E. Randel Schoenberg, a Los Angeles attorney with a passion for Jewish genealogy, is infinitely fascinated by the idea that all Jews are related; it’s just a question of figuring how.
So, when he heard that the Beit Hatfutsot Museum on the campus of Tel Aviv University was undergoing a $100-million renovation with ambitious plans to feature cutting edge technology in its displays, he approached the museum with an intriguing idea.
What if with the help of a phone app, visitors to the new museum could discover if they are connected by blood or marriage to some of the famous Jews on display throughout the museum?
“For Jews it’s automatic. Everyone is related by marriage, cousin to cousin to cousin. This turns out to be true regardless of where you are from – Sephardi, Ashkenazi, Persian, Mizrahi, Yemeni, Romaniot ‒ it doesn’t matter. By now, all Jews in the world are very closely related or connected to one another. Only now we have the technology to prove it,” says Schoenberg.
The board of the newly renamed Anu - Museum of the Jewish People, plus an advisory board of top Israeli hi-tech entrepreneurs, concluded that Schoenberg’s idea was in the spirit of the museum: the idea that Jews are one big family with roots going back 4,000 years. After all, an interest in genealogy is as old as the Jewish people itself ‒ look no further than all the “begets” in Genesis.
“The museum’s new name, ANU, which means ‘we’ or ‘us’ in Hebrew, spells out the idea that, in 2021, there is no longer them and us. We are one people and all the boundaries, real and imagined, have melted away,” says Revital Blumenfeld, the museum’s director of communication. “When we went through the process of changing the name, we wanted to talk about solidarity, equality and a name that unites the Jewish people.”
The new museum, funded by the State of Israel, the Nadav Foundation and private philanthropy, brings almost 4,000 years of multifaceted Jewish history, tradition and contributions under a single roof.
And what a large roof it is.
With some 7,000 square meters on three floors, it is the largest, most comprehensive Jewish Museum of its kind in the world equipped with a mix of images and interactive exhibits showcasing the cultural riches of communities and Jewish contributions from around the world. There are enough eye-popping hi-tech interactive displays, films and immersive exhibitions to warrant a second or even a third visit. ANU replaces its predecessor museum, constructed in 1978, which told the story of the Jewish people with an emphasis on the Diaspora.
Schoenberg, famous for his role as the lawyer who forced the Austrian government to repatriate Gustav Klimt paintings looted during the Holocaust, subject of a major motion picture, “Woman in Gold,” designed and funded the app.
So how does it work?
To use the genealogy app, a visitor must have a family tree on Geni.Com, a website that crowdsources family trees. Those family trees that overlap are merged. After several such mergers, one can have hundreds, if not thousands, of cousins by blood or marriage. Geni.com allows users to build trees and merge them for free.
“Geni.com is a giant jigsaw puzzle that will find the shortest path between two people,” says Schoenberg, a volunteer curator at Geni.com, a company acquired in 2012 by the Israeli genealogy company, MyHeritage.
Once in the museum, visitors go to https://geni.anumuseum.org.il/, then to their Geni.com account and within seconds they get a list of the famous Jews to whom they are connected and a relationship path for each. Next, a click on each famous person will reveal their exact location in the museum.
“We collected more than 1,000 names of famous Jews mentioned in the exhibition. Once we found that most of them had profiles on Geni.com we were all set to put the idea into motion,” says Eynat Sharon, chief digital officer of the museum’s in-house digital department.
“I can’t find a connection to Abraham Lincoln, but I can find a connection to any Jew,” says Schoenberg in a recent telephone interview from his Los Angeles home. “Any two Jews who go on the app can have this amazing experience and discover that they are connected. It’s pretty much automatic.”
To prove his point Schoenberg looked up this reporter’s family tree on Geni.com and discovered that we are connected in about 20 steps by marriages on both my father’s side and my mother’s side.
I tested the app during a recent visit to the museum. Within less than a minute the list of famous Jews to whom I am connected grew to over 900.
There was enough “yichus” to impress even the most exacting yenta.
I am 12 steps away from Rav Avraham Isaac Kook, the first Chief Rabbi of British Mandatory Palestine. I am 13 connections away on my mother’s side from Robert Aumann, Nobel Prize winner in economics in 2005, Robert Downey Jr. and Marcel Marceau. At 14 connections I get Martin Buber, (my mother’s side) Moshe Dayan, (my father’s side) Leonard Nimoy and Neil Sedaka (my father’s side). If I stretch to 15 connections, I get the Who’s’ Who list of famous Jews including Sigmund Freud, Franz Kafka and Karl Marx.
Did I say “yichus?”
Leonard Cohen, whose guitar is on display in the museum, is 17 connections away on my mother’s side. Isaac Bashevis Singer, whose typewriter can be found on exhibit, is my great uncle’s fifth cousin, twice removed.
“There aren’t any museums that I have been to that make the experience visiting them so personal,” says a recent visitor who tried the app.
Once a visitor finds a connection, clicking on the name will provide directions to their specific exhibit. With a second click, one can also discover whether some other previously unknown relatives in your family tree happen to be visiting the museum while you’re there. For the more curious, the app lets you message this newly discovered relative to meet for a drink in the museum café, exchange e mails or do nothing.
During a recent family visit, a grandmother, her daughter and three grandchildren discovered a family connection to Israeli “Wonder Woman” actress Gal Gadot.
“The children’s shouts of joy could be heard throughout the lobby,” says Sharon.
The app is just one of the technical innovations at Anu. Another is the C-U Robot tour which allows people with disabilities, unable to visit the museum in person, to experience a full guided tour from the comfort of their home. The robot is the first of its kind in Israel, and one of the only ones in the world in use in a museum, says Sharon. During the tour, visitors can see the guide and the exhibitions via three cameras, creating a 360-degree view of the museum. Visitors are able to fully control the robot’s movements and communicate directly with their guide, almost as if they were present in person.
The ANU museum is the first to use an Israeli innovation called OrCam My Eye, a revolutionary voice activated device for the blind and visually impaired. It attaches to glasses and can instantly read text from any surface into the wearer’s ear.
Another innovation is the cutting-edge ID Bracelet – RFID wrist band visitors can purchase at the museum’s box office. Using this bracelet, they can collect 80 spectacular, three-dimensional images around the museum at various designated stops, easily identified by a radio wave symbol. At the end of the tour, visitors receive a link with their selections to view at home.
And as to the genealogy app, Schoenberg is optimistic.
“It will improve as more people put their trees onto Geni.com. We’re already at the stage where there is a critical mass where it will work for most people. With time it will only get better and better.”