BACKGROUND: In Bohemia, surnames were generally adopted by Jewish families in 1788. Prior to that names were most frequently based on patronymics. The number of Jewish families, their occupations & residences, and in particular the right to marry, was heavily restricted until the 1840s. The total number of Jewish households in Bohemia in around 1800 was in the order of 10000, and the majority lived in small communities with not more than 100 families. As a result, parents of any child were often related. Family Finder gives estimates of the number of close relatives for descendants of Bohemian Jews that are often far too high - e.g giving hundreds of predicted "Close relatives", of which very few could even be possible when known genealogies are compared. Intermarriage is likely to lead to living descendants with DNA segments, albeit maybe short length, inherited from ancestors many generations back. The net result is that it is very difficult to utilize Gedmatch or Family Finder databases. Over the last years, Bohemian Jewish descendants have made a great effort to work together on the collaborative Geni Tree (www.geni.com). One result of this is that it has become possible to follow maternal lines, as one can merge one's tree with that of another researcher who happens to include a member of your own maternal line. Further, there has been an effort to create Geni Tree projects based on Jewish communities, and to link families to those places, and conversely link places to families. Anyone with Jewish Bohemian ancestry, who has taken DNA tests (autosomal, Y-DNA or mt-DNA), is welcome to join this group. Aims: - to provide a tool to help those with Bohemian Jewish ancestors to combine genealogical information from the GENI tree with Family Finder autosomal-DNA and Y-DNA data. Members can annotate all direct ancestors on the GENI Tree with their Family Finder Kit number (and Gedmatch if used) , so that anyone looking at the GENI tree can immediately try to compare their autosomal DNA - to investigate the best way to analyze Family Finder DNA from close-knot Jewish Communities, by selecting a manageable group of testers with defined Bohemian Jewish ancestry . One hope is that by selecting people from the same village (easily found on GENI Tree), or who are known to have intermarriages, even if they do not know that they share direct ancestors, one might identify shorter segments that are of significance. - to provide a way of Jewish Bohemian descendants to discuss and collaborate on how to best utilize their DNA data It is highly recommended that anyone with DNA results on FamilyFinder should show their Bohemian ancestors on family trees associated with their Kit ID. Also, if they are not there already there, it is suggested that they add these ancestral lines to Geni Tree, and add their Test Kit numbers to the Profiles on Geni Tree. So when someone finds your ancestor on Geni Tree, they can immediately also compare DNA results. Any feedback, suggestions or questions are welcome Peter Lowe Project Administrator