Any Jews in Somalia? Some Might Think So

Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Somalia is on the right hand side of Kenya and Ethiopia
bordering the Indian Ocean.  Somalia (Somali:officially the Federal Republic of Somalia (Somali: and formerly known as the Somali Democratic Republic, is a country located in the Horn of Africa.

Somalia was an important center for commerce with the rest of the ancient world, and according to most scholars, it is among the most probable locations of the fabled ancient Land of Punt.

There have been Jews living in Africa since the time of the Pharaohs of Egypt.  After all, Israelites had left Egypt to return to their homeland in Canaan which became Israel later with king Saul.  Many Jews had returned to Egypt finding refuge there at the time of the destruction of the 1st Temple in 586 BCE.  Most likely there were Israelite military settlers in the service of the last Pharaohs as well.  There are many records of this such as an Israelite military colony at Yeb in the 5th century BCE.  Then the Greeks with Alexander the Great conquered Egypt and he brought in Israelite settlers to colonize their new cities.  Alexandria became from the 3rd century BCE on one of the greatest seats of Israelite life and civilization.

                                                      

My wonderful Israeli friend, from Kenya,
a Masai who is also Jewish
He's the greatest!!

We have Ethiopian Jews  that have been flown to Israel in rescue missions as they had been persecuted and killed by the Christians of Ethiopia.  Ethiopia is a neighbor of Somalia, but Jews have never gone there.  Someone from Somalia has had no contact with Jews.  Ethiopian Jews had a history of their Queen of Sheba visiting with King Solomon to see his kingdom.  Many were found to be following Judaism and waiting to be taken to Israel.  

Ethiopians moved into a high rise apartment house in Safed, Israel that was right across the street from me.  They came wearing white sheets and before you could say hi, were trying on clothes in one apartment made over as a shop of used donated clothing, and learning to buy groceries in our supermarket.  They first were taken to the hospital to make sure they were physically ready for our society, checking what diseases they might be carrying and such.  It was good for them and good for us.  

Yahoo answers replied to my question with:  "The thing about Somalia is that people tend to know everyone else's business. lol Since nearly 100% of us are Muslim, news would travel quite quickly if any were non-Muslim. So far, there is only one Christian Somali family I've heard of. No Jews but any non-Muslims in Somali would not be ethnically Somali."
                                                    

JIBOUTI -- The sultan of the Jews in Somalia is a handsome, silver-haired man named Ahmed Jama Hersi who does not know the first thing about Judaism. He is a Muslim, as were his ancestors back at least 800 years. But he and his people are treated badly, cursed as descendants of Israelites. The name of the tribe is Yibir, or Hebrew."  This shows that even in Somalia, Africa 800 years ago there was anti-Semitism.  They of course, were Muslims then and they did not like Jews, as in the Koran Jews were the object of attacks, for if a Muslim saw a Jew hiding behind a rock they were to attack them.  With this new revelation, why is it that we have a new Rep  with parents from Somalia that is so anti-Semitic?  She's Muslim, so perhaps this is a carry-over from African attitudes as well.  First off, he is recognizing his ancestry but not the religion.  It's a tribal issue to him.  He sees Hebrews as a tribe of this day. 
He has no idea that they stood for the religion called Judaism today. I suggest he take a DNA test.  That will tell us a lot.  We need to see his Y haplogroup results, his male line of DNA showing what group he would be classified in.   

                                                  

"For at least eight centuries, the Yibir have lived amongst the pastoralist populations of Northern Somalia. There, the populations are divided into different clan groupings. A strict caste system traditionally organizes the clans into a fixed hierarchy of noble to inferior. Being one of the lowest castes, the Yibir constitute one of the poorest populations in Somalia, if not the poorest."

As a low caste, the Yibir do not traditionally practice herding and are prevented by local customs from owning livestock or land. For most of their history, they made their living by doing low-wage menial labor and housemaid work for other clans. They are also associated with leatherwork occupations, such as tanning hides and handcrafts involving the making of saddles, amulets and prayer mats. The Yibir are also well known for their skill in blacksmithery, in making iron tools and weaponry.

