Goldfoot Genealogy

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                  

                                                        14th Century Lithuania
Jews had lived in Poland since the 9th century and came either from Germany and Bohemia or southward from Kiev and the Byzantine empire.  They may have come from both, for that matter.  "By the end of the 14th century, Lithuania was one of the largest countries in Europe and included present-day Belarus, Ukraine, and parts of Poland and Russia.."  "Between 1569 and 1795 Poland and Lithuania formed the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth which incorporated much of what is now Ukraine.^[1] Before 1918 both countries were part of the Russian empire and until 1991 part of the USSR."  We've been receiving many DNA matches from people with roots in Ukraine.  

Jews had settled in Lithuania by 1321.  In 1398, a community mostly made up of Karaites, Jews who rejected the Oral Law,  existed in Troki and in 1495, Jews were living in Vilna, Grodno, and Kovno, which totaled 10,000.  They were given a charter in 1529 guaranteeing freedom of movement and employment and soon monopolized foreign trade and tax-farming.  In 1495, 3 years after the the Spanish Inquisition, to 1502, they were expelled from Lithuania.  In 1566 till 1572, Jews had to wear a Jewish badge. Jews were also disqualified from giving evidence in courts.

In 1791 Catherine II decreed that Lithuania was one of 25 provinces of Czarist Russia where Jews were permitted permanent residence.  This was called the Pale of Settlement.  Jews were restricted to stay within the borders of the pale.  It was in reality a ghetto.  This severely hampered the Jewish economic developement.  By 1795 to 1918, Jews found that they were not only a part of the Russian Empire, but were a major Jewish important cultural  group.  Those in Lithuania established a distinguished yeshivot with leading rabbis of the age.  It was the center of Haskalah.

c1900 Telshi, Kovno, Russian Empire- c1930 Telsiai, Lithuania- c1950 Telsiai, Soviet Union

Telz was one of the oldest towns  and is in the NW part of Lithuania on the shores of Lake Mastis and was mentioned in the chronicles of a Crusader Order in 1320.  During the 2nd half of the 15th century a royal estate was established there.  .Merchants and artisans began to settle around it.  The Swedes invaded in 1710 and the town suffered.  2/3 of its population died from epidemics at that time.  By the mid 1700's a court was established in Telz which helped the town to develop and grow.
                                                                       
Until 1795 Telz was part of the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom just like Lazdijai.  Telz fell under Czarist Russian rule from 1802 as part of the Vilna Province or Gubernia as a district administrative center and then from 1843 as part of the Kovno Province.  The 1812 Napoleon retreating army passed right through Telz and left behind desolation and a big gun which can still be seen in the town park.  The town was damaged during the Polish rebellions of 1831 and 1863.
     
Nathan came from Telsiai, Telsiai, Kovno, in Yiddish Telzh, which was 242 km NW of Vilnius and lay 55 degrees 59 ' N and 22 degrees 15' E.  His family went back to 1730 in this city.

Though they were not far apart from each other, they met in Council, Idaho after immigrating from Lithuania in sometime before 1905 when they married there.

Apparently Jews settled in Telz at the beginning of the 17th century.  The Telz community was a subject of the Kahal of the Keidan district.  A municipal council was established in Telz on January 1, 1800 which included 3 Jewish delegates.  In 1804 the Jews were removed from the municipality at the request of the Christian delegates.  2,500 people lived in Telz in 1797 of which 1,650 were Jews or 66%.

Telz Jews suffered from the Blood Libels.  One was in 1758 and the 2nd was in 1827.  Both times the accused Jews were released by the court, but as a result the Jewish population suffered through a period of fear.  there were also plots by estate owners who saw the Jews as competitors in producing and selling alcohol, and so in 1825 the nobles asked the Tsar to expel the Jews because they spread diseases and threaten to rob and to steal.

During the Polish rebellion of 1831 Telz Jews suffered both from the rebels and from the Cossacks.  Menashe Lukniker, a Jew, was accused of helping the rebels and was hung by the Russian rulers.  The authorities in Telz started to arm the population and to enlist men to fight the rebels.  Local Jews said that they shouldn't be forced into the army as they had no weapons and didn't know how to use them anyway.  Instead they offered to supply the army with steel, leather, gunpowder, etc and the authorities agreed and they both signed a document about it.

