“Fraggi” my grandmother said hurriedly when I asked her for her mother’s maiden name, as if there were so many better things we could be talking about.  I was 14 years old. It seems like my grandmothers generation was determined to forget the past while many in my generation are obsessed with reconstructing it.  Fast forward to the 21^st century and we can now use genetics to uncover a few thousand years of ancestry rather than  just a few generations

There is uncertainty as to whether to best think about Fraggi, Faraggi and numerous other variants as Sephardic, Romaniot, or Italian. There are branches that spent time in Volo, old Greece, where they used biblical names rather than Ladino ones. Who and how long they were in Italy is also unclear. The names changed with new countries, languages, and alphabets.

Faraggis and variants live in many countries including Greece,Turkey, Bulgaria, Italy, France,  Israel,Switzerland, Canada, USA, Mexico,  Argentina,Chile, and Paraguay.

I would like to dedicate this site to the memory of Moshe Faraggi, whose extensive paper and pen research allowed many branches to come together, new cousins to be met, and in some instances, new mysteries to be created.

Let’s keep that going.

bedford@u.arizona.edu