Goldfoot Genealogy

Nadene Goldfoot
Family Tree DNA Jewish Q lists kits and the countries where people were from.  This page also lists other Jewish and non-Jewish Q haplogroups and a few others besides.  5% of this haplogroup are found in today's Jewish population which is only 0.02% of the world population;  6 million in USA, 6million in Israel, 2 million in Diaspora.
                                                                           

Reference: https://www.familytreedna.com/public/Jewish_Q?iframe=yresults

Nadene Goldfoot                                                             

Danny and I and our  Aliyah party 1980 Danny's mother's surname was Cohen.  His father was a Levite, making him one, too.  He became a high school history teacher and then earned his master's in testing and evaluation and became a counselor. His father's surname had been Iskowitz, but changed to become more American.

Our small trickle of a Jewish population of 14 million is so lucky to exist after millenniums of people trying to destroy us.  We only make up 0.02% of the world population today, but long ago in King David's time, must have grown into a goodly %, for the great numbers slaughtered were huge. Above, Danny's father came from Russia with his family as a little boy via a guide in the night like the Mexicans of today leave Mexico. His mother was a German  Jew, born in the USA with a paternal grandfather Greenstein from Russia.  My paternal grandparents came from Lithuania.  My grandfather died when my father was 4 years old so we knew nothing about his life, just that he came from "Russia."   By the time my Bubba immigrated, her city of Lazdijai had been taken over by Poland. My mother had converted to Judaism.   Here we live in the melting pot of the best country in the whole world for Jews since Judah had been destroyed.
                                                                   
   
The destruction of the 2nd Temple in 70 CE was about to change the whole world and especially the Jews.  Romans entered Judah when they replaced the Seleucids as the great power of the region.  They granted the Hasmonean king Hyrcanus II limited authority under their Roman governor of Damascus.
                                                                               

Danny's Bar Mitzvah  and family in Brooklyn 1951 His grandmother was Sarah Cohen nee Greenstein

Who was a Jew?  In this Talmudic period from 100 BCE to 500 CE, anyone who had a Jewish mother was Jewish, or if the person had been rabbinically converted.  Jews themselves are divided into 3 male castes;  Cohen, Levi and Israelite.  It is estimated that Cohanim and Levites each comprise about 4% of the Jewish people today, although about 40% that have tested their DNA are found to have the Cohen gene. This makes me wonder.
                                                                           
Herod was the son-in-law of Hyrcanus II and in 37 BCE was appointed King of Judea by the Romans.  He was given almost unlimited autonomy in the country's internal affairs and became one of the most powerful monarchs in the eastern part of the Roman Empire.  He loved Greco-Roman culture. So he launched a massive construction program including the cities of Caesarea and Sebaste, and the fortresses at Herodium and Masada.  He also remodeled the Temple into one of the most magnificent buildings of its time.  However, he failed to win the trust and support of his Jewish subjects  He was not of the Davidic dynasty.  He was the son of Antipater who was an Idumean and his mother was a Nabatean, named Cypros.  His father appointed him governor of Galilee when he was a young man and he immediately showed a strong hand by executing dissidents.  For this he was summoned by the Sanhedrin and only saved from death by the intervention of Hyrcanus and Sexus Caesar, governor of Syria.

In the middle of the 2nd century BCE, a Jewish writer of the 3rd book of the Oracula Sibyllina spoke to the "Chosen People" and told them that "every land is full of thee and every see."  Other notables such as Strabo, Philo, Seneca, Luke-author of the Acts of the Apostles, Cicero, and Josephus all mentioned Jewish populations in the cities of the Mediterranean basin.  Jews were in India and in China.  King Agrippa I sent a letter to Caligula numbering the Jews in their provinces which were almost all of the Hellenized and non-Hellenized countries of the Orient.  He didn't mention Italy or Cyrene having Jews, then.  Josephus said that after Judea and Babylonia were in Syria and especially in Antioch and Damascus, where 10,000 to 18,000 Jews were massacred during the great insurrection.    Philo said that Jews in Egypt numbered one million which was 1/8th of the population.     Alexandria was the most important Jewish community.  They were on par with their Ptolemaic counterparts and had close ties with them with Jerusalem before the destruction.  Moving to Egypt then was a choice of the people there, not an imposition.  

When Herod died in 4 BCE, Judah came under direct Roman administration.  The population's anger kept growing against increased Roman suppression of their Jewish life and this resulted in sporadic violence which escalated into a full-scale revolt in 66 CE.  Titus brought in his superior Roman forces and they were finally victorious by razing Jerusalem to the ground in 70 CE  by burning it and defeating the last Jewish outpost at Masada in 73 CE.  
                                                                     

Leaving Jerusalem

The was total destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple's destruction was a huge catastrophe for the Jewish people.  Hundreds of thousands of Jews perished in the siege of Jerusalem and elsewhere in the country, and then many thousands more were sold into slavery.
                                                                     
   
Shimon Bar Kokhba came along in 132 CE and regained Jerusalem from the Romans, giving the population a respite from Roman rule, but his attack on the ended in defeat after 3 years of fighting and he was killed in battle, regaining Judea as it was called by the Romans.  The holy city was plowed up with a yoke of oxen.  Judea was then renamed as Palaestinia just to be ornery against the Jews and Jerusalem was renamed as Aelia Capitolina.
                                                                             

The Arch of Titus leading away the loot from the Temple and Jewish slaves

After this, many Jews were taken as slaves and brought into other lands which they called "the Diaspora."  By the 4th century CE, many of these slave populations may have served as the basis of later European Jewish communities.