Even so, in 1859 a school was established in Telz and its first teacher were Avraham Simkha Mapu and Meir Shapira.  During the 1880s a Jewish-Russian school for boys and 2 classes for girls were established by the poet, Yehudah-Leib Gordon.  The orthodox declared war against this school and its headmaster, who answered with his witty writing, but after 7 years from 1865 to 1872 in Telz, he left.  In 1866 a school for girls was opened.  They were partly financed by the government.  In 1879 Jewish women established a vocational school for girls and nearby a boarding school for girls from poor homes.  The head of the founding committee was a rich woman named Feige Lurie who donated the money for maintenance of this place.  Poor children studied at Talmud-Torah schools and others of a Kheder type where they learned reading, writing, bible with "Rashi" commentaries and "Gemara" (Talmud).

By 1870 Telz had 6,481 people including 4,399 Jews which was 68% and in 1897 there were 6,000 people and of them 3,088 were Jews which dropped down to 51% or over half the population of the town.

There was a famine throughout Lithuania from 1869 to 1872.  My grandfather Nathan was born in 1871.  There was an assistance committee for Telz Jews with the following members: Dr. Mapu, Yehudah-Leib Gordon, the merchants Leib Kantsel, who was Gordon's father in law, and Berman.  Later on, Izik Rabinovitz and his wife, Idel Gordon, Meir Atlas, Yehoshua-Heshl Margalioth, Yitshak Elyshev, Hayim Rabinovitz and his son in law Broide, Rabbiner Khazanovitz, Yeshaya Bai, Shabtai Raseinsky, Aharon Neimark, Gershon Meirovitz were also active.  Other lists were of Telz Jews who donated money for hunger victims in other Lithuanina towns.

There were persecutions and pogroms against Jews in the 1880's in Ukraine and other places which took away the self confidence of Telz Jews.  Besides these problems,  they had to contend with  the young Jewish men were conscripted into the army for a length of 6 years, so many left Telz and immigrated to America, Argentina and South Africa, my grandfather and his cousins  among them.  This wave of immigration lasted until WWI.  From 1870 to 1923 the Jewish population of Telz decreased by 2,854 people.

The cholera epidemic of 1893 took many victims, especially among poor Jews who lived in overcrowded conditions and had bad hygienic conditions, which I'm surprised at.  The local rabbi, Eliezer Gordon, started a committee which collected money from the rich to supply the sick with medicines, disinfectants and medical help.  Around this time the Telz Jewish  Hospital was establish.

Local Jews made their living from commerce, crafts and peddling, which was what my grandfather did when he came to Idaho and Oregon.  In 1841 there were 25 Jewish artisans, 14 tailors, 10 shoemakers and one watchmaker not counting wandering artisans.  Among the Jewish merchants there were several who had big businesses of grains and flax and made a good living of which grandfather's cousin was a part of.  there were also several textile merchants who imported merchandise from Germany, one being Ya'akov Rabinovitz.

The Great Yeshivah was a source of income for many families who supplied living quarters and food for hundreds of its students.  Many families maintained gardens beside their houses as additional income.  In the 1880's many Jewish families earned their living while residing in surrounding villages.

The Telz Jews, the small shop owners, artisans, peddlers, coachmen and the carriers found economic conditions difficult.  There were also poor people who subsisted on welfare support and some who collected alms by going form house to house.

Telz had 4 synagogues of which were the great  Beth Midrash, one of the tailors, the butchers and of the soldiers, where Jewish soldiers would swear the oath of allegiance to the Tsar.  The Telz Yeshivah was established in 1880 by 3 young men; Avreikhim-Yitshak Ya'akov Openheim, Meir Atlas, Zalman Abel and with the help of a German Jew, Ovadyah Lakhmana from Berlin, which developed and prospered.   Rabbi Eliezer Gordon was nominated as its head in 1884 and it became the main institution of orthodox education.

 At the end of the 19th century, it had about 400 students and was counted as one of the greatest in the world.  Next to it there was a preparatory class called the Yeshivah Ketanah for boys aged 10 to 16.  Among the graduates of this Yeshivah were rabbis and spiritual leaders of great Jewish communities in the Diaspora and in Israel such as Rabbi Professor Simchah Asaf, Rabbi Yekhezkel Abramsky, Professor Ben-Zion Dinur, Avraham Hartsfeld, M. Bar-Ilan and others.

