We are very sad to announce the passing of Schelly Talalay Dardashti.
She founded the ‘Tracing the Tribe’ forum on Facebook, and before that, when living in Israel, she wrote a regular column on Jewish genealogy in the Jerusalem Post (“It’s All Relative,” 1999-2005). She participated in numerous IAJGS conferences, earned the title of “trouble maker” and she wore it proudly. Born Ashkenazi (with Sephardic roots) she married into the famous Dardashti Jewish Iranian family and got in love with the language and the food.
Schelly started the first English speaking genealogy group JFRA (predecessor of IGRA) in Ra’anana Israel many, many years ago, and more recently the Facebook group Tracing the Tribe. Traced her Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi families across Iran, Spain, Belarus, Russia, and Ukraine. An early proponent of DNA for genealogy, she co-admins several DNA projects at FamilyTreeDNA.
Native New Yorker Schelly Talalay Dardashti has lived in Teheran, Tel Aviv, Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas and now New Mexico. She worked as a Genealogist advisor for MyHeritage and lectured for Legacy Family Tree Webinars multiple times. Her articles have appeared on JTA, Reform Judaism, Hadassah, NGS Quarterly, Avotaynu and numerous Jewish and general genealogy publications, newspapers, and more. Affiliations: Social media coordinator, board member, Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies; president, JGS of New Mexico (sponsors annual Jewish Genetics and Jewish DNA/Genealogy conferences); founding member, Centro Sefarad NM (New Mexico).
She is already missed. BARUCH DAYAN EMET