The majority of Jews lived outside of Judea rather than in it, and they were already living outside of Judea at the time of the destruction of Jerusalem.  As many as a million Jews were already living in Alexandria.  The Romans treated and put to the law all Jews, no matter where they lived.  They collected an annual temple tax even though they had destroyed the Temple.  They were treating Jews as a distinct ethno-national group.

There was a revolt in 115-117 CE in Egypt, Libya and Crete which likely  decimated the Jewish Diaspora population.    Wholesale massacres had taken place in Cyrenaica, Cyprus and Meseopotamia where there were large numbers of Jews.  When Caesar Augustus had started his rule, there were over 7,000 Jews living in Rome, though this is only the number that is said to have escorted the envoys who came to demand the depositionof Archelaus.  Bringmann talks of about 8,000 Jews who lived in Rome.  Many sources say that the Jews made up about 1/10th of the population of Rome.  In the year 62-61 BCE, the tax paid showed that the Jewish population of Asia Minor was about 45,000 adult males out of a total of at least 180,000 people.  There was another in 132-135 of the Bar Kochba Revolt causing the Romans to engage in mass executions and enslavement.  The Romans then destroyed large numbers of Judaean towns, and forbade Jews from settling in Jerusalem or its environs.  there was no further Jewish government or overarching legal system in Judaea.  Jews had now become permanently exiled people with no national homeland.  The restrictions continued such as taxation, discrimination, social exclusion which further alienated and marginalized remaining Jews in the Negev and Galilee.
                                                                             
What the Romans did was favor the settlement of culturally pagan Syro-Phoenicians and others.  These would have been the ancestors of the people the Arabs have displaced.  
                                                                           
    
For Arabs came from the Arabian peninsula and regions nearby it, but left their land when Islam was created by Muhammad before and after 632 to proselytize.  They burst forth from their homeland to conquer the greater part of the then civilized world.  They are a Semitic people like the Jews, coming from Abraham's first son, Ishmael by the Egyptian woman, Hagar, who was Abraham's wife's handmaid.  
                                                 
Judaea became known as Syria Palestina.   The Romans did their best to ensure that Jerusalem would ever rise again or that there would ever be another Jewish Temple.  

Jewish people were now in exile.  Some time around the year 615, Muhammad spoke to the Jews of Mecca and Medina as though they had been expelled 2 times from the land of Judaea by the servants of Allah and told them it was a punishment for their rejection of Jesus and of the prophet, (himself).  
                                                                              He was wrong.  The outside world in which Jews were living in (the Diaspora)  happened over the centuries since they had returned from Babylon where they had a taste of living outside.  Then they had to live through the Roman destruction and the subsequent rule of Christians and Muslims.  For generations to come, the Jews were to be seen as an exiled and persecuted people for much of their history.  The Babylonian captivity created the promise of return and getting on with their lives.  

So we find many Jews were living outside of the Land of Israel before the Roman imperial oppression and before the Jewish uprisings for independence and freedom from Roman rule in their homeland.  Many went back to 4 BCE like the settlement in Puteoli, Italy  and originated in voluntary emigration by the lure of trade and commerce.   I would think that the scholars tended to remain in Judah for as long as they could until they too, saw the writing on the wall and fled, most likely before the burning started.  
                                                                                  

Worms, Germany

Jews were living in France before 70 CE.  Organized Jewish communities were living there in the period of the Roman Empire.  When Christianity entered, their position deteriorated because the church councils took steps to enforce the conventional anti-Jewish codes.  Under the Merovingians, some Jews occupied prominent positions at their court.   

From the 8th century on, Jews were under the protection of Charlemagne and his house, so Jewish merchants began to settle in France for purposes of trade, importing foreign luxuries and establishing new communities up the Rhone Valley and into Champagne.  In the 9th century, southern France was the main center of the activity of the international traders, the RADANITES.  
                                                                                

My great aunt, Jenny Criss nee Jermulowske, spoke Yiddish and English

Yasmin Levy, Sephardic singer and song writer from Jerusalem with fans even in Pakistan

 Sephardi  originally meant Jews descended from the communities that existed in Spain before their expulsion of 1492.  Today we use Sephardim to mean all descendants of the communities of North Africa and the Near East who follow the Sephardi rite of worship and their cultural traditions.  Before the middle of the 20th century, gene flow between Ashkenazi and non-Ashkenazi groups was restricted by distance, but some cities found both living there, each attending their own synagogues.  Language would have been a barrier and some small differences in customs, for instance, Sephardi allowing rice to be eaten during Passover but Ashkenazis not allowing it.  I wonder if Jacob's wife, Rachel, was this beautiful.  I hope so.  