Although the question as to how Judaism has arrived to Somalia has not been previously researched, certain Yibir cultural features seem to indicate that the community has branched out of an older Beta Israel–Ethiopian Jewish population. (As reported in Jon Entine’s Abraham’s Children, genetic evidence has confirmed that the formation of the Beta Israel goes back approximately to the fourth or fifth century). Both groups, the Beta Israel and Yibir, are perceived as outcasts by their host populations and are associated with magic and superstition. (The Beta Israel are known in Ethiopia as Falasha, meaning exiles or outcasts in ancient Ethiopic. The Beta Israel are also strongly associated in Ethiopian traditions with the Budah, a magical or evil supernatural entity that can inflict curse on the locals).
                                                                 

Ilhan Abdullahi Omar  age 37 (born October 4, 1982) is an American politician serving as the U.S. Representative for Minnesota's 5th congressional district since 2019. The district includes all of Minneapolis and some of its suburbs. " Minnesotans elected Ilhan Omar, the first Muslim woman and first Somali person to serve in the U.S. House of Representatives. Another Muslim woman, Rashida Tlaib, was elected to Congress in Michigan as well." 

We now have a female Rep  born and raised in Somalia, Ilhan Omar.  She is about as anti-Semetic as one can get, and the terrible thing is that she is heard from all the time in her role as a Representative.  She was voted in from her district, a higher Muslim populated area, and they must all be of her persuasion towards Jews.  When told she's anti-Semitic, she denies it.  Of course, all anti-Semites do.  They see things only their way which they think is he right way.  

A timeline shows that she was born on October 4, 1981 and was 8 years old when she fled from Somalia in 1989.  By 1991 there was a full blown Civil War in Somalia.  She was in a refugee camp for 4 years in Kenya taking her to 1993. She was now 12 years old or older.   By 2000 she was a USA citizen, having to wait the usual 5 years as everyone does before filing.  She did get to attend an American High School, Edison in Minneapolis, for how long, I couldn't tell.  Most American conditioning takes place from K-8th grade.  That's when we have stood every morning to say the Pledge of Allegience, and sing American songs.  All a duck has to do when hatched out of the egg is to follow whoever or whatever is presented to them as their parent or role model.  We, on the other hand, need a little more conditioning.  

Right now President Trump is in trouble and is being called a racist by the Senators.  "The post came days after Trump apparently told four Democratic Congresswomen of color—Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib—to “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came.” All four women are U.S. citizens and all but Omar, who was born in Somalia, were born in the United States."
                                                       

Somalians seem to have the fine features of many Ethiopians

Isn't he just throwing back to her with his quick statement of "perhaps she should go back to her old country what she has been saying about Jews?  Remember, his daughter is Jewish and so are her children and husband, of course.  He's taking her comments personally, I would think.  "Democrats quickly declared the tweets racist and voted to condemn them, but the President pushed back on that accusation. On Monday, he declared that the tweets were “NOT Racist,” and that he doesn’t “have a Racist bone in my body!”"

Ilhan Omar has taken American citizenship.  She's now an American BUT she has the conditioning of a Somali Muslim.  Citizenship hasn't turned her into an "American, raised in our school system with parents proud of their country who have love for it.  You don't change overnight.  Now she's in partnership with 3 other very young female Congresswomen  who all feel the same way.  Yes, America is changing their attitudes, and again, many have changed back to the attitudes of the 1930 Nazis of being anti-Semitic.  This is what we Jews should be fearful of, and not be caught off-guard like the German Jews were.  Do I hear an uproar from American Muslims against her views about Jews?  No.  i'm waiting.  
                                                                    

Pressured by the U.S. government’s anti-terrorism crackdown, a small Southern California bank is cutting off a crucial source of aid to families in war-ravaged Somalia — money wired from Somali immigrants in the United States.

Merchants Bank of California said it planned to stop wiring the funds to Somalia on Friday, following in the footsteps of a string of other banks that cut off the service since giants Wells Fargo & Co. and US Bancorp ended such transfers nearly a decade ago.

