Goldfoot Genealogy

Jews were already living in Vilna, Lithuania by the end of the 15th Century but were banished in 1527 by Sigismund I at the burghers request. Some returned only to become victims of a riot in 1592. Jews were formally allowed to settle in the following year of 1593 to have a home and lend money. In 1633 they had permission to trade in precious stones, meat, and livetock and to be craftsmen. Again they had another riot in 1633 and those that lived through that were massacred by the Cossack army in 1655. A famine was in the land from 1709-10 when 4,000 Jews died.

In the 18th Century the city became a center of rabbinical study, being called the Lithuanian Jerusalem. This is when the best known scholar lived who was Elijah Ben Solomon Zalman, known in the Jewish world as the Vilna Gaon. He lived from 1720 to 1797.

My distant cousin that I located in Jerusalem, Stanley Goldfoot, told me that our family was related to him. Since then I've found many genealogies claiming to be related to him. Being our Goldfoot family came from Lithuania, it's possible. Gaon mean genious, and he was. He worked on the Talmud and did clarify it. He disagreed with the Misnagdim or Chassidim, however. He always wanted to live in Israel, but for unknown reason wasn't able to get there.

Since it has been found by genetic scientists that 70% of Jewish men still have a Middle-Eastern DNA pattern on the male line despite the 2,000 years or more of living outside the area, it's possible we can be connected. The Eastern European Ashkenazi community of over 8 million people is largely descended from a small number of "founders" of about 25,000. From 1300 to the Holocaust of about 1939, Jews had to almost totally marry within the Jewish group. So the Ashkenazi Jew is more closely related genetically to another Ashkenazi than other Jews outside of the group. All persons of Eastern European Jewish descent share many markers because they are descended from a rather small group of individuals, perhapps 50,000 who were alive in the year 1500. It's quite possible that we are indeed related to the Vilna of Gaon.

By the late 1800's Goldfoots were living only from 120 to 150 miles from Vilna in Telsiai and Rossieny.

Now all I need is to meet someone who definitely is connected to the Vilna Gaon and find out his dna and see if we share a few markers which can be done through 23 & Me, a company I just tested my dna with or I'd even settle with some paper evidence.

2/22/11 Update: I have bought the book, Eliyahu's Branches by Chaim Freedman and do not find the surname of Goldfoot or Goldfus/fuss listed in it as a descendant of the Gaon of Vilna.  The connecting party that Stanley was sure to be connected out of the Goldfoot family could have been from the mother's side way back.  Unfortunately, I cannot find this person.  It is true that Jewish people in a community would have wound up being related to each other after a period of time, so that it is still possible; just not verifiable at this time.  We need to find a person who is definitely an ancestor and then compare genes.  Even at that, over a long time of a connecting person, the genes will not show a large percent of connection.  Something would be better than nothing, however. 


http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/biography/vilnagaon.html
Standard Jewish Encyclopedia