Dr. Paul Jacobi (1911-1997) was born in Koenigsberg in Germany and emigrated to Palestine/Eretz-Yisrael in 1929. After finishing his law studies in England, he served as the Legal Adviser of the Jewish National Fund for more than fifty years. He was active in the “Israeli Genealogical Society”, from its inception in 1937 as the “Palestine Jewish Genealogical Society”.

In the last decades of his life, he devoted most of his time to genealogical research of Ashkenazi (Germanic) Jewry from early times as it spread throughout in the various European communities.

2. His Genealogical and Historical Outlook:

In a lecture on “Jewish Genealogy and Jewish History” to the Israeli Genealogical Society in 1986, Dr. Jacobi presented some of his approach to the subject:

“One begins with the present – myself, my parents, my four grandparents, my eight great-grandparents and so on. It is a mistake to omit less celebrated branches of one’s family. Every individual has historical relevance, which is how genealogy helps supply material for history.

"While working on my own genealogy, I happened to notice that the same family surnames kept reappearing in the different countries of Europe. I collected, therefore, material on approximately 400 European Jewish families and recorded their genealogy. I followed the patrilineal line, since a Jewish wife typically enters her husband’s family and carries his surname after the marriage.

"Families, acting as a group, were instrumental in the spread of Ashkenazi Jewry all over Europe. Between 1490 and 1590, Jews were expelled from most cities in central Europe. Poor families stayed on in near-by villages, eking out a living by serving as simple artisans or engaging in the cattle trade and similar occupations. Richer families went to Renaissance Italy. Still others headed directly eastward to Lithuania, Moravia and Poland, where they founded Yeshivot [centres of rabbinical learning].

"Again and again, we see that members of the same families chose and led the path of Jewish wanderings. Those families served as the main reservoir from which the [local] communities drew their important community leaders as well as their rabbis.

"By following the genealogy of Ashkenazi Jews, it becomes very clear that a relatively small group of families wielded a decisive influence in Vilna, Lublin, Brisk, Krakov, Przemysl, Metz, Frankfurt, Padua, Amsterdam, Copenhagen and the rest of Jewish settlements all over Europe.

"This elite, comprised of only about 80 families, dominated the whole of Ashkenazi Jewry. I categorised these [leading] families, which were already recognized as such by the sixteen century, in descending order – [calling them] the Founding, Ancient, Old, and Earlier Families.

"…, the Jewish family "clan" served as the elite which occupied the place [in society] held by other historic elitist collectives, like that of the military elite in the Mameluke kingdoms or the Catholic priesthood in the Christian kingdoms.

"There is no transmission of values without an elite. The elite of Ashkenazi Jewry was linked by kinship, holding a carefully considered marriage policy".