“Every Jew is a historian and every Jew is a professional
genealogist,” said Professor Israel Bartal of Hebrew University,
in an often humorous session on genealogy’s relation to the
humanities. Every Jew, he said, is concerned with yichus
(pedigree): “My mother used to say we are descendants of the
Baal Shem Tov, and it took me 30 years to convince myself that
we have no connection to the BESHT.” Bartal's research turned up
a man in the same town who was called the second BESHT, and
Bartal realized the latter was the ancestor his mother had
meant. For historians, he says, family histories can lead to
problems with accuracy, since these family stories are often
presented as history, but are actually meises (stories), not
like historians’ “real” history. Bartal’s Galician-born father
boasted that he was Austrian, Polish, Ukrainian, Soviet and
Israeli. Because borders shift throughout history, these
contradictory-sounding claims could all be true. Family
histories include rumors, legends and stories, and they o