52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks 2025: Week 42 (FIRE)
January 2025 I decided to test my father's yDNA in the hopes of breaking down the brick wall that is the Pellack Family.
My great grandparents:
Alexander (Alex) Pellack
B: 17 Apr 1873 Skoryky, Скорики, Ternopil's'ka Oblast, Ukraine
D: 22 Oct 1955 Gronlid, Saskatchewan, Canada
and
Marya (Maria) (Mary) (Marinka) Maximiw
B: 24 Dec 1875 Ukraine/Galicia/Austria - Unknown
D: 12 Aug 1946 Gronlid, Saskatchewan, Canada
I had been unable to find any documented proof for the family before they sailed to Canada in 1909 leaving all they knew behind in Ukraine.
In the years since we received autosomal results, showing Ashkenazi Jewish, I had made a guess that Alexander was the Jewish grandparent who passed 26% to dad, and then 13% to me.
With this in mind I went right to the BigY test, not bothering with the cheaper smaller versions at FamilyTreeDNA, hoping that would provide the clarity we were looking for.
When the initial results came in I received the message below from a researcher, Meir Halevi Gover, who I discovered is a professional with a strong research background.
resided in the 17th Cen. CE Jewish Prague Ghetto."
Knowing he was a professional I felt comfortable continuing the conversation outlining what we did and didn't know about dad's paternal line.
We agreed to await the BigY results knowing they would be along shortly.
After 2 failures (May & August) Dad's BigY results finally arrived last week.
Y-DNA Haplogroup:
Previous: R-M198
Updated: R-BY24975
I received more information about my paternal line from Meir Halevi Gover.
"Welcome to the R1a-Levite Haplogroup. It is now confirmed at close to
100% certainty that your patronymic male line, genetic son after genetic son
is both Jewish and Levite."
patronymic male ancestor Pellack-Pollak, resided in the
Prague, Czech, Jewish Ghetto. From there he immigrated eastwards to Poland where he picked up his surname and thereafter to Ukraine."
shares a circa 15th Cen. C.E. Common Ancestor with: ....
I put the venue of this Forefather-Grand Zeide of all you above 6 (you included),
in the Prague, Czech Jewish Ghetto, or vicinity. In the middle of the 18 Cen.,
this line was expelled eastwards due to the anti-Jewish Deportation Decree,
of antisemitic Austrian Queen Maria Theresa."
I now have a place and time to research looking for more information on my father's paternal line.
I haven't yet spent any real time looking at dad's yDNA results.
I have spent a lot of time looking at our autosomal results trying to place the close connections we have that are 100% Jewish.
One of those matches (last name Render) Ancestry predicts as 1st cousin 1x removed, 2nd cousin, or half 1st cousin 1x removed.
This person descends from Edenbridge - the Jewish community near the homestead of my great grandparents.
I had been wondering if the connection could be a female relative of Alexander's not yet identified, but noticed a Render match of mine on 23&Me had an ancestral yDNA in the correct ancestral family.
This leads me to look at the male to male family lines in that tree in relation to mine and not the maternal lines.
23&Me has placed 2 Render cousins in my family tree as the great grandchildren of Alexander's parents.
The Render family trees I have found do not place Mikihor or Mary anywhere in their trees
At this time I can not place the matches exactly, but have created a floatiing tree within my own tree on Ancestry awaiting the connection.
With all this new information I decided it was time I understood where my family originated from so began researching.
The Jewish Ghetto of Prague was not a part I had ever known as my family story.
"In 1096, the community was attacked by Crusaders, and hundreds of Jews were murdered. The community as a whole was again attacked during the siege of the Prague Castle in 1142 when the oldest synagogue in Prague and sections of the Jewish Quarter were burned down.
After the siege, Jews were required to live on the right bank of the Vltava in an area that eventually became Prague's Jewish ghetto, the Josefov. During this time, Jews were very limited in their movements. By day the doors to the ghetto were open, but in the evening and on festivals, the gates of the ghetto were locked.
The situation did not improve in the early 13th century. In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council mandated that Jews must wear distinctive clothes, were prohibited from holding public office, and were limited in the amount they could charge for interest on loans. Catholic antisemitism was the norm for the Jews of Prague.
Things began to change at the end of the 13th century under King Otakar II. He issued a Royal Charter in 1254, which stated that the Jews were protected as money lenders and servants of the king and were required to pay high taxes and occasional supply loans to the royal treasury. More importantly, regarding the prevalent Christian antisemitism, the Royal Charter protected the Jews from persecution. It refuted the blood libel myth, prohibited violence against Jews, their property, synagogues, and cemeteries, and outlawed all forced baptisms in the kingdom...........
As was so often the case for the Jews of Europe, there were times of stability and times of horrific antisemitism. Jews knew not to get too comfortable, for history had shown them that expulsion or attacks could be just around the corner.
