Family history research is a fascinating study which once you start it will probably turn into a passion.
Many people have asked themselves where they come from, where are their roots, and these questions reflect a yearning that all of us have. Genealogy is the science of tracing your family tree. It is a kind of detective work or paper chase game. The results are often unpredictable but always fascinating.
Family history research has recently gained a powerful tool in the internet. Now that it is possible to do a keyword or name search almost instantly, it has become much easier to trace a family tree. Easier at least than in days gone by, when a researcher had to spend a lot of time trudging around a dusty archive library, or waiting several weeks for a reply from one records office or another.
Even with the internet though, there are some parts of one’s family tree which will be impossible to reconstruct due to certain historical circumstances. One example that comes to mind is the fire that destroyed the Irish records office in Dublin in the nineteenth century.
So you have decided to try to trace your family tree. The question is, where do you start?
Probably the best starting point is to talk to members of your own family, particularly elders, and try to get them to remember as much as they can about the past, and about their relatives and forebears. This can be very useful in providing some jumping off points for further investigations. The facts they are able to give may well help you to refine and focus your search right from the start, thereby saving a lot of potentially wasted time and effort.
Talking to people about the past is something that should be done in a sensitive way, as it can often awaken memories which people would rather forget.
Next you should decide what aspect of your family history you are going to investigate. Are you interested in finding out about everything you can about everyone related to you? Or do you prefer a more narrow focus, such as tracing one particular branch? Or perhaps you will keep an open mind at first until you find something in your family tree that provokes your interest.
Some people even trace their spouse’s family. A friend of mine who is divorced nevertheless is tracing her husband’s ancestors on behalf of her children, since her ex-husband is descended from an old aristocratic family who were very powerful and influential in medieval England.
There are many different reasons for wanting to research family history, each one of them is interesting to the individual researcher, and all of them have been greatly facilitated by the arrival of the internet.
By: Robert Paterson
Posts Tagged ‘Researcher’
Why Research Family History?
December 28th, 2009Kabbalah Uses Scientific Methods, But It’s not Regular Science
September 5th, 2009Perhaps you’ve heard that Kabbalah is connected to mysticism, magic, fortunetelling, tarot cards, and all kinds of other misconceptions. However, not many people know the truth about Kabbalah—it is a science that studies all of reality.
Why Kabbalah is considered a science? Because it uses the same methods as the natural sciences do. Kabbalists stage experiments and record all the settings and details involved in the process, to make sure that other people will be able to perform the same experiments and verify their findings.
As Kabbalists research the surrounding reality, they feel certain sensations, and they systematically record these sensations using graphs, tables and equations. Then, using these graphs, tables and equations, they once again perform an experiment, in order to replicate the research and check whether their previous findings were correct. This is known as the scientific approach, used in the natural sciences such as physics, chemistry and biology.
But what makes Kabbalah so unique and so different from other sciences? The difference is that Kabbalists use the scientific approach to study the hidden realm of reality. It’s called hidden or concealed because without its discovery by Kabbalists, we would never even suspect of its existence.
This is somewhat similar to how centuries ago, people would never have believed you if you told them that there are tiny living things, entire organisms called microbes and viruses, crawling around all over your body, and even inside it. Back then, people couldn’t even imagine that such a thing was possible. But scientific progress and research uncovered this hidden micro-world, and today everyone knows about it and considers it a norm.
But the hidden realm of reality studied by Kabbalists is quite different even from the micro-world or the macro-world studied by science. And that’s because this realm becomes revealed to the researcher and can be studied only after he develops his latent sense of it. So first of all, Kabbalah teaches a person how to develop this additional, inner instrument of research – you can call it the sixth sense.
As Kabbalists begin to feel the hidden realm through the sixth sense, they research the laws operating in that realm. And just like laws studied in physics, such as the law of gravity, there are also laws operating in that hidden realm of our reality. And studying these laws in detail is a major part of the Wisdom of Kabbalah.
Thus, Kabbalah is a science, but a special one. It is not studied and applied by means of our natural five senses, given to us from birth. Rather, it is a science studied and applied in the sixth sense that a Kabbalist develops.
All Kabbalistic research, the integral science of Kabbalah, comprises thousands of books that were written throughout millennia. The books remain a mystery to someone who does not know that they should be read through the sixth sense – which is why Kabbalah has been shrouded in so many misconceptions. But to a Kabbalist,
who knows that he is reading scientific books that document research of the hidden part of reality, the books say: this happens for that reason, X is connected to Y, if you perform this action, you will receive that reaction, and so on.
That is, just as in the natural sciences like physics, chemistry and psychology explain the nature and laws of the revealed part of our world, so Kabbalah explains the nature and laws of the hidden part of it. Thus, Kabbalah is far from any mystical or religious practice. Studying Kabbalah does not involve faith or belief in something that you haven’t felt, and there are no rituals or meditation sessions.
Moreover, just like the natural sciences, Kabbalah can be studied by anyone. You can have any natural traits, characteristics, or mentality, be a man or a woman, belong to any nationality or religion, and so on. Just like scientists engaged in physics or chemistry, Kabbalists do not ask who you are and where you come from. Their primary interest is: do you have a true desire to study the whole of reality? If so—you are welcome.
www.Kabbalah.info
By: Bnei Baruch
