From 70 to 1099 Jews in Germany, France and England

 Nadene Goldfoot                                             

70 CE was the date that the Romans burned down Jerusalem and Solomon's 2nd Temple, taking as many Jews as they could as prisoners to sell in Rome and killing the majority.  Jews fled if they could out of Judah, that had become Judaea when Roman soldiers occupied the land.   

131–136

The Roman emperor Hadrian (emperor from 117-138 CE) , among other provocations, renames Jerusalem "Aelia Capitolina" and prohibits circumcision. Simon bar Kokhba (Bar Kosiba) leads a large Jewish revolt against Rome in response to Hadrian's actions. In the aftermath, most Jewish population is annihilated (about 580,000 killed) and Hadrian renames the province of Judea to Syria Palaestina, and attempts to root out Judaism.

136

Rabbi Akiva (50-135 CE) is martyred.  Greatest scholar of his time, supporter of General Bar Kokhba, said to be Messiah,  who took back Jerusalem in 132-135.  

138

With Emperor Hadrian's death, the persecution of Jews within the Roman Empire is eased and Jews are allowed to visit Jerusalem on Tisha B'av. In the following centuries the Jewish center moves to Galilee.

From Jerusalem some Jews managed to get to the Rhineland of Germany.  Such Jews as these became known as the Ashkenazi Jews, differentiating from the Sephardic Jews of Spain who took a different path out of Jerusalem.  By 321 CE, the Roman Emperor Constantine issued regulations which showed a Jewish community with rabbis and elders in Cologne.  Others also settled along the Rhineland at the time.  Jews were also found to be used as soldiers in the Roman garrisons.  The Carolingian royal house adopted a pro-Jewish policy and encouraged the settlement of Jews in its dominions with the object of developing trade.  By the 10th century, Jews were living in Worms, Mainz,, Speyer, and Cologne where an intense intellectual life developed by the 11th century under Franco-Jewish influence.  The 1st persecution was recorded in 1012 and was probably not unique.  

 Our famous biblical scholar, RASHI, was born in Troyes, France in 1044.  He first studied to be a rabbi in the Rhineland of Germany, then returned to Troyes where he opened his own school.  He also maintained his own vineyard which was his business.  People wrote to him from afar asking for his own Jewish opinion about matters.  He died in 1105.  Troyes is located on the Seine river about 140 km (87 mi) south-east of Paris.                                                    

   RASHI, born 1044 in Troyes, France, famous for his comments on Bible and Talmud; used later by Nahmanides and ibn Ezra.  

Troyes has been in existence since the Roman era, then known as Augustobona Tricassium, which stood at the hub of numerous highways, primarily the Via Agrippa. The city has a rich historical past, from the Tricasses tribe to the liberation of the city on August 25, 1944 during the Second World War, including the Battle of the Catalaunian Plains, the Council of Troyes, the marriage of Henry V and Catherine of France and the Champagne fairs for which merchants came from all over Christendom.

By 1066 we see that some Jews had made it to France and the Province of Normandy within France.   Many Jews lived there in the Middle Ages, known to us by the number of rabbinical scholars as well as streets in some localities named after the Jewish population.  They were expelled in 1394, but in the early 17th century, there was an important Marrano settlement at Rouen.  Marranos were Jews who had been forced to convert to Christianity or lose their lives, but were still Jews, but hiding the fact,   still practicing what they could.  The number of Jews grew in the 19th century, and there are now communities at Rouen, Le havare, and Ellbeuf.                                

                      A Norman Frenchman  who conquered England, William I

William I, byname William the Conqueror or William the Bastard or William of Normandy, French Guillaume le Conquérant or Guillaume le Bâtard or Guillaume de Normandie, was their most important leader.  He was born in c. 1028, in Falaise, Normandy [France]—died September 9, 1087, Rouen), duke of Normandy (as William II) from 1035 and king of England (as William I) from 1066, and was one of the greatest soldiers and rulers of the Middle Ages. 

He made himself the mightiest noble in France and then changed the course of England’s history by his conquest of that country. William was the elder of the two children of Robert I of Normandy.

In 1066, when William conquered England, a handful of Jewish financiers followed him from the Continent into England.  Within the next generation, Jews were living in London, York, Bristol, Canterbury, etc.  Jews were not allowed to own land like other people or enter the trades.  The only thing left for them to do was finances, looked upon as undesirable by European Christians.   How Jews managed to live was therefore by:

1. Trading

2. Lending money to the baronage

3. Advanced funds for current needs on the security of the revenue to the Crown-who in return protected them from malice.  

