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October 29, 2004/Cheshvan 14 5765, Vol. 57, No. 9
The oldest family in the world
BILL GLADSTONE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
TORONTO - You may not find Dr. Neil Rosenstein's new book listed on national best-seller lists, but the noted genealogist - with his tongue halfway in his cheek - compares it to the popular thriller "The Da Vinci Code."
Both books, the noted American genealogist and surgeon said, deal in varying degrees with family trees reaching back 30 centuries to the biblical House of David.
But Rosenstein, a 60-year-old New Jersey resident, notes that while Dan Brown's novel presents a clever blend of fact and fancy, "The Lurie Legacy," published recently by the New Jersey-based publishing house Avotaynu, is based entirely on accurate historical information, with all sources carefully noted.
In "Legacy," Rosenstein links the Lurie lineage - which includes such modern lumi-naries as Sigmund Freud and Martin Buber - to Rashi, the 11th-century sage, and many other revered Jewish figures from Hillel to Hezekiah - and ultimately to King David of the 10th century BCE.
The book significantly extends on Rosenstein's monumental 1990 work, "The Unbroken Chain," which focused on the genealogies of the major Ashkenazic rabbinic dynasties from medieval times to the present. Rosenstein joked that "Legacy" is a "prequel" to the earlier book - "you know, just like in the 'Star Wars' series."
The new book enlarges the genealogical pyramid, con-necting it to Rabbi Jehiel Lurie, head of the 13th-century rabbinical court in Brest-Litovsk, then back to Rashi and beyond.
The Guinness Book of Records has also accepted the Luries as the oldest-known living family in the world today, citing them in the "longest lineage" category in its 1999 edition.
The family tree boasts an astonishing array of celebrated historical figures from the prophet Isaiah to Sir Isaiah Berlin, from Felix Mendel-ssohn to Karl Marx and Moses Montefiore.
The list also includes Yehudi Menuhin, Helena Rubinstein, the Rothschilds and even Rosenstein himself. If it begins to sound like a "Who's Who" of the Ashkenazic world, that's because it is.
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