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Together with our guides the participants make 120 steps to the history of our Jewish ancestors. It is an excellent opportunity to visit the places where our families once lived. The group visits Eretz Israel during the second Temple destruction, then moves to Babylon, Spain, Germany, Poland and Russian Empire.
The tour takes place at realistic decorations which help participants to feel the epoch they are moving through.
After the journey to the family history every participant receives a certificate on the origins of the family name.
The certificate contains information on the meaning and the origin of the family name and on where the family members resided during the last 200 years.
Often Am haZikaron Institute researchers attach to the certificates references and historical documents about the members of the participants’ family.
Among these documents are testimonies on family members perished in the Holocaust, documents on relatives who immigrated to the US, information on famous members of the participants’ clans and other information on the family history.
After the seminar The Am haZikaron researchers continue to support participants in finding more facts about their family history.
Family history research is an exciting adventure!
Who knows, maybe your ancestry goes back to the legendary King David...
Generations Book
“The Generations” is a unique book that reinforces the Jewish identity of the reader by reestablishing the feeling of continuity of generations by following their history through ages. This approach seems especially appropriate for the target audience of the young people, many of whom face the question of their self-identity.
The book starts by pointing out the rarely recognized fact that majority of the modern Jews have explicit family connection to the times of the TaNaCh. This is done by mentioning the genealogical trees of the more than 25 wide-spread Jewish clans tracing their ancestry to King David and explains that according to genealogists’ estimates not less than 400.000 Jews living today are direct descendants of King David.
Then the book succeeds in tracing the story of Jewish generations from David’s times to today in a way that seemingly was never done before: it tells what happened to concrete Jewish families through ages. Thus a personal connection to the story of our People is established via the family connection by stressing and making concrete the fact that the events of the Jewish history are what happened to the actual ancestors of the reader. Thus the reader is left with the feeling of belonging to the long history of the Jewish people.
The book is distinguished by extremely high quality of the presented information. A vast amount of information has been condensed on less than 60 pages in such a way that the reader will find the reading both easy and enjoyable. Large amount of ingeniously chosen illustrations helps to get the feeling of different historical epochs that were traversed by our People during its long history. The book is full with interesting historical facts, brilliantly chosen Hasidic stories and sayings by prominent Jews that will make the reader proud again of the wisdom of the Jewish People.
“The Generations”, originally composed for Russian-speaking audience, includes a rather wide exposition of the history of Jews of the Russian empire. This is fortunate for the English-speaking audience as well, since the roots are mostly common - majority of American Jews have origins on the territory of the former Russian empire. The English edition of the book will include additional materials of interest to American Jewry. This includes the description of the waves of emigration from the territory of the former Russian empire to the U.S and how the new immigrants from different Jewish shtetles found their way to recreate Jewish culture and traditions in the new environment.
The book has already proved to be very popular with the Russian-speaking participants of the Birthright program. Its success with the English-speaking participants is likely to be even higher and will undoubtedly constitute a valuable gift to them. The roots of this part of the modern Jewry were often cut at the immigration, which created a gap in the knowledge of the roots that demands to be filled.
“The Generations” makes the reader reconsider the travel to Israel as the given opportunity to visit the Land of their ancestor and realize that it is all thanks to the chain of the generations to which their belong and which continuation is now in their hands.
