Dear Family and Friends,

It is with a great deal of pleasure, excitement and pride that I present to you on behalf of all its contributors, this fabulous brand new Website that supersedes the old behmoiras.com. As, great as it is, this new Site is a living organism and will forever change as new information via your feedback, discovery of new family members, births, or as new research results stream in.

All of us contributors and non-contributors alike stand on the shoulders of one individual, Raphael Ventura, whose vision, intelligence, and hard work, made the Erensia project possible. He started the enterprise, believed in it heartily and followed through and we followed behind.

Before going any further I would like to indulge in a short essay, an allegory of sorts.

Imagine, for a moment, that in January of the year 1892, as a young man, I immigrated to the US by myself. Of course, this is very much a hypothetical case. I am old but not a biblical character going on his second century of life. Ellis Island, a Federal Immigration Station from 1892 to 1954, was my first introduction to America. I was one of the first of 12 million immigrants to be processed there. I felt anxious; for the word was spreading that there had been some health related rejections. After a long waiting period, my turn comes. I am confronted with a very puritanical immigration officer. He finds my surname, Lipshits, rather obscene and so gives me the opportunity of registering with any other name of my choosing. At the time – and now I am bragging – I was a fast thinking, forward-looking egotist who hated to leave a grand opportunity go to waste. Thinking in retrospect, I must have been much older and wiser than my years indicated. My quickly conceived scheme, I figured, contained the seeds for an easy way to leave a great legacy. I felt confident that the answer was at hand. I was going to choose a family name that had never been heard of before. I selected Oyacasmoir. The immigration officer who had a problem with spelling was now sorry he gave me a choice, but was fair enough not to retract his offer. In reality the name is a composite constructed by joining three consecutive letters each from my roots, Benaroya, Castro, and Behmoiras. And now we fast-forward into the far future. We have advanced fourteen generations to the year 2300, when one of my descendants, ambitious Nathaniel Oyacasmoir, wants to generate his family tree from scratch. He searches throughout the world for all the Oyacasmoirs,  Casmoirs, Oyacasses and other possible variations of the name. Of course, in the 24th century, the necessary research is accomplished at lightning speed via Goggle Cubed quantum servers and at Internet download speeds of many terabits per second. Because this unique name originated for the first time at Ellis Island in 1892, Nathaniel followed the logical premise that all persons with that name and its variations belong to one single family. In 1892, that was precisely the motivation for me, the arrogant one, to have chosen this unique family name. Being highly egocentric, I wanted to facilitate the future construction of the Oyacasmoir family tree with me standing at its apex.

The Behmoiras saga that we are now so familiar with has some similarities with the hypothetical I just described. Yet, it contains great differences as well. The 17th century Behmoiras ancestors had no grandiose plan, not even the clairvoyance to facilitate the construction of a family tree in the 21st century. There were no egotists among them, as far as I can tell, who anticipated a reunion of the family in 2005, or the subsequent emergence of Erensia that greatly helped pursue the required research into the Tree. Nor did they anticipate a 200-year dynasty of the Behmoiras Grand rabbis of the great Jewish community of Edirne; an episode that resulted in a historical treatment by the Encyclopedia Judaica. The contents of which triggered the idea of one unique Behmoiras family and its promise that the construction of a complete family tree from birth to its present state was a distinct possibility.

The project has succeeded beyond the imagination of any of us who initiated it. It required a lot of hard work interspersed with a few lucky breaks. Phone interviews were mostly friendly once the confidence factor gained the upper hand. There were a few isolated instances where trust was hard to come by. In those cases working around other family members became necessary. The original Behmoiras Website was helpful in the discovery of new family members who contacted us themselves. Emails facilitated rapid communications. We are proud of the accomplishments so far and very hopeful of a contributing loyal following that is so necessary for the continued success of this bold enterprise.

Despite all the enumerated great successes, we have had one significant failure. We failed to upgrade our Website quickly enough to retain the interest of the family members. We had an ambitious design of what it should look like. We wanted the site to contain the full Tree, to offer four languages, to include ancestral and current photos – sometimes interspaced with text, to be capable of receiving email and allow publication of responses, to have essays and biographies, to have open and password entry areas. We wanted it to be colorful and appealing, and absolutely user-friendly and maintenance-friendly. Last but not least, we wanted to do all this on the cheap, preferably gratis, because we had exhausted our funds. The process of retrieving old, newly found archival documents written in an archaic script (Solitreo) and needing translations was very important. It was absolutely necessary to advancing the enterprise by reducing generational gaps in our Tree. But it was also a costly proposition even when volunteers do the research work. All that and more has now been accomplished. Our new Website is now alive and well because of the generosity and great skills of our family member Régis Behmo. Régis has been the driving force this last year despite the requirements of his daytime job. His contribution to building the Website has been enormously successful. We are greatly indebted to Régis for his great work.

