Goldfoot Genealogy

 Nadene Goldfoot                                       

    Me:   Neanderthal 2.9%  found by 23&Me  After Neanderthal are the Cro Magnons- or homo sapiens.   Our DNA goes back 29,000 to 34,000 years.  Neanderthals lived " during the middle to late Pleistocene Epoch, about 400 000 to 40 000 years ago. Neanderthals lived in Eurasia with traces discovered as far north as present-day Belgium and south to the Mediterranean and southwest Asia. At 40,000 Neanderthals died out and at 29,000 to 34,000 to Cro Magnons lived.   This is why my paternal line only have 2.9%;   became a Cro-magnon with a little Neanderthal DNA.                       

                          Cro Magnons:  early Europeans   

                  A line of Native Americans with Q haplogroup
     Native Americans first arrived on the continent 12,000 years ago.  
Russians...yes, we were from Lithuania--Russia held many times  
                   Possible ancestor looked like this handsome guy                      

     Grandfather Nathan Abraham Goldfoot (August 5,1871-July 19, 1912)

Abraham was not a name we were privy to know about until genealogy research took place.  He had named his 3rd son, Abraham, who had died in infancy, though.  The Jewish custom of naming is for family who have died.  Rabbi Goldberg told me to look and see if we had an Abraham in the family. 

                     Rabbi Goldberg on left-the other, also a rabbi, was killed, too.  
He was connected to us and my helper from Jerusalem.  He was slaughtered in his synagogue during morning prayers later on, a horrible shock to me.  I hadn't even known--he hadn't told me---that he was a well-known rabbi.  

Our Nathan grew a beard because my father remembered sitting on his lap and playing with it.  Zayda (grandfather) died from an accident when Dad was 4 years old, so he really did remember.  

Our family line started with one man quite possibly born in Turkey of Central Asia who migrated to Mesopotamia who migrated to ancient Canaan some 4,000 years ago.  A descendant of his then remained on the land till 70 CE-about 2,,000 years ago only to be transferred to Rome, Italy, possibly as merchants originally or slaves after 70 CE.    From there the family finally wound up in Germany in around the year 1,000 CE, and then found they needed to leave and headed northwards, ending in Lithuania in the year 1321-1398, still part of the Dark Ages.  We had become part of the Ashkenazic Jews.  

We know these facts through genealogy with the modern help of places like ancestry.com;  and our own DNA testing, especially the Big Y test from Family Tree DNA (FTDNA), that shows our one and only male Goldfoot's Y haplogroup to be a rare QBZ67.  Q's are from places like Turkey.  My brother's test was Q-M242 , then Q-Y2200 which  is the predominant Y-DNA haplogroup among Native Americans and several peoples of Central Asia and Northern Siberia. Adele Canada is the project person at FTDNA for our line.  Wikipedia said, "Q-M378's subbranch Q-L245's subclades Q-Y2200 and Q-YP1035 are the only varieties of haplogroup Q that are found in Ashkenazi Jews. Citizen scientists found that some Sephardic Jews carry different subclades of Q-L245, including Q-BZ3900, Q-YP745, and Q-YP1237.."

So, a very long time ago, our line split off from the Native American line to become a line of Jews that must have hooked up in Mesopotamia. As far as Jews go, who are a very small group today as it is after the Holocaust killed 6 million of us being only 0.02% of the total world population, This line is one of the small ones of Jews.  

It is a part of the Halpern group, though. The Halpern group is a group on FTDNA of men related to the Halperns whose ancestors were many well-known rabbis of the day in Europe. The genealogy of many go back to King David of Israel (1010-970 BCE). Family lines of Wertheimer and Oppenheim/er are among those we connect with.                                                              

The nice thing for genealogists is that in order to sit on the high court, the Sanhedrin,  the 71 ordained scholars; rabbis who had to present their genealogy scrolls showing their connection to Rabbi Hillel of the 1st century CE  or King David so there have been a few that were able to  still exist today. 

 Interesting to me is that they didn't realize the power of DNA, expecting descendants of rabbis to produce rabbis who would be equally brilliant in their judgements.  For in the days of Hillel, rabbis held debates between each other on point of law
of Moses.  They even had debating partners and practiced debating. My son took debate in high school and went to state (Salem, Oregon) winning almost all their debates.    Hillel had 2 famous teachers, Shemaiah and Avtalyon which is like saying Harvard AND Yale.  Hillel even became president of the Sanhedrin.  Hillel and his debating partner, who was known to take Hillel's opposing side, was Shammai.  They were the last  of the pairs (Zugot) of scholars.  Hillel was well-known for his humility and tendency to leniency.  Usually Hillel was the one other rabbis followed.   

From Lithuania and before WWI, our grandfather, Nathan Abraham Goldfus, immigrated to England and changed his name from Goldfus to Goldfoot, and then from there to Dublin, Ireland seeking a new homeland lived for a short while with cousins who turned out to be the ancestors of Ian Goldfoot who I met a few years ago in Texas.  From Ireland, somehow Nathan moved on to the USA while his cousins immigrated to South Africa, a favored place for Lithuanian Jews since I found many  of our relatives there.

Nathan met and married another Lithuanian, Zlata Jermulowske,  in Idaho where they married in Boise.  They lived in a little mining town there of Council, Idaho for a short while.  After my uncle Charley was born, they rode the train to Portland, Oregon.                  

     Stanley with 1st wife Rebecca Finger and daughters in Israel , I met him in 1981 in the King David Hotel and at his home in Jerusalem.  He was still as tall and slim as he was in this earlier picture.  

When I made aliyah in 1980, the first thing I did was to look up Stanley Goldfoot (1914-2006) .  He was a pioneer, moving to Israel before 1948 and becoming the Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group whose leader was the famous Avraham Stern who went by Yair, (1907-1942).  In 1939-1940 he left the Irgun Tzeval Leumi, of which he had been a leader, because of its refusal to continue anti-British activities in Palestine during World War II.  He formed an underground organization later known as Lahame Herut Israel.  The British called it the Stern Gang which carried out acts of sabotage, etc.  They did attack the King David Hotel, as it happens--where I met Stanley much later on.  Stern was killed by the British police while being arrested...one of those affairs we have seen happen to Blacks in the states during arrests.  Wouldn't you know it, but Stanley had 2 daughters, no sons.                 

                       Ian on the right.  He was my age (1934-2022).  He also had daughters, no sons.  He had had a scholarship in track in Texas when younger.  He also ran in Israel in the Maccabi Games running the 100 meter race.  Ian Goldfoot and Stanley Goldfoot were 2nd cousins.   

Labels: Ashkenazi, Cro Magnon, dna, ian Goldfoot, lithuanian, Nathan Abraaham Goldfoot, Neanderthal, Rbbi Abraaham Goldberg, Sanhedrin, Sephardic, Stanley Goldfoot, Stern Group, Turkey