There is a peculiar hierarchy in the way we think about historical information. A memorandum sent between government officials is intelligence. A diplomatic dispatch is intelligence. A report prepared by a police informant is intelligence. A military officer quietly telling another officer that somebody has been seen meeting an enemy representative is intelligence. Two women exchanging information about who visited whose house, who suddenly acquired money, whose marriage is failing, who may...

Chinese Jewish genealogy presents an unusual problem even within the wider history of the Jewish diaspora, because the term “Chinese Jews” can refer to several populations whose histories, migrations and documentary environments differ substantially from one another. The most distinctive is the long-established Jewish community of Kaifeng, whose members lived in China for centuries, adopted Chinese language, names and social structures, and nevertheless retained a recognisable Jewish communal...

Ethiopian Jewish genealogy presents a problem that is both familiar and remarkably different from those encountered elsewhere in Jewish family history. The familiar problem is one of evidence: families remember origins, relationships and migrations that must somehow be reconciled with the surviving documentary record. The difference lies in the nature of that record. Beta Israel developed for centuries within the Ethiopian highlands, geographically distant from the principal centres of...