Since we have a depleted treasury, this is an opportune time to ask you to mail us your 2011 memberships fees. Some of us have already paid at the stated rates below. Membership fees will facilitate maintaining the Website and make further research possible. Those of you who have never applied for membership to Erensia Behmoiras are urged to do so now. Membership information can be found on the dedicated webpage. This action will be key to obtaining access to the password entry only section of the Website, including the latest version of the Tree, personal communications, etc. These are compelling enough reasons to want to join and thus enjoy the same privileges, as all Erensia members will. I would like to emphasize that only parts of the Site will be accessible to the public-at-large whereas the more private sections will be reachable by password only. Passwords will be issued to paid members only.

It would be great if you could distribute this editorial to members of the family that do not have internet access.

Sincerely,
Rafael Benaroya, President

The list in alphabetical order of the given names

Red= Male Black=Female Green= Possibly married name

By Raphael Ventura, February 2011

ON-GOING RESEARCH

We have presented our case regarding the family. Our tree file contains 1,160 names of people living or deceased. Around 750 among them are genuine Behmoiras descendants (many of them do not bear the Behmoiras family name any more). The others are spouses. There are also 122 additional Behmoirases, whom we have not been able to contact; hence they are not attached to the tree.

Now our tree file contains 3,271 names of people living or deceased. Around 2142 among them are genuine Behmoiras descendants (many of them do not bear the Behmoiras family name any more). The others are spouses and non-Behmoiras parents. There are also 28 additional Behmoirases, whom we have not been able to contact; hence they are not attached to the tree. (see under WANTED)

The main purpose of the new Web Site is to further our project. To achieve that purpose we need your assistance. Your contribution at this stage is of utmost importance.

This part has not changed.

Once we have identified a branch that belongs to the family, we try to follow it retrogressively. The more recent generations are important as well, but they do not constitute a problem, since we can always obtain information on them from the representatives of the various branches. Hence, the more recent generations will be taken care of later. It is the ancestors, the old members of the family that need our immediate focus: Parents, grandparents, uncles, granduncles, great grandparents etc.

While this is still correct, we are now equally interested in the young generations. Please report recent births.

The real links between the various branches lie back there, and we have to make an effort to find them. The main problem lies in the gap of some 50 years between the end of documented historical data on the ancestors, on the one hand, and the earliest information that we obtain from the present members of the various branches, on the other. Our problematic year is 1850 take or leave 25 years.

Thanks to the recent discovery of the Edirne Notebooks we were able to push back the problematic year by one generation. Our new problematic year is 1820 take or leave 25 years.

Some of you have already given this information either to me or to Rafael Benaroya. However, writing it once again, in an orderly fashion, according to the following guidelines, will help you remember more information. Your letters will be posted on the Site for others to check whether they know someone you mentioned.
Add: “or to Simon Behmo”

a. List all the members of your branch that are older than you, particularly those who are deceased. List maiden names, given names, alternative or additional names (particularly Hebrew names for people with names like Albert, Robert, or Marco), important dates (even approximate), spouses, children etc., and your connection to them. Make every effort to go as far back as possible. Partial or doubtful information is better than no information. If another member of your branch may have more information, do not hesitate to ask him.
b. Whenever possible, tell us who, among brothers, was the eldest. It is very important, even if he died young or did not have progeny.
c. If you know of tombs of members of your branch who were born before 1900, tell us where they are located (city, cemetery). If you have photographs of the tombs, send them to us. If you can obtain photographs so that the inscription is legible, please do so.
d. If you possess old documents, birth or death certificates, ketubbot, marriage licenses, old photographs, old passports etc., please inform us. You cannot imagine how important they may be.
e. If your branch has any memory of grand rabbis, or other people of importance in the family, tell us all about it.
f. If there are old incidents, stories, legends, etc., which came down the generations in your branch, please tell us.
Add: Please report (email) recent births, marriages, divorces, deaths, changes of email addresses etc. in your branch of the family. Please send pictures of family members.

We have to break the 1850 barrier!

We have to break the 1820 barrier!

This part of our website is dedicated to the formation and preservation of a virtual modern Behmoiras library. It will contain a bibliography of productions, whether printed or in manuscript, whether literary, scientific, artistic or other, of Behmoiras family members.

