[Cz-L] Genealogy Web site attempts to map out entire Jewish people

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Last update - 02:51 30/03/2008
Genealogy Web site attempts to map out entire Jewish people



By Anshel Pfeffer, Haaretz Correspondent

In the near future, provided Dan Rolls realizes his vision, any Jew
in the world could easily visit a Web site where he would be able
trace back his genealogical trecoe in a way that would show him his
or her family connections with thousands of relatives he had never
known about across the globe.

Rolls and his partners at Famillion believe that they need 300,000
Jews - figure that constitutes 2 percent of the Jewish people - to
upload their genealogical tree. So far, Famillion's servers have
received the genealogical tree of 70,000.

The idea came to him eight years ago when he went with his wife for
genetic testing. "We needed to each write down our genealogical tree
and list various pathological disorders among our parents and
relatives," he recalls.

"The geneticist who treated us put the pages we had filled out in a
drawer. I had this vision of all the pages flying out of the drawer
and connecting to each other until they formed a whole planet."

Rolls began implementing this vision five years later, when he teamed
up with Yiftah and Ilan Cohen to form Famillion, a startup that uses
bio-informative methods and advanced programs to produce a platform
where genealogical trees can be cross-checked and traced for
compatibility.

True to its origins at the geneticist's office, Famillion is based on
genetic studies. "We compared genetic sequences to the way family
trees are arranged, and we discovered they, too, were unique," says
Rolls. "We realized we can match them and connect them in such a way
that would create something much bigger."

Famillion ended up developing a unique technology, which now has
possible applications in science and security. It can be used to
prevent identity theft and online impersonations. But that is not the
primary vision Rolls has for this system. He wants to use it to
comprehensively map out the Jewish People.

"It became immediately clear to us that this method was very suitable
to the needs of the Jewish people and that if we would act in
parallel in Israel, in the United States and in the former Soviet
Union, in France and in Argentina, then we would be able to build a
database that would fine the common denominator between people who,
in the age of globalization, are drifting apart," Rolls said.

Because many family name have different spelling, depending on the
country, Rolls and his partner developed a special program which
translates each family name to its other variations, and cross checks
it with family trees of people from all over the world.

Many of the 70,000 family trees that have already been uploaded to
Famillion's servers came from schoolchildren who used the system to
write their Shorashim project, an assignment many Jewish children
complete, in which they draw their family tree and tell the class
about their family history.

To increase their database on their way to crossing the 300,000 mark,
Famillion has recently started cooperating with a number of public
and business organizations. The Haaretz group is one of them, and the
project is accessible through Haaretz.com.

Famillion plans to initiate a similar cooperation with Jewish.ru: a
network of Web sites that belong to the umbrella group for Russian
Jewry. The Jewish Agency might jump on the Famillion wagon soon, in a
bid to use the Famillion platform to disseminate its educational
programs for Jews in the Diaspora.

"We believe that this project will serve to augment the feeling of
connectedness that people have," Rolls says. "It will happen when the
users see before their eyes how they are connected to other Jews
across the world. It can connect ultra-Orthodox Jews to Reform Jews,
the secular
to religious people. It will mean that family will be able to find
its forefathers who 500 years ago were deported from Spain. They
could find out that one branch of the same family settled in
Lithuania, while another branch ended up in Morocco."

The question now is not only whether the technology will deliver what
Rolls and other expect from it, but also whether the users will want
to know what this method has to offer. Would a Hassidic Jew really
want to find out that he has a cousin who converted to Christianity
and became Catholic? Would he want to have this information available
to everyone online?

"It's a tool that potentially could have a lot of power," said a
Jewish Agency official involved with Famillion. "But I'm not sure it
could help bring people who are not interested in their Judaism
closer to it, and some people might not like to have their entire
family history exposed on the Web.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/objects/pages/PrintArticleEnjhtml?
itemNo=969662
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Received on 2008-03-30 19:58:58