                                                               

 In 1071, Jerusalem was captured by the Turkish warlord Atsiz, who seized most of Syria and Palestine as part of the expansion of the Seljuk Turks throughout the Middle East. The Seljuk hold on the city was weak and returning pilgrims reported difficulties and the oppression of Christians. Byzantine desire for military aid converged with increasing willingness of the western nobility to accept papal military direction.

                                                                       

The 1st Crusades: The earliest initiative for the First Crusade began in 1095 when the Byzantine Emperor, Alexios I Komnenos, requested military support from the Council of Piacenza in the Byzantine Empire's conflict with the Seljuk-led Turks. This was followed later in the year by the Council of Clermont, during which Pope Urban II supported the Byzantine request for military assistance and also urged faithful Christians to undertake an armed pilgrimage to Jerusalem.  As these Crusaders rode on horseback through Europe to join them, they slaughtered Jews on the way.  In 1096 the Crusaders massacred the Jews throughout the Rhineland and joining areas.  This contributed to the process which drove them out of Trading and forced them increasingly into the profession of money lending.  

                                                                      

                          Conquest of Jerusalem in 1099 by Crusaders

Resource:

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia

https://www.britannica.com/biography/William-I-king-of-England

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_the_Conqueror

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_Crusade

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crusades

When Jews Came to Paris, Champagne and Toulouse, France

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                      

                                                              Paris
Jews have lived in Paris since Roman times.  We know that individual Jews lived in France before 70 CE when Jerusalem fell.   A settlement was recorded throughout the early Middle Ages.  Persecutions started in the 12th century.  The Jews were expelled in 1182-1198.  In 1240 the French held the Disputation of Paris which was followed by the public burning of the Talmud.  Like the rest of French Jews, they were banished in 1306 and 1394.  

By the 17th and 18th centuries, Jews came to live from Bourdeaux, Avignon, Alsace, and other places.  At the time of the French Revolution, there were 500 Jews in Paris.  Settling there from that time on was unrestricted.  By  1880 there were 40,000 Jews in Paris.  Many Jews became prominent in politics, literature, art, and theater.  From 1882 on, Jews from Russia came to live.  So did Jews from North Africa and the former Ottoman Empire.  This is where the Dreyfus Affair happened which stirred up the city at the end of the 19th century which showed that anti-Semitism existed.  Nevertheless, 70,000 Jews from eastern Europe settled in Paris between WWI and WWII.  Many German Jews had managed to arrive after 1933 as well. so that the total Jewish population was about 200,000 in 1939.  Many were taken away by the Nazis when they occupied Paris.  and at least 50,000 died in the death camps.  By 1990 the Jewish population was 300,000 and consisted of many from North Africa like Algeria.  There are many synagogues in Paris as well as communal institutions.  Today, anti-Semitism runs rampant there with the influx of Muslim immigrants.

Today France is one of the worst places for Jews with all the anti-Semitism going on there. Many have already made aliyah to Israel. "April 23, 2013 - Paris - A rabbi and his son were stabbed near the Beth-El synagogue by an Iranian man who had recently escaped a psychiatric hospital. The attacker stabbed the rabbi in the neck causing light injuries, while the rabbi's son was lightly cut when he came to his defense."  
                                                             

   Troyes

  Little do the French realize that according to legend, a Jewish community existed in in Vitry-en-Perthois in 279 CE.  Champagne is a region in NE France and used to have international fairs.  This had attracted Jews from an early date.  The international traders that came to this fair were the Radanites or Jewish merchants who, in the 9th century, traveled between southern France and China.  They spoke Arabic, Persian, Roman, and the languages of the Franks, Andalusians, and Slavs.  Jews were then excluded from trade and handicrafts being it was unwanted competition for the Christians that drove them into moneylending, which in Northern France became their economic stand-by.  The Christian church didn't allow their people to lend money, thinking it was a disgusting profession, so that was all that was open for the Jews.
                                                                           