Each member is urged to contribute to this list by sending us (by email to the address on our homepage) titles of publications (books, articles, theses etc.,) or other tokens of cultural distinction, belonging to him/her or to any other family member, whether alive or deceased, whether recent or old. The Internet is packed with titles of publications by Behmoiras descendants, whatever their present name may be, but we would like to receive lists by the authors themselves or by close family members.
Publications should be quoted as in a bibliographical list. (Please, no more than 4 items per person).
To these will be added, in the near future, a list of ancient publications by the Behmoiras grand rabbis and other intellectual members, which, fortunately, were printed before the fire and survived.

Behar Caroline (30), daughter of Avraam and Sultana

Behar Marcelle (13), daughter of Vitalis and Elise Behar

Behar Vitalis (43), son of Binyamin-Raphael and Malcouna Elmaleh

Behmoaram Raphael, (47), son of Yomtov and Venezia Danon

Behmoaras Rebecca (31)

Behmoiras Nissim (48)

Behmoiras Joseph (47), son of Haim and Boulissou Farhi

Behmoiras Leon (43), son of Meir and Sara Sarfati

Behmoiras Raphael (38)

Behmoiras Salomon (36)

Behmoiras Huguette Esther (19), daughter of Rodolphe-Menahem and Ida Canetti

Behmoiras Suzanne (16), daughter of Menahem and Sophie Polidi

Behmoiras Jacques (14), son of Simon and Ida Arditi

Behmoiras Ninon-Nissim (10), son of Rodolphe Menahem and Ida Canetti

Behmoiras Isaac (8), son of Menahem and Sophie Polidi

Behmoiras Claude (4), son of Leon and Jaqueline Bloch

Behmoiras-Mizrahi Sarah (49), daughter of Jacques Behmoiras and Gracia Benbassat

Benbassat Vittorio (55), son of Mordo and Rosa Behmoiras

Benbassat Jacques (27), son of Vittorio and Rosa Asa

Cohan-Danon Lucie (43), daughter of Hezkia Danon and Esther Behmoiras

Cohan Marcel (14), son of Robert-Shabtai and Lucie Danon

Cohan Maurice (13), son of Robert-Shabtai and Lucie Danon

Moaraf Rafael-Rifat (45), son of Salomon and Behora

Moaraf Salomon (17), son of Rafael-Rifat and Rosa Behar

Moaraf Rika (14), daughter of Rafael-Rifat and Rosa Behar

Moaraf Avraam (8), son of Rafael-Rifat and Rosa

Rividi Israel, son of Haim and Sultana Behmoiram

Joseph Niego was a famous member of the Behmoiras family though he did not embrace a rabbinical career. His activity for the benefit of the Jewish community is taught in Israeli schools, and is well known among the Jews of Istanbul. His mother was a daughter of Grand Rabbi Moshe-Rahamim Behmoiras and sister of Grand Rabbi Raphael Behmoiras.
His career is mentioned in encyclopedias, in books and various articles, even on the Internet. The Tel-Aviv lodge of Benei-Berit members of Turkish origin is named after him, and there is a ‘Joseph Niego Grove’ in Holon, Israel.
Joseph Niego was born in Edirne in 1863. His parents died when he was very young and his uncle, Raphael Behmoiras, took care of his education.
At first, Joseph received the standard Jewish education in Heder and Yeshiva. However, when the Alliance Israelite Universelle opened a school for boys in Edirne, Joseph preferred to study there, in the spirit of French emancipation, despite the attempts of his uncle to interest him in rabbinical studies.
Because of the Russo-Turkish war of 1876, Joseph Niego left for Istanbul to a parallel school of the Alliance there. He was 13 years old.
He was chosen among the best students of this school to pursue his studies in Paris, at the Ecole Normale Israelite Orientale, which had been founded in 1865 by the Alliance in order to train young Jewish people of oriental origin for eventual leadership in their countries of origin, according to its spirit.
Joseph studied in Paris between 1878 and 1882 and proved to be an outstanding student. There he met another Alliance graduate, Lea-Pauline Mitrani, who was to become his wife.
In 1870 the Alliance founded Miqve Israel, the first agricultural school in Palestine, in what was then the outskirts of Jaffa and now Holon. Its purpose was to train the new settlers in modern methods of agriculture to enable them to earn their livelihood out of the land. Karl Netter himself headed the school for several years and then Hirsch. The time had come to appoint a licensed agronomist as head of the school. It was therefore decided to send Joseph Niego to Montpellier to specialize in agricultural studies.
In 1885 he obtained his diploma of engineer agronomist, and was directly appointed to Miqve Israel.
In early May of 1886, 23 years old Joseph Niego set foot in Palestine as the first Jewish agronomist of Eretz-Israel. He served under Hirsch for a few years and in 1891 was appointed head of Miqve Israel.
Under Niego the school flourished and expanded. He moved with his wife and daughter to the second floor of the main building. His living quarters there, modeled in Franco-oriental style, have been kept intact and are accessible to modern visitors to the still active school.