Some of those Jews  led to extermination camps

Resource:  https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/Romans.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_diaspora
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
The Jews of Khazaria 2nd edition, Kevin Alan Brook
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0007_0_07174.html- Genetic Ancestry, Jewish
https://www.google.com/search?q=Sephardi+Jews,+pictures&biw=1024&bih=677&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0CDYQ7AlqFQoTCL3W3rPn8cYCFc1biAodOZ0PrA#imgrc=sWBiEDr6U7q7MM%3A

                       Nadene Goldfoot                                                                

King David lived from1043 BCE to 973 BCE.  He was king in 1010 BCE. According to one source, he left 22 sons and one daughter.  I remember that he had an abundance of wives, though nothing like his son, Solomon. I have counted the names of 10 wives of David.
                                                                         
 We'll skip down to about 900 years later and we find Hillel the Great on our tree who lived from 70 BCE to 10 CE.  He was the founder of the school known as the "House of Hillel. (Bet Hillel)."  He was also the ancestor of a dynasty of patriarch which held office until the 5th century.  Hillel was born in Babylonia and settled in Judah and earned a small living by manual labor while studying with Shemaiah and Avtalyon.  Before he knew it, he was appointed president of the Sanhedrin and together with his friend and opponent, Shammai, constituted the last of the pairs (Zugot) of scholars.  He was noted for his humility and tendency to leniency.  He laid down the 7 rules of bible interpretation.  He is known for creating the "Golden Rule."  Do not do unto others that which you would not have them do unto you." On university campuses you should find the Hillel House for Jewish students.  The Hillel Foundations are organizations founded in 1923 and supported by B'nai B'rith.
                                           
                             
Next we come to Simeon Ha-Nasi.  Nasi means prince.  It's a Talmudic term for the president of the Sanhedrin who was also the spiritual head and later a political representative of the Jewish people.  Simeon bar Kokhba  in 132 to 135 assumed the title, and it is possible that it was applied as the president of the Sanhedrin only after this period.  He was the one who was a General (Aluf) and  was the leader of the revolt against Rome from 132 to 135 CE when he was killed.  From then on the Romans called Eretz Yisrael "Palestine."  His name in Hebrew means son of the star.  His real name is Bar or Ben Kosiba.  He was the nephew of Rabbi Eleazar of Modiin and also of Davidic descent.  Rabbi Akiva acclaimed him as the Messiah, but not all the rabbis accepted this view.  He had great personal strength, was autocratic and irascible.  The revolt's cause is unclear to us, but it could have been that the Romans were rebuilding Jerusalem as a Roman colony and didn't allow circumcision.  The feelings of the people had been fermenting for a while since 70 CE when the Romans had burned down the Temple and city.
                                                                   
Then comes Rashi's tree starting with  with Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder. Gamiel was the surname of 6 Palestinian rabbis, descendants of Hillel and the most important was Gamaliel the Elder of the early 1st century.  He was president of the Sanhedrin at Jerusalem, grandson of Hillel.  He corresponded with Jewish communities in Palestine and the Diaspora and framed several regulations directed at social improvements, including the betterment of the legal position of women.  He is sympathetically mentioned in the New Testament as a teacher of Paul,  found in Acts 22:3.   3 generations later we come to Johanan Ha-Sandalar of Egypt in the 2nd Century CE.

There was Joshua, Jochanan, Nachman, Jose (author of Luleiot Hashor).  Then Yanai and Rabbi Manianai Gaon, Rabbi Jose of Constantinople, the Ha-Gaon Rabbi Abraham, Rabbi Aaron (renowned doctor),  and Ha-Gaon Rabbi Eliakim.

Somewhere fits in Rabbi  Yohanan Ha Sandlar, a 2nd Century famous Palestinian Tanna (Mishaic master) who also claimed to be descended from King David who Rashi claimed to be descended from.  The Mishna was compiled by Rabbi Judah Ha-Nasi on the basis of previous collections and arranged logically.  Johanan HaSandlar means "Johanan the shoemaker" or Johanan the Sandalmaker," aka Johanan the Alexandrian and lived from about 100 CE to 150 CE.  He was one of the main students of Rabbi Akiva and a contemporary of Rabbi shimon bar Yochai.  He is one of the tannaim whose teachings are quoted in the Mishnah.  His name seems to indicate that he earned a living by making sandals, but it could also mean that he was a native of Alexandria Egypt.  He was a great-grandson of Rabbi Gamaliel the Elder and also traced his ancestry back to King David.  Rashi, the great medieval commentator, was a 33rd-generation descendant of Rabbi Yochanan.   His well-known saying found in the Mishnah of Pirkei Avoth (4:14) was, "Every assembly that is for the sake of Heaven will survive;  but if it is not for the sake of heaven, it will not survive."    He died on the 29th day of Tammu and has the same yahrzeit as that of Rashi, his descendant.  He was buried 200 meters from the tomb of Shimon bar Yochai in Meron, Israel. 
                                                                         

Rashi

   The next 20 generations go by and we come to a Solomon, Isaac and finally, Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki (Rashi) of Troyes, France, born in 1040 and died in 1105. His father was Isaac.  Rashi is the abbreviation for Rabbi Solomon.  He was a French rabbinical scholar.  After studying in the Rhineland, he returned to his native Troyes where his school rapidly earned a wide reputation.  He earned his livelihood from his vineyard.  His decisions on the law have been preserved in the works of his pupils.  He also composed hymns.  His chief contribution was his lucid commentary on the bible and Babylonian Talmud.  One has only to open our prayer books and see his name besides them with commentary.   Jews who will be known as the Ashkenazis are now in Europe and Rashi will be studying in Germany.

