Racing Backward in Time
| October 20, 2010The black yarmulke resting comfortably on Matisyahu’s head stands out in the center of the hustle and bustle of midtown Manhattan and hints at his primary means of connecting with his heritage — hunching eagerly over an open Gemara struggling to penetrate its deepest sugyas. He returned to New York after spending several years in yeshivos in Eretz Yisrael which he insists is his real home — “where I learned to love Torah.” His quest to reconnect with his roots has led him to harmoniously pursue the pleasant ways of Torah life in the classic cultured tradition of Italian Jewry while immersing himself in the strange new foreign world of genetics.
Through his mastery of published scientific research and his regular contact with geneticists and genealogists he eventually became a project coordinator with Family Tree DNA a Houston–based company that contends its database of more than 300000 records qualifies it as the world’s largest firm offering genealogical DNA testing. Matisyahu is working to position himself as an active participant in a growing global network of Jewish genetic genealogists.
“It only takes a few ‘leaves’ — individuals — to see the outline of a ‘branch’ on the family tree. With more leaves more detailed smaller branches become visible. Soon we will have enough of these smaller branches to really envision the entire tree” says Matisyahu who is assisted by a network of researchers.
He is receiving backing from private supporters and followers of the research as well as from clients seeking assistance in tracing their own personal families and placing their branch in the greater Jewish family tree.
Our Genetic Makeup
Every cell of a person’s body contains a DNA signature made up of about 30000 individual genes. The DNA is most reliably extracted from blood samples such as in medical tests but most genealogical DNA tests are collected via the more convenient means of a sample of saliva swabbed from the inner cheek in a simple mail-order test kit. At Family Tree DNA starter test kits run from $159 to more than $800. And for those looking for more detailed and sophisticated results follow-up costs can run higher. In its sales literature the company says: “you should consider using a genetic test when you have a genealogical puzzle that cannot be solved with traditional records alone.”
A person who wants to take the self-test can take three swabs from the inside of the cheek spread out over a few hours and mail it back.
Each child receives a shuffled mix of genes about half from each parent. Small sections of DNA are always passed unshuffled and these are the sections that genealogists focus on. The most useful is Y-DNA present only in males and passed from father to son. A man’s Y-DNA closely resembles his father’s direct male ancestry even many generations back and he doesn’t get any of those particular genes from his mother’s father or other ancestors. Also useful in determining family trees is a substance called mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) which is passed on by mothers to all of their children male or female without mixing with the father’s genes. This enables DNA tracking of maternal lines.
Matisyahu’s test results didn’t come straight out and say “Jew of Sicilian origin.” He received a befuddling string of genetic data letters and numbers and a list of close genetic matches distant “cousins.”
“I realized that I had to study even more in order to interpret the data and do some networking to make it useful.”
Among his matches of “Ashkenazic” and Sicilian Jews was an individual whose mother insisted that their original family name was Kimchi and that they were originally from Spain. Matisyahu’s ears perked up at the mention of the family name of the great Radak Rav David Kimchi whose commentary on Neviim is found in almost all annotated editions of the Prophets.
“Although I thought that the chances were slim” he says “you have to follow every lead.”
Matisyahu then set out on an ambitious project: to track down as many members of the Kimchi family as possible and compare their genetic signatures to see if any of them match his own.
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