The Plaque That Preserved a Family Story

Some discoveries in genealogy happen in archives.

Others happen completely by accident.

My journey into this story of my great-grandfather, Moshe “Musa” Mizrachi, began because another man with the surname Mizrahi — most likely unrelated to me — casually asked about the Mizrachi family in my tree.

During our conversation, he mentioned an out-of-print Hebrew book he had found online and sent me a PDF copy.

At first, I barely looked through it. Most of the book focused on the Jews of Urfa who later settled in Rishon LeTzion, and I assumed my family would not appear in it at all.

A week later, out of curiosity, I carefully translated a few pages and suddenly found an entire chapter about the Jews of Urfa in Jerusalem.

That moment changed everything.

As I continued translating the chapter, I began recognizing familiar names, family connections, and details I had never heard before. I followed the sources used by the author, searched archival websites, and eventually came across photographs of a synagogue plaque connected to the Mizrachi family.

The plaque revealed something extraordinary: the Mizrachi family had been donors to the synagogue’s expansion in Jerusalem.

But even more importantly, the inscription preserved names and relationships that helped solve long-standing mysteries within my own family research.

For years, including in published accounts from the Jewish community of Panama, it was believed that Musa Mizrachi’s parents were Isaac and Rachel Mizrachi. My father believed this his entire life, and honestly, the assumption made sense.

In our Sephardic tradition, the first son and daughter are often named after the father’s parents. Musa’s first surviving son was Isaac, and his first surviving daughter was Rachel.

But as I searched for primary records, a different picture emerged. Document after document pointed instead to Yosef and Lea as Musa’s parents. His gravestone also identifies Lea as his mother.

Yet Lea’s maiden name remained a mystery.

Some family members claimed she was from the Shrem family, and I found one secondary source supporting that claim, but I still did not consider it sufficient proof.

At the same time, one document complicated the story even further. In Musa’s Panamanian petition for citizenship, his mother’s maiden name appeared as “Chabol.”

My father believed this may have resulted from Musa verbally providing the information in Arabic and a clerk recording what they believed they heard. Musa reportedly spoke only Arabic, and differences in pronunciation and transcription could easily have affected the spelling recorded on official documents.

What made this especially interesting was that some branches of the Shrem family from Aleppo were also known by variations such as Shabube or Shabobe. Phonetically, the discrepancy no longer seemed impossible — but it still was not enough to serve as definitive evidence.

Then came the plaque.

Its inscription provided the missing piece of evidence, identifying Moshe Yosef Mizrachi as the son of Yosef Mizrachi and Lea of the Shrem family. It also revealed brothers whose existence had previously been uncertain, including Shimon and Benjamin.

That discovery solved one of the biggest puzzles I had encountered while researching this branch of the family.

For a long time, I questioned whether Shimon and Benjamin were actually the same person, or whether one name had been incorrectly remembered or transcribed over time. The plaque made it clear: they were two separate brothers, and both died before 1930.

At the same time, the discovery forced me to reevaluate older family assumptions and oral history traditions.

I began studying Sephardic naming customs more closely and realized how easily confusion could develop across generations, especially in families that experienced child loss, migration, language shifts, and incomplete records.

One possibility I continue researching is whether Musa and Sara may have had stillborn children, or children who died in infancy, before their surviving children were born. In some Sephardic traditions, when a child died young, families sometimes avoided immediately reusing the same name for the next child of the same sex.

This could potentially explain certain naming patterns within the family, though I still consider it a theory rather than a conclusion.

The deeper I researched, the more the story expanded.

I discovered references suggesting Musa’s father may have been Yosef Benjamin, possibly meaning “Yosef, son of Benjamin,” following older naming conventions found in Ottoman Jewish communities. Yet I still cannot confirm with certainty that Benjamin was Yosef’s father.

DNA analysis also began revealing possible connections between the Mizrachi family and the Aboud Hidary branch, though several records remain conflicting and still require verification through original archival documents in Israel. There is little doubt that the two branches are related; the question that remains is who their common ancestor was.

Some mysteries remain unresolved. Others may only be answered by physically examining the original records themselves.

But the plaque changed everything.

What began as a random PDF sent by a stranger became the rediscovery of an entire branch of my family history — one carved into stone in Jerusalem decades ago, quietly waiting to be found again.

The plaque begins with the words:

“יד וזכר עולם”

“an eternal memorial and remembrance.”

And in many ways, that is exactly what it became.

Memorial plaque honoring the Mizrachi family. Image reproduced from Our Forfathers Came from Beyond the River (2013).

• Jerusalem Sephardic burial registers for Moshe Yosef Mizrachi Sankari and Sara Mizrachi Sankari, Mount of Olives

• Family ketubot transcripts preserved by descendants.

• Across The River Came Our Ancestors [Hebrew], Urfa in Jerusalem, Moshe Mizrachi, Chapter 6; Zion Suleiman, Yigal Moshe Israel, Yigal Baldegreen.