Rashi's children were 1.  Jochebed married to Meir ben Samuel (1065-1135)., 2. Rachel married to Eliezer and 3. Miriam married to Judah ben Nathan.

1. From Jochebed and Meir were the descendants:Isaac Ribam who had 7 children.

 From them came Samuel Spira and his daughter who married into the Treves family.  This family came from Trier (Treves) in Germany.  Mattathias ben Joseph Treves was born about 1325 and died in 1387.  He was an author of a work on talmudic methodology and was chief rabbi of France by royal appointment from 1360 on the return of the Jews to the country.  He was succeeded by his son, Johanan Treves who died in 1429 who continued in office in the face of fierce opposition from Isaiah ben Abba Mari and Meir ben Baruch of Vienna until the final expulsion of the Jews from France in 1396, after which he settled in Italy.  Many members of the family were prominent in Italy.

  Another descendant of Isaac Ribam was  Solomon Spira in the 14th century.  From Solomon came the Luria family.  From these were the descendants of the Meir Katzenbogen family aka Meir Padua.  also known as the "Maharam Padua" (1482-1565).  He was a Talmudist.  He was born in Germany but studied in Poland, and officiated as rabbi in Padua.  An outstanding codifier, he was extensively consulted on halakhic problems.   Also,  the Jehiel Heilprin family and others, of course.  Jehiel ben Solomon Heilprin (1660-1746)  was a scholar.  He was rabbi at Glusk, White Russia and from 1711 at Minsk.  His best known work was Seder ha-Dorot comprising a chronology down to 1696, an alphabetical list of tannaim and amoraim, and a catalog of post-talmudic  Hebrew authors and books.  Besides his rabbinical knowledge, Heilprin had a wide secular education and was a student  of Kabbalah as well.

3. Miriam and Judah's children were Yomtov and Miriam.  Yomtov's children were Judah, Isaac, and then Judah Sir Leon of Paris (1166-1224)aka  Judah ben Isaac.  He was a French tosaphist;  grandson of Rashi.  He refounded the Paris yeshivah when Jews returned to the city in 1198 after a 16 year ban.  His main literary work was the composition of tosaphot to nearly all the Talmud, based on the teachings of his master, Isaac ben Samuel of Dampierre.   .  His descendants were Rabbi Joseph Treves of Marseilles, France in the 14th century.  His descendant was Mattithiah Treves of Provence (1325-1387).   Here's where the daughter of a relative, Samuel Spira, married his son, Abraham Treves who died after 1384.  His next son was Johanan Treves who died in 1439 with descendants of the Treves family and then the Dreyfus family, famous from the Captain of the Dreyfus Affair in France who was accused of something he didn't do and was punished for it nevertheless.  This started the ball rolling to realize that Jews needed their ancient home back.

This brings us to the Luria family which has  an unbroken line almost back to Rashi.
                                                                       

Rashi

It starts with Solomon Spira listed in #1 of the of the 14th century who were descendants of Rashi.  From this Solomon descended Miriam who married Samson Luria of the 14th century, then Jehiel Luria, Nathaniel Luria and Aharon Luria who died in 1456.  "Solomon Spira:

From Aharon Luria descended 2 important lines; Jochanan and Jehiel.  Jochanan Luria of Alsace lived in the late 15th and early 16th centuries.  From him came Aharon Luria of Elsass, Schlomo Luria, Joshua Moses Luria who died in  1591 at Worms and then Aharon Luria who died in 1611 at Frankfort.

From the other son, Jehiel Luria who died in 1470, came Abraham Luria, Jehiel Luria, Rabbi Solomon Luria (born in Lublin in 1510-died in Brest Litovsk in 1573), He came to be known as the Maharshal, and was a rabbi and codifier.  He officiated in several Lithuanian and Polish communities.  We could have connected with him as our family came from both places.  .  He regarded the Talmud as the sole halakhic authority.  His independent and critical views made him many opponents, but the greatness of his learning was undisputed.

