I only met my grandfather when I was like maybe 10 years old, and he is deceased now. My mom didn’t like him and hasn’t come up with any documentation on his Jewishness.
I’ve been told I can go one of three routes:
Obtains a letter from a recognized rabbi from a recognized Jewish community stating that your grandfather was Jewish (that is: by having been born to a Jewish mother or by his own conversion to Judaism). Letter must be written in the comunity/synagogue stationary, signed and stamped by the rabbi.
Letter from the local Hevra Kadish (Jewish Burial Society) stating that your grandfather is buried in the local Jewish cemetary (if it's the case).
If a rabbi didn't know your late grandfather or he was not buried in a Jewish cemetary, the rabbi can request any family documentation he finds necessary to prove your grandfather's Jewishness. It's his exclusive decision to sign or not that kind of document.
-1 I’ve obtained what I think is his Mother’s name and DOB from ancestry.com. I suppose if she is Jewish, then my grandfather is too, then I can make Aliyah.
-2 This route won’t work because he was born in a Christian cemetary. You may be thinking ‘are you sure he was jewish??’ - Well my mother has claimed he was anytime I asked about it… and his name sounds Jewish.
-3 I’ve found nothing so far on ancestry.com. If they were members of a synagogue then there’d be records. Where do I even start? He lived in Illinois so I could call the synagogues around there and see if he or his Mother were members. What if I don’t find this information? Isn’t there a master database of Jews and maybe my deceased grandfather or his mother are in it??
Any suggestions or things I haven’t considered yet?
You could try different synagogues. Presumably if he lived in a certain location (census records? Mailing address from old correspondence?) that would narrow down possible synagogues to try.
What are the rules about getting extremely old/dead people’s birth certificates, etc.? Would marriage certificate also contain names of parents?
There’s all the standard “trace my heritage” routes. I thought I read that you can search the Ellis Island databases, too, if that’s relevant. The Mormon site familysearch.org also has extensive collections of historical genealogy records, I used it to search a lot of my English ancestors.
Ancestry.com (with subscription) has turned up a lot. Surprisingly it was very useful. They even have source documents. Census documents don’t have a religion category, at least back then.
Do birth certificates have religious orientation in the USA? Hm…
I have his parent name from ancestry.com as well. Still, the religious orientation on these public records has not been seen.
[This is a drift, of course, but…] What is the status of plain old immigration? I mention this because many people are under the mistaken impression that only Jews or their relatives are allowed to immigrate.
I also understand that being admitted under Aliyah (besides the profound implications of the word/concept) entails quite a different set of circumstances in support, etc., after coming to the country.
Good point. Iirc Aliyah basically is a rule that lets Jewish people immigrate and gain citizenship under an abbreviated process. It doesn’t mean that that’s the only want to immigrate. This is true in many countries. For example, Ireland has a special rule for people who have one Irish-born grandparent that more or less grants immediate citizenship upon application, but other people can immigrate - it just takes longer and might require fulfilling educational, skills, or sponsorship criteria that Irish-grandparent applicants don’t.
Familysearch.org has a lot of information too - for free. It also contains a lot of records, not just those for members of its own religion. However, if you have access to ancestry.com odds are they have the same records.
I knew a fellow who was from Russia, spent a number of years in Israel (became a citizen, I think). He was Christian but his wife was Jewish and that’s how he got in. they left for here because they were tired of the missiles inbound from Gaza.
If you have the name, and you know when he lived in Skokie, try looking for his name in phone books, and once you have addresses matched with dates, maybe you can find the likely neighborhood synagogues that he would have affiliated with.
If the OP can find his grandfather’s parents’ secular wedding license, assuming they were married here, then it will probably be signed by a rabbi as the officiant. Otherwise, they most likely had a ketubah, and this will be true whether they were married in the US or someplace else, and this was something they probably took care of. It is possible that a cousin or other relative still has the ketubah, which will be written in Hebrew. Ask family members if anyone has Zayde Moishe’s parents’ ketubah. This would probably be accepted as proof.
It is also possible that he has a baby book. When was he born? My father was born in 1930, and has a baby book, which contains all kinds of mementos, including a card with a poem written by his father’s co-workers, and a letter his father wrote to his mother while she was still in the hospital. It also has his bris document, signed by the mohel, and the record of people who attended the bris, and who brought what gifts. So some such thing may still exist for your grandfather. You might ask around and see if family members have anything like this.
If the OP wants to make aliyah, he will need to convert Orthodox (or, at least, this will make things much easier). But this means living as an Orthodox Jew for at least a year, and probably finding a family to take him in and help him with observances (there are some people who enjoy doing this, particularly for people who have some Jewish roots, just not the matrilineal descent necessary to be Jewish). By this, I don’t mean literally house him, but maybe overnight on erev Shabbes, and otherwise be available to answer questions and set an example, and be “family” on the holidays.
It also needs to be a sincere conversion. It’s an unkind thing to do to take advantage of a community if one has no intention of remaining Jewish. I don’t know why the OP wants to make aliyah-- maybe he does want to practice Judaism-- but if he wants to practice liberal Judaism in Israel, he’s better off trying to make aliyah through the grandfather, to immigrating.
The OP’s point is that he (or she, I forgot which, or even if gender was mentioned) may already be Jewish by Orthodox Jewish law and thus does not need to convert
I’m no expert, but I don’t think having a Jewish maternal grandfather is enough, in Orthodox Jewish terms, to make you Jewish. Jewishness is inherited through the female line; the OP would need a Jewish maternal grandmother.
A single Jewish grandparent of any sex is enough to give you the right of return in Israel, though.
No, his mother’s mother would have to be Jewish for him to be Jewish by the Orthodox rules . He’s trying to qualify as the grandchild of a Jewish person. The Law of Return allows the spouse and the children and grandchildren of a Jewish person (and the spouses of the children and grandchildren) to gain citizenship whether they are Jewish or not.
If anyone cares, it has to do with who has traditionally been persecuted, and specifically targeted by the Nazis, who did not care what the Jews’ own definition was, but anyone who was ethnically 1/4 Jewish was in danger during pogroms, inquisitions, and what have you. Israel was meant to be a haven for anyone persecuted for Jewishness.
And the Law of Return is so framed, basically, because the Nazis regarded that wider class of people as Jewish. The policy adopted was that if you were Jewish enough to be victimised by the Nazis, then you were Jewish enough to be welcome to Israel.
Huh. I thought it was limited to those in the matrilineal line. That means that I would qualify after all, since my grandfather, my mother’s father, had a Jewish mother.