Lyndsey Telford and Ed Carty

17 June 2013

THE US First Lady and her two daughters were given a presentation on their family genealogy and connections to Ireland when they visited Trinity College today.

‘;
document.write(s);
return;
}

window.google_adnum = window.google_adnum || null;

google_ad_client = “ca-pub-9024837700129787″;
google_ad_output = “js”;
google_ad_type = “text”;

google_ad_channel = ’9868211012,3764294476′;

google_max_num_ads = ’2′;

google_skip = window.google_adnum; /* insert this snippet for each ad call */

At Trinity, the Obamas visited the Old Library and were shown the Book of Kells, a ninth-century, elaborately decorated gospel manuscript made by Irish monks.

Mrs Obama, Malia and Sasha were also shown the birth registry of President Obama‘s Irish ancestors from around the village of Moneygall and old maps detailing the family’s homestead in Co Offaly.

Dressed casually in jeans and jackets, the girls listened carefully and chatted to tour guides as they happily strolled the length of the Long Room in the famous Old Library of Trinity – Ireland’s oldest university.

The First Lady flicked through the pages of a booklet compiled by Trinity’s genealogists, pointing out interesting facts to Malia and Sasha.

The elder daughter nodded and smiled, appearing relaxed in the spotlight, dressed in a khaki jacket and black cut-off trousers, with bright pink flat shoes.

Her younger sister Sasha looked like any 12-year-old girl on a family holiday, in her bright pink jumper and blue slouchy jacket, dark pink trousers and green pumps.

Mrs Obama is the subject of a new book being published tomorrow which links her ancestry to Protestant Irish immigrants who were plantation and slave owners in the southern states of the US in the 1800s.

The US embassy in Dublin said officials have been aware of the First Lady’s reported ancestry but nothing has been confirmed by the White House.

A huge security operation was in place in Dublin city centre for the First Lady’s trip with parts of St Stephen’s Green and Kildare Street, where the Leinster House parliament is located, closed to through traffic.

The Obamas were given a presentation on their family genealogy and connections to Ireland, compiled by heritage and archive company Eneclann which has been spun out of Trinity research.

It researched President Obama’s ancestry from Falmouth Kearney, his second great-grandfather to his seventh great-grandfather, Joseph Kearney.

It identified John Kearney, whom college researchers described as a distant cousin of the US president, who went on to become the provost of Trinity, and later the Church of Ireland bishop of Ossory, a diocese in the counties of Kilkenny, Laois and Offaly.

The family were also shown an original 19th century map held by the National Library of Ireland which shows lands of Gorthgreen from where some of the family originated.

Trinity provost Dr Patrick Prendergast, who showed the Obamas through the Old Library, said it was a honour to have them at the university.

The college chief told the First Lady their visit was particularly poignant because of the Kearney connections.

“As a country, America has welcomed many of our graduates over the years where a large number of our alumni are living. Our graduates who play a critical role in shaping the knowledge economy are our diaspora,” he added.

President Obama’s distant Irish cousin Henry Healy – who the US leader jokes is known as Henry VIII because of their family ties – presented Michelle and the girls with gifts during their visit to Trinity.

He said both daughters were delighted to get their certificates of Irish heritage.

“Both of them were pretty amazed with the certificates,” Mr Healy said.

“Competing with their friends, now they can prove they’re more Irish than them.”

By Kevin Doyle

Press Association

‘Tis graduation season — or for rabbinical school, ordination season — and my family welcomes my sister-in-law Dahlia as the first female rabbi in our tree. So it’s a tad jarring that the family member whom I want to talk to most says, and I quote, “It’s against my religion.”

As a writer and researcher, I’ve picked up the mantle of family historian. My great-aunt Gloria holds the last living secrets to my family’s Hungarian heritage. She’s the youngest child of Ignatz Amsel, my great-grandfather and namesake, and the first one of the family to make it to America.

Most American Jewish families have similar stories, but I am genuinely proud to be a descendent of Ignatz. He fought in WWI, was in a Siberian POW camp for seven years, then walked (yes, walked) back home to his wife and kids in Hungary. When he immigrated to the States, he worked as a cloth cutter for years before he could send for his family. From all counts, Ignatz remained a hard-working but light-hearted man. He’s an emblem of courage, defiance and love.