Solomon Luria's descendants were Zeev Wolf Luria, then Abraham Luria and Jehiel Luria.
Jehiel Luria's descendants were Yakov Luria who had Asher Luria and Asher had Pinhas Selig Luria, Isaac Eisie Luria, Abraham Luria, Zeev Wolf Luria and Aaron Luria.
                                                                           
 
****Rabbi Isaac ben Solomon Luria may be the Isaac Eisie Luria listed above.  He was born in 1534 in Jerusalem and was known as the Ashkenazi, and was a Jewish Safed kabbalist.  His education happened in Egypt.  He lived in Safed from 1570 on, and became renowned for his ascetic life and saintly character.  (I lived in Safed from 1981 to the end of 1985.  It gives me the goose-bumps to think that he could have been the one who passed on these special genes discovered in a recent DNA test who connects me to all these people, especially to Rabbi Wertheimer.  I wrote a play that we produced in Safed and used James Mitchener's chapter in "THE SOURCE" called, THE SAINTLY MEN OF SAFED.   My husband and I produced it and also acted in it.  We could have been starring Isaac Luria! Instead, I called him Mitchener's name of Rabbi  Zaki.   )  Isaac in real life identified ancient graves in the Galilee and conferred on them sanctity which has persisted to the present day among the Orthodox.  His teachings were done orally and were recorded by his pupil, Hayyim Vital.  His teachings deeply influenced subsequent mystical thought.  He had launched a neo-kabbalistic movement which he launched that had a vast impact on Jewish life, particularly in the Mediterranean area and in Europe.

Aaron Luria had Moses Luria who had David Luria of Mogileve who had Yehuda Idel Luria of Sychow who had Zevi Hirsch Luria of Bychow, Jacob Aaron Luria of Minsk who had David Luria of Minsk, and the 3rd son of Yehuda was David Luria of Bychow (1798-1855).

David Luria of Mogilev's 2nd son was Jacob Aaron Luria who died in 1783 in Mogilev.  His son was Israel Isser Luria of Mogilev and his son was Aaron Luria who died in 1835 in Pinsk.  One can see the family had moved from France-Germany's area on up to eastern Europe now into Pinsk.

From Aaron Luria came Moses Luria who died in Wiesbaden 1824-1906),  Samuel Luria who was born in 1826 in Pinsk, and David Luria of Pinsk (1838-1883.)

Moses Luria of Wiesbaden had many descendants.  Aaron Lourie of Pinsk (1841-1910, Bele who married Idel Lurie of Wiesbaden, Selde who married Elias Eliasberg of Pinsk, Rachel who married Moses Chaim Eliasberg of Berlin, Samuel Lourie (born in Pinsk1850-died in Wiesbaden1888), Isidor Louris of Libau (1851-1920), Leopold Lourie of Vienna (born Pinsk 1850-?)  and Alex Lourie of Vienna born in Pinsk (1861-?).

"Rashi, the acronym of Rabbi Shlomo Itzchaki of Troyes (1040-1105), has been, by tradition, considered a descendant of King David. The earliest source accessible to us for that is the genealogy prepared by Johanan Luria who lived in Germany in the last half of the 15th century, and reported by the shtadlan Joselman of Rosheim (1478-1554). There is a detailed discussion of this matter in Mishpachat Luria, by Abraham Epstein (Vienna, 1901). One important passage relates that there was a genealogical record of the Luria family going back to the Tanna Johanan Ha-Sandler (2nd century, who was a descendant of King David). This record was lost in the "Swiss War" of 1499, and "Johanan Luria mourned the loss of his genealogy more than the material goods he was robbed of.""

I don't know where Goldfoot connected except it is a German name as spelled Goldfuss, and Yiddish as spelled Goldfus.  It had to be in Germany with some of these people.  It could have been as far back as in Worms, Germany.

Resource: finding Our Fathers-A guidebook to Jewish genealogy by Dan Rottenberg-with charts of genealogy.
 The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://nimetseker.wordpress.com/english/jewish-and-muslim-mysticism/
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11912-paris
book:  Apprentice in Budapest by Raphael Patai  on Rashi's descent from Ha Sandlar.
Wikipedia on Johanan HaSandlar
http://www.jewishgen.org/rabbinic/journal/kdavid.htm    Descendants of King David
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/13965-spira-spiro#anchor25

Nadene Goldfoot                                                        

Rabbi Samson Wertheimer, born in Worms, Germany, son of Joseph Josel Wertheimer (1626-1713) and received his education at the yeshivas of Worms and Frankfurt am main.

DNA testing through FTDNA and a special group from there, Halpern and  Branches, shows that we Goldfoots come from either Rabbi Samson Wertheimer (b: 1658- d: 1724) or his brother, Moshe; most likely Moshe.

"Rabbi Samson WERTHEIM (WERTHEIMER) Born: Jan 17, 1658 Died: Aug 6, 1724 in Vienna. 
Landesrabbiner + Veronica "Frumet" (see BRILIN family)  Born: Mar 15, 1658/9 Died: Apr 24, 1715/18 in Vienna 
Father: Rabbi Isaak Brilin (Brüll) (Worms? - 3/17/1678 Mannheim bur. Worms, Germany) 
Mother: Sorle (Sarlan, Sara, Serle) Oppenheim/er (Wolf) (Worms, Germany - 3/3/1673 Worms or Mannheim, Germany)" reference below from Wertheim tree. 
This shows that  Samson Wertheimer's uncle was Samuel Oppenheimer.  

