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A murder victim was anonymous for 13 years. Jewish genealogists found her name.
(JTA) — On March 29, 2011, the body of a decapitated woman was discovered in a vineyard in Arvin, a town just over the Los Angeles county line.
Earlier this month, nearly 13 years later, the victim was identified as Ada Beth Kaplan, a Jewish woman who was 64 at the time of her death.
The tortuous journey to cracking the mystery of Kaplan’s name involved a “long and hard” multiyear effort by a DNA-focused nonprofit, eight generations of family records and the work of two Jewish genealogists who understood just how thorny it can be, sometimes, to ascertain the identity of an unknown Ashkenazi Jew.
“It’s kind of a miracle that this was figured out, in a lot of ways,” said Adina Newman, the co-founder of the DNA Reunion Project at the Center for Jewish History in New York City. “Giving Ada Kaplan her name back when people didn’t even realize she was missing is just such a big deal to me.”
Kaplan’s decomposing body was found naked, decapitated and mutilated in 2011, with few clues to who she was or how she met her end. Her case remained unsolved and, in 2020, the Kern County Coroner enlisted the help of the DNA Doe Project, an organization that uses genetic genealogy analysis to build out the family tree of unidentified victims in an effort to find their identities.
Kaplan’s DNA indicated that she was an Ashkenazi Jew, an ethnic heritage that was as much a challenge as a step forward. The team of researchers initially found only Kaplan’s distant cousins, who had common Eastern European Jewish last names and spanned eight generations.
That made it difficult to pinpoint her specific ancestors, among all people with those surnames, and place them in a family tree. Researchers were barred from using certain large DNA databases such as Ancestry.com and 23andMe, whose terms of service bar working with police.
“Honestly it scared me, because I didn’t know that I could solve her case,” Missy Koski, the researchers’ team leader, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency regarding Kaplan’s Ashkenazi heritage.
Koski recalled the recent case of a John Doe who was one quarter Ashkenazi Jewish, which went unsolved for a long time because of difficulties the team encountered in identifying his Jewish great-grandparents. That case was ultimately solved through the non-Jewish side of his family tree.
“We worked very hard on that for a long time, so I already knew how difficult it could be in terms of trying to piece those family members together,” Koski explained.
To further complicate matters, researchers eventually discovered that three of Kaplan’s four grandparents were immigrants — meaning they had to search Eastern European records to connect them to each other.
Many Ashkenazi families have changed their surnames or spelled the same names differently. And Ashkenazi Jews are a historically endogamous group. They are descended from a limited population and procreate from within that small tribe for generations. That means an Ashkenazi Jew may have a strong DNA match to someone they’re not actually closely related to.
For help, the team turned to an expert in Jewish genealogy: Susan King, the founder of JewishGen, an online database for Jewish genealogy research. King’s extensive knowledge of Jewish genealogy led the DNA Doe team to Kaplan’s great-grandparents, including an ancestor born in Lithuania in the 1780s. But King died in Dec. 2022 before Kaplan was identified on the family tree.
The DNA Doe Project then approached Newman, whose DNA Reunion Project helps connect Holocaust survivors with their long-lost relatives. Newman had previously volunteered on another John Doe case involving a person of Ashkenazi heritage whose body was found in Maine in 2000. That John Doe was was ultimately identified by the local medical examiner and the FBI as Philip Kahn, a cab driver from Las Vegas, who had appeared as an extra in the 1988 film “Rain Man” with his wife Jean.
“My other work is in… helping survivors find families and reconnecting,” she said. “So it’s kind of the same ballpark, in a way, and I have the skill set. I would like to use it for the biggest mitzvahs possible, is the way I see it.”
DNA testing has recently come under scrutiny in the Jewish world due to privacy concerns that arose when hackers stole the data of Ashkenazi users of 23AndMe in a targeted attack, and put the information up for sale. The genetic testing company is now facing a class action lawsuit in federal court for negligence, invasion of privacy, unjust enrichment, and breach of implied contract.
But for genealogists like Koski and Newman, the benefits of these databases outweigh the risks. Newman said privacy problems extend far beyond the potential problems associated with DNA databases — and that to identify someone conclusively, researchers more than genetic records.
“People think that DNA does all these things, but people don’t realize the digital footprints they leave. We shed DNA every day of our lives,” Newman said. “So I think people catastrophize a lot of the DNA stuff when really… you may get matched to me, but I’m not finding you because the DNA told me something. I’m finding you because of your digital footprint. I’m finding you through public records, finding you through your Facebook profile.”
She added, “DNA is kind of the starting point.”
In July 2023, the team of researchers working on Kaplan’s case found two potential family members who agreed to provide DNA samples for comparison. One of her relatives lived in the heavily Jewish neighborhood of Forest Hills in Queens, New York City. That, in turn, finally led to Kaplan’s identity.
A cause or location of death has not been determined in Kaplan’s case, and the Kern County Sheriff detectives learned in interviews with family members that a missing person’s report was never filed on her. She is not known to have had any children. Likewise, no suspect has been identified in connection with her death.
But researchers did learn of some details of her life: Online yearbook records show Kaplan attended Forest Hills High School, where, as a senior, she was an office aide and one of the recipients of the 1963 New York State Scholarship Award. She wrote that she had aspirations to be a prima ballerina.
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The post A murder victim was anonymous for 13 years. Jewish genealogists found her name. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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US Shifts One of Two Aircraft Carriers Away From Middle East
The world’s largest aircraft carrier USS Gerald R. Ford steams alongside USNS Laramie (T-AO-203) during a fueling-at-sea in the eastern Mediterranean Sea in this photo taken on Oct. 11, 2023 and released by the US Navy on Oct. 14, 2023. Photo: US Naval Forces Central Command / US 6th Fleet / Handout via REUTERS
One of two US aircraft carrier strike groups deployed to the Middle East in part to deter Iran from carrying out a threatened attack against Israel has departed the region, the Pentagon said on Thursday.