Gloria, who turns 80 this September, moved to Israel 20 years ago and lives in an ultra-Orthodox enclave in the shadow of the Western Wall. She used to be secular; now she covers her hair at all times. “I became religious in ’67 after we got Jerusalem,” she says, under her snood.

For the five female rabbis ordained at the Jewish Theological Seminary this spring, religiosity is in the eye of the beholder. They each represent a slightly different branch of the religion, from Open-Sexuality Judaism, to Orthodox-in-all-but-penis. Yet they all have the same basic tenets in common, which emphasize tolerance and acceptance for all people. (You’ll be hard-pressed to find a homophobic female rabbi.) For centuries, the word rebetzin was defined as “rabbi’s wife.” Now my brother Aaron proudly emblazons it on his baseball cap.

Female rabbis are a young institution, and change in the status quo terrifies those who cling to the past. After learning about Ignatz, I can’t blame past-clingers. There exists a profound respect for those who came before us and set our stage. We want to connect to these people as closely as we can – that might be why we bestow their names unto our children. Personally, I want to connect to Ignatz’s incredible courage and willpower. I assume the ultra-Orthodox yearn to connect to something meaningful in their history, too.

The problem, as Gloria illustrates, is the cognitive dissonance among the ultra-Orthodox. She doesn’t hold with Torah-literate females, but she’s proud that her grandfather was the rabbi and cantor of his village. She basks in the mythos that we’re related to the rabbi who built the Golem.

I’m fascinated by family stories like these. Piecing the puzzle together, we can better understand where we came from and who we have grown to be. Entire human lives have been lived from beginning to end, and while some have been recorded in detail, others have left nothing but a single anecdote and a faded photograph. This is why I research family history.

We look toward our ancestors with a longing, a sort of admiration of their trials. We wonder, “If I were in that situation, would I have been able to do the same?” Survival seems so easy now, and maybe a part of us regrets that whatever made our ancestors strong and empowered has diminished over time.

I observe these female rabbis (or rabbot), and I listen to their stories. These are women who sing their prayers at the Western Wall with full expectation that men will throw chairs to silence them. Some women are arrested, clutching Torah scrolls, and are taken in police cars away from the Jerusalem center. The ultra-Orthodox are admonishing them for their act of social change, for straying from a heritage of female complacency. Each of the five women experienced this first-hand, and expect to in the future.

Generally, the Jewish population enjoys great liberties between America and Israel. These women are the vestiges of the remaining struggle for modern Jews — a struggle at the hands of the past-clingers, no less.
But the joke is on Aunt Gloria. The ultra-Orthodox, in their insistence to honor the past, are creating the perfect conditions in which to cultivate new trail-blazers. For these female rabbis, their Serbia is cold ignorance, and they’re slowly walking home to the embrace of acceptance. They are setting the stage for those who come after them, living not for the past, but for a future of tolerance. Like my great-grandfather, these women are nothing if not emblems of courage, defiance and love.

And tomorrow’s historians will shake their own heads in wonder.

Jake Friedman is a writer, professor and the authorized biographer of Art Babbitt.

The Bartlesville Genealogical Society will present the popular short course “Genealogy 101” at the Bartlesville Public Library, Conference Room A (upstairs). The class will meet from 2 to 4 p.m. on Saturday.

The instructor will be Barbara Fulton, an experienced genealogist who has taught a number of classes locally. The class will include tips for how to begin the search for one’s ancestors and how to organize the information that is found.

The class is open to all and is free, however, there will be a fee of $3 to cover the cost of the handout (which will be very useful to researchers).

Registration is required to ensure that enough handouts will be available. To register, sign up at the library’s Local Family History Room or call 918-331-2757 or 918-338-4167 by Friday.

During the hours of 9 a.m. and 4 p.m. on Saturday, an experienced genealogist will be on duty in the Bartlesville Public Library’s Local Family History Room to guide beginning family history researchers or to assist anyone requesting help to get past “brick walls” in their ancestral search.

This free service is provided by Bartlesville Genealogical Society.