Rivka Goldblatt of Manchester, England, is a professional genealogist, meaning she spends a lot of time studying her own and other people’s family trees, and even getting paid to do it

Getting Started in Mishpachology

Rivka was bitten by the genealogy bug early in life, at age 15, when she started asking around in her own family to find out who her great-grandparents were and more details about her ancestors’ lives. Her family couldn’t understand her obsession, which has only grown since then.

Why does Mrs. Goldblatt find genealogy so fascinating when lots of other people might just yawn?

“The funny truth is that I’m not good at names,” she says. “I focus more on the family stories. When people talk about family trees, they aren’t just referring to the names on the tree, they’re talking about those stories. I call it ‘mishpachology.’”

Family trees don’t reveal much about how people lived. “Most documents say the what and the how and the where and the when, but don’t actually say the why,” she says.

While a family tree might not seem fascinating at first, that why can be utterly fascinating. “A lot of family stories can be found by looking at a family tree, where they lived and when, where they traveled and when. That’s really the family story.”

Long-Ago Detective Work

There are a vast range of documents Mrs. Goldblatt uses to research those “what and how and where and when” questions: local birth certificates and death certificates, immigration records, passport applications, passenger records from ship lines, old family photos, and many more. Even mohelim, in her experience, usually keep records — which may be stored in their descendants’ basements for generations. Her quests for information have taken her deep into Manchester’s city archives and put her in touch with archivists and historians in other cities and countries.

Being able to read handwriting from long ago is very helpful. Even the handwritten notes from long-ago shul meetings can reveal important information such as how active a person was in the local Jewish community — and whether they paid their dues on time, as in the case of one client’s family member.

“We didn’t have a lot of information about him,” she says, but she found a similar name in a shul’s account books. “He was a shul member and missed his payment. We knew that this person had moved to Wales around the year 1907. And most people who missed their dues to the shul came up again and again. It’s usually the same people who didn’t pay. But he didn’t come up anywhere else, and the year matched, so I wondered: Maybe he moved to Wales that year and forgot to cancel his membership. They sent him a letter and he paid it off and he probably canceled his membership... so that would fit.”