Niego made it a point to have in his school students from each one of the pioneering settlements of the ‘Hovevei Zion’ so that they, in turn, would introduce modern methods of cultivation to their settlements.
After a short visit to Kurdistan, where he was sent by the Alliance to check the situation of the Jews, he was appointed advisor to the JCA (Jewish Colonization Association) in Eretz Israel.
In 1896 Joseph Niego received Kaiser Wilhelm II who passed by Miqve Israel on his way to Jerusalem. Though, as an Alliance adherent, Niego did not share Herzl’s vision about Zionism, he enabled Herzl, who happened to be on a visit to Eretz-Israel, to meet the Kaiser and shake his hand on that special occasion.
Niego was very active in the massive introduction of Australian Eucalyptus trees to Eretz-Israel, as a means for drying up the malaria infected swamps. He was also the driving force in the foundation of Sejera, the first agricultural settlement.
Unfortunately, the climate of the Holy Land was too harsh for the delicate health of Lea, Niego’s wife. This was the principal reason for Niego’s departure for Istanbul, with his family, after 13 years of tenure as head of Miqve Israel.
In 1904, he was appointed inspector of the JCA in Istanbul. He was 41 years of age. In this function, Niego was involved in the foundation of various settlements for Jewish refugees throughout the Ottoman Empire.
In 1911 he founded the Grand Lodge of Benei-Berith in Istanbul. The founding ceremony took place in Niego’s house, and he delivered the main speech. The Jews of Istanbul were eager to assume greater responsibility for the fate of their fellow community members, whereas the Alliance seemed to lead a policy, which was firmly dictated from Paris. The Benei-Berith offered a much more acceptable alternative for the solution of local community affairs. Niego was appointed founding director of the grand lodge and kept that post for 22 years. In the course of these years he delivered many ardent speeches and became known as an excellent orator.
The First World War brought about the cessation of activities of foreign schools in Ottoman Turkey. The Jews of Istanbul, who used to send their children to such foreign schools, were in urgent need of a Jewish lyceum. Joseph Niego, with the devoted help of Rabbi Dr. Marcus, raised the needed funds and established the first Jewish lyceum in Istanbul, the ‘Bene-Berith’, later named ‘Yabne’. Niego served as its first principal, on a voluntary basis (1914-1917). Three years later he passed the function over to Dr. Marcus.
In 1918, when the allies entered to negotiate the situation of the Ottomans on the aftermath of the war, there was urgent need that the Jews of Turkey be properly represented at the negotiations. However, the Grand Rabbi of the Ottoman Empire, Rabbi Haim Nahum, was temporarily unavailable. The Istanbul Jews urgently formed a temporary national council of the Jewish community of Turkey and unanimously elected Joseph Niego to preside it.
In 1923, his employment at JCA was terminated when Turkey was declared a democracy and could not allocate any more regions of its territory for the settlement of Jewish refugees.
Joseph Niego was 60 years old. By the suggestion of the American ambassador Morgenthau, he was employed by the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee, as head of a fund that offered assistance to small Jewish businesses: ‘Caisse de petits pres de Constantinople’.
At the age of 70, Niego retired from communal activities. It was then that his book was published: Niego, Joseph. Cinquante annees de travail dans les Oeuvres Juives, Allocutions et conferences. Bulletin publie a l’occasion du soixante-dixieme anniversaire du grand frere president J. Niego, sous les auspices du District XI de la Bene-Berith, (avec une preface de J. Shaki), Babok & Fils, Istanbul, 1933.
He died in 1945, at the age of 82.

The immediate assumption of a Sephardic family is that its origins are in Spain.
There are several reasons for us to believe that this was indeed our origin:

1. We speak Ladino in the family for as far back as we remember
2. The Appel – Meshulam branch has a definite recollection that the origin was in the city of Evora, now in Portugal, then in Spain, 500 years ago.
3. The De Soria Letter to Alberto Behmoiras, states that our origins are in the expulsion from Spain.
4. Raphael Cohen, of the Sirius-Behmaras branch says that his mother saw the name Behmoiras in a synagogue of Toledo, dated to that old period.
5. The “lakerda folk story” which speaks of a fisherman on the coast of Malaga whose name was Behmoiras, and who invented the lakerda. It also says that this legend is carved? written? on a wall of the fish market of Toledo.

