I am interested in learning more about the origins of the Sephardic community in Romania. I was born in Romania, but left at an early age.

Hi Mike,

It would be great to hear more about it and your surnames from you on this board. I think the Sephardim of this area aren't as well known for the western world as clear as they could be regarding surnames, migrations, customs, etc. I hope you get many more responses. Immediately, off the top of my head, do you know about JewishGen's site in the "Rom" area? Here's a link to a bit more info from JewishGen at http://www.jewishgen.org/ROMSIG/index.html . Don't leave here though. I'm glad you've brought this up here!

Cheers,
Donalyn

A useful web page -
www.sephardicstudies.org/romania.html

My family is trying to put pieces back together. My mothers family lived in Jassy,Iassi.There is a tradition that the great great grandfather was called the Crow because he was very dark, ate only sephardic types of food. The family name was serota and they supposedly came from Spain. The family name became smilowitz. We are trying to gather more information.

Bryan,
I believe I am your cousin and my father Herbert is your Mom's brother. My daughter googled the name Smilowitz and emailed me about your posting 4 years ago on this website.
Several years ago, I received an email from some cousins of our parents (again after my daughter contacted them after finding a letter from them written many years earlier to my parents) who now live in Israel and were doing a family tree and history. If you email me directly (and I tried to email you directly with more private information), I will send you their email address and copies of their emails to me with a fairly complete (but with some inaccuracies) and interesting history of our family.
Anita