My Magyar Zsidók Family – דאָס פּינטעלע ייִד

I am דאָס פּינטעלע ייִד of my Magyar Zsidók family! And, I have a story to share about family secrets and the Jewish will to survive extreme anti-Semitism. This is a story very common among United States descendants of Hungarian Jews, as modern voices in search of ancestral Hungarian roots talk in unison. Hear me now, my children, and know your ancestral heritage.

The story begins and ends with my great-grandfather and great-grandmother. According to United States records, his Hungarian name was Niklos Farkas, and he arrived to Ellis Island on May 16, 1895, at the age of 19. When he left Ellis Island, to be a resident alien within the United States, he would now be known as Nick Farkasdi ז״ל. Her Hungarian name was Jewell Gancs, and she arrived to Ellis Island in 1895. When she left Ellis Island, her American name was now Julianna Gancs ז״ל. We have been unable to locate any records of their life in Hungary, prior to their presence on the shipping manifest transcripts. They arrived on the same ship together, so it is told within my family, and they married in November of 1903. Thus, they became the founding mother and father of our immigrant Jewish-American family.

Records of the Old World, Hungary, are lost to time as far as any of us within my father’s and my generations have been able to discern. And, my great-grand-fathers/mothers and grand-fathers/mothers and family members of these generations refused to teach the history and the native language to their children. They were determined to take this history to their graves with them, and have done so, sadly.

But, within every Jewish family there is the “pintele yid,” the Jewish spark, just waiting to ignite within the family. Somewhere, within somebody. It’s so common, that this Yiddish phrase for it took root within Jewish tradition. I always called it “the speaking of the blood” within me. And, all my life, I’ve been wrestling with this knowledge of my blood, but not being able to find records of our family in the Old country.

You see, my children, our family had a secret, and the secret was fear. The fear for survival as a family in an extremely anti-Semitic and growing more violent world. A world targeting Jews for persecution, for forced religious conversion to Catholicism and, for those who refused, by World War II, extermination as whole families and as a people.

My great-grandparents arrived to this nation as immigrants looking for a better way of life. A safer place to thrive in. They publicly passed themselves off as Catholics, but the name holds a secret to catch the attention of any Hungarian Jews in the United States to recognize. It was such a Jewish thang to do! To turn a family name into a place name upon immigrating to the United States. This is why we are called Farkasdi, a place name, rather than – properly – Farkas, as we should be so named.

Unfortunately, the families remaining in Hungary after their immigration to the United States paid the price for staying – as the spread of Nuremberg style laws took place across Europe in lead up to the rounding up and whole scale genocide of Jewish families throughout Europe, during World War II. I suspicion, though cannot fully confirm, that witnessing this occur to their families who were still across the sea, explains why they were so committedly tight lipped about family history, so unwilling to share the language and the remaining documents and artifacts that they’d brought with them from Europe. Sadly, these family heirlooms appear to be gone, and I will not be able to pass them along to you.

But, I am דאָס פּינטעלע ייִד , the Jewish spark, of our Magyar Zsidók family, so I know the truth. Because, the blood within our veins has been talking to me all my life – guiding me as I try to uncover what my fore- fathers and mothers hid, in fear, from us. Families want to survive and, in their age, they could not contemplate the possibility of the birth of a modern State of Israel. This would only happen after the violent and deadly expulsions from out of Europe and the Middle East/North Africa that would deposit most Jews back into our ancestral homeland.

A time arriving only after they immigrated to the United States, only to find that anti-Semitism was demonstrably just as rampant in some areas here, as well.

So, whether Conversos or Crypto-Jewish, our יהדות הונגריה Farkasdi family is אֲנוּסִים anusim, meaning “forced”. And under Jewish law, we are all entitled to Right of Return to our Jewish roots. I hope more of my family will do so. I hope you, my children, will follow in my Jewish footsteps. Especially, now that you know who we are – as a family, and as a people. Farkas means “wolf” and Farkasdi means “place of the wolf” or, more accurately, “place of this wolf family” in Magyarország földje / ארץ הונגריה “the land of Hungary” – now living in the United States.

This snapshot may be a good example of what we’re dealing as a family with trying to track our great-grandfather in Hungary. Was he 19 or 20 years of age? Was Niklós a middle name, a nickname, a mispell at Ellis Island (Miklós would be the correct Hungarian spelling), or is it his actual given name? Was he a son without a father, carrying his mother’s surname (more than one in Jewish databases), or did the family change their surname after his birth? Is it a combination of two or more of these questions presented here?