On the other hand, there are equally good reasons to claim that the origin of our family is from Ashkenaz, and the family is Ashkenazi.

1. The name Behmoiras is not similar to any names of Spanish Jews.
2. We know the name’s meaning and formation, and it is purely Hebraic.
3. The old historians of Ottomanic Jewry are all unanimous in postulating that the head of the family was Isaac Ashkenazi an Eskenazi rabbi of Ashkenaz (Temisoara-Hungary, Poland).
4. The main family legend, that of Sabbetay Zevi, is linked to this Eskenazi theory.
5. Those historians take the pains to explain how it came to pass that the family changed from being Eskenazi to become Sephardic.
6. I was not able to find any evidence for the existence of the name any earlier than the date that is claimed to be that of the arrival of Rabbi Askenazi with his 2 years old boy to Edirne. (1668). This is almost 200 years after the expulsion from Spain.

I believe that the second theory is correct. However, the issue is delicate. It would be sufficient to discover one single instance of the name that can be proved to be earlier than that period, to destroy the entire theory.
My reasons are the following:

1. The Eskenazi origin is harder to believe than the Sephardic one. So if an historian states that the family was Eskenazi, he is bound to have checked it and double checked it.
2. There is no scholarly publication that claims that the family originates in Spain.
3. The name was neither Behmoiras nor Behmoiram in the beginning. It developed to become what it is today from the original Behmoharar. We understand exactly how this development could have taken place. The earliest instance of the name being Behmoaras is in mid 19th century. Whereas, those who claim it is Sephardic, believe that it existed in its fully developed form ever since the fifteenth century. One cannot accept this kind of anachronism.
4. The reference to the city of Evora can be explained in the following way. The Jewish population of Edirne, almost all of them Sephardic and a few Karaites, was subdivided into 13 congregations. Each congregation had its own synagogue. There existed 13 synagogues in the city, all of them now destroyed. These synagogues were given names: The names were as follows: Gregos (the oldest), Budoun (Buda from Budapest = Hungarian immigrants), Ashkenazi, Italian, Apullian, Sicilian, Aragon, Catalonia, Evora, Guerush, Majorca, Portugal (the smallest), Toledo. Jewish encyclopedia on line. Those in red were under the jurisdiction of the Behmoiras dynasty of grand rabbis; the others belonged to the Gueron dynasty. IF the Appel-Meshulam branch belonged to the Evora congregation, their descendants could well have developed a tradition which assumes (erroneously) that they were Evora Jews. In reality, they were Evora congregation Edirnelis.
5. As for the “lakerda legend”, the name of the fisherman Behmoiras mentioned in it is Adi Behmoiras. Now, Adi is a very recent Israeli name meaning “piece of ornament”. This is not what is meant there. It is the Turkish word for “NAMED”. Hence, the legend is not Spanish, but Turkish.  If  a Sephardi  Turkish story teller would want to create a legend in order to suggest a Ladino etymology for lakerda as being “la querida”= the beloved one, he would have  to  locate the events in Spain and date them before the expulsion, when Jews prospered there. This etymology is patently wrong.
6. There remains the name Raphael Cohen’s mother told him she saw in a Toledo synagogue. This is something that has to be checked further, since the synagogue is still there. The Toledo Jewish Museum does not have any  knowledge of the name Behmoiras.

The sequence of grand rabbis that forms the stem of our tree is as follows:

1. Menahem Bar Isaac Ashkenazi (=MENAHEM I) (1666-1734)*
2. Mordehai Bekhmohar Menahem (=MORDEHAI I) (1695-1748)
3. Menahem Bekhmohar Mordehai (=MENAHEM II) (1723-1781)
4. Mordehai Bekhmohar Menahem (Jelibi) (=MORDEHAI II) (1745-1821)
5. Menahem Bekhmohar Mordehai (=MENAHEM III) (1775-1810)
6. Joseph-Raphael Bekhmohar Mordehai (Raphalanji) (1780-1849)
7. Moshe-Rahamim Behmoiras (Moshonachi) son of Joseph-Raphael (1815-1878)
8. Raphael Behmoiras (“The Angel Raphael”) son of Moshe-Rahamim (1837-1895)
9. Meir Behmoiras son of Shabbat-Mordehai (1864-1929)