 Rabbi Wertheimer was a court Jew, born in Worms, Rhineland/Germany,  and court Jews were especially prominent in the Vienna court.  Two of the most notable were Samuel Oppenheimer and his nephew,  Samson Wertheimer.  Rabbi Wertheimer had gone to Vienna in 1684 to join the bank of his uncle, Samuel Oppenheimer, and soon became a court banker.  His uncle Samuel Oppenheimer was a banker and he lived with him.
                                                                           

King Charles VI

King Leopold

Wertheimer  leased royal revenues and was one of the chief purveyors of the imperial forces.  Together with his son, Wolf, they lent large sums to the emperor, the Holy Roman Emperor, King Leopold (1640-1705)  of Germany,  Hungary, Croatia and Bohemia.  In 1719 /Charles VI (1685-1740) another Holy Roman Emperor,  appointed him as chief rabbi of Hungary with judicial authority.  He used his connections to assist Jewish communities and obtained an order from  Emperor Leopold prohibiting the publication of Eisenmenger's antii-Jewish work, "Entdecktes Judentum."
                                                                         

Safed

Wertheimer established a fund to assist the poor in Palestine, which existed until 1914, the start of WWI.
                                                                             
 Perhaps this is start of what children in America's Jewish Sunday Schools contributed to called Karen-Ahmein or Karen-Kimet.  Some of his Shabbat homilies have been preserved.
                                                                           
Samuel Oppenheimer or Oppenheim (b: 1630-d: 1703) , his uncle, was a philanthropist besides being a Court Jew.  He was the first Jew to settle in Vienna after the 1670 expulsion and was Leopold I's agent and financier, helping to finance his wars with the Turks and the War of the Spanish Succession.  In 1697, he was accused of conspiring to murder his nephew and rival, Rabbi Samson Wertheimer, and was put in prison until vindicated.  Samuel liberally supported the poor, Jewish scholars, and Judah Hasid's movement to settle in Palestine.  He was a Zionist before it became popular.  " Prince Eugene of Savoy brought him a large number of valuable Hebrew manuscripts from Turkey, which became the nucleus of the famous David Oppenheimer Library, now comprised in the Bodleian Library at Oxford.."

Connecting to the family of the Vilna Gaon of Lithuania is :Rabbi Moshe Rivkas who came to Vilna from Prague in the early 17th century.  During the Cossack massacres in 1655, Rivkas fled to Amsterdam, where he completed his commentary on the Shulkhan Arukh called Be-er Hagolah. 

Court Jews or Hofjuden were Jews who served as financial or other agents of rulers.  They advanced credit as tax-farmers and as organizers of commissariat in Central and Eastern Europe during the 17th and 18th centuries.  They were men of wealth and played an important role at court, especially in the period after the Peace of Westphalia in 1648.

Court Jews enjoyed special privileges;  were exempted from wearing the Jewish badge and could live anywhere, maintaining the necessary Jewish religious functionaries in their place of residence.  In other words, Rabbi Samson continued to function as a rabbi besides his financial obligations for the court.
                                                                       
Some court Jews met with disaster, such as Joseph Suss Oppenheim of Wurttemberg of SW Germany whose capital was Stuttgart (b: c1698-d: 1738) who died at age 40. He was a financier appointed by Carl Alexander of Wurttemberg as his finance minister in 1732.  He endeavored to consolidate the duchy's finances and free its ruler from dependence on grants from the estates.  His "modern" financial methods aroused much opposition and after the death of the duke in 1737,  he was accused of embezzling state finances and was hung at Stuttgart, nominally for having sexual relations with Christian women.  He refused to save his life by accepting baptism.  His career is the subject of many books, including the novel, Jew Suss by Lion Feuchtwanger.   Because of their position, they were influential in obtaining rights and privileges for other Jews and were men of great power in the Jewish community.  The office was sometimes hereditary.

"Although there was a ban on new settlement  for Jews in place until 1624, this was repeatedly circumvented through the granting of exceptions, to the point that a new cemetery was established in the Seegasse in 1582. Jews’ rights were further restricted in 1637, leading to the second expulsion of Vienna’s Jewish population in 1669/70 under Leopold I. The second Ottoman siege of Vienna in 1683 however led to Samuel Oppenheimer’s (1630-1703) appointment as a financier to the court; he was also responsible for the restoration of the cemetery.  Oppenheimer was able to help Samson Wertheimer from Worms to come to Vienna in 1684.  Wertheimer was later named Court Jew, but he could not perform his duties as a Rabbi in Vienna and therefore left for Eisenstadt, part of the Siebengemeinden, where Jews were welcomed under Paul I, 1st Prince Esterházy of Galántha."   updated 12/20/15 from Wikipedia.  

