I guess the one thing that gets me out of a genealogy posting funk is Randy Seaver's "Saturday Night Genealogy Fun."

This time we're on a quest to find my paternal grandmother's patrilineal line. That's not only hard to read and say, but kind of confusing to understand. What we're looking for are male ancestors of my dad's grandma. Boy genealogy would be so much easier if we just used regular 4-year old English, wouldn't it?

The challenge is this:

Provide a list of your paternal grandmother's patrilineal line. Answer these questions:

* What was your father's mother's maiden name?

Answer: Hey I know this! My grandmother's maiden name was Zipora Smorgonski - born between 1913-1916 (whenever we asked her when she was born she would say "in the spring") and I just saw that I have no idea when she passed away. It was around 10 years ago on Yom Kippur. I have to ask my dad/uncles.

* What was your father's mother's father's name?

Answer: I know this one as well! My great-grandfather was Avraham Smorgonski - born about 1881, died (murdered during the holocaust) on 29 April 1942. That date unfortunately shows up several times in my family's history.

* What is your father's mother's father's patrilineal line? That is, his father's father's father's ... back to the most distant male ancestor in that line?

Answer: This is a little harder to answer but I am happy to say I did the research on this with some help from other JewishGen researchers and have a few great-greats:
2nd great-grandfather: Shlomo Smorgonski - born about 1836 (I still have some work to do to understand the 20 year gap between Shlomo's children - I may have missed a generation?)
3rd great-grandfather: Ruvin Smorgonski - born about 1793, died about 1836.
4th great-grandfather: Movsha Smorgonski

* Can you identify male sibling(s) of your father's mother, and any living male descendants from those male sibling(s)? If so, you have a candidate to do a Y-DNA test on that patrilineal line. If not, you may have to find male siblings, and their descendants, of the next generation back, or even further.

Answer: My grandmother had two sisters, Hanna and Pesia. Her mother, Esther Segalchik died after Pesia was born and her father, Avraham, married her sister, Henia Segalchik. This was quite common back then. They had 4 children (2 boys, 2 girls), but only one son, my grand uncle, Sholomo Shamgar (changed from Smorgonski) survived the holocaust. Shlomo passed away in 2005, but he has a son and a grandson to continue the male Y-DNA paterilinial line.

Result: I have candidates! But I don't know what testing them would give me. There are a lot of "other" Smorgonski's out there that we have not been able to connect with my branch, so maybe that would give us the answer. I'll discuss it on my next trip to Israel.

Thanks again Randy, for your terrific genea-challenge!