* Some of the above dates are approximate.
Numbers 1-8 held the office in unbroken sequence. Menahem III (number 5) was short-lived and childless. His younger brother, Joseph-Raphael, succeeded him.  Raphael Behmoiras (number 8) had no male progeny.
After the death of Raphael Behmoiras, the entire community agreed upon a temporary rabbi, Rabbi Avraam Zemah. He remained in office for less than 10 years. Then, the sultan (Mehmet V) issued a nomination for R. Haim Bejerano from Romania, to fill the vacant seat of the late Rabbi Raphael Behmoiras. After a period of 12 years in office (1908-1919), R. Haim was transferred to Istanbul, and once again we find a member of our family as Haham Bashi of Edirne, Rabbi Meir Behmoiras son of R. Shabbat Mordehai Behmoiras (number 9). R. Meir remained in office until his death in 1929, at which time the chief rabbinate of Edirne ceased to exist.
The Gueron Dynasty ended at the closing of the 19th Century.

The grand rabbis were very learned people. Those of the Behmoiras dynasty were better versed in Biblical, Talmudic and Kabala matters, and produced many learned writings, some of which were ultimately published. The private library of the Behmoiras dynasty was famous and contained, among precious books, many unpublished manuscripts. The grand rabbis of the Gueron dynasty were more active in communal affairs and in connections with the civil government. There were two rabbinical Beit-Din institutions at Edirne headed by the grand rabbis. The Behmoiras grand rabbis were famous for their knowledgeable solutions to religious and civil cases that arose among members of their congregations. They often had to visit the Balkan communities that were under their jurisdiction, in order to settle religious and administrative questions as well as to deliver judgments.

THE PARALLEL BRANCH

After Mordechai I the family was divided into what became its two principal branches. Mordechai’s eldest son, Menahem II, inherited, as we saw, the post of grand rabbi and therefore belongs to the main branch (of the grand rabbis), whereas his second son, Solomon initiated a parallel branch, which did not produce grand rabbis, but was quite important nonetheless.
Later in his life, Solomon was given a second name:  Nisim. Though he was not grand rabbi of Edirne, he was very famous for his biblical knowledge and served as a dayan of great renown. He authored important works and many letters in which he discussed halachic matters with his learned contemporaries. Solomon-Nisim died at the age of 38 in 1775.
Solomon-Nisim’s son, Simeon-Mordechai (or “Rabbi Matte Shim’on”*) visited various cities, preached and gave judgments. He died in mid life at about 1819. He had two sons: Nisim-Solomon (b. abt. 1793) and Menahem (1800-1887) whom we shall tag “Menahem IV”.
Menahem IV (or “Rabbi Divrei Menahem”*) ben Nisim-Solomon was a learned man in Talmud, excellent preacher and rabbi. People listened to his preaching in ecstasy. His renown was among Jews and non-Jews alike. His wisdom and modesty were well known. When young he was secretary in Leon Alfassa’s Bank at Edirne. His many books were burnt in the fire of 1905 in Edirne.
In 1878 he moved to Istanbul because of the Russo-Turkish war. The Jews of Edirne feared that they might suffer greatly if the Russians captured the city.
The rabbis of Istanbul received him with great honors.
In 1880 Menahem IV left for Eretz Israel and died there in 1887.
Menahem IV’s grandson was Rabbi Yomtov Behmoiram who resided in Bulgaria. He was an active Zionist leader.

* Sometimes important rabbis are commonly known by the name of their principal opus.

It took some reading and much thinking to solve some of the problems involved in the name Behmoiras. The name is definitely unusual, to say the least.
The Hebrew language uses several honorific designations for rabbis. One of the more complex designations is “Kevod Morenu Harav, Rabbi X” where X is the given name of the rabbi, like Meir, for instance. This means “Our honored teacher and rabbi, Rabbi X”. Old sources were very keen to assign honor where honor was due, and therefore, whenever there was need to mention a distinguished rabbi, they would use this formula, and not just “Rabbi X”. In order to save space and time in writing (and also in verbal addresses) they abbreviated the formula into an acronym. They formed a single “word” by grouping together the initial letters of each word in the formula. This trick is quite usual in Hebraic literature. In our case, the acronym turned out to be “KMoHaraR X”.