Omar was born in Mogadishu on October 4, 1982, and spent her early years in Baidoa, Somalia. She was the youngest of seven siblings, including Sahra Noor. Her father Nur Omar Mohamed, an ethnic Somali, worked as a teacher trainer, and her mother, Fadhuma Abukar Haji Hussein, a Benadiri (a community of partial Yemeni descent), died when Ilhan was two. She was raised by her father and grandfather thereafter. Her grandfather Abukar was the director of Somalia's National Marine Transport and some of Omar's uncles and aunts also worked as civil servants and educators. She and her family fled Somalia to escape the war and spent four years in a Dadaab refugee camp in Garissa County, Kenya, near the Somali border."

She's at the forefront of kicking Trump out of office.  

"A frequent critic of Israel, Omar has denounced its settlement policy and military campaigns in the occupied Palestinian territories, and what she describes as the influence of pro-Israel lobbies  such as the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC)."  I happen to be a member of AIPAC!  AIPAC is not pushing Israel in any direction as Israel is their own Democratic country, the ones who have to live in such a dangerous climate.  They trust their decisions about their own lives.  They work on explaining issues to those who do not have the time to learn, to understand.  They are advocates of Israel as I am, not naysayers.  There is another group, J Street.  I cannot say such nice things about them.  They were created under Soros.  Need I say more?  They are the critics who do so as sheep, only following their leadership.  Criticism has value only if it helps, not deters the object being criticized.  A child will not blossom if he is constantly being told he has no value, is bad, needs to stop XYand Z, etc.  He'll only turn into a serial killer.  
                                                          

probably an Ethiopian Jew, now in the IDF

In early 2019, Omar was criticized by a number of Democrats, Republicans and Jewish civil rights groups for comments about American support for Israel that they said drew on anti-Semitic tropes. Omar apologized for some of the remarks."  It was Trump who has finally kept an American promise of moving the consul from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.  This was a big plus in Israel's eyes.  It was a Trump accomplishment, and Democrats are having a hard time dealing with that.  They are doing their best to kick Trump out of office.  Omar, of course, is a Democrat.  Minnesota has a population of 5,303,925 people.  274,412 of them are either Black or of African heritage.  Somalians must be included in this group.  


Hodan Natayeh is a female Somali-Canadian journalist who went to Somalia for research and was murdered with 25 others in her hotel.  

Somalia has a history of Muslim slave trade, terror, piracy and civil hostility which drove Ilhan Omar's family to the USA along with many others.  Piracy even existed in Somalia.  "Slavery in Somalia existed as a part of the Arab slave trade. To meet the demand for menial labor, Bantus from southeastern Africa captured by Somali slave traders were sold in cumulatively large numbers over the centuries to customers in Somalia and other areas in Northeast Africa and Asia."

As people are Sunni Muslims, their culture allows honor killings and includes female genital mutilation. " In 2012, Somalia introduced a new constitution that was supposed to ban female genital mutilation. But a few years later, there had been little follow-up, and UNICEF still estimated that up to 98 percent of girls and women there had been cut."

This is the country that Omar praises.  She is a leader of calling Trump racist now that she's in Congress where she is already known for her anti-Semitic and hatred for Israel messages to her cohorts.  Looking at her country of origin and the USA, I'd take the USA anytime and thank G-d and praise the USA, even with all it's faults.  After all, it's not heaven.  That depends on the population and their values of life.  More likely the USA is like a rose garden with those prickly stickers on the stems.  

Resource: "haruth.com/JewsSomalia.html
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-new-anti-semite-in-our-government.html
https://www.goodreadbiography.com/ilhan-omar-biography/
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/worldviews/wp/2018/07/20/most-girls-in-somalia-experience-genital-mutilation-the-ritual-just-killed-a-10-year-old/?noredirect=on&utm_term=.0d6454511aae
https://geneticliteracyproject.org/2013/09/03/ethiopian-jews-in-somalia-tracing-remnants-of-the-yibir/
https://suburbanstats.org/population/how-many-people-live-in-minnesota
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia:  Africa
https://time.com/5629368/merriam-webster-racism/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maasai_people
https://news.yahoo.com/latest-pence-dems-led-liberals-233225798.html;_ylt=AwrWmn2lnTBd_GgAKAAPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTByZDNzZTI1BGNvbG8DZ3ExBHBvcwMyBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzYw--
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Somalia
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2019/03/hamas-supporter-helps-ilhan-omar-house.html
Leonard Baum:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Somalia
https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-justice-democrats-of-usa-backers-of.html
https://nationalpost.com/news/world/send-her-back-crowd-at-trump-rally-echo-presidential-remarks-towards-minority-congresswoman?video_autoplay=true
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somali_Civil_War
Update: 7/19/19 morning:  https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/What-There-were-Jews-in-Somalia-540076**** A must read.  There was one family, mother and son, who were Jewish and have disappeared since the Civil War.  

