I am happy to announce my recently published genealogy paper entitled:  FROM LINEAGE TO MEANING: Expanding Jewish Genealogy Toward Jewish Meaning-Making published in the Journal of Jewish Genealogy. The paper is also available for free download on Researchgate. I would love to hear from you. Contact me on Researchgate with any question or comment.

ABSTRACT

Jewish genealogy has expanded dramatically in recent decades, driven by digitized archives, DNAtesting, and global genealogical platforms. While these developments have greatly improved accessto lineage data, they have not consistently produced deeper insight into Jewish identity, continuity,or meaning. Genealogy has long supported rigorous analytic traditions, including historicaldemography, population studies, migration analysis, and the study of social and economic structuresacross time. The interpretive framework proposed in this paper is presented as an extension ofgenealogical practice rather than a redefinition of its core purposes. Drawing on sociological andpsychological theories of identity and meaning-making, together with Jewish frameworks ofmemory, peoplehood, and intergenerational transmission, the paper proposes a structuredframework for translating genealogical data into identity-relevant narratives. The frameworkdistinguishes multiple levels of identity (community, family, individual, and relational), applies cross-cutting interpretive scales, and identifies key identity markers through which Jewish identity isexpressed and interpreted over time. Using illustrative case examples, the paper shows howgenealogical facts, when situated within historical and communal context, can support nuancednarratives of continuity, adaptation, belonging, and agency across generations. The paper concludesthat interpretive genealogy can meaningfully contribute to contemporary Jewish self-understandingwhile remaining attentive to uncertainty and evidentiary limits.

CITATION

MARKOWICZ, B. P. (2026). FROM LINEAGE TO MEANING: Expanding Jewish Genealogy Toward Jewish Meaning-Making. In Journal of Jewish Genealogy. Zenodo. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.18735594