Lob Jehuda Efraim Sinzheim was born c 1675-1680 in Vienna, Austria and died June 4, 1744. He was the son of Haim and Rebecca Sinzheim.   He became the Court Purveyor of Mainz, Germany and the Court Jew of Vienna.  Some of the Sinzheim descendants follow:
                                                                                 
Rabbi Joseph David Sinzheim (November 16, 1745-November 11, 1812) was from France and was the Rabbi of Strasbourg.  Strasbourg is " the capital city of the Alsace region in northeastern France. 
                                                                            

Rabbi Joseph David Sinzheim , the most well-known Sinzheim

He was born in Trier, Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany said one source and died in Paris.  His father was Rabbi Isaac Abraham Sinzheim b: c1700 and mother was Esther, daughter of Joseph Abterodel.  Rabbi Isaac was the rabbi at Edencoben, Trier, Niedemai.   Strasbourg is the seat of the European Parliament and sits near the German border, with culture and architecture blending German and French influences."   He belonged to the Assembly of Notables and was president of the Great Sanhedrin in 1807.  Napoleon appointed him chief rabbi of the Central Consistory on its inception.  Sinzheim was the author of Yad David, an unfinished piece that was on parts of the Babylonian Talmud. Bella Sinzheim (1725-Sept. 4, 1789)  nee Hahn had married Simon Isak Sinzheim in Vienna, Austria.  She was the daughter of Amschel Salomon Hahn.  Isac Low Sinzheim was born in 1749 in Vienna, Austria.  He was the son of Raphael Simzheim and wife Ghele.
                                                                           

Forced clothing worn by German Jews of 13th century

 Jewish settlement here goes back to the Dark Ages and was first protected by the lords and clergy.  In the First Crusade of 1096, the Jewish quarter was burned and many Jews were killed.  At the beginning of the 12th century, the Jews received protection as "serfs" of the emperor.  Their position worsened by the 13th and 14th centuries.  Many were ferociously massacred in 1349, and in 1388 the new community was expelled.  Resettlement only started again in 1771, with Rabbi David Sintzheim.  Of course, WWII depleted the city of Jews by the extermination camps.

Update 12/20/15  Finding myself and family matching the surname Rivlin as 5th cousins, which is the name of the President Reuven Rivlin of Israel, I find his history goes back to Rabbi Yosef of Ovan who lived in Vienna around 1550 and then was exiled to Prague.  Somehow we must have had ancestors who met during this period as well.

"The "Judenturm" at Vienna.(From an old print.) 1554
                                                                           
A word on Vienna's Jews: Vienna was the city of Hitler's birth in 1889.  He died at the end of WWII in 1945.   The capital of Austria was Vienna and Jews had been living there at the beginning of the 10th century, the same time when Jews had arrived in Worms, Germany.  In Vienna they received a special living quarter near the ducal palace and were allowed to get houses elsewhere in the city.  The center was famous for its scholarship.  In the 13th century, life had deteriorated under pressure from the burghers, and a ghetto was created for them.  In 1406, the Jewish quarter was burnt, and in 1421, the Jews were killed or expelled as the result of a Ritual Murder accusation (Wiener Geserah).

  Jews lived there during the 16th century, and a community was again formed at the beginning of the 17th century, maintaining trade connections with Poland, Italy and Turkey, but they were again banished in 1670 with Samuel Oppenheimer being the first to return.   When that happened, many went to Moravia.  Rabbi Samson and his entouraage were exempt from the expulsion, probably for financial reasons.   Other Jews returned slowly under special license after 1675, but no synagogue could be built until 1826.  They participated in the 1848 revolution  and finally received equal rights in 1867.  

Many were prominent in the political, economic, cultural and scholastic life of the city in the 19th-20th centuries.  Anti-Semitism began to spread from the 1880s, the year the first aliyah was made to Palestine.  The anti-Semitic attacks were under the leadership of Karl Lueger. 
                                                                               

 Theodor Herzl (1860-1904)  was starting Zionism then and he was from Vienna. He was the founder of political Zionism and was born in Budapest but studied in Vienna from 1878 to 1884.  From 1891 to 1895 he was a Paris correspondent for the Vienna Neue Freie Presse and became very interested in the Jewish problem.  He first advocated assimilation, but saw that was a bad idea.  It was the Dreyfus trial that caused him to conclude that his zionistic idea of returning to Eretz Yisrael was the only way to go.   The Dreyfous/fus family was also from Trier (Treves), France.  and belonged to the Alsatian branch of the Treves family.  
                                                                           

A later Moshe Wertheimer (1878-1944) from Hungary,  66 years old at death.  The 2nd world war did not end until May 8, 1945.

Moshe Zvi Mor Wertheimer was born circa 1878, at birth place, to Marton (Mordechai) Wertheimer (Vertheimer)and Miriam Lea, Maria Wertheimer (born Herskovits, Hershkovitz Halevi). Marton was born on 10/1/1855 other source 1854, in Gelse, Szabolcs county, Hungary. Moshe had 3 brothers: Dezso David Yehuda Wertheimer (Verthaimer) and 2 other siblings. Moshe married Esther, Ester, Lea Wertheimer (born Fisher). Esther was born in 1885, in Slatina, Slotino. Her occupation was Merchant. They had 10 children: Ytzchak Eisik Wertheimer, Shmuel Wertheimer and 8 other children. Another Moshe Wertheimer was "Moshe Wertheimer, 1893 - 1969" Moshe Wertheimer was born in 1893, to Shlomo Aaron Wertheimer and Golda Lea Wertheimer (born Reiseman). Shlomo was born in 1866, in Pezinok, Hungary. Golda Reiseman was born in Jerusalem. Moshe had 10 siblings: Rivka Wertheimer, Frida Gittel Wertheimer and 8 other siblings. Moshe married Fruma Wertheimer (born Zilbiger Wertheimer). Fruma was born on October 24 1893. They had 7 children: Abraham Joseph Wertheimer and 6 other children. Moshe passed away in 1969, at age 75 .