Jews left from Telz in the mid 1860s  and immigrated to Eretz-Yisral (then called Palestine).  The following are buried there: Hanah, wife of Izik d: 1862; Leib, son of Ya'akov d: 1863; Izik Nagar d; 1866; Ya'akov, son of Benjamin-Ze'ev d: 1868; Eta-Gishe, wife of Mosheh-Yehoshua, son of Yekhiel d: 1876; Zlata, daughter of Mosheh d: 1890; Sheina, daughter of Ya'akov Mendilsh d 1891; Avigdor, son of Rabbi Avraham;  Avraham-Yitshak Epelman, born in Telz, came to Eretz-Yisrael in 1883, lived in Jerusalem and made his living from bookbinding.

Later in the first census performed in 1923  in Lithuania  showed that Telzh had 1,545 Jewish people which made up 33% of the total population.  Lazdey had 1,141 Jewish people making up 48% of the total population.  There were none left by 1945 due to the emigration and finally the Holocaust.  In Telzh, there were 70 Jews left in 1970 and 23 by 1989.

A monument in the park says, "In this place the Hitler murderers and their local helpers in July-August 1941 murdered about 8,000 Jews; men women and children."

 c 1900 Lozdzieje, Sejny, Suwalki, Russian Empire-c1930 Lazdijai, Seinai, Lithuania-c: 1950 Lazdijai, Soviet Union

Lazdey is in the SW part of Lithuania and has several big lakes nearby. Lazdijai is 127 km WSW of Vilnius, Lithuania and lay  54 degrees 13 ' N and 23 degrees 31' E.  This is where Nathan Goldfus's wife, Zlata Jermulowske  came from.   It was established in 1570. Until 1795 it was part of the Polish Lithuanian Kingdom which was the 3rd division of Poland by 3 superpowers; Russia, Prussia and Austria.  The result was it was partly Russian and partly Prussian.  Lazdey was handed over to Prussia which ruled during 1795 to 1807 when it was a county administrative center.  Then Napolean defeated Prussia and still the Jews had no civil rights.  From 1807 to 1813 it belonged to Warsaw and was part of the Bialystok district. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated and all of Lithuania was annexed to Russia.  By 1827 Lazdey had 1,988 people living in 272 houses.   In 1866 it was part of the Suwalk Gubernia as a country administrative center.

Lazdey was surrounded by Jewish farms and farmers till WWI.  Many Jewish families also had vegetable gardens behind their houses.  In 1872 during the great famine in parts of Lithuania, local Jews donated money for the starving.  The collectors were Yehudah Glikman and Meir Simkha Zilberman.

Individual Lazdey Jews also left for Eretz Yisrael before the emergence of the Khibath Zion movement, like Telz Jews.  In the cemetery in Jerusalem there are 3 tombstones; Gershon, son of Moshe d: 1910; Reuven son of Yehudah Frid d; 1895; and Hayah, daughter of Rabbi Yudl Rosh ha Galil d: 1897.  A rabbi in Lazdey was Yehudah-Leib, son of the "Gaon" from Vilna, known to us as the Vilna Gaon (Elijah Ben Solomon Zalman 1720-1797) . The Mitnaggedim regarded him as their spiritual leader.   

Reference: Preserving Our Litvak Heritage by Josef Rosin
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithuania
http://www.jewishgen.org

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                         

                                                      Rashi:  Jewish commentator on Bible
 My 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot of South Africa made aliyah to Jerusalem and became the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group.  He told me when I finally met him in Jerusalem that he was told we were connected to the Vilna Gaon.  This is possible because the Goldfoot family, originally Goldfus, were from Telsiai, Kaunas, Lithuania and this was not too far from Vilna.

Chaim Freedman is the author of Eliyahu's Branches.  This is a book listing the descendants of the Vilna Gaon and his family and is usually found in the reference section of a Jewish library.  In the Index is listed:  Gold, Goldberg, Goldfaden, Goldfarb, Goldfeder, Goldfield, Goldin, Golding, Goldman, Goldner, Goldring, Goldschmidt, Goldsmidt, Goldsmith, Goldsmitt, Goldstandt, Goldstin, Goldsteinas, Goldzweig, but NO GOLDFOOT!