For all we know, we could be staring at him right here in this snapshot – and not even know it. I have studied it and many other records so very closely! Trying to account for every variable. If I only had a document that had my great-grandfather’s birthdate and name on it! The Ellis Island transcript, I am now rather convinced is suspect on it’s thoroughness to verify info of those coming through this U.S. port. And, first generation to the USA took that knowledge to the grave with them.

The only definitive statement carried through the generations is great-grandfather’s deliberate change of the family surname to a Hungarian place name – Farkas into Farkasdi after Ellis Island – signifying to all Hungarian-American Jews his Jewish family status, as was customary for Hungarian Jewish emigrants to the United States at that time.

I would like to know more about my great-grandfather’s life in Hungary, but it is likely I’ll never know. Unless, someone knows what my grandparents hid from us – the info I need to know the history before his emigration. I understand why they hid it. World War II and its attempted genocide of the Jewish people shook Jews to core all around this world! They had family back there, in Hungary, that they were supporting with USA income. Family survival in the face of world-wide anti-semitism is very strong among Hungarian Jews, as scholar after scholar has pointed out in their attempts to recover the past history.

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Update Sep 2020: Made another ancestry stab at trying to break the mystery of Farkas Niklos. Again, can find no record of either a Niklos or Miklos born in Hungary in 1876 (1874 through 1878, for that matter). … Back to the same wondering: “Did great-grandfather travel under a fake given name?” This is my suspicion, because relatives from Hungary used his and his wife’s name (rather than their own names) later to enter the United States, at about the time Niklos (now Nicholas) changed his surname, Farkas, into the place name, Farkasdi, that we now inherit.

Interestingly, even though I can find no Hungarian record of a Farkas Niklos being born in 1876 in Tokaj – more importantly, anywhere in Hungary/Slovakia – I have discovered a birth record that has no other kinds of records to follow it. Farkas David was born in 1876, in the very town that Niklos claims on the birth certificate of his daughter to be from. More, importantly, I have found no marriage record, no emigration record, and no death record for this Farkas David, whose parents are Lajos and Hani Schneider.

Hmmm, one wonders! Same guy?! Given the intensely anti-Semitic Christian Jew-hate politics of the time period, it makes a lot of sense some Jews travelling under a Christian name, rather than an obviously Jewish one, to successfully immigrate to the United States. Once here, it was typical of Hungarian Jews to keep the name they arrived with or, quite often, to change the name partially or entirely upon naturalization.

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Update Apr 2021: Well, this is interesting! 23andMe is getting good! I am of the G2a family of Jews. Without knowing that I’m Jewish, just by looking at the DNA, 23andMe determined that, out of 20 Magyar counties, I am either from Budapest or Békés. What is the relationship between these two specific counties? A high concentration of Jews settled in the area, of course! … Let’s see if they can narrow it down further, and choose correctly. 🙂 … Trivia question: Did you know that half the Arab Israelis tested genetically are also G2a?

The moral of this sharing is: Never judge a person by their skin color nor their looks. Judge a person on their behaviors, which will reveal their beliefs and their social identity!

Here’s an interesting debate on halogroup G, for the curious in our family – https://www.eupedia.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-28416.html – Is the high Jewish frequency of hg G representative of the pre-Arabic Levant?

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Update 2 Apr 2021: Oh, my! I have just discovered the Jewish equivalent of a genetic “holy grail”! No longer is it just stories from ancestors, without direct records from the Old World! I now have evidence that confirms and speaks for itself – even if I never find a record in Hungary of the Jewish community my family emigrated from.

I just narrowed down genetically what I’ve always known instinctually! We sons are G2a3b1 by Y haplogroup (descent by fathers). G2a originates in the Middle East (Iran to Israel – the Levant) around 5,000 years ago, and was migrated into European populations 1,500 to 2,500 years ago. The highest concentration of our Y parentage is on
Ibiza island, eastern Spanish coast (estimated 16% of the population, primarily Crypto-Jews).

We are Sephardic Jews! I knew it, knew it, knew it (even without direct proof)!!!

No wonder it was a Sephardic family in the islands that gave me the Jewish education that I needed, and was not given being born a secular unaffiliated Jew.

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Update 3 Apr 2021: This is a page on an Israeli web site. The 13th Century is the Ottoman Empire period. And by Farkas being established as a Jewish Hungarian surname prior to the Spanish and Portuguese inquisitions and expulsions, this does explain why Sephardi Jews knew to go to Eastern Europe (not just Middle East and North Africa), and explains why Sephardi Morrocan Judaism was the Judaism of the Ottoman Empire.

