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On March 19, 1994, a Jewish family reunion took place in Givat Haim, a kibbutz situated midway between Tel Aviv and Haifa. Such meetings are hardly unique among Jews these days—a few weeks earlier, 85 members of the Rothschild family, all descendants of Mayer Amshel (1743-1812), had assembled in Frankfurt—but neither are they all that frequent. The reason is not far to seek. The major migrations in modern Jewish history have left few genealogical records to be traced, and the catastrophe that befell European Jewry in this century destroyed virtually all that remained. Although the Museum of the Diaspora in Tel Aviv regularly receives communications from individuals attempting to document that they are the direct descendants of King David, close inspection invariably reveals one or more missing links. In other cases, the family name is so common that research is virtually impossible. (There are about a hundred Rothschilds, not to mention Epsteins and Shapiros, in the Tel Aviv telephone directory alone.) Few Ashkenazi families can trace their origins back further than two or three generations with any precision.

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