@pdworkin You would be surprised how many Jewish records in lands devastated by the Germans, Russia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Germany itself, survived the second World War and are open for examination. There is a project on Jewishgen.com which is devoted to taking surviving Jewish records from Poland and Russia, transcribing them and adding them to existing databases.
My Morgan forebears came from Riga, then Russia, now Latvia, and the State Archives there were able to trace my great-grandfather’s 18 siblings and prior generations back to the late 1700’s.
As to the family, it seems like everyone and I mean everyone in the 19th century was a tailor, a cutter, a shoemaker or a furrier. All professions open to Jews in 19th century Russia.
The remarkable thing about my wife’s family is that she is descended from a passenger on the first group of Puritans who landed in Boston in 1630.
SRM