הגאון רבי עקיבא הכהן כץ ס"ט (מגולי ספרד), אב"ד סלוניקי - Has anyone been able to find information about his family?

See one of the other discussions where I mentioned a theoretical connection the the Ben Ardut family. They lived both in Catalonia and Salonica like Akiva, but more interestingly they have a tradition of being descendants of the High Priest Eli, which is not common among other families of Kohanim. It’s not very much at all, as a matter of fact, it’s pure speculation, but their just might be something to it. However if we track down where Akiva came from in Spain (which may be impossible) I’m sure we’ll be able to get more insight.

Eli Rubin

Following the previous discussions I tried several times to find more information ... he is mentioned in dozens of sources + the information I wrote about him, other than that I could not find more information

I was hoping that maybe someone else find more information about him and his family ... There is the option here to go back many generations - if we can find information

I agree although it’s very likely that any family information was destroyed or lost during the inquisition

Eli Rubin

It seems to me that there is a possibility here to go back many generations - if we could find the identity of his parents, his family, and how he is a descendant of Rabbi Yehuda Hchassid

I should note that I am looking for information not because of the connection to Spain / Portugal, but because he is a descendant son after son of Aaron the Priest, so it seems to me that there is the ability here to find information many generations back.

The fact that I am a descendant of a mixed family: Ashkenazi, and Spanish I know well (I also know to whom we are descendants, but I don't know how)

How would we find his parents? I’ve spend a lot of time looking and I’ve literally found nothing.

I also searched a lot and could not find, so I opened the discussion hoping to find someone who has information / can guide us where to find information

I would like to shift gears for a minute on this topic, looking instead downstream of R' Akiva HaKohen Katz. The question is whether either of you have any reasonable doubts as to whether R' Akiva is the father-after-father ancestor of R' Shabtai HaCohen Katz (Shakh), as currently appears on the GENI tree? According to GENI, the former is the 5x great grandfather. However, I have heard in a prior discussion that there may be some disagreement about this pedigree. What are your findings on this question, if you have had any time to consider the question? What is the evidence against, if any? The GENI tree looks solid up to 3x ggf but then comes a profile whose curators and managers I am not familiar with and there are no places of birth or death, as there are for the preceding records. So the question reduces to: how do we know whether R' Naftali Herz Katz (3x ggf) is the son of R' Yitzach HaCohen of Galata (4x ggf)?

Private User

I tried some time ago to try to find on the side of
HaRav Shabty Ashkenazi HaCohen Katz, the "SHaCH"
out who his ancestors were, and I managed to the best of my memory to reach only 3 generations back.

Because I'm a descendant of

Rabbi Akiva Hakohen Katz, ABD Saloniki (Alter of Salonika)
Through another branch, I did not notice that Rabbi Shabtai was also connected to him as his descendants

Need to check the thing, there may be a mistake here

In the book
"ELEF MARGALIOT
"אלף מרגליות"
On page 367 there is a whole chapter on
HaRav Shabty Ashkenazi HaCohen Katz, the "SHaCH"
family

Unfortunately, I do not have a subscription so I can not read the information written there ..
There may be people here who have a subscription and they can read and know what the correct information is

I hope there is some feedback on this because there is a person who has a solid pedigree to Shach who has done the genetic testing. If the connection between Shach and Alter of Salonika is solid then that would mean this person is showing us the signature the Alter. This would in turn support the hypothesis that Akiva is from the original Cohanic family. BTW, there was a recent article in Haaretz suggesting that maybe Aaron was not the brother of Moses: https://www.haaretz.com/jewish/.premium.HIGHLIGHT-the-conspiracy-to...

Private User there is no need to mention such blasphemous articles. Thank you.

Private User Amen to your point. I also believe that in an open society, we must be able to discuss anything. My position on the Moses question is this: Moses was a Levite, and according to my understanding, his grandson Rehavia had many descendants. This would mean that there is most probably a Levitical branch around today which descends directly from Moses.

If there is a Levitical branch descended from Moses, the family probably wouldn't know it. In general, there is a much greater amount of Kohanim than Levi'im, even though originally there were much more Levi'im than Kohanim. The reason behind that is probably because the Kohanim retained their lineage through the generations a lot better than the Levi'im; the Kohanim have much more obligations than the Levi'im, so it's more likely for the family to remember that they were Kohanim. Kohanim do Birchas Kohanim (the Priestly Blessing), they can't go into a cemetery, people have to honor them, they get the money from the Pidyon HaBen, etc. But almost the only privilege given to Levi'im is the fact that they get the second Aliyah.