The Jews of Mexico

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                         

"Marranos"  together to Celebrate Passover
checking at the window to see if they are safe or not
Today we call such Jews the Anusim.  

Jews have had history in Mexico ever since the Spanish Inquisition of 1492 when Jews had 2 choices to make;  convert to Christianity and remain in Spain or leave quickly.  Jews had arrived in Spain after 70 CE when the Romans had attacked Jerusalem; killing Jews and burning the city down.  Jews who remained in Spain by converting included many who were still Jews at heart, not being happy to have been forced to accept another religion, and they continued to practice what they could in secret.  They were called Marranos, which in Spanish was an ugly word, meaning swine or pigs.  Today we do not use this word, but dub them as another Hebrew word. the Anusim, meaning those who were coerced, forced to take another religion.   

The vast majority of Spain's Jews who had converted, called" conversos, however, remained in Spain and Portugal and were suspected of "Marranism" by the Spanish Inquisition. Although the wealthier among them could easily bypass discriminatory Limpieza de sangrelaws, they constituted a significant portion of the over three thousand people executed for heresy by the Spanish Inquisition."
                                                                                    

Burned at the stake by Spanish Inquisition
for not giving up their Jewish religion when forced to become
Catholics.

Marranos from Spain found it too hot to stay safe and live so left.  They wound up in Mexico with the CONQUISTADORES early in the 16th century, and how, I do not know since the Spaniards no doubt were Catholics intent on converting the natives.  Maybe the Jews got out as servants of some sort.  Two Jews were discovered, nevertheless, and were burned at the stake in 1528.  

A group of Jews arrived who were educated European laymen in 1531 but evidence shows that they were a substantial portion of the scant Spanish-speaking population who had arrived.  There are still letters in Spain that claim that by the mid-16th century there were more secret Jews than Catholics in Mexico City.  These, however, were written by various Inquisitors and no doubt exaggerated greatly to get more money out the king.  

Portugal soon came under the same laws of kicking out Jews so those Jews leaving had to seek refuge elsewhere.  These Conversos, as Marranos were also called,  who had moved on to Nueva Espagna (Mexico) from  Portugal  had skills that led Mexico to become a productive country, but we in the USA  don't view Mexico as that today, not with thousands fleeing from there to here lately.  What has happened?  

In 1571,  the Spaniards set up an Inquisitional tribunal  and it remained active for 200 years.  

"Jews who arrived between 1821 and 1865 were not allowed to become Mexican citizens."  Political and economic chaos was the problem, not necessarily bias, think some.  

A few European Jews reached Mexico in the 19th century. In 1884 President Porfirio Diaz invited a number of Jewish bankers into the  country.  Until then, banks were non-existent.  They financed Mexico's entry into the 20th Century!  Today Jews do not dominate the banking system or the Mexican industrial complex, though they founded the bank.  Today, all original banks are nationalized.  
                                                    

The Mexican Consul General, Prado, said that  "The first wave of Jewish immigrants in México — known as conversos — arrived during the colonial period and were fleeing the Spanish Inquisition"  Jewish families also arrived at the border on their way to immigrate to the United States.
"Since then we have many prominent Jewish families living in El Paso that arrived to the United States through México," Prado said.  

