I started with Ancestry and later subscribed to MyHeritage. Sometimes, I'll find something on My Heritage that I didn't find on Ancestry (although it may have been there and I missed it). But there's not a big enough difference for me to keep MyHeritage if I only wanted to subscribe to one site. One thing about both of them that annoys the hell out of me is there constant alerts about matches they have found that are drawn from what they scraped from my own tree or from others who borrowed verbatim from my tree because they had some overlapping relatives. In this world of super-advanced algorithms, they should be able to do better

It is not considered appropriate to call attention to the conversion status of a Jew by using the Avinu (or Imeinu).  At this point in time, he/she is a Jew and the status should not be questioned.  He or she should just be ben/bat Avraham (and in/or v'Sarah if a mother's name is included).  My husband's shem kodesh is Yaakov ben Avraham.  One is not supposed to be able to tell whether it is Avraham Avinu or Avraham is/was his  biological  father's name.  BTW we have been married for over 50 years, and this has been his Hebrew name since we met.   
--
Sarah L Meyer
Georgetown TX
ANK(I)ER, BIGOS, KARMELEK, PERLSTADT, STOKFISZ, SZPIL(T)BAUM, Poland
BIRGARDOVSKY, EDELBERG, HITE (CHAIT), PERCHIK Russia (southern Ukraine) and some Latvia or Lithuania
https://www.sarahsgenies.com

The only Jacob Cohen Bessie born in Amsterdam between 1833 and 1852 was born 28 January 1847 in Amsterdam but died 2 years later. There were Cohen Bessies born elsewhere (e.g. Haarlem) but I haven't got the time to start looking in the archives there. 

Pablo, 

I think at the most you can tell that you do not know if these families are related...
I just found in my family book Lebedinskiy, who lived in Moldova, and I think I was on a wedding in that family. The close families to Lebedinsky were Shamis, Kogan.

Good and successful research,
Yefim

Hi Aviv, 

Everything Sylvia has said is right. My own experience has been that sometimes something is possible through personal contact with local officials in the Archives, especially if you are from the same family, even not directly at all, or with a not-official power of attorney for another person who can visit the Archives.  But it does not always work, it depends on the municipalities.

BRUSSELS is made up of BRUSSELS Center and 18 other municipalities, my past experience is limited to BRUSSELS Center, until the 1947 census. In some other municipalities everything has been denied to me, and yet searched people were from my family.

 Unconventional methods must then be used, for example the phone directory. I thus found 2 JAKUBOWICZ (only 2 probably because the directory doesn't necessarily mention everyone, especially people with only a mobile and no more landline) :

Charles JAKUBOWICZ, avenue François Sebrechts 56 / B14, 1081 BRUSSELS (KOEKELBERG), Tf +32. (0) 2.354.0217

Genia JAKUBOWICZ, avenue du Globe 41 / B46, 1190 BRUSSELS (FORÊT), Tf +32. (0) 2,203.1636. 

Perhaps you could start by asking those people, by letter or by phone, if they are descendants of known people of your family . . you might be once lucky, why not ?

Also try Facebook or Linked-In, and so on,  with these two names. Sometimes this has been proved as successful for me, so I'm then putting  a message on their page with hoping a response will ever come, sometimes months later (because we're no « friends » or not yet linked with each other. There's for example already one  Charles in BRUSSELS, I verified it. No Genia ! And then you go on as . .  a new Sherlock Holmes . .  

 Kind regards,

Etienne

Hi Jeri,
I would suggest using "GenoPro", very easy to use and easily downloadable from the internet. As far as I see from having using it for many years, I can reply to your questions as follows:

1. A program that lets me include every family member (siblings;
cousins; aunts and uncles; 1st, 2nd, etc. marriages; etc.) in one giant
family tree.

It does; virtually no limit to number of family members (the only limit might be your own ability to orientate yourself among a huge number of members)

2. A program that lets me enter birth, marriage, death info that is
printed right on the tree itself, so I don't have to refer to any other
documents.