Not saying it was the Farkas families directly that did this, just that the Sephardi Jews had specific connections in the “Old World.”

https://dbs.anumuseum.org.il/skn/en/c6/e209845/Family_Name/FARKAS

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Update 4 Apr 2021: Okay, after a very exhaustive study of my paternal and maternal lineages, I have come to discover that I and my brothers are: (drum roll, please!)

As expected, Sephardi Jews coming from the indigenous families of the Levant – in paternal ancestry (what Dad gave us) and, SURPRISE, we are indigenous Sardinians in maternal ancestry (what Mom gave us).

And, the following would explain the Celtic looks of my Mom and, somewhat, me as Sardinians:

“According to historian Ettore Pais and archeologist Giovanni Ugas, the Corsi probably belonged to the Ligurian tribe. Similar was also the opinion of Seneca, who claimed that the Corsi from Corsica, where he had then been staying in exile, were of mixed origin, resulting from the continuous mingling of various ethnic groups of foreign origin, like the Ligures, the Greeks and the Iberians.” – Wiki, Corsi

So, in summary, I am – by my Dad and Mom – Sephardi Jewish *and* indigenous Sardinian. I’m speechless, for the moment!

Oh, and by the way, the prehistoric indigenous of Ireland were the Sardinians, who migrated over and settled the island. Then, the Celts arrived, wrote about them in lore, and replaced them as the people of Ireland, so the genetic studies demonstrate.

Can’t help but wonder the wild chances that we sons would have *two* rare haplogroups passed down into us. It trips the mind! It is deeply moving to know who your ancestral mothers and fathers actually are. What a sense of identity from this!

Update 4 afterthought: As I have fully learned yesterday, to truly understand yourself – you have to get to know the fathers and mothers before you. Not just the lived families around you and their stories. But, the fathers and mothers who gave you your individual haplogroups.

The way to achieve this is to take your raw DNA and get it analyzed for the Y-chromosone paternal and mitochondrial maternal haplogroups. They are the snippets of DNA that all your direct fathers and mothers before you have passed on to you throughout human history. And, at a biological level (rather than social identity level), this is who you fundamentally are – regardless the rest of the DNA conversation.

Everyone originates in Africa. But, with every long-term settling, unique haplogroups are formed in specific locations around this world. This is how certain haplogroups can be shown to originate in certain parts of the world as the indigenous of those areas.

With Jews, though, through so much intermarrying around the globe and outright assimilation of other peoples as Jews, Jews have numerous paternal haplogroups – G, J1, J2, E1b and, even, R1b in very small quantities. Same with maternal haplogroups of Jewish mothers (hence all the colors and looks of Jews around the world).

But, each of us as individuals – regardless of socialized identity – would benefit greatly by learning who our genetic fathers and mothers are, specifically where did they come from and where they settled to arrive to your birth. All other DNA is like gossip, compared to this (hence the percentages are always changing).

23andMe will give you your haplogroups, if you take their test. Or, there are private companies that will do the analysis. Or, if your good at utilizing open source scripts for analyzing raw DNA files, this will achieve the goal, too!

It is from here, obtaining the haplogroups passed down to you, by father and mother, that the real ancestry work begins. Getting to know your genetic parents, like you know your family’s genealogical trees.

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My name is יוסף צפניהו פרקשדי Joseph Tsefanyahu Farkasdi, also known by my pen name Tsefan Josef. I am the great-grandson of Farkas Niklós ז״ל – an immigrant to the United States from Hungary prior to the World Wars. My grandfather was still sending money back to Hungary during his lifetime. So, family was still living in Hungary during the Interwar period.

If you know anything about my family’s history that would be helpful to my search for a full family history – please, get in touch with me! I can be reached at ‘joseph_farkasdi’ on ancestry.com and at ‘Tsefan Josef’ on Facebook (message me). תודה רבה!

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A Jewish Historical Lesson Sidenote: What does it mean to be Jewish in the age of DNA testing? Is this a reliable way of determining Jewish ancestry/ethnicity?

