Dear Genners,

I would like to hear many opinions of what, if anything, is the correct way
to handle my current situation.

Yankel Leib had 3 wives and children with each one. Those childen are half
siblings because they share the same father.

I am related through the 3rd wife, Rachel Leah. Am I considered a
step-cousin or a half-cousin to wife 3 children? wife 1 and wife 2
children?

Do I include them in my family tree program? or is that a personal choice.

Thank you for your thoughts

I also have another family that has step - half - and whole siblings. Do
they belong in the family tree?

Trudy Barch, Chicagoland

I've found some incredibly interesting things by including people
ranging far and wide. The other day I encountered a last name that
sounded familiar, but not through my family, and realized it was part of
the name of a rabbi whose portrait I'd purchased some years ago. I'd
seen the painting in a gallery and it spoke deeply to me, so even though
the topic isn't something I'd ordinarily have sought to collect, I had
to have it, and it never fails to move me when I look at it, which I do
often. A quick Google search that produced a photo proved I was looking
at the same name - and I learned that this same person was actually my
12th cousin (the Rabbi Yekutiel Yehudah Halberstam). It turns out he
was quite prominent, and clearly had a very strong mystical presence
about him. I just have to laugh now when I think about how many people
have asked me if he was an ancestor upon seeing the portrait to whom I
replied in the negative.

Wendy Hoechstetter
Mill Valley, CA

Dear Trudy,
Everything's a personal choice, even whether to include your own mother
in the tree. It depends on what you wish to document, and who's
intended to read it.

You're related to anyone with whom you share an ancestor. So if Yankel
was your ancestor *and* someone else's, you and the someone-else are
cousins. No "step" about it.

If Rachel Leah had been married before, and you were descended >from one
of the children of her first marriage, you'd be a step-cousin (or
step-something) to the children of Yankel >from *his* previous
marriage(s), because you wouldn't have a common ancestor.

Imagine we're a stereotypical Hollywood couple, and in our house there
children known variously as yours, mine and ours. Yours are one
anothers' plain-old brothers and sisters; same for mine with one
another, same for ours with one another.

Yours and ours are each others' half-siblings, because all of them have
you as a parent, but they have only one common parent. Same for mine
and ours, with me as the common parent.

The only step-relationships are between yours and mine, because they
have no parents in common.

Now ask: what story would I like to tell? The family tree file is
merely a means to the greater end, which is to write the story of your
family and how it got that way.

Depending on where your people lived, it might simply be efficient to
enter everybody who appears on the radar. In some old-country places,
the term "not related" should always be followed by "yet."

Best,
Roger Lustig
Princeton, NJ USA

Trudy Barch wrote:

[...]
I am related through the 3rd wife, Rachel Leah. Am I considered a
step-cousin or a half-cousin to wife 3 children? wife 1 and wife 2
children?

Do I include them in my family tree program?
or is that a personal choice.
[...]
I also have another family that has step - half - and whole siblings.
Do they belong in the family tree?

What one puts in a tree is personal choice.

Including not-related-by-blood connections may explain some events.

For instance, my grandfather was shown in the UK1901 census as a
visitor in a household. Knowledge of his extended family meant I knew
that another visitor (with a different surname) in the same household
was his step-sister; he was clearly there as travelling
escort/chaperone while she visted the family of the man she would
later marry.

Cecilia Nyleve

Trudy Barch wrote on 23 okt 2012 in soc.genealogy.jewish:

I would like to hear many opinions of what, if anything, is the
correct way to handle my current situation.

Yankel Leib had 3 wives and children with each one. Those childen
are half siblings because they share the same father.

I am related through the 3rd wife, Rachel Leah. Am I considered a
step-cousin or a half-cousin to wife 3 children? wife 1 and wife 2
children?

Do I include them in my family tree program? or is that a personal
choice.

...

I also have another family that has step - half - and whole siblings.
Do they belong in the family tree?

The whole world belongs to your family tree.

If you include them is up to personal preferences,
keeping your tree lean could be yours.

For me, people having a story or image is an incentive to include them,
even if they surpass my personal boundary of "twice removed".

Over here, were Jewish ansestrial trees often collide by arythmetically
necessary cosanguinity, even expectance of such collision not yet proven,
could be my reason for inclusion.

--
Evertjan Hannivoort.
The Netherlands.
(Please change the x'es to dots in my emailaddress)
Visit: <http://www.synagoge-enschede.nl/>

Hi Trudy,

For me, the general rule is to include all blood relatives, their
spouses/partners, and their legally adopted children.

You are a full relative to all of Yankel Leib and Rachel Leah's common
issue. You would also be a full relative to Rachel Leah's children >from any
other husband (should there have been any).

"Step" means there is no blood relationship. For example, Yankel Leib's
children >from the 2 previous marriages would be step relatives. This is most
common today when too divorced people with their own respective children get
married. Those children >from totally different parents are step-siblings.

"Half" means just that - half of the "expected" number of parents are in
common. So Yankel Leib's children >from wife 1 or 2 are step-siblings of his
children with Rachel Leah, because they only have one parent (and not two)
in common.

Meron LAVIE

In a message dated 10/22/2012 7:52:39 P.M. Eastern Daylight Time,
cousintrudy@... writes:
I would like to hear many opinions of what, if anything, is the correct way
to handle my current situation. .... Do I include them in my family tree
program? or is that a personal choice.
===

My attitude is it is your tree and your hobby and you do it the way you
feel is correct. There is no right and wrong in this situation because this
is your personal effort and you do it how you like.

You take your own tree and research as far and as wide as you want to.

Myself I really only like to look at direct bloodlines but my brother is
doing in-laws of in-laws of in-laws. To me it seems too wide but if he is
interested in knowing about those people so be it and have fun doing the
research.

Allan Jordan

I agree with you 100 per cent. I have collected records and document
Notes on a wide basis and when I find that they are definitely related
I have all the records to add. I find that if I cast a wide net, I
Catch a lot of fish.

Diane Jacobs
Somerset, NJ