The decision to end the dual-carrier presence came nearly three weeks after US Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin ordered the Theodore Roosevelt carrier strike group to remain in the Middle East, even after the arrival of the Abraham Lincoln aircraft carrier strike group to replace it.
The Roosevelt has now departed the Middle East and is headed to the Asia-Pacific region, Major General Patrick Ryder, a Pentagon spokesperson, told a news briefing.
Austin’s order for the Roosevelt to stay in place came on Aug. 25, as Hezbollah launched hundreds of rockets and drones at Israel and Israel‘s military said it struck Lebanon with around 100 jets to thwart a larger attack, in one of the biggest clashes in more than 10 months of border warfare.
Officials have been concerned that Iran might make also good on its threats to carry out an attack against Israel over the killing of a Hamas leader in Tehran in July.
Ryder played down the idea that the United States was no longer concerned about potential Iranian action and said the decision was based on the Navy’s fleet management.
“Iran has indicated that they want to retaliate against Israel. And so we’re going to continue to take that threat very seriously,” Ryder told reporters at the Pentagon.
Iran has vowed a severe response to the July killing of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, which took place as he visited Tehran and which it blamed on Israel. Israel has neither confirmed or denied its involvement.
US President Joe Biden’s administration has been seeking to limit the fallout from the war in Gaza between Hamas and Israel, now approaching its one-year anniversary. The conflict has leveled huge swathes of Gaza, triggered border clashes between Israel and Lebanon’s Iranian-backed Hezbollah terror group and drawn in Yemen’s Houthis.
“We remain intensely focused on working with regional partners to de-escalate tensions and deterring a wider regional conflict,” Ryder said.
The post US Shifts One of Two Aircraft Carriers Away From Middle East first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Toronto police charge three people at UJA event protest—while more cops find themselves assaulted
Protests also occurred at multiple screenings at the Toronto International Film Festival.
The post Toronto police charge three people at UJA event protest—while more cops find themselves assaulted appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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SUNY Purchase President Steps Down Amid Backlash Over Handling of Anti-Israel Protests, Campus Antisemitism
SUNY Purchase College President Milagros Peña attends the 52nd annual commencement at Westchester County Center in White Plains, New York, May 17, 2024. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
State University of New York (SUNY) Purchase president Milagros Peña will leave office at the end of this academic year, ending a four-year tenure that was derailed by pro-Hamas demonstrations on the campus.
According to The Journal News, Peña announced her “retirement” in a letter to the campus community and further discussed the decision at a convocation event held earlier this month.
“After considerable reflection and discussion about what is best for me and my family, I informed Chancellor [John B. King, Jr.] over the summer that this 2024-2025 academic year will be my last year as president,” Peña wrote, according to excerpts of the letter shared by the local news outlet. “I have mixed emotions about my decision to retire as president after the spring semester, because, though we still face challenges as a community, we have accomplished a great deal together and our shared mission of providing access to a high quality, transformative public education is as important as ever.”
Appointed to office 2020, Peña became a target of far-left faculty last academic year when she authorized the clearing of an illegal “Gaza Solidarity Encampment,” which, the school’s newspaper reported at the time, led to clashes between law enforcement and pro-Hamas students who refused to obey orders to leave the area. An estimated 70 students were arrested, The Phoenix Purchase has said, and at least one professor was detained for obstructing justice.
However, Peña was inconsistent as a policy maker. In an account of her responses to campus antisemitism published by The Algemeiner on Wednesday, SUNY Purchase alumna Esti Heller said the president ignored numerous supplications for increased security for Jewish life on campus after Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel. Peña was unresponsive, even after someone vandalized an Israeli flag and desecrated a sukkah, a hut built for the Jewish festival of Sukkot. Later, Peña reversed course in her handling of the pro-Hamas protesters, Heller said, acceding to their demands for “ethical investing,” amnesty for students charged with violating the code of conduct, and public disclosure of the school’s financial decisions.
Ultimately, Peña lost a no-confidence vote on June 3 in which 87 percent of the voting faculty called for her to leave office.
“While disappointed by the resolution, I am committed to continuing to take part in conversations with stakeholders on and off campus about many of the issues raised and look forward to engaging with the faculty, staff, and students about our shared goals and the best way of moving forward as a community,” Peña told the Purchase following the vote.
Now, three months later, Peña has granted faculty their wish, becoming the third university president in New York State this year to leave office after being criticized for mismanaging a series of crises, antisemitic incidents, and riotous demonstrations. Last month, Minouche Shafik resigned as president of Columbia University after her administration’s credibility crumbled amid revelations of antisemitic conversations between administrators and a partisan investigation of a pro-Israel professor. In May, Cornell University president Martha Pollack resigned after weeks of convulsive protests and disruptions on campus caused by mobs of pro-Hamas students and faculty.
In Wednesday’s announcement, Peña pledged to make her final months in office productive.
“We still have a lot to do before I step away, and I look forward to working together to ensure that Purchase College continues to thrive,” she said. “While there are challenges ahead, I feel confident that we have the flexibility, the skills, and the determination to continue to provide an excellent education for our students and to make progress as an institution that is continually evolving, while safeguarding our community and living up to our values during this extraordinary time.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post SUNY Purchase President Steps Down Amid Backlash Over Handling of Anti-Israel Protests, Campus Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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