As some well know who have taken DNA tests from companies like Ancestry and discovered small percentages of Ashkenazi, only to see that percentage altogether disappear in later test results, DNA testing is simply not a reliable way to claim or demonstrate Jewish ethnicity, unless you are relying upon a very specific paternal Y haplogroup that is passed down from father to son for this. (Only a few Jewish families can take this approach and, then, there is the community halacha aspect of legalizing who is a Jew, according to that community’s interpretation of Jewish halacha. But, back to the DNA…) There are two reasons for this.

The first reason is that, as the sampling size of DNA testing increases, it becomes possible to refine one’s DNA to very specific regions of countries. Ashkenazi families share the same halogroups as Arabs in the Levant region of the Middle East but, through various intermarriages and religious conversions, also share similarities with many regional areas in Europe. Sephardi and Mizrahi Jews follow the pattern in their areas of the world.

The second reason makes relying on DNA tests to establish Jewish identity terribly problematic. It is a historical fact that Jews are historically notorious for marrying outside the family and, even, assimilating whole tribes of people as members of the Jewish family. So, a high percentage in Ashkenazi in your DNA results only indicates your close connection to Jewish families that have been keeping the insular tradition of making marriages only among a specific group of Jewish families within Europe, and it says nothing more about Jewishness in general.

DNA testing is not a reliable general test to take for determining one’s Jewish ancestry/ethnicity connection. And, if you’re one of the lucky ones to watch your DNA results radically change over the years, as scientists continue to refine methods and increase the database size of DNA samples, losing the Ashkenazi in your DNA results shouldn’t be the slightest bit of concern for you, if you’re Jewish and of European descent. And this explanation below is the reason why:

In ancient Jewish concept, civil and religion are one and the same, thus there is only nationality to the people. Meaning, that what religious Jews call “conversion” these days, the ancients understood as assimilation – either by individual marriages or whole group additions into the people. To demonstrate the latter, in our BCE Jewish literature, there is a story about the assimilation of whole tribes of peoples into the Jewish people during the Exodus from Egypt. (Exodus 12:38, “A mixed crowd also went up with them, and livestock in great numbers, both flocks and herds.”) And, this follows with a story of conquesting and assimilating the peoples living in the lands of what would be known as the kingdoms of Israel and Judea. How do you become assimilated into the nation of Jews? Foreskin removal, of course, which places you under the covenant made with the national deity of Israel.

A little more closer to our Common Era (A.D.) time of history, we have more examples. For instance, let’s talk about the Jewish King Herod. He and his family were assimilated Jews, Arab Jews to be exact. Herod was born in the year 73 BCE to a family of Idumean “converts,” to use the modern word, to the way of life of the Jewish people. He eventually became the King of Judea during Roman occupation. What is most notable is how his family became Jews: John Hyrcanus engaged in a ethno-religious conquest during the Hasmonean years of 134 to 104 BCE, and forcibly made whole families of non-Jews be circumcised and added to the national population of Jews.

If a DNA test had been available back then, between Herod’s Idumean tribe and Israel’s Jews (and, later, Palestinian Jews), there would have been basically only very slight DNA differences. The results would have been 100% Middle East for both at that time in world history.

Yet again, we have another example. This time, with my very own ancestral Hungarian Jewish family, a modern example of assimilation is at play. In the 8th century CE, the Khazar Empire had established rule over the seven Magyar tribes – the future conquesters of what is now known as Hungary. During this period, this Turkish-Asian empire “converted” to Judaism en masse. This forced Judaization led to civil war within the empire, the Magyar-Qabar tribal movements westward, and their encounter with the Jewish families already well-established in the Carpathian basin since the 3rd century CE.

So, some Hungarian Jews (Magyar Zsidók) are directly Magyar in ethnic ancestry and are ethno-religiously Jewish, both at the same time. Thus, they are, even without Ashkenazi family connection, still just as authentically Jewish as any Ashkenazi family in Europe.

And, yet again, if we go look over at the continent of Africa, the same whole tribe assimilation into the Jewish people is how we have Ethiopian Jews in this world. Hello, the Beta Israel kingdom of Africa. Some of their kept rituals haven’t been practiced by most modern Jews for two thousand years.

What happened to my Ashkenazi DNA?

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What is identity? And, why does it have to be based on historical facts? Judaism or the Jewish ethno-religion (meaning its community of adherents) is based fully upon both myth and fact combined. And there is a lot blur in between! Who gets to decide which of the two is more valid? Is not a Jew someone who venerates and upholds Torah, regardless their historical background? The Torah itself is an intricate intertwining of national myth and Jewish history. Only legitimate Jewish communities get to decide who is Jewish and who is not. Would you agree? Or, not agree?