Data from over 61,000 tombstones in Jewish cemeteries in Turkey is now available in great detail at a new website
https://jewishturkstones.tau.ac.il/

It is a project of Tel Aviv University in memory of the late historian Bernard Lewis. 

Jeff Malka
https://www.SephardicGen.com

Articles from Jewish newspapers in Hebrew, Russian, English and Yiddish in relation to Jewish Chislavichi an Monastyrshchina of Mogilev gubernia were added to their websites and can be found at http://shl2gur.tripod.com/Chislavichi/Chislavichi_Bibliography.htm 
and http://shl2gur.tripod.com/Monastyrshchina/Library-Monastyrshchina.htm

Although my name is Kaplan, I was told by my older brother that we are not Cohenim. My Y-chromosome dna testing showed that I belong to Haplogroup G (M201). How can I find out which group I belong to?
Leonard Kaplan

VM82913

 

In Russian:

 

Состоялось в городе Лублин 10-го (22-го) мая 1871 года в час по полудни явились евреи Тобеяш (возможно) Либерман, (не ясно) 39-и лет и Яков Дизекман, работник 51-го года, оба жители города Люблин и объявили, йто вчера, в 6 часов вечера в городе Люблин, в доме под номером 638, родилось первое дитя мужского пола от родителей Гирши Вайсблеха ( не ясно) и Витли супругов Вайсблех, жителей города Люблин.  По настоящему удостоверяю о рождении ребенка.  Акт сей присутствующим прочитан и ими подписан.

Подпись Подпись Подпись Подпись

 

Translated into English:

 

Held in the city of Dublin on the 10th (22nd) May 1871, at one o'clock in the afternoon, the Jews Tobeiash (possibly) Lieberman, (not clear) 39 years old and Jacob Dizekman, a 51-year-old worker, both residents of Lublin and announced that yesterday at 6 o’clock in the evening in the city of Lublin, in house number 638, the first male child was born from the parents of Hirsch Weisblech (not clear) and Witley spouses Weisblech, residents of the city of Lublin. I hereby certify the birth of the child. This act has been read and signed by those present.

Signature Signature Signature Signature

This is amazing. I found a family transfer on my very first try!! Thanks so much for this information as it gave me the name of the town where my grandfather grew up and also, for future research, a possible spelling of the family's last name.
Hallie Metzger, hallie.metzger@...

I think I can be of asssitance here.  

יצאה נשמתה בטהרה

ינ"ב

Her soul left purified [ on the date] >

Irina,

Thank you that is very helpful and not easily searchable information, so I appreciate the expertise.

One final question.  This particular headstone says "Esther Elyevna" which I have learned is the female patrynomic for Esther daughter of Eli?  Or is this possibly understood as Esther the Levite or Esther the Levi?
I am not sure how Russian headstones addressed this common Hebrew custom of calling out the "tribe" on the headstone.

Best regards,

Steve

I think we have to be careful comparing results of testing companies. Unless you test most of your cousins with all the companies, there's no way of knowing which is better. You certainly can not just go by which turns up more documentable cousins. There are all sorts of reasons why someone might turn up as a cousin without you really having a clue as to how they relate. Endogamy is one, but just the fact that surnames churn over frequently, especially with women upon marriage makes it hard to even identify someone with a branch you already know of. Also, adoptions, informal and formal. I'm also discovering that a significant number of men on my tree (several percent)  especially those who were about 30 in the 1950's or early 1960's, had children out of marriage. Also, at least in one case, relatives back in Poland converted to Catholicism in the 1900's (making them unrecognizable as relatives just by given names and surnames...except that their names now were very Polish looking, so that clued me in....). 