By the 10th century, or 900 CE, there were many Jews living in the province, especially in its capital of Troyes, which was the capital and home of Rashi, the famous biblical commentator.  Rashi was born in 1040 and died in 1105.  "By 1000, Troyes had an organized Jewish community and collected taxes from its members, and Jews owned real estate, more particularly vineyards.  There were about 100 Jews living there at the time of Rashi.  Many of his pupils, the tosaphists, taught at various places in Champagne such as in Ramerupt, Dampierre, Vitry, and other cities.   Tosaphists are well known for their prayer-ritual which has been preserved and published in Budapest in 1905.  The tosaphot, or in Hebrew, addenda, were critical and explanatory notes on the Talmud by French and German scholars of the 12th to 14th centuries.  To start with they were added to Rashi's Talmud commentary, which they frequently criticized and modified.  They soon developed a new independent mode of Talmud study.  Rashi was the author of the monumental commentary on the Talmud and the Torah.   Rashi's  grave has never been found, but scholars believe he died there in about 1105. In 1940, the Champagne region around Troyes had as its prefect,  Rene Bousquet, who later headed the Vichy police and was responsible for numerous roundups of Jews during the Nazi occupation of France. In 2005, the city had a 900th anniversary of Rashi's birth since he was the most famous person from there. 

 "A well-kept, small, medieval city about 100 miles east of Paris, Troyes was once at the center of European trade routes located on the ancient Roman road connecting Milan in northern Italy with Boulogne-sur-mer on the English Channel.  Coupled with its proximity to Flanders and the cities of the Rhineland, this made the town one of the major trading hubs in Europe, an advantage seized upon by the Counts of Champagne, who instituted the twice-yearly Champagne fairs, where traders from across the continent would ply their wares."  Jews had learned about the city and followed the traders there being many were merchants themselves.  .  

By the 12th century, Jews were treated differently then as they continue to be today with anti-Semitism.. In 1182 there was the order of all Jews to be expulsed out of France. This had to do with the Christian Crusades in 1096 and 1099 and its effects on people of how they viewed Jews.  Before that, The Byzantine Empire had been forcibly trying to convert Jews to Christianity.   At that time, Champagne wasn't yet incorporated into the kingdom of France, so this was a safe place for them to live.   Then, they were subjected to severe taxation  by the counts.  "The counts of Champagne took the precaution of keeping in their own hands jurisdiction over the Jews in the charters of freedom granted to various towns."  However, by the 13th century, Jews enjoyed more royal protection and acted as financiers to the nobles, monasteries, as well as other places.

13 Jews were put to death in Troyes in 1288 on a Ritual Murder/Blood Libel charge:  2 elegies in Old French commemorate this episode. An elegy is something like a poem or song that laments sorrow for one who is dead.  If they are continuing to sing this today, it is done strictly as an anti-Semitic act.   This was a completely false allegation that Jews murdered Christians in order to get blood to put in the Passover matzos. Jews did not eat blood of any animal at all and went through great lengths to avoid this when eating the allowed meats, so certainly wouldn't want human blood in their food.  To take something so obvious about Jews and claim such a horrific thing showed that they knew nothing at all about Jews or Judaism.

The general French expulsion orders of 1306-1394 affected the Jews living in Champagne this time, so they were forced to leave the area and probably went up into eastern Europe.  After this expulsion in 1306, the community never again held their position, but some returned in  to Troyes the 14th century.

A few Jews returned in Champagne only in the 17th century and then in 1794 and there were about 80 families by 1930.  WWII caused half of the Jews of Troyes to be deported under the Nazi occupation, so probably all were killed in the Holocaust.  After the liberation, the community was reconstitued by those that lived through it all.   Lately, there are Jewish communities in Chalons, Rheims, Chaumont, Troyes, Epernay, and Vitry-le-Francois.  That is, if they haven't been driven out again by anti-Semitism.  The Jewish population in 1990 was under 1,000.  "The old, classical form of antisemitism, which we had hoped was long gone in Europe, continues to be resilient."  "During November, 2013, a new phenomenon had spread. Fans of the antisemitic comedian Dieudonné responded to his request and started to get pictures of themselves making the 'quenelle salute', a backwards Nazi salute, next to Jewish or Israeli places, or even next to a group of Jews.  How disgusting can they get with their anti-Semitism?  This caught on, of course, in other countries after the French started it.  

                                                           Toulouse
There had been Jews living in Toulouse, France in 1420 somehow, but the whole Jewish community was then annihilated, a mini Holocaust by the French.  Jews had lived here since the 8th century.  They had all left with the 1306 order but some had returned in 1315 but were killed in the Shepherds' Crusade of 1321.  Toulouse was a Marrano Center (Jews who had to pretend to be Catholic) in the 16th Century.

