Ancestry or similar

[BrinkWomanship]

I’m tempted to do a DNA test via Ancestry or similar. Has anyone done it? I’m Ashkenazi and v intrigued by what it might show. I know my great great grandparents all came to the UK from Russia, Hungary, Poland and Romania in the late 19th century, fleeing the pogroms so I’m curious what else it could show. Would it track as far back as the Middle East?

Also, re the family tree element, are there sites that are better for Jews because they have access to Eastern European records? Is Ancestry as good as any to go for?

All thoughts welcome!

My dad did one and it came back as 99% Ashkenazi Jew and 1% other. Pretty funny as he knew that much already!

Ha! That wasn’t v informative then, was it?!

Theoretically my mom would come back the same but I'm slightly tempted to get it done anyway... maybe there's a deep dark secret somewhere in my mother's family tree!

That's always an intriguing thought - cupboard skeletons lurking...
I'm also intrigued about tracing my family history beyond the relatives I know about in the UK.

I did one with My Heritage.

Before I took it, I joked that if it came back with anything Jewish I'd be impressed at how thorough my conversion was, because I absolutely knew I was ethnically 90% English and a bit Irish.

To my surprise, it turned out I was only 40% British, lots of mixed European and a little Levant, and then they updated their model and my Levant was changed to Ashkenazi. 🥳🥳. That was a happy surprise for me, but it could go both ways.

The only thing a DNA test will do will give you a breakdown of your ethnicity. If you are Ashkenazi then it will give you a vague geographical estimate of Eastern Europe and it will only give you some pointers if say your relatives mixed with non Jews ie can tell they have slavic blood so could break that down to a country or region, say Poland or Lithuania.

Your best best would be finding relatives and their place of birth (you can request to see other peoples family trees on Ancestra.com and might be able to find mutal relatives and use their information to build a family tree and find out some more information about your family line). I doubt you would be able to trace your roots back to the Middle East as Jewish people didn't have surnames really before the 1600s in Europe. My Mum managed to trace our Jewish line back to around 1700 doing this though so worth a shot!

Ancestry.com **

Wow. 1700? Amazing!