ABSTRACTS
Michel Gaspard
From Hamburg to Metz in the 17th century: Glückel Hameln’s Memoirs (First part)
Glikl bas Juda Leib, known as Glückel Hameln, was born in Hamburg in 1646. She married at the age of 14 and had fourteen children. After losing her husband in 1689, she started to write a chronicle of her life: the first literary work written in Yiddish. She remarried in Metz in 1700 and lived there until her death in 1724. She leaves behind seven books of Memoirs, a unique testimony of lifestyle, thinking and beliefs of Ashkenazi traders of the time.The author, a direct descendant of Glückel, is preparing a documented French translation of her Memoirs - little known in France. The first part of this paper highlights some key parts of this exceptional woman’s life, whose large family was related to some of the most famous Jews of the royal court .
Anne-Marie Fribourg
A portrait of Barbey d’Aureveilly by Emile Levy
This article reviews the circumstances in which Émile Levy painted a portrait of the writer Jules Barbey d’Aurevilly and, on this occasion, traces the family origins of a little-known painter.
Simon Giuseppi
Jews in Corsica
WW1 saw thousands of foreigners, allied and enemy, relocated in isolated and ruined Corsica. This paper relates the life on the island of a group of 750 Jewish refugees from Syria who settled in Ajaccio and Bastia in 1916 and their fate after peace was restored.
Marc Fellous & Jacques Beckmann
Genealogy and DNA
The study of DNA in genealogy is based on the study of polymorphic markers (or genetic variants) of Y chromosomes for paternal lineages (like names) and mitochondria mt for maternal lineages. These genetic variants Y or mt are transmitted from generation to generation in blocks, called haplotypes. A great deal of work has been done in the context of large international studies on thousands of human population groups to study their diversity, such as the Jewish people (Sephardim or Ashkenazi). There are no genetic variants or haplotypes specific to a given population or ethnic group, however certain haplotypes may be more frequent in certain populations or ethnic groups than in others. As far as we are concerned, there is no Jewish haplotype or “gene”. All of these genetic data from human populations can only be extrapolated to a given individual in terms of probability. In France these genetic tests are only authorized in the medical or legal context. However, the 2020 bioethics law could extend their use to research, and therefore genealogy.