However, the connection could be the surrname of Halpern.  We have one match with a Halpern at familytreedna and the name of  Khaya Halpern, married to Akivah Pines is in the book for the Vilna Gaon.  Halpern people are also connected to Rashi.

The Vilna Gaon's name was Elijah Ben Solomon Zalman.  He was born on April 23, 1720 and died on October  9, 1797.  In England or the USA, this would not be a hard job to trace back and have a family tree.  People in England have trees and the necessary information to go back to the 1500's.  For us Jews, this is a much harder job as so many places had been burned down from the wars that would have had papers showing census and tax information.

The Vilna Gaon was a Talmudist born in Lithuania and was famous at an early age for his scholarship.  From 1740 to 1745 he traveled among the Jewish communities of Poland and Germany, settling in Vilna where he taught and later founded his own academy.

His reputation was that of a saint as well as a scholar.  He refused rabbinic office and lived in seclusion.  He led the opposition to the Hasidim in Lithuania and he was able to check the spread of Hasidism in Lithuania.  He was well known for his skill in the field of halakhah.  He sought to establish critical texts of the authoritative rabbinic writings, resorting also to emendations.  He avoided pilpul and based his views and rulings upon the plain meaning of the text.  He regarded the early kabbalistic works highly and was very critical of philosophy.  He was interested in secular studies insofar as they threw light on the Torah, but opposed the Haskalah.  He wrote commentaries on the Bible, and annotations on the Talmud, Midrash and Zohar.  He even wrote about works on mathematics, the geography of Palestine, and Hebrew grammar.

When he was about 60 years old, he set out alone for Palestine but returned before reaching there.  Elijah influenced his own generations and those that followed.  This leader of the Mitnaggedim regarded him as their spiritual leader.

There is also the possibility that we are connected to Rashi, which is the anacronym for R. Solomon Yitzhaki or ben Isaac who was born in 1040 and died in 1105 in France.  He was a rabbinical scholar who studied first in the Rhineland.  He then returned to his native Troyes, France and his school achieved a wide reputation.  This scholar earned a livelihood from his vineyard.

 This possibility is addressed after taking an autosomal DNA test through 23&Me and FamilyTreeDNA's familyfinder test which matched up with the Halpern family who have found that they are descendants of Rashi.

Many halakhic queries were addressed to Rashi and his decision have been preserved in the works of his pupils.  He also composed penitential hymns.  His chief contribution was his lucid commentary on the Bible and the Babylonian Talmud.  His thoughts on the Pentateuch in the Bible became universally popular and his notes on the Babylonian Talmud were responsible for making that work an open book.  His style was simple but concise.  His commentary on the entire Talmud made some outstanding contributions.  Students today who study the Jewish religion in a Yeshiva will be studying Rashi's comments.

From Rashi we also have the "Rashi Script" which was a semi cursive form of writing Hebrew letters that was used for writing and printing rabbinical commentaries.

Rashi's commentries served as the basis for later scholars such as Nahmanides and Ibn Ezra in their interpretation of the Pentateuch.  

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      
 The Y-DNA Q Project is likely the largest collection of Worldwide Q samples around.  We have about 685 Q samples so far.  Our Goldfoot haplogroup for Ydna is Q1b1a.  My paternal grandfather, Nathan Goldfus, anglized to Goldfoot, was from Telsiai, Lithuania.

We are still working on finding our roots.  Q1b1a is a Jewish haplogroup that makes up only 5% of the Jewish male population.  The countries where 27 people match up with us in a subgroup with  our allele #395 =15-19 are from Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, Belarus and Latvia.  These countries were all a part of the Pale of Settlement that belonged to Russia for several hundred years.  Also included in the 27 was someone from Hungary and another from Estonia which were outside the Pale.

The study of this end of genetics is called Population Genetics.  One should have a good historic background to help match the possible history of the genes.  It makes history all the more interesting when you're tracing these bits and pieces on our 23 chromosomes.

Testing is very easy today.  Blood is not a part of it.  One only has to scrub the insides of his cheeks with a swab that comes in a kit and send it back.  The scientists do all the work.  It helps to already have an interest in  your family history and have a genealogy tree made first.  They like to know who your oldest ancestor was from both your mother's side and your father's side, what year they were born and where they were born.  If you  don't know, that's okay, too.  You'll find out more about that with the results of your test.

 Resource:  http://www.familytreedna.com/public/ydna_q/default.aspx?section=yresults