Sephardic Genealogy and attempts to create
a resource that will be of use to all genealogists. The result
is a ground-breaking work which seeks to accomplish three
objectives: it seeks to describe the history of the Sephardim
from the time of the expulsion from Babylon down to
present time; it attempts to explain the fundamentals for
doing genealogical research, and it describes a number of
the resources available for researchers investigating the
various countries around the world possessing Sephardic
descendants.
From the first, the author is confronted with an extremely
difficult issue: that of defining Sephardim. As Malka explains,
there is a wide variety of definitions: from the strict
view that Sephardic Jews derive purely from descendants
of those Jews who were departed from Spain at the time of
the expulsion in 1492 to the much more inclusive view that
holds that the Sephardim include “…almost any Jew who
is not Ashkenazic. 1 Malka concludes that the distinctions
have become cemented based on the traditions observed:
“Sephardim follow the Babylonian Jewish customs and
Caro’s Shulchan Arukh, while Ashkenazim follow the Palestinian
tradition” (p.7) and the interpretation of the
Shulchan Arukh passed down to us through Moses Isserles.
After sorting through this quagmire, Malka then proceeds
to render a short history of the various groups of Sephardim,
including the descendants of those expelled from Spain,
those who lived under Islamic rule in North Africa and the
East, and those who were descendants of the famous
Geonim of Babylonia. He adds to this sections dealing with
the Sephardic languages and with Sephardic names. In the
former section he describes the various languages used by
the Sephardim and the manner in which they have evolved
over time, while in the latter he describes how Sephardic
names have changed and evolved over time, with special
conventions used in certain areas. All of these elements are
extremely useful for the novice genealogist who is trying
to get some grasp of the Sephardim and their multi-faceted
culture.
Yet, Malka is not satisfied with this introduction, but he
expresses an interest in offering assistance to the beginner
by describing a series of genealogy basics. Here he explains
what to do to get started, how to organize and document
one’s records, how to utilize calendars and date conversions,
some of the important periodicals useful to the
genealogist, and some tips about employing computers
and the Internet. He also provides a brief review of some
of the genealogy software that is available, and describes
some of the unique resources available for doing
Sephardic genealogy.
In the third section of the book, Malka proceeds to elaborate
on the various resources that are available for research
in Sephardic genealogy. He wends his way through each
of the countries of the Sephardic world (from Iran to the
Caribbean), giving a brief history of each region (as far as
the information is relevant to the genealogist), and then
describing some of the resources available for doing family
history research in each country. Those available differed
significantly from place to place. In some countries
one finds archives, vital records, and cemetery records,
while in such other regions as the Balkans, information is
much more meager. For each place Malka makes suggestions
for further reading, and he even suggests research
strategies in a few instances for dealing with regions that
have a complex organization to their records. One of
Malka’s areas of real expertise is Turkey and the Ottoman
Empire, and for this reason, he offers a number of additional
tools to assist the researcher. He offers an introduction
to Turkish as well as insights into the Turkish calendar.
This is in addition to discussions of Turkish civil, cemetery,
and genealogical records. Malka thus attempts to offer
some guidance to researchers by probing all regions of
the Sephardi world.
Even with all this information, Malka is not satisfied, and
so he supplements his extensive resources with a discussion
of the Internet. A general description of the topic is
offered earlier in the book, but in this section Malka proceeds
to examine and evaluate the Internet resources available
in individual countries of the Sephardic world. Looking
first at such elements as the Crypto-Jews and Sephardic
family pages, Malka tries to include in his survey as many
websites about as many topics as he can muster. Unfortunately,
on this point, Malka’s work falls victim to the rapid
advances and changes of Internet technology. Indeed, new
websites are popping up every day, and those that exist are
prone to change. Although Malka has made a valiant effort,
it is apparent that the World Wide Web has seen some
changes in the short time since his book’s release.
Yet, there is still more to Malka’s work, in the form of a
series of highly informative appendixes. This information
includes a diverse group of topics, ranging from “Etymology
of selected Sephardic names” and the “Arabic Alphabet”
to “Inquisition Tribunals in Spain” and a list of
(continued on page 6)
Dorot • Spring-Summer 2003 -7-