Prague was devastated by a pogrom in 1389. On Easter that year, which coincided with Passover, Jews were accused of “vandalizing the eucharistic wafer” and, as a result, 3,000 Jewish men, women, and children were cruelly murdered in the streets, homes, and synagogues of the ghetto. One of the few survivors, the great Torah Scholar Rabbi Avigdor Kara (whose tomb is preserved in the Old Jewish Cemetery), saw his father murdered. He wrote a moving prayer, "Es kol ha-tela'ah" describing the attack, which is read yearly in Prague on Yom Kippur. In the aftermath of the pogrom, many Jews fled Prague for Poland and Hungary........
The devastation of the Thirty Years War (1618-1648) brought mixed fortune for the Jews of Prague. On the one hand, Emperor Ferdinand II, desperate for economic support in the war, took great pains to ensure the safety of the Jews. Although his troops ransacked Prague after the Battle of White Mountain, the emperor prohibited them from harming the Jewish Quarter and even had guards posted outside their homes. To the Jews of Prague, this was nothing short of a miracle. To commemorate this momentous event, they established the 14th of the Hebrew month of Cheshvan - the day the invasion began - as a Purim of Prague....
After the Thirty Years' War, measures were taken by the state authorities to reduce the number of Jews and to segregate them more strictly in a ghetto. Implementation of these measures was prevented in 1680 by an outbreak of plague, which took the lives of more than 3,500 Jews." 1
"In 1729 there was a census of the Jewish population and of the buildings of the ghetto. 333 dwelling houses inhabited by 2,335 families and 30 public buildings were registered. One of the unpleasant restrictive measures of the period prohibited anyone other than a first-born son to start a family, as the permitted number of Jewish families in the whole country was strictly limited and was not to be exceeded.
During the reign of Maria Theresa, in December 1744, there was a new attempt at dealing with the problem of the Jewish population in a radical way by means of their expulsion from Prague and the entire Kingdom of Bohemia. An alleged cooperation of the Jews with the enemy during the Prussian occupation of Prague in the autumn of that year was the pretext for the above plan. The exodus, however, did not prove to be easy due to various financial and business connections. Nevertheless, by mid 1745 all inhabitants of the Jewish ghetto had to leave Prague. Some of them settled in the nearby Libeň Quarter and other hamlets in the vicinity of Prague. There they lived until 1748, to witness the revocation of the expulsion order. They found their houses in the ghetto, which had been vacant for two years, looted. Soon after the renovation had been completed and life in the Jewish Town started to function normally again, a fire of 1754 destroyed 190 houses of the ghetto. The synagogues, the Town Hall and the hospital also burnt down." 2
It was the information quoted above that led to this week's blog with the prompt FIRE.
In addition to the actual fires impacting my family of origin, yDNA has lit a fire under my need to focus on this part of the Bramble Bush.
Receiving yDNA results was the first time I heard the term Levite Jewish.
This is why I search -
Cause ...
You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your family you know!
***Any errors are my own. Please send me any updates or corrections via the comments at the bottom of this blog post***
Footnotes:
1 The Jewish History of Prague. Aish Jerusalem. Leving, Rabbi Menachem. Retrieved October 15th from
https://aish.com/the-jewish-history-of-prague/
2 The Jewish Town - Josefov. Old postcards of Prague. PhDr. KATEŘINA BEČKOVÁ. Retrieved October 15th from
https://www.old-prague.com/history-prague-jewish-town-josefov.php
3 Levites Today. Even after the Temple's destruction, Levites enjoy some unique ritual privileges. My Jewish Learning. Retrieved October 15th from
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/levites/
Sources:
A Beginner’s Guide to Y-DNA testing. By Al McLeod and Mark MacLeod. Associated Clan MacLeod Societies. Retrieved October 15th 2025 from
https://www.clanmacleod.org/genealogy/dna-project/a-beginners-guide-to-y-dna-testing/
The Jewish History of Prague. Aish Jerusalem. Leving, Rabbi Menachem. Retrieved October 15th from
https://aish.com/the-jewish-history-of-prague/
The Jewish Town - Josefov. Old postcards of Prague. PhDr. KATEŘINA BEČKOVÁ. Retrieved October 15th from
https://www.old-prague.com/history-prague-jewish-town-josefov.php
Levite. Ancient Israelite history. Encyclopedia Brittanica. Retrieved October 15th 2025 from
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Levite
Levites Today. Even after the Temple's destruction, Levites enjoy some unique ritual privileges. My Jewish Learning. Retrieved October 15th from
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/levites/
MEIR Halevi GOVER, Genetic Genealogist. Retrieved October 15th 2025 from
https://buffalo.academia.edu/MeirGGover
Y chromosome DNA tests. International Society of Genetic Genealogy Wiki. Retrived October 15th 2025 from
https://isogg.org/wiki/Y_chromosome_DNA_tests
Photos:
Personal
Links:
Amy Johnson Crow, 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks Challenge
https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/52-ancestors-in-52-weeks/
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