Because there are so many obligations that the Kohanim have, especially by Pidyon HaBen, there is a concept of using a Kohen who has very good lineage. It is actually a famous idea that the Rappaport family, the progeny of the Shach, are known to be verified, true Kohanim.

1) certain families (bienveneste horowitz and Epstein) of levites have traditions of being descendants of the line of Heman/Samuel//Korah from the Kehath family of Levi.
2) the Rappaport family are not actually related to the Shach. They have a complete tree that goes back to Zadok/Elazar/Aaron, while the Shach was a Katz, and his family traced back to Eli/Itamar/Aaron. See the handwritten document that I uploaded to the Shach’s profile. While there are descendants of the Shach the bear the last name Rappaport, they are not, in a genealogical sense, true Rappaports.

I say that knowing my family’s (the Shach’s) history very well.

Eli Rubin Thanks for the summary, which I believe. To add the ydna dimension to your comment: if Korah and Aharon were first cousins, then the ydna haplogroup of son-after-son Levite lines descended from Korah should be in the same ballpark as those of the Rappaports and Katzes you mentioned. As it turns out, the Rappaport and Katz lines and certain Benveniste lines are indeed in the same y group, while the Horowitz and Epstein lines do not appear to be in the same y group. While these findings are preliminary they show the way towards increased knowledge of the Levite-Cohen tribal tree. The Horowitz and Epstein divergence could indicate a new line of Levites whose origins may have been lost to history, and my someday be re-discovered. Way back then nobody knew we'd have a method of identifying paternal lineages in 2022!

? Kamenezky Thanks for the detailed explanation, which makes a lot of sense. There are a couple of interesting speculations about this: 1) it appears that the Jeroboam, the first king of Northern Israel was a descendant from Moses' son Gershom, and if this is true it could be that the Jeroboam line became 'lost' during the Assyrian captivity, suggesting some interesting implications for modern research, and 2) could it be that the 2nd-3rd Century CE Halakhic inter-faith marriage prohibition created a theoretical problem vis a vis the descendants of Moses via his Midianite wife Zipporah, and that this may have influenced subsequent attempts to preserve a Mosaic descent tradition (i.e., were Moses' descendants Jews)? I am not a Talmudist, but would be interested in learning what the Talmud says about Moses' descendants.

Private User Jeroboam was from the tribe of Ephraim son of Joseph. He can't be a patrilineal descendant of Gershom son of Moses who were from the tribe of Levi. Also in regards to the Judaism of Moses's descendants, there is some Rabbinic Literature that discusses the conversion of Zipporah wife of Moses, and even some that suggests a possibilty that before the Sinaitic revelation Jewish descent was patrilineal so Gershom would be Jewish even if Zipporah had not converted. The Talmud does tell us that Johnathan son of Gershom at the end of the Book of Judges was in fact the grandson of Moses.

Private User Thanks for the correction. I was looking at this https://www.bible.ca/archeology/archeology-exodus-route-sinai-levit... and misunderstood the meaning of the graphic (which I now see means that Jeroboam was not a descendant but rather was influenced in idolatry by Jonathan, grandson of Moses). I am glad to have one less hypothesis to think about.

Private User I looked up Judges and found this: “The sons of Dan set up for themselves the graven image; and Jonathan, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, he and his sons were priests to the tribe of the Danites until the day of the captivity of the land.” (Judges 18:30) This supports a new hypothesis: the Mosaic line persisted as priestly lineage serving the Danites until the captivity (circa 770-740 BCE) and thus the line may also have persisted thereafter amidst the scattered 'lost' tribes.

Private User I would not call that priestly lineage. Although they acted as though they were priests, it was in service of Idolatry and God chose only Aaron's descendants as priests. But I do agree with your deduction that the line from Johnathan persisted.

Private User Very interesting. Thank you

In a previous discussion ( Rabbi Akiva Hakohen Katz, ABD Saloniki (Alter of Salonika) ), people mentioned that R' Akiva of Salonika was a son-after-son descendant of Eli HaKohen, who was a son-after-son descendant of Isamar. I know that the line from R' Akiva to Eli is undetermined, but where is the source that Eli is a descendant from Isamar (as apposed to Elazar)?

I try to understand how Rabbi Akiva is a descendant of Rabbi Yehuda HaChassid
Because Rabbi Akiva is a Choen, and Rabbi Yehuda HaChassid is from a family of Levites, it is clear that this is through ancient mother/ mothers ...

The gap between them is around 12-13 generations,

If we can decipher this matter, we will have more ancestors of Akiva, and this could help us try to go back as far as possible to Aaron.