Those same sources, when they needed to mention the name of a son of such a distinguished rabbi, initially wrote (and said) “Ben Kmoharar X”, but gradually, this too became an acronym (because of its frequent use) and turned into “Bekmoharar X”. Now, the word “Kevod” starts in Hebrew with the letter “Kaf”, which is pronounced “K” mostly when it is used as an initial. Otherwise it is pronounced a strong “H”, or “KH”. Since in “Bekmoharar” the letter “Kaf” representing the word “Kevod” is no longer an initial, the acronym became “Bekhmoharar”. Let us assume that a certain Avraam Farhi was a distinguished rabbi, and that his son was named Mordechai. The father would be referred to as Kmoharar Avraam Farhi, whereas his son would be referred to as: Mordechai Bekhmoharar Avraam Farhi meaning “Mordechai, son of our honored teacher and rabbi, Rabbi Avraam Farhi”. All this existed already in the literary sources and in the spoken language among rabbis, before the introduction of our family name Behmoiras.

One should keep in mind that unlike the Moslems of the early 18th century, the sephardi Jews already used by that time both given and family names. Our ancestor was Menahem son of Isaac Ashkenazi. His family name was Ashkenazi. For reasons that will be explained in a later article, he could not keep this family name and had to get rid of it. On the other hand, he did not wish to replace it by just another family name. So he decided that, exceptionally, his family would not have a family name at all. His son Mordechai came to be known as Mordechai Bekhmoharar Menahem. The title Bekhmoharar was in order since Menahem had been made grand rabbi of Edirne. By doing this, Rabbi Menahem was not inventing something that had not been known before. He merely eliminated his family name. Hence, instead of Mordechai Bekhmoharar Menahem Ashkenazi, which would have been a perfectly adequate designation for his son at any period, he insisted that he be known as Mordechai Bekhmoharar Menahem. His grandson was named Menahem, after the grandfather. That grandson became known accordingly, as Menahem Bekhmoharar Mordechai. This was also in order, inasmuch as Mordechai had inherited the post of grand rabbi of Edirne from his father (and therefore was an “honored teacher and rabbi” on his own merit).

In general, the members of the family were known as “Y Bekhmoharar X” where Y was the given name of the person and X that of his father. The Jews of Edirne, who were accustomed to family names, had no alternative but to refer to this family as “the Bekhmoharars” just as they would say “the Farhis” or the “Gherons”, though they clearly understood that in the case of our family “Bekhmoharar” was not a family name at all. This situation lasted for some 130 years.

At some period, in the mid-19th century, the next development took place. The family had already become complex and possessed several branches. By that time, not all male descendents of the family were rabbis. Hence the title Bekhmoharar X was no longer adequate for their children. On the other hand, Bekhmoharar had become the only name by which this family was known. The time was ripe to disregard the original meaning of the acronym, and transform it into an ordinary family name. On doing so, however, they could not settle for a name “Bekhmoharar”, because this is just a title, which cannot be complete and meaningful as a name, unless it is followed by the given name of the father.

Most of the branches at that period, regarded themselves as descendents of Shimeon, and therefore adopted the family name “Bekhmoharar Shimeon” which was further abbreviated into Bekhmoharash. Few branches insisted that their ancestor was Menahem; hence they became “Bekhmoharar Menahem”, abbreviated to “Bekhmoharam”. Once they became ordinary family names, Bekhmoharash and Bekhmoharam could not change any more, and passed intact from generation to generation, down to this day.

Behmoiras is the Latinized (French) version of Bekhmoharash, which reflects the way it was then pronounced. The versions Behmoaras and Behmuaras are merely Turkish orthographies, since modern Turkish, unlike French, does not use diphthongs and has a strictly phonetic alphabet. The modern Behmoiram is the Latinized (French) version of Bekhmoharam, and Behmoaram is its Turkish counterpart.

It is inconceivable that this unusual sequence of events, which led to the name Behmoiras as a family name, could have been duplicated elsewhere; nor are we aware of the existence of this name, anywhere in the world, before the 19th century. So, since we know who initiated the sequence as well as when, where, and why it was initiated, there remains no doubt that all past and present bearers of the name belong to one and the same family, and all are descendents of Rabbi Menahem son of Isaac Ashkenazi.

The early “history” of our family, as is frequently the case, has a nucleus of historical truth, couched in a layer of myth and legend. The legend that was woven around the personalities of our ancestral figures, Rabbi Isaac Ashkenazi and his son Menahem, is almost as precious to us, as a family heirloom, as is the historical truth. Only prominent people inspire legends that can survive for centuries in the collective memory of their descendants.