The modern community of Jews dates from the early 19th century which was reorganized in 1907.  It grew in population with the North African Jewish immigration in the 1950's and early 1960's because of the African countries rebelling against their Jewish population over the creation of Israel in 1948.  The Jewish population of Toulouse in 1990 was 18,000.
                                                                       

 In March 2012, a Muslim shot and killed people in a Jewish Day School in Toulouse.  Rabbi Jonathan Sandler, 30, and his sons Arye 6, and Gabriel 3, along with the principal's daughter, Mirium Monsonigo 8, were shot and killed at their school, Ohr Hatorah  "The suspect pursued his last victim, an 8-year-old girl, into the concrete courtyard, seizing and stopping her by her hair, said Ms. Yardeni, who viewed surveillance footage of the killing.  His gun appeared to jam at that point, Ms. Yardeni said. Still holding the girl, the killer then changed weapons, from what police identified as a 9-millimeter pistol to the .45-caliber. He shot her in the head and left, never removing his motorcycle helmet. The killer was Mohammed Merah.   "On September 16, 2013, a 20-year-old French national of Moroccan origin,  called the Ohr Hatorah school in Toulouse and told a secretary, “I am Mohammed,  Merah’s cousin,  and I’m coming over tonight to kill you.” That threat was not the first one from this youngster, and he was arrested."  The 2012 attack was the worst France had seen against Jews in 30 years.  The killer was finally caught and killed when the police stormed his apartment on the 22nd of March..  " An Islamist extremist who is believed to have killed seven people in France died Thursday after a shootout with police, officials said. Interior Minister Claude Gueant said that Mohamed Merah, a 23-year-old French citizen of Algerian origin who had allegedly confessed to killing three Jewish children and four adults, was hiding in a bathroom when special forces officers raided his ground-floor apartment."

The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia: Champagne

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0004_0_04153.html
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/judaica/ejud_0002_0020_0_20063.html
http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=45034
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisemitism_in_21st-century_France
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/21/world/europe/jewish-school-shooting-in-france.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0
http://worldnews.nbcnews.com/_news/2012/03/22/10805444-jewish-school-slayings-suspect-dead-after-france-cops-storm-apartment-officials-say

RASHI's Family Tree and the Rabbi of Worms, Eleazar ben Judah

Nadene Goldfoot                                                            

                                                     RASHI (2/22/1040 CE-1105 CE)

Jerusalem fell in 70 CE to the Romans who burned it down.  Jews scattered to the four winds.  Many were taken to Rome.  From Rome they could escape to France and then go into the Rhineland, which became Germany.  About 1,000 years later we meet RASHI, Judaism's most famous commentator on the Torah and other Jewish writings in Troyes, France. "  Jews settled there very early.  Thought Ashkenaz means "Germany" in Hebrew, it includes France as well.  In fact, Rashi lived there first before being interested in Germany.  Jews lived in France according to legend sources at the time of the 2nd Temple.  They came with the legions of Rome later when they went there to conquer "Gaul" and make it a Roman colony.  Jews came, some as slaves forced to be soldiers, and stayed there.  Jews settled in France in 3 places:  Provence in southern France on the Mediterranean, the Rhineland, which was controlled under both France and Germany at different times, and Paris and Troyes.  They were only 25 miles apart.  Jews lived in Troyes for hundreds of years, but today there is no sign that they were ever there.  Ashkenazi Jews started as Frenchmen. The migration went eastward into Germany and Central Europe, and from there further east into Poland, Russia and Eastern Europe.  Most of the moving was "due to anti-Semitism and persecution."

Rashi's comments on the Torah are listed in the Jewish prayer books.  He is the most well known commentator of Jewish writings.  Rashi is the abbreviation for Rabbi Solomon Yitzhaki which is ben Isaac.  He was born in 1040 and died in 1105 CE in Troyes, France but had studied in the Rhineland.  He had a livelihood dependent on his vineyard.  He also wrote commentaries on the Babylonian Talmud.  His comments on the Pentateuch became universally popular and his notes on the Babylonian Talmud made that work an open book.  He wrote in a simple but concise style and he wrote with knowledge of Midrash.  " A legend relates that the Jews of Worms were descended from the Benjamites who had migrated from (Israel) to Germany."  The Benjamites were the offspring  and tribe of descendants of  Jacob and Rachel, who 2nd son was Benjamin.  Their first son had been Joseph.  Rachel had died in childbirth.  