It does; you also can enter many more personal details (from my experience, many more than you actually can know about each person)

3. A program that will let me print out this tree, even if it means
taping together a whole bunch of sheets, and will also allow me to make
the tree into a PDF file, so I can share it via email.

It does. If its size is large enough to exceed an A4/A3 paper sheet, you can save the tree as an image file and later print the whole tree/image on a plotter

4. A program that is a true family tree, not just sheets listing
people. (A cousin gave me a printout like that, and it's way too hard
to follow.)

It is. The visual aspect of your family tree is a true... tree. As you progressively build it you can re-arrange its aspect by modifying/moving people among it and maintaining the relative relationships

5. The program must be compatible with Windows 10.

It is. I use it on a Win10 PC.

All the best,
Davide

The language is Romanian written in cyrillic script. Same as in the Catagrafii found at the Iasi National Archives.

Luc Radu
Great Neck, NY

It may well be due to Spanish influences.  After the banishment of Jews from Spain, many went to Eastern Europe and many other parts of the World. In Spain under the Inquisition, in order to preserve the fiction that they had converted to Catholicism, Jewish families ate fish or milk meals on Friday nights.

We only had fried fish on Friday nights at home. I still miss it when we have something else.

Martyn Woolf

That's a really good question that I'm beginning to ask myself.  
 I don't like MH way of being unable to give a straight answer to the subscription rates.  That's because there's always an offer.  So hold out for them.  When offered a 5 year sub at the height of the Pandemic, I said I dont know if I'll live that long.  

I often want to reject info not because it's wrong, but because the info makes my tree so wide . I'm not interested in "my mother's great uncle's wife's aunt by marriage"  What I am interested in is more info about my grandfather's sibs.  And how I can view everything in my tree and someone else's tree if I have obtained permission to do so.  

I was very interested to see that your possibly Jewish grandfather's mother was named Apollonia.
I have a 7th great grandmother, Apollonia Israel, born in Bassenheim, Germany c. 1655.  The surname suggests her family was once Jewish, but I can't find evidence of that.  They seem to have been Catholics by the mid-17th century.   
Does anyone else have examples of a Jewish woman named Apollonia?

I have used Ancestry for a very long time and MH more recently. In truth I do not think MH adds very much and at my next renewal, I shall cancel. The problem that we all have is the plethora of sites, so that one does not know how to distinguish the advantages of this site from that site.

Martyn Woolf
London, UK

About two weeks ago I finally gave in and bought a Complete package. So far, no benefit and I am searching the web for ways of using it. When I search for information on a particular person, it gives me only facts, not the original document. I put my tree up at the start, it shows my tree, but the tree isn't connected to my DNA. I can find no 'contact us' on the website.

It makes a feature a 'letting me add large chunks of other peoples' trees' to my tree. I don't work that way, I want to confirm all the information. And they make a point of telling me the number of people I can add to me tree from this other person's tree.

Also, I was hoping that because so many Jewish people use My Heritage there were be more trees to work out my DNA links. But so far most of my 25% Ashkenazi heritage is reflected in 90+% of my DNA matches and almost no one has posted an extensive tree, ie, going back past 1900.

On the plus side, I have a zillion photos to colourise and a year's subscription is cheaper than a colourisation package.

Great program!  Will the conferences be recorded and available afterwards?  

right
and adding to that, he was a watchmaker indeed. 
and Szentes is bordering Nagy-geres

Jonas had a son Fulop who came to the US twice

A  person I knew named Rose had a Yiddish name Rifkeh. Another was named Raizel.
Perhaps Ruzzeh might be another version.
Eleanor Richmond

My Aunt was Ruchel in Yiddish for English Rose.
Judy Salomon
New Jersey

Searching for descendants of FANNIE SMITH  b. approx 1900 who married Samuel FRANK, FLORENCE SMITH  b. approx 1903 who married Hyman FRANK, and SIDNEY SMITH b. approx 1904 who married Fay  LISBERG.  These siblings were born in Lithuania and arrived in the Milwaukee area around 1904.  Many thanks. 
 
Eileen G. Kessner
Plano, TX
e.kessner1@...