Rabbi Akiva Hakohen Katz, ABD Saloniki (Alter of Salonika) - Born in Spain?

is there anything connecting R' Akiva to ashkenaz rather/more so than sefard? meaning if we may not have anything confirming spain/majorca as his birthplace, but do we have substantial proof in the negation, or at least real proof relating to ashkenaz? I kind of feel like we're grasping at straws either way.

Hello Eli, i consider this an ongoing investigation which I hope may yield a straw or two sooner than later. Whenever anything new emerges I'll post a note here. One possibility would be if I can find a confirmed Sephardic male whose ydna matches R'Akiva. Then it would be confirmed that at least some descendants of the family are/remained Sephardic. We know that R'Akiva's son became a rabbi of Galata which is near Istanbul and then of Buda. The Ottoman policy was to move Salonikan Jews to Istanbul, Smyrna, etc. So one may speculate that during those years offsping may have been raised around Istanbul some of whom remained in the Ottoman sphere until the 20th century. So far the descendants of R'Akiva I know abour proliferated in Europe. In my mind it would make more sense for Sephardim to remain in Ottoman lands which history tells us were more hospitable to Jewish people than elsewhere. So one has to look hard at this question: why would a Sephardic family established near Istanbul choose to migrate into central Europe in the 16th century? I'm not saying there could not be any other reasons for such a move, but I believe one reason might be that the family may have had Askenazic roots. Remember this is a family of Cohanic rabbis for whom matters of tradition are probably much weightier than for the average Israelite. This might explain why there are no Sephardic descendants yet in the data.

I'm a 17th great grandson of Rabbi Akiva Hakohen Katz, ABD Saloniki (Alter of Salonika) (through my mother's side). When I took a DNA test through MyHeritage, I was 5.6% Sephardic.
All my known ancestors at the time of the test were Ashkenazim, which led to an interest in my Sephardic background. (I do have some family who were descendants of Spanish exiles from the Inquisition, but I only know it from family lore.)
Perhaps it would be a supporting factor whether he was Sephardic at all.

Many thanks Yehuda, I've looked at your connection on GENI to R' Akiva the Elder and after R' Yitzakh of Galata the line seems to be completely Euro-based. After 17 generations the R' Yitzach contribution to your genome would be far less than 5.6% (after that many generations you have about .000191% of R' Akiva's genes, presuming no cousin marriages). This could suggest that most of your 5.6% stems from another ancestral source (or a combination of several). In other words, even presuming MyHeritage's calculation to be accurate, and given that you are descended from R' Akiva, I cannot be certain that R' Akiva is the source of your Sephardic roots. It could be that some amount of your 5.6% does come from R' Akiva but I have no method of verifying this.

See https://hebrewbooks.org/pdfpager.aspx?req=21601&st=&pgnum=2...= which says that Rav Akiva was from Portugal.

As far as I understand, if someone is found in Geni who is son after son up to him and agrees to perform a DNA test, we can know for sure whether his origin is indeed Spanish, or whether it is an invention.
I'm a descendant of him, but between me and him there are 6 ancient mothers (including my grandmother and her mother) so I can"nt perform the test.
btw,

There is a way to determine the relative amount of Sephardic ancestry a person has. This is done by comparing the person's genome to the genomes of many confirmed Sephardim and Ashkenazim. If the person is in the middle of the Sephardic cluster than the person is Sephardic. If the person is in the Ashkenazic group then the person is Ashkenazic. The area in between is a hybrid who could be closer to one group of the other. This determination cannot pinpoint the individual lines that were Sephardic. See my post of 6/4/2021 which explains this further. In other words this type of comparative study cannot tell us whether R' Akiva was himself Sephardic, only that the descendant has enough Sephardic ancestry somewhere in the ancestry to be noticed by the study. If a person has one Sephardic grandparent from 1340, and the rest of all direct ancestors are Ashkenazim, this faint trace of Sephardic ancestry will not register in the comparative study.

Private User

I have a number of certain Spanish branches, but from generations ago, in addition, my mother's grandmother was chawa Szprynca,To the best of my knowledge, the name implies that her family (at least branches of it) were of Spanish descent, but the only surnames I could find on her side were: fiszman, singer (zynger) choen, khon these are Ashkenazi surnames,

Genealogical testing is similar to fishing: sometimes you catch something immediately, sometimes you have to wait patiently for a long time, and sometimes the fish steals the bait :-)

Private User

Personally, the most important thing for me is the education I received from my wonderful late parents, and this is the education of an Ashkenazi Jewish home of Polish origin. All other things are secondary

Randy Schoenberg

my g.grandmother,Chawa Szprynca,was murdered in the Sobibor extermination camp, of course she has no grave
All my ancestors From my mother's side (except my grandmother) were buried in the wlodawa jewish cemetery
Both the Nazis and the Poles completely destroyed the cemetery And believe me I made great efforts to find even a remnant of a tombstone.

My grandmother was buried in the Jewish cemetery in Lublin, I asked friends who were there to find her gravestone and take a photo for me, unfortunately they did not find it.

At this point due to the new document from Levi, since I’ve looked into the details and translated it, I am beginning to wonder whether or not our assumption that Akiva was born in the mid 14th-century is correct or if he was possibly born and even the early 15th-century.