Rashi was the son of Rabbi Yitzchak Tzarfati [RASHI father], רבי יצחק צרפתי - אבי רש"יand Leah Miriam Bat Yizchak Tzarfati [RASHI mother], לאה מרים צרפתי - אם רש"י
Husband of Rivkah wife of Rashi
Father of Yocheved bat RASHI Kalonimus, יוכבד קלונימוס בת רש"י; Miriam Bat RASHI, Ben Natan, מרים בת רש"י אשת ריב"ן and Rachel bat Rashi / רחל בת רש"י
                                                                     

                              Jewish headstones in the once Jewish Quarter of Worms
                                                       
One of his descendants 120 years later was Eleazar ben Judah of Worms.  He actually was a native of Mainz, Germany.   "It was the capital of the Electorate of Mainz at the time of the Holy Roman Empire. In antiquity Mainz was a Roman fort city which commanded the west bank of the Rhine and formed part of the northernmost frontier of the Roman Empire; it was founded as a military post by the Romans in the late 1st century BC and became the provincial capital of Germania Superior. The city is located on the river Rhine at its confluence with the Mainopposite Wiesbaden, in the western part of the Frankfurt Rhine-Main; in the modern age, Frankfurt shares much of its regional importance."  

The Jewish community of Mainz dated from the 10th century CE and was noted for its religious education found there.  Rabbi Gershom ben Judah (960-1040) taught there among others.  At this time he concentrated on the study of the Talmud and created a German Jewish tradition.  Rabbi Amnon of Mainz was also from this city and had been martyred.  He was the composer of the Unetanneh Tokef prayer.  The Jews of Maniz, Speyer and Worms created a supreme council to set standards in Jewish law and education in the 12th century.  

Non-Jews in Mainz sometimes allowed Jews freedom and protected them but at other times persecuted them.  Jews were expelled in 1012 and 1462.  Later they were invited to return, but then in 1474 were expelled again.  They were attacked by mobs in 1283.  The Black Death was usually blamed on the Jews.  At such outbreaks, they were massacred as in 1349 when about 6,000 Jews were burned alive.  

 His full name was Eleazar Ben Judah Ben Kalonymos, or for short, Eleazar Rokeah.  He was born in about 1160 in Manz, Franaconia (Germany) and died in 1238 in Worms.  He was a rabbi, liturgical poet, mystic kabbalist, Talmudist and codifier.  He was a part of the eminent Kalonymos family, which gave medieval Germany many of its spiritual leaders and mystics. Rabbeinu Gershom explicitly prohibited polygamy for the first time in Jewish history.  Both he and Rashi lived in Worms.    Judah ben Samuel, a Hasid of Regensburg was his teacher and spiritual master.
                                                                 

Eleazar's wife was a businesswoman, allowing her husband to study and work on his findings.  In 1196, two Christian crusaders broke into his house and murdered his wife and 2 daughters in front of him.

 Even after going through this traumatic event, he continued to teach a doctrine of love of humanity.  He became a rabbi at Worms in 1201 and in 1223 took part in a synod at Mainz, which debated about problems such as business relations with Christians and the "inequitable exemptions of favored Jews" from the taxes imposed by the government.    His works stressed the idea of repentance.  He wrote "The Book of the Spice-Dealer".

Eleazar had studied Kabbalism, which is an influential body of Jewish mystical writings, and the Talmud, which is the rabbinical compendium of law, lore and commentary.  He tried to unify these opposing aspects of Judaism in his writings, often with interesting results.  He was an angelologist.  He held mystical theories of theurgy, which is the art of persuading or compelling supernatural beings to one's bidding.  Eleazar believed that the Kavod, a ruling angel, was an emanation from G-d and the knowable aspect of him, while G-d himself was infinitely transcendent and unknowable.  He also wrote mystical commentaries on the 5 scrolls of Song of Solomon, Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and Esther, and on the Five Books of Moses.

