To give a perspective - one should never say something is a closed subject when it is not as that is just an opinion. Not fact. Just because it is a way someone was raise or what they think, or what they say does not make it so.
The verdict is still out and nothing has been confirmed. Keeping an open mind is an asset in these times one would think.
Scientists have discovered a gene which can be traced from the Biblical figure of Aaron, the first High Priest (kohen) of the Jewish people, to a segment of the Jewish population today which carries the priestly lineage. https://www.israel365news.com/49932/dna-studies-prove-existence-of-...
Within the Jewish community, genealogical studies have shown several families that can claim descent ben akhar ben (father to son) in a direct line, most notably the Dayan, Shealtiel and Charlap/Don Yechia families. Most of these families come from Aleppo, Syria. https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/74034/king-davids-descendants-re... https://vilnagaon.org/king-david/
The Sephardi Path https://momentmag.com/king-davids-genes-2/
Rashi is not the only way for a family to link itself to King David. Sephardi families usually trace their lineage through the line of exilarchs and at least two major ones trace their line back to the last exilarch.
After the last exilarch, Hezekiah, was killed in 1040 CE—the same year that Rashi was born—his two grown sons, Yitzhak and David, fled Baghdad with their families to Granada, Spain, then a vibrant center of Judaic life with a Jewish grand vizier. Each son became the patriarch of a family that would become highly prominent in the diaspora. “The Shaltiel family sprang from Yitzhak, whose eldest son was the first Shaltiel,” says Moshe Shaltiel-Gracian, a resident of a Chicago suburb who has taken an active role in researching his family’s history.
In 1066 the Jewish grand vizier of Granada was assassinated and the Shaltiel family headed north to Spain and Portugal. There, many family members flourished, while others traveled east to Salonika and Italy. Still others intermarried for several generations with the Jewish kings of Narbonne, an independent city-state founded by Charlemagne that stretched north from Barcelona to Aquitaine and was a major hub of Jewish scholarship. Narbonne’s ruling families are said to be descended from Natronai, a former exhilarch in Baghdad who had been force to flee after losing political support.
While researching his family, Shaltiel-Gracian found Shaltiels in 25 countries. Their names had morphed into Sealtiel, Saltiel, Scietliel, Chartiel, Xaltiel and Saltelli, among others. “Many of them are not Jewish but they are very happy to know about it [the King David connection],” he says, adding that the family now holds regular international reunions. In 2000, the BBC aired a documentary on the family, Shealtiel: A Family Saga.
Along the way, Shaltiel-Gracian met Arthur Menton, who grew up during the Depression in the Bronx and now lives in Long Island. A member of the Charlap family, Menton was also descended from the last Exilarch Hezekiah, but through his other son, David. David’s son Chaim also left Granada in 1066, settling in Portugal. He is the progenitor of the Charlap family, which has also been known by many other names, among them ibn-Daoud, ibn-Yahya, Ben Chaim, Don Yahia, Donyechia and Donkhin, explains Menton, who has published his family research in The Book of Destiny: Toledot Charlap. It was Chaim’s son, Chiya, the chief advisor to the first king of Portugal, and a military leader and a scholar, who took the title Charlap. “It was typical that the famous leaders of the Jewish community took acronyms as titles, and he was first to use the title Charlap, which stands for “first in the exile in Portugal,” says Menton.
Chiya gave rise to the powerful ibn-Yahya dynasty, which had vast landholdings in Portugal and Spain. But with the expulsions from Spain and Portugal, the family was forced to flee, spreading throughout the Mediterranean basin and the Ottoman Empire. Two hundred years later, a Rabbi Eliezer ibn-Yahya living in Poland was asked to take a title. “He chose one from 500 years before—Charlap,” says Menton. When Jews were required to take surnames at the turn of the 19th century, most family members adopted Charlap. However, one Charlap, a dairyman, bucked tradition and took the name Ser, meaning cheese in Polish. Menton’s mother’s maiden name was Sahr, a corruption of Ser.
An engineer by profession, Menton says that researching his family is the most satisfying thing he has ever done. “I have gone all over the world meeting relatives and I have gathered up 20 family trees,” he says. “They didn’t know of each other but they mirrored each other remarkably and they all have the Davidic connection.” One of these trees hangs in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. He has found letters that speak of the family’s King David lineage and his nephew uncovered a medieval document describing the coat of arms of ibn-Yahya family in Spain and Portugal. It includes the Lion of Judah—to symbolize the Davidic throne—as well as an eagle that stands for courage and a Star of David behind a Ten Commandments above which is a crown, representing the royal House of David. There is also a spade, he explains, which signifies that the family will be instrumental in rebuilding the reestablished kingdom of Israel, and a palm frond referring to the land of milk and honey.
“We have thousands of relatives in Israel, everyone from humble farmers in Galilee to people like Dorit Benesch who is retiring chief of Israel’s Supreme Court and her sister, the head of the faculty of humanities at Tel Aviv University,” says Menton. “ I have relatives who are scientists at the Weitzman Institute and one who is a beekeeper on a kibbutz next to the Gaza strip. And many rabbis still retain the name Charlap. We crisscross the whole society of Israel.” There are also many prominent Charlap family members in America, he says, including the jazz pianist Dick Hyman, Abram Sachar, the first president of Brandeis University who died in 1993, and his son, the historian Howard Sachar.
https://szin.neocities.org/genealogy/davidic.html