My first encounter with our ancestors was in the Hebrew Encyclopedia (in Hebrew), under the entry “Adrianople”; Then the Encyclopaedia Judaica, under the entries “Edirne” and “Bekemoharar”. My attempt to put together the information from these three articles left me with more questions than I had answers for. Therefore, I checked their sources – books and articles written by historians of the period such as Salomon A. Rosanes, Dr. Simeon Marcus (who had some of his data from Yomtov Behmoiram), Avraam Danon and Avraam Elmaliah. Rafael Benaroya checked the accounts given by Avram Galante and M. Franco. Later we discovered in the Internet the Jewish Encyclopedia on-line. We pooled our results and found out that there are quite a few discrepancies among the various versions, but the main facts are clear.

The Behmoiras family “made it” to the encyclopedias because it produced a series of as many as nine Rabbanim Kolelim at Edirne (we call them here grand rabbis, though, of course, they were subject to the head rabbinate of the Ottoman Empire which resided in Constantinople). This series of grand rabbis is rightly qualified as a “dynasty” because the office passed literally from father to son for a period of about 200 years.

Edirne at 1700 was a very important city of the Ottoman state. Its days of glory as the capital of the state had passed, but many sumptuous buildings had been erected there and the sultan himself used to stay in his Edirne palace for long periods. Many crucial incidents of the Ottoman history took place at Edirne. It was situated strategically at the gateway of the European part of the empire.

The Jews of Edirne were numerous but divided into 13 congregations, each with its own synagogue. Most of them were of Sephardic origin. The grand rabbi of Edirne was the religious, judicial and cultural head of the entire community. He was also responsible for all Jewish communities in the Ottoman occupied Balkans, including principal cities in Bulgaria, Salonica etc.

Our story starts in 1666, when a boy was born to Rabbi Isaac Ashkenazi at Temishvar1¹, Hungary (now Romania). He was named Menahem. Two years later, Rabbi Isaac, heard about Sabbetai Zevi (the false messiah), whose fame had reached the Jewish communities of the West, and decided to leave Hungary with his family in order to meet him in the lands of the East. His destination, most probably, was the Holy Land.
When he reached Edirne (Andrinople) on his way, two things happened. a) The boy, who was two years old, became sick with “the plague”, b) Sabbetai Zevi happened to be in that very city. Sultan Mehmet IV had obliged him to change his faith and become a Moslem. This act disillusioned most of his adherents, but some still clang to their faith in him and in his power to perform miracles. Old women, thus the legend goes, advised that Sabbetai Zevi should see the sick boy and miraculously save him from certain death.

When Sabbetai Zevi came to the room where the boy lay, he put his hands on him and murmured a spell. Then he took out of his plate two sweets made of sugarcoated almond and gave them to the child. He promised the women who stood there that the child would recover and that his progeny would become learned rabbis, and so it came to pass. Therefore it is an old custom in our family to say about Sabbetai Zevi: “Neither shall you curse him, nor shall you bless him”.

Menahem’s father died soon and the elders of the Jewish community of Edirne looked after the orphan boy. They enabled him to study the bible, and he excelled in his studies. At the age of 40 he was such a learned man and rabbi, that he was appointed assistant to the grand rabbi, Rabbi Avraam Zarfati.

Not having a male successor, R. Avraam sought to bequeath his office to his son-in-law Rabbi Avraam Gueron, but not all the members of the community accepted this nomination. Six out of 13 congregations preferred Rabbi Menahem. So, in 1722 the community of Edirne had, for the first time in history, two officiating grand rabbis. Each one developed a dynasty of his own, so that we can now speak of the Dynasty of Gueron and the Dynasty of Menahem, both of which ruled in parallel from Edirne until 1900, i.e., for about 200 years.

Rabbi Isaac Ashkenazi (Menahem’s father) was of Ashkenazi origin. Having become grand rabbi of a city that was populated by a vast majority of Sephardic Jews, Rabbi Menahem felt that his Ashkenazi origin, and particularly his father’s nickname², would mark him as a foreigner, and impede his assimilation among his followers. Therefore he made an exceptional decision. He did away with the nickname “Ashkenazi”, and established in its stead the term Bekhmoharar by which his family became subsequently known (see article “The Name “Behmoiras” its meaning and variants“). In the course of the centuries, repetitive intermarriages with the local sephardic population rendered the family sephardic, as it is today.

Menahem died in 1734, at the age of 68, and his son Mordechai Bekhmoharar Menahem took over. On Menahem’s tombstone his son carved, among other things, the titles of the learned writings that his father had composed (most of them, in manuscript, were subsequently destroyed in a fire, of which more will be said in a future article). Rabbi Menahem served as grand rabbi of Edirne for 12 years.