Eli Rubin

He had a grandson named Akiva, maybe you confuse them

Initially when I saw sources that mentioned the family coming from Portugal or being exiled in 1492 I thought they were just mistakes or something of that sort but at this point not only am I not seeing any sources that mention coming from specifically Spain let alone Mallorca, but I haven’t even seen anything that mentions him being in Spain in 1391. As a matter of fact almost every source that mentions him mentions both Portugal and or 1492. At this point I’m beginning to side with Randy.

Sorry I should be saying Mr. Schoenberg.

Eli Rubin
I too have seen that in some sources it has been mentioned in Spain, and in other sources in Portugal
Firstly the surname katz is a very common surname, and there may be confusion between the various sources, secondly it is possible that someone who wrote the family tree hundreds of years ago was wrong
And there is also the possibility that he moved from Spain to Portugal and / or vice versa

But, he is not connected to any great-grandfather/family, so even if he was not born in Spain / Portugal, no mistake was made in the family tree
.
I think we need to explore more in depth,

Another possible interpretation is that subsequent genealogists, seeing that R' Akiva was in Salonika, and his son a chief rabbi in Galata, presumed that the family was part of the 1492 era migrations. Perhaps R' Akiva the Elder and his family arrived to Salonika from Hungary in an earlier wave, but were then lumped into the more common story of the post-1492 migration from Portugal. One fact that keeps gnawing at me is that the R' Akiva lineage is to my knowledge adhering to the Ashkenazic minhag. Rabbis like Karo and Zacudo exercised the Sephardic rites, to my knowledge. Would it be likely that R' Akiva's descendants be in the middle of Ashkenazic orthodoxy if they were originally Sephardic rabbis? And further, why would they not decide to remain in Ottoman lands like Karo, Zacudo, and so many of the post-1942 Sephardim, which lands were so hospitable for nearly 400 years following 1500? My intuition is that the answer is because R' Akiva's family descended from an Ashkenazic traditiion and preferred if at all possible to remain in the West. Under this scenario, Salonika, and even Galata, were a temporary refuge until the family could return to Ashkenaz. If we are lucky maybe a professional Jewish Historian is going to come to the rescue of this investigation sooner than later....

I’m beginning to agree with that, but at the same time I’m also wondering why was he in spain in the first place

Private User
Because we have no information about his ancestors, any option can be true.

In my opinion, we should continue to investigate in depth, but I think a DNA test will give us a complete answer about his origin

If you want to check on the teomim family, I do not mind being tested (if I fit), because I am son after son up to the first teomim family ,except for two ancient mothers: my grandmother, and her mother

Haim, When you do the dna test, let me know if you need my opinion.

Private User

o.k.

I do not know much about DNA testing ,but someone here in Israel explained to me that it is difficult for me to perform such a test, because as of this moment, only on my grandmother's side I have branches that go back decades, and there are always ancient mothers on the way (my grandmother and her mother), and she further explained to me , Because my two grandfthers were choen, it would further complicate the outcome

Son after son after son is great -- but a YDNA test will only follow the line like that from the tester. A YDNA test does not go thru a person's grandmother and/or great grandmother.

A FamilyFinder Test can perhaps help confirm Haim's relationship to someone who is in fact a direct male descendant, if that will help. The FamilyFinder Test is not restricted to one specific line. But FamilyFinder is only useful for about 5 or 6 generations back.

Private User
On the side of my grandfather (son after son) first it is a branch of choanim family and from it I am also a descendant of families teomim, horowitz, jaffe, The Maharal from Prague and more up to Rashi, but because my information on this side is little (I know to whom I am a descendant, but not how), it is possible That there too it is through ancient mothers.
And through my grandfather's mother, I'm a descendant of Benvenisti , levitan, karo, vital families... but through ancient mothers

Haim Katz - Hachoen Wartski
I have read it is illegal to do DNA testing in Israel.
I know many people in Israel have done DNA Testing.

If you can afford to do the YDNA700 and FamilyFinder, and can do so without breaking the law, I think you should do so. (Do both from the same Kit.) There is currently a sale on thru the end of August.
You clearly have a great interest, and they will provide you with additional clues.
It takes a long time for results to come in from YDNA700 - plenty of time to read up.

Private User

If I decide to perform a test, I will update here
According to the things that have been explained to me, a comprehensive test that will test very many generations back is very, very expensive

Big Y-700 on sale now for $399 - which is $50 off usual nonsale price
That is the most comprehensive one they offer
That may easily be seen as very, very expensive.

On the other hand, FamilyFinder is $59 on sale (plus about $10 for shipping and handling, and plus return postage if not in the US), so perhaps you could order that now, and at some future time order the other (or a lesser Y test) as an upgrade
Or perhaps that is also a lot of money to spend (I started ordering FamilyFinder for myself and relatives back when it was $189 on sale, so current price seems low to me)

Thank you,
If I decide to perform the test, I will update

By the way I’m in Israel for the year studying in Yeshiva, so if any of you want/need me to look up anything (sefarim, secular sources, etc) i’d be happy to help you out.