The community only became sizable after World War I.  Most came to Mexico from 1881 to 1939, beginning the same years as those Jews heading for the USA.  Mexico today as about 50,000 Jews and are living in a country that is about 97% Catholic.  The people of Mexico have been kind and tolerant and the Jews have had the ability to adapt to new environments and maintain their Judaism.                                          

Celebrating Chanukah in Latin America 

Ashkenazim Jewish immigrants  came mainly from Poland, Russia and Lithuania and some could be my relatives for that's where my ancestors came from.  The Sephardim who spoke Ladino, a Spanish-Hebrew language from Spanish speaking countries came from Syria, Turkey and Greece.  Mexico restricted Jewish immigration after the USA did in 1924.   Mexico restricted Jews by 1937, when the getting out from Germany was so important.
        Jews have played an important part in the industrial development of the country. These Jews differ from Jews going to the USA as immigrants.  Those going to Mexico were almost 100% fleeing for their very lives.  The present community of Mexican Jews have left a legacy of fear buried in their minds and hearts.  Can such a thing as the Inquisition happen here as well?  It has chased Jews to Mexico already.   In 1990 there were 35,000 Jews living here.  Most found homes in Mexico City.  There were also Mexico Indian Jews, Jews of mixed ancestry of Indian and European.  Charges brought by the Inquisition substantiate that Jews who fled to Nueva Espagna in 1531 converted Indians before the Inquisition was established in the New World.  
                                                     

Mexican Jews reading from the Torah on a Saturday morning

The rabbinate and the Mexican Jewry do not recognize this group and 2 other groups, the Iglesia de Dios and the Casa de Dios.  All 3 read the Old Testament and observe some of the rules that observant Jews follow.  The 7th Day Adventists do also, for that matter.  They have not been thought to be a form of Judaism as yet.  The one synagogue where Mexican Indians attend who do observe Judaism is the one in Venta Prieta serving Mexican Indians.  
                                                         

A synagogue in Mexico of Polish Jews

  There are 14 Orthodox synagogues and 2 others, perhaps a conservative and a reform in Mexico City.  Other synagogues are found in Guadalajara, Monterrey and Tijuana.  

There are 6 all-day Jewish schools and 2 yeshivot in Mexico City and one each in Guadalajara and Monterrey.  About 65% of the Jewish children attend schools, from kindergarten to high school, that offer Yiddish, Hebrew and general courses.    The Colegio Hebreo Tarbut offers a Hebrew and general curriculum.  There is also a Jewish Teachers' Seminary.  

The Yidisher Sport Tzenter has a membership of 23,000.  There are 5 Jewish newspapers.  The 11 volume Encyclopedia Judaica Castellana is the most ambitious Mexican Jewish cultural achievement out of Mexico.  

Strangely to me, as bull- fighting would not be accepted in Orthodox Judaism in that we don't believe in hurting animals, is that we had a Jewish matador from Brooklyn in the 1920s  who remained popular in Mexico after he cut the pigtail as an announcer of bullfights on radio and TV. 
                                                      

Hidalgo Mexican Sephardi Jewish symbol

Some Converso groups in early 1999 from Vera Cruz and Puebla now are practicing Jews.  They are also gathering information about the many Catholic families who are still practicing some Jewish rites.  This is similar to what is going on with the Pashtun Muslims in Afghanistan, Pakistan and India.  They also became Muslims but how and why is still rather unknown.  Their experiences would have happened after the Assyrians attacked Israel in 722 BCE, much farther back in time.  These Mexican Catholics were asked why they do these things and they answer that their mothers learned it from their mothers.  "They might light candles on Friday night or keep separate sets of dishes for dairy and meat, but have no idea that what they are doing is Judaic in origin."

Schulamite C. Halevey, a descendant of an anusim family made their way to Israel and reported about this.  She found they tell their children:  "We are not really Mexican.  We are descendants of Spanish nobility.  Then they practice Jewish rituals; the dietary laws lighting Friday night candles, and some even close their businesses on Saturday.  They say it is a day we spend with our families.  They also marry only people like themselves, other anusim.  It is not expected that they will return to Judaism officially, but will remain Catholics who practice Jewish rituals, but once they know who they are, well, we will see.  Such situations have happened with other groups and a few might be curious enough to revert back to Judaism after studying their history.
                                                      

Catholic Grocer helps Mexican Jews keep kosher (kosher food marked with
a U in a circle that has followed the laws of kashrut).  Here a Jewish customer
is checking out the kosher foods on the top shelf.   