"Kalonymos or Kalonymus (Hebrew: קלונימוס‎) is a prominent Jewish family originally from Lucca, Italy, "city of Tuscany, Italy. Its Jewish community is known in literature especially through the Kalonymus family of Lucca, whose ancestor saved the life of the German emperor Otto II. after the battle of Cotrone in Calabria (982), and seems thereupon to have settled at Mayence, where the family had extensive privileges.".  Then, after the settlement at Mainz and Speyer of several of its members, took during many generations a leading part in the development of Jewish learning in Germany. The family is according to many considered the foundation of Hachmei and Hasidei Ashkenaz."

Worms turned out to be an important Jewish city for the Jewish academia.  The city was old, having existed before Roman times, which the Romans had captured and fortified under Drusus in 14 BCE.  The Romans kept a small troop of infantry and cavalry there who were garrisoned in Augusta Vangionum.  Originally the Celtic people had settled there and called it Borbetomagus.  It grew, with the garrison turning into a small town with the regularized Roman street plan, a forum, and temples for their main gods, Jupiter, Juno and Minerva.  On top of these was built the cathedral and another temple for Mars.  Roman inscriptions and altars and votive offerings are now in the city's archaeological museum along with a collection of Roman glass.  Found in this area were fragments of amphoras which show that olive oil that they held had come from Hispania Baetica by sea and then up the Rhine.  At Borbetomagus, Gunther, king of the Burgundians, was set up as a puppet-emperor, Jovinus as he was called during the disorders of 411-13.  Hun mercenaries overwhelmed them in 437 called in by the Roman,  General Aetius,  to put an end to Burgundian raids.

Worms, Germany, is a city in Rhineland-Palatinate, Germany, on the Rhine River and about 40 miles SW of Frankfurt-am-Main.  The census in 2004 showed it had 85,829 people.  It  was known in Medieval Hebrew under the name Varmayza or Vermaysa. which anglicized, would be "Worms."    It had become the center of Ashkenazic Judaism.  The Jewish community was established in the late 10th century and the first synagogue was erected in 1034.

By 1096, 800 Jews were murdered by crusaders and the local mob.  The Jewish cemetery in Worms dates from the 11th century and is believed to be the oldest surviving one in Europe.

There is the Rashi Synagogue there, which dates from 1175 and was carefully reconstructed after its desecration on Kristallnacht in 1938.  It is the oldest synagogue in Germany.

For hundreds of years, the Jewish Quarter was the center of Jewish life until Kristallnacht.  That was the year that much of the Jewish Quarter was destroyed.  Today, Worms has a very small Jewish population.  There were renovations in the 70's and 80's.  Many of the buildings of the Quarter can be seen in a reconstuction of the original, preserved as an outdoor museum.

In 2010, the synagogue was fire bombed.  Eight corners of the building were set on fire.  Somebody threw a Molotov cocktail through the window.  Kurt Beck, Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate, condemned the attack and vowed to find  the guilty.  He said, "We will not tolerate such an attack on a synagogue."

Today, with DNA coming out of scientific achievements, people are finding they are part of a group who have had their DNA tested and find they are matching with others who have a direct connection to the Rabbi of Worms, and therefore, to Rashi.  A group is formed at Family Tree DNA called the Halpern and Branches, part of the Jewish Heritage Project. My family genes are connected to the Rabbi of Worms.   I believe that Rashi would have been a Cohen bearing the Y haplogroup of J1, but descendants carrying some of these genes  would be of other lineages because of his only having daughters. The Eshet Chayil Foundation is tracing the descendants of King David, and they list Rashi in their material as well as the Luria family.  Their tree leads to the Gaon of Vilna b: 1720 in Lithuania, of which my oral history is that we are connected to him. Now there could be some truth to this because of our Rabbi of Worms connection and the fact that my grandfather was born in Lithuania.

A Rashi family tree can be seen at http://www.loebtree.com/rashi.html. and at http://www.loebtree.com/rashi.html.   He had 3 daughters.
[1] Rashi: Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac (b. 1040 Troyes/Champagne, France, d. 1105 Troyes/Champagne, France) marriedBatisaak daughter of Isaak BENABUN. They lived in France. Rashi wrote well known concise commentary on the bible.

Reference:  http://www.geni.com/projects/THE-RASHI-LEGACY-Kalonymos-Treves-Luria-and-Spira-Families/56
Encyclopedia Brittanica
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Worms,_Germany
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mainz
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kalonymos_family
http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/15013-worms
http://www.loebtree.com/rashi.html
http://www.davidicdynasty.org/familytrees.php--including Rashi
http://www.jewishhistory.org/ashkenazic-jewry-in-france/