During WWI, Jewish refugees came into Austria and Vienna from Galicia, Hungary and Bukovina, swelling their Jewish population.  At this time there were 17 major synagogues in Vienna of which one was Sephardi.  They also had a rabbinical seminary, a Jewish museum, a school network and other institutions.  There were 180,000 Jews in Vienna before the Nazi invasion of 1938, when a ferocious persecution immediately began.  About 1/3 of the Jews were able to emigrate.  All the rest were deported to extermination camps.  
                                                                            

Jews of Hungary when they were rounded up to be sent to extermination camps

After the war in 1945, survivors from Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia went to Vienna.  The Jewish population in 1991 was 6,000.  

Update: 7/11/17 
OPPENHEIM from Jewish Virtual Libary  Needed Background History http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0015_0_15132.html

"OPPENHEIM, town in Germany. Jews are first mentioned there in the tax register of 1241, according to which they were obliged to pay the emperor an annual tax of 15 marks. The Jews of the town, legally the property of the emperor, were placed under the protection of the officers in charge of the local fortress, to whom they paid their taxes. They also paid a house tax to the archbishop of Mainz. *Rudolf of Hapsburg and other kings gave letters of credit to various noblemen which were to be defrayed from the taxes paid by the Jews of Oppenheim; at times, they also leased these taxes. The burden of their taxes appears to have caused several Jews of Oppenheim to join the group that fled from the Rhineland and, under the leadership of *Meir b. Baruch of Rothenburg, attempted to emigrate to Eretz Israel (1285). At the end of July 1349, during the persecutions that followed the *Black Death, most of the Jews of Oppenheim were murdered, while others chose martyrdom (*kiddush ha-Shem) and burned themselves to death in order to escape forced conversion at the hands of the mob. Among the martyrs was the rabbi Joel ha-Kohen.

Some time later the community was reestablished. After 1400 the right of residence was made renewable at the end of every six years, and the amount of taxes to be paid was fixed. In 1422 a plot by two Christians to kill the Jews of the town was frustrated by the municipal council. Certain protection fees and "gifts" that the Jews of Oppenheim were compelled to pay weighed upon them so heavily that despite the additional support of such communities as Worms, Mainz, and Frankfurt, Oppenheim Jewry could not meet their payments and were therefore penalized (1444). In 1456, R. Seligmann Bing (or R. Seligmann Oppenheim) attempted to establish a union of the communities of the Upper Rhine, but because of community opposition and that of R. Israel Isserlein (c. 1390–1460), the project was abandoned.

The community suffered during the wars of Louis XIV, and by 1674 only three families remained in the town. By 1722 the number had grown to eight. Many Oppenheim Jews settled in Frankfurt and other south German cities, where they were known as "Oppenheim" or "Oppenheimer," and the name became widespread. The community numbered 20 families in 1807; 257 in 1872; 189 in 1880; and 56 in 1933. Of the 17 Jews who remained during World War II, 16 were deported. In 1970 no Jews lived in Oppenheim. A memorial plaque commemorates the destroyed synagogue and the Oppenheim Jews who were victims of the Holocaust. The municipality organized two meetings of "Oppenheims" and "Oppenheimers" in 2000 and 2003."

BIBLIOGRAPHY:

FJW, 405; P. Lazarus, in: ZGJD, 5 (1934), 200–4; Germania Judaica, 1 (1963), 255–6; 2 (1968), 629–32; E.L. Rapp and O. Boecher, in: Festschrift 1200 Jahre Oppenheim (1965), 91–105. ADD. BIBLIOGRAPHY: P. Arnsberg, Die juedischen Gemeinden in Hessen. Volume 1: Anfang, Untergang, Neubeginn, vol. 2 (1971), 180–87; Germania Judaica, vol. 3. 1350–1514 (1987), 1068–76; F.-J. Ziwes, Studien zur Geschichte der Juden im mittleren Rheingebiet waehrend des hohen und spaeten Mittelalters (Forschungen zur Geschichte der Juden. Abteilung A, Abhandlungen, vol. 1) (1995).

[Paul Lazarus /

Zvi Avneri /

Larissa Daemmig (2nd ed.)]

Resource: Halpern & Branches Group on Family Tree DNA; leaders, Ziegleman and Aaronson.
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leopold_I,_Holy_Roman_Emperor
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~prohel/names/oppenheimer/sam_oppenheimer.html
http://freepages.genealogy.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~prohel/names/wertheimer/wertheimer.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_National_Fund
http://goldfoot_genealogy.blogspot.com/2013/09/connections-to-king-david-rashi-isaac.html
Geni.com tree for Sinzheim managed by R. Randol Schoenberg
Update: 7/27/15
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salomon_Oppenheim
//en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_Vienna
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rabbis