Jews in Mexico came from 4 distinct areas:  Aleppo, Syria, Damascus, Syria, the Balkans and Eastern Europe.  They each have their own synagogues.  They represent the Ashkenazim of Russia, Poland, Germany and other parts of Europe and the Sephardim, mainly from Italy and what was once the Ottoman Empire.  

Here they Ashkenazim and Sephardim are intermarrying, which is also happening in Israel and in the USA, right in my own family.  The synagogues are slightly different but both read Hebrew, and the food of the two groups has its own distinctness while still following the laws of Kashrut.  Language was different; Yiddish and Ladino, but like in Israel, all speak Hebrew, and in Mexico, all speak Spanish.  

San Francisco's Bay area had a Jewish Film Festival and in 1995 saw a movie titled A KISS TO THIS LAND, directed by Daniel Goldberg, a Mexican Jew.  The film recreates the Mexico that Jewish immigrants found when they arrived in the 1920s and 1930s.  It points out the differences of Jews settling in the USA and those settling in Mexico.  
                                                           

Father Hidalgo y Costilla-Mexican Roman Catholic priest and supposed  marrano,  and a leader of the Mexican War of Independence in 1810-their break from Spain.   Anti-Spanish sentiment had been simmering in Mexico for some time, but it took the charismatic Father Hidalgo to provide the spark the nation needed to start its war of Independence. Today, Father Hidalgo is considered a hero of Mexico and one of the greatest founders of the nation.

A genealogical study claims that Father Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla the father of Mexican Independence, had a "Converso" or Anusim background.  The same sources say that Bartolome De Las Casas, Bishop who fought the colonial government seeking to free slaves in Nueva Espagna, also had Jewish ancestors.   
                                                          

Frida Kahlo, flamboyant artist and wife of Diego Rivera, had a Jewish heritage. was a "pillar" of the smart set of Mexico who died in 1954.  Her father was a Hungarian Jew and she never denied her Jewish heritage.   

Resource: 
The New Standard Jewish Encylopedia, Mexico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marrano
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anusim
Jews in Mexico, A Struggle for Survival by Shep Lenchek in 2000, part 1, 2, and 3. http://www.mexconnect.com/mex_/travel/slenchek/sljewsinmexico2.html 
Something to read in the future:
Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, a book researched by Joan Comay, published in Israel.  

Historical records;  Archivo General de la Nacion de Mexico
Ramo de la Inquisition, The Inqauisitors and the Jews in the New World by Seymour B. Liebman, U of Miami Press, 1974
Los JudeoConversos en Espagne y America by Anatonio Dominguez Madrid 1971

Being Connected By DNA to Rabbi Samson Wertheimer or his Brother Back In 1658

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                                         

Rabbi Samson Wertheimer

One of the benefits of having my DNA tested by FTDNA was to find out I was a 3rd cousin to one of the heads of the group, Halpern & Branches, and then finding out that I was in a group connecting to Rabbi Samson Wertherimer (1658-1724) who was born in Worms, Germany.  He had gone to Vienna in 1684 to join the bank of his uncle Samuel Oppenheimer and soon became court banker.  He is also known now as a financier.

Some three hundred years ago, in the city of Vienna, capital of Austria, there lived a famous rabbi, Rabbi Samson Wertheimer. (Rabbi Samson Wertheimer was born in Worms in 1658 and died in Vienna at the age of 66. Through his great friend, Samuel Oppenheimer, the great financier, Rabbi Samson was presented to the royal court and, together, they were of great assistance to 

                                                    

                                        King Leopold the First. 

 Leopold I (French: Léopold;^[a] 16 December 1790 – 10 December 1865) was a German prince who became the first King of the Belgians following the country's independence in 1830. He reigned between July 1831 and December 1865.  

Later, after the death of Oppenheimer, Rabbi Samson took over his post, which he kept also during the reign of King Joseph.)

This rabbi was renowned not only on account of his riches and high government position, but also on account of his wisdom and fine character.  He was King Leopold’s Finance-Minister, and was entrusted with all the financial secrets of the country. He also supplied much of the war material for the army in the great war with Spain at that time.  Because of this, he was accused of cheating and almost was either hung or burned alive in fire.  (Chabad story-reference below to finish reading). 

