The name Shealtiel was documented to have been used in Spain since 1097
CE.
Since the 18th century, the northern branch of a Sephardic family of ancient origine, settled in Amsterdam, the
capital of the Netherlands. Eliau ben Eliau Saltiel was the founder of the dutch Sealtiel family. Born in London,
he moved to Amsterdam in 1757 and married the spinster Sara Mendes. His second marriage was with his
former sister in law Esther Monteiro. By his two wifes, he got himself a total of five children: four sons and one
daughter. Throughout the next 200 years, the family continued to live in Amsterdam, most of them with very
modest occupations, and adsorbed by the strong Portuguese element within the Sephardic Congregation of
Amsterdam.
During this course, the family lost most of its own sence of idendity. Some family members were talented in the
realms of art, humour and entertainment. But most of the family made their living as hawkers, peddlers, carriers,
sigar-makers and diamondworkers.
My grandmother, Jacoba Wilhelmina Sealtiel, was born in 1905.Even if the had musical talent, she chose to
work as a dress-maker to support her parents financially. She never became famous, but her gay personality,
quick remarks and sing a songs left a deep impression on me as a child. Her fascinating personality and the wish
to know more about my background, put me into doing a genealogic research for the Sealti%ls, her family and
my forebears.
My investigations began in 1992 in the Municipal archives of Amsterdam; within a year I possesed a complete
tree of the more than 250 Sealti%ls who had lived in Amsterdam and who were all the descendants of our
common ancestor Eliau Saltiel.
With this information, I went looking for relatives who had possibly survived the Holocaust. As a result I
managed to find a few dozen of survivors and their descendants dispersed through the Netherlands. The great
break through in my search occurred, when I discovered that Eliau Saltiel was born in London. The name Saltiel
was easily discovered in the telephone directories of London, and I wrote to all the entries. Within one month, I
received an reply from an (as it turned out) fifth cousin, Miles Saltiel. He would like to meet our branch of the
family. The dutch family felt positive about a reunion.
We decided to get going, and soon we had established a network of distant relatives from London and
Amsterdam, who were cooperating on the organization of the event. At first, we were convinced that the reunion
would only attract S(e)altiels living in Great Britain and the Netherlands. But it turned out that we were wrong.
Over the time, we had made contact with a few Saltiels of Salonikan origine, whom we believed to be not (or
extremely remote) linked to our family.
But the Salonikans became extremely enthousiastic about our idea for a reunion, and we decided to trace and
invite as many of them as possible. With the help of Telephone Directories from all over the world, and relying
on the "mouth to mouth" we managed to contact more and more Saltiels. Contacts were made with Saltiels,
Sealtiels, Shaltiels and Chaltiels in the countires Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Germany, Great
Britain, France, Greece, Israel, Italy, New Zealand , Spain, Turkey, United States and South America. They all
signed up to participate and the planned reunion became bigger and bigger in a kind of "snowball" effect.
Meanwhile, we started discovering interesting information about the
medieval Spanish family of Shealtiel. The
name Shealtiel was documented to have been used in Spain since 1097 CE. A tombstone of Monzon de Campos
in Palencia, Northern Spain, records that Rabbi Shemuel Bar Shealtiel HaNasi died on 27 August 1097
(Gregorian calender). A member of our family told me that the British Museum in London posessed a 14th
century Haggadah, which had belonged to a member of the Shealtiel family. This interesting information was
being distributed to all new found family members, together with an invitation to participate in the first
international Shealtiel reunion, to take place in Amsterdam during the weekend of 27 and 28 August 1994. The
reunion was to become a great celebration, to comme-morate the survival of the family 502 years after it was dispersed from Spain.
At the closing date for participation, more than 150 people from all
over the world had joined us, and the last
preperations took place during weeks of exited stress.
The author is born in Denmark in 1968, the oldest daughter of a dutch-danish
intermarriage. Since 1987 she lives
in Amsterdam, and now the studies medieval archaeology at the University of Amsterdam.
Literature:
*Nieuwsbrief voor de familie Sealtiel, jaargang 1, vol. 1,ed. Vibeke Sealtiel Olsen, Amsterdam 1993.
*S(he)altiel - the name and family, reunion edition, ed. Miles E. Saltiel, London 1994.
*S(he)altiel Magazine, vol. I, reunion edition, ed. Vibeke Sealtiel Olsen, Amsterdam 1994.
*The S(he)altiel Family Book, reunion edition, ed. Vibeke Sealtiel Olsen, Amsterdam 1994.
*The S(he)altiel Family in New Zealand, ed. Pam Forsyth, New Zealand 1994.
*Shealtiel Gazette, vol. II en III, ed. Miles E. Saltiel, London 1995.