The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies Conference 2012 is in Paris in July. I’ll be there, along with co-researcher Janet Akaha who will be making a presentation about the Frankfurt Jewish DNA project. The project traces the paper trail of the Jewish families of Frankfurt from the middle ages and connects the DNA connections between these families.

Bacharach is one of those early families. So far in our Frankfurt or Bacharach projects we don’t have any participants who can trace their ancestry to medieval Frankfurt. Janet and I are actively seeking males with that DNA (last name Bacharach/Bachrach or variants with a family tree back to Frankfurt). If we can find someone, we can establish whether the other Bacharach families from all over Europe have a common ancestor with the documented families from Frankfurt. This would be a very exciting development.

After the conference, I’ll post more here about the Frankfurt project and what it means to the modern-day Bacharachs and their possible connection to very old rabbinic dynasties.