Why was this such a benefit?  Rabbi Samson had a tree showing a connection to RASHI, famous biblical scholar, and RASHI was a descendant of King David.  Back in the ancient days, all men on the Sanhedrin had to have trees to show such a connection.  

There are other known Wertheimers.  Joseph Von W.(1800-1887) was an Austrian educator and author which is what I am except I'm from the USA.  This man was first a businessman and established the 1st kindergarten in Vienna in 1830.  He founded a society for developing handicrafts among the Jews in 1840.  He supported the struggle for equal rights by writing  comprehensive accounts of Jews in Austria.  He was the author of popular plays, too.  
                                                

Max Wertheimer (1880-1943) was a psychologist and taught in Germany until 1933 since the movement against Jews had become so strong that he decided to move to New York where he taught at the New School for Social Research.  He was a founder of the Gestalt theory of psychology.  He's written many books, all on amazon.com.  Too bad he passed away before the time of DNA testing.  I wonder what he would think of students of today?  "  He's buried in New Rochelle, Westchester, New York.  His father was Moses Wertheimer and mother was Elizabeth Dreyfus.  He married Miriam K. Solomon on August 30, 1908.  


My brother, now a retired psychologist,  matched with 3 Wertheimers of which 2 were men I didn't match,  and I matched 4.  All were either 4th or 5th cousins. My 1st female cousin matched 10 Wertheimers of which 5 not my brother or my matches.  My male 1st cousin matched 2  of the ones my brother and I matched.  It looks like we females match more Wertheimers than our male counterparts.  My cousins are children of my father's sisters.   No Wertheimer we matched was of Q haplotype, but were Js, Es and R.  (2 of my matches matched each other on one chromosome with a little over 5cMs.  One was a 4th cousin and the other a 5th.) That was the only 3 people on the same chromosome and segment match I had-a triangulation with them.  
                                                     

Wertheim Castle

There was the surname of Wertheim. This is an example of a surname being taken from the town they were from.  Jews had to buy their surnames, usually from a certain list of surnames up for sale for Jews.  Like Goldfoot, there are Jewish Goldfoots and Gentile Goldfoots with a completely different Y haplotype.  Ours is Q, theirs is R, one of the more common surnames found in Europe.  

 Wertheim am Main is a municipality in Germany. Wertheim (East Franconian: Wärde) is a town in southwestern Germany, in the state of Baden-Württemberg with a population of around 23,400. It is located on the confluence of the rivers Tauberand Main. Wertheim is best known for its landmark castle and medieval town centre.

"Maurice Wertheim was born on February 16, 1886 to Jacob Wertheim and his wife, Hannah A. Morgenthau Wertheim. Jacob Wertheim was a founder of Wertheim & Schiffer (later Kerbs, Wertheim & Schiffer), one of several domestic cigar-manufacturing companies which were combined in 1902 to form the United Cigar Manufacturers Company, of which he became president. Jacob was also at one time director of the General Motors Corporation, a director of the Underwood Typewriter Company, and a director of several large real-estate concerns. He was also a founder of the Federation for the Support of Jewish Philanthropic Societies."

I see the middle name of Morgenthau, which is a Jewish name.  "Hans Joachim Morgenthau (February 17, 1904 – July 19, 1980) was one of the major twentieth-century figures in the study of international politics. Morgenthau's works belong to the tradition of realism in international relations theory, and he is usually considered, along with George F. Kennan and Reinhold Niebuhr, one of the three leading American realists of the post-World War II period. Morgenthau made landmark contributions to international relations theory and the study of international law. His Politics Among Nations, first published in 1948, went through five editions during his lifetime.

Morgenthau was born in an Ashkenazi Jewish family in Coburg, Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, Germany in 1904, and, after attending the Casimirianum, was educated at the universities of Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich, and pursued postdoctoral work at the Graduate Institute of International Studies in Geneva, Switzerland.  On the other hand, there may be Morgenthaus of a Y haplogroup not common to Jews who proves to be a Gentile.  We have to remember that there are Catholic families who had been from Jewish families in the past, and now their descendants have no idea of their Jewish heritage.  That's why testing for the Y haplogroup is so important in such cases if facts are desired.  

Resource:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wertheim_%26_Co.
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/112291/jewish/Rabbi-Samsons-Great-Escape.htm