Just as anecdote, I did discover that a 4th cousin of my father was a known client of his! They had a laugh over that. But that's the only case in my tree. Though I do see some endogamy among relatives, I haven't see any with my direct ancestors.  And though one test long ago before some chip changes and algorithm changes, my parents showed as cousins, I don't think they do any longer. Considering my genealogical details, it seems very unlikely that they are closer than 6th cousins, but I'd guess 7-10 is more likely to be correct for them and most Ashkenazim. For the few with documentable distant rabbinic lines, I can see that a few 15th cousins married, but they may very well have cousinhoods that are closer than the ones I can document. 

Steve Bloom
Central Virginia

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Deanna M. Levinsky, Long Island, NY

The Baal Shem Tov's only daughters name was Udel.

My mother (born in Ukraine around 1907) said her Hebrew name was Rivka Udel.  She was one of 4 Rivka's of about the same age named after an ancestor, whom we know about, but I don't know where the Udel came from and unfortunately never asked....  Her official papers in the US used her new American name of Reva, no middle name.

Trudy Greener, Jerusalem

Art. thanks for offering to look things up. I don't know what information is available, but I'd appreciate it if you could try and find when Rubin FELD (my uncle) entered Paris from Warsaw. His sibs all left but he stayed behind until his mother  (my grandmother Henia FELD) passed away, and it would help me with the timeline of when she died. It would probably be in the 1930s though it could conceivably be late 1920s.
TIA.
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Helen Gardner

ancestral names, all from Poland, mostly Warsaw

AJGENGOLD/EIGENGOLD, BERCHOJER, BLANK, BIALOGORA, BLUMBERG, CHMIELNICKI, FELD, FERNEBOK/FERNSBUN, EDELMAN, FRYDMAN, GELDTRUNK, GURIN, ISSAKOWICH, LAKS, LERMAN, MALIS, MENDER/MONDER, MLYNARZ/MILLER, PODGORER/PODGORSKI, POPOWER, RAUTARBER/ROTGERBERG, RASTENBERG, POSSIBLY PRESSEIZEN

The Israel State Archives (https://www.archives.gov.il/en) has arrival records of the Immigration Department of the Palestine Zionist Executive. These are in Hebrew and arranged by month and year but aren't searchable by name. For example, the 1923 records for ships arriving at Jaffa and Haifa are at
 https://www.archives.gov.il/en/archives/#/Archive/0b071706800386c1/File/0b071706809d4c5b
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My grandmother was Udele AJGENGOLD.
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Helen Gardner

ancestral names, all from Poland, mostly Warsaw

AJGENGOLD/EIGENGOLD, BERCHOJER, BLANK, BIALOGORA, BLUMBERG, CHMIELNICKI, FELD, FERNEBOK/FERNSBUN, EDELMAN, FRYDMAN, GELDTRUNK, GURIN, ISSAKOWICH, LAKS, LERMAN, MALIS, MENDER/MONDER, MLYNARZ/MILLER, PODGORER/PODGORSKI, POPOWER, RAUTARBER/ROTGERBERG, RASTENBERG, POSSIBLY PRESSEIZEN

Your relatives may have left from Libau, now Liepaja, Latvia, a port near Riga. The Wilson Line carried passengers from Libau to Hull as well as from Scandinavia. Libau was a Baltic port that played a major role in emigration from the Russian Empire and during the early years after the Russian Revolution. 
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Search for his obituary in the Jewish newspaper for the town in the USA where he lived - I found one for a relative who also had emigrated to Israel.    
I also found him in 'US Passport Applications', and  "Reports of Deaths of US Citizens Abroad' -- both of those collections on Ancestry, but ? might also be available via familysearch.  

I don't think there is any specifically genealogical organization analogous to the Daughters of the American Revolution, but maybe now is the time to start one in memory of these brave souls.  Meanwhile you could check with the Abraham Lincoln Brigage Archives https://alba-valb.org/  re this specific person. Otherwise it is an exercise in US Jewish genealogy.

since Udi appears as a kinui for Yehuda, I could understand Udel also as a kinui for Yehuda > Yudel > Udel;