Southern California: Ethnic roundtables, Oct. 5

The next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV) on Sunday, October 5, will feature expert society members leading small groups in specific research areas.

Roundtables will be held on American, German, Lithuanian and Polish research; as well as JewishGen, getting started with your research, how to write your book and others.

The event format includes two 45-minute sessions so each attendee can participate in two areas. The society's traveling library will also be available.

The free meeting starts at 1.30pm at Temple Adat Elohim 2420 E. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks.

For more information, directions and future programs, click www.jgscv.org.

Maryland: Iranian Jewry, Nov. 1-3

"Iranian Iranian Jewry: From Past to Present" will take place at the University of Maryland, from November 1-3.

The international conference is sponsored by the Joseph and Rebecca Meyerhoff Center for Jewish Studies and the Roshan Institute Center for Persian Studies, co-hosted by The Hebraic Section and Near East Section, African and Middle Eastern Division, Library of Congress, Washington, DC.

"Iranian Iranian Jewry: From Past to Present" will take place at the University of Maryland, from November 1-3.

The bios and abstracts of the speakers are here. It was nice to see the names of those I know, such as David Menashri (Tel Aviv), Peggy Pearlstein (Library of Congress), Nahid Pirnazar (UCLA), and those we've known since our days in Teheran - Haideh Sahim and Judith Goldstein.

A sample of the program:

Haideh Sahim, Hofstra University,
“The Herat War and the Expulsion of the Jews”
Nahid Pirnazar, UCLA,
“Voluntary Religious Conversion of Iranian Jews in the Nineteenth Century”
Parvaneh Pourshariati, Ohio State University,
“Jewish Participation in Over-Land Trade in Late Antique Iran:
A Preliminary Assessment”
Vera Moreen, Independent Scholar,
“Neglected Sources: The Riches of Judeo-Persian Manuscripts”
Peggy Pearlstein, Library of Congress,
“Iranian Judaic and Hebraic Resources in the Collections
of the Library of Congress”
Hirad Dinavari, Library of Congress,
“Jewish Resources in Persian and Iranian Collections
at the Library of Congress”
Shalom Sabar, Hebrew University,
“Persian and Kurdish Jewish Amulets: Shapes and
Images, Texts and Social Function”
Evan Rapport, New York University,
“Bukharian Jewish Musical Life and Its Relationship
to Judeo-Persian Culture”
Jaleh Pirnazar, UC Berkeley,
“Post-Revolutionary Jewish Iranian Literature”

There is also a good page on Persian/Farsi links and resources here.

The Meyerhoff Center is also planning other events:

4pm, November 17
"We are not Mizrahi...We are Indian Jews"
Issues of Culture and Identity in the Indian Jewish community in Israel
Professor Maina Chawla Singh, University of Delhi, India

Netherlands: Jewish genealogy society

The Netherlands Society for Jewish Genealogy was established in 1987. In 2007, its 20th anniversary year, saw some 500 members and the society celebrated with a symposium in Amsterdam.

Here is information on the 2007 symposium. The website is in English and Dutch, although symposium details are only in Dutch.

Its main goals and activities are:

- Sharing of genealogical data about Jewish families having lived or currently living in the Netherlands;

- Developing sources for research on Jewish families;

- Publication of a quarterly periodical (Dutch);

- Meetings and lectures;

- Encouraging genealogical research on Jewish families in the Netherlands and their ancestors from other countries;

- Study - from the genealogical view - on Dutch Jews throughout history.
Publications:

The annual Family Register includes the names of families for which members hold data; it helps members contact each other for additional research and collaboration.

The quarterly journal Misjpoge (Dutch-Yiddish: mishpokha, family, Hebrew). It appears in Dutch with an English summary. The Q&A section is very popular, and the latest issue's Q&As are also on the website. To publish a question or provide an answer, send to forum@nljewgen.org, with the family name in the subject line.

For more information on the society publications, email publications@nljewgen.org

Membership is 30 Euros or US$50; paid members receive the member list, Family Register and the current year of Misjpoge. The membership form is here.

Family names being researched by members and non-members are here.

Book: Jews in Kurdistan

"I am the keeper of my family’s stories. I am the guardian of its honor. I am the defender of its traditions. As the first-born son of a Kurdish father, these, they tell me, are my duties. And yet even before my birth I resisted."

Thus begins the introduction to journalist Ariel Sabar's book, "In My Father's Paradise: A Son's Search for His Jewish Past in Kurdish Iraq," (Algonquin Books, New York; August 2008).

Sabar attempts to answer these questions and more as he journeys to the small northern Iraqi town of Zakho near the Turkish border.

"Who is my father? How did he wind up so far from home? I wrote this book in part to answer those questions. I wanted to conjure the gulfs of geography and language he crossed on his way from the hills of Kurdistan to the highways of Los Angeles. But I also had other, bigger questions: What is the value of our past? When we carry our languages and stories from one generation to the next, from one country to another, what exactly do we gain?"

Sabar's quotes - and his book - resonate with genealogists, as well as the children and grandchildren of immigrants.

In addition to the family history for which we all search, Sabar addresses the embarrassment of the younger generations at how their parents looked to others, the strange languages they spoke, the cultural symbols that made them different and, in general, how the elders just didn't fit in with the American society in which the youngsters were living.

The birth of Ariel Sabar's own son takes him on a family history journey to the northern Iraq town of Zakho where his father - Yona Beh Sabagha - grew up as a member of the small Jewish minority. He also hunts for information on his great-grandfather, Ephraim, the town's only fabric dyer, learns from Zakho old-timers in Jerusalem that Ephraim spoke to the "angels," and searches for other family stories.

In 1951, following the establishment of the state of israel and anti-Semitic sentiments against the Jewish minority, some 120,000 Iraqi Jews resettled in Israel, even as others went to Iran, the US and other countries. Yona was the last bar mitzvah in the town. In Israel, the family name became Sabar.

Amazingly, on his return to Zakho, Sabar learns that the town's Muslim Kurds still call the district where his father lived "the Jewish neighborhood," even though no Jews have lived there for 50 years.

Yona Sabar is a world expert on neo-Aramaic - a language nearly dead as its native speakers disappear. Resettlement wasn't easy, but being a speaker of neo-Aramaic helped, relates his son. His father received a scholarship to the Yale University Department of Near Eastern Languages and became a UCLA professor.

Publishers' Weekly (September 16) wrote:

For his first 31 years Sabar considered his father, Yona, an embarrassing anachronism. Ours was a clash of civilizations, writ small. He was ancient Kurdistan. I was 1980s L.A. Yona was a UCLA professor whose passion was his native language, Aramaic. Ariel was an aspiring rock-and-roll drummer. The birth of Sabar's own son in 2002 was a turning point, prompting Sabar to try to understand his father on his own terms.

Readers can only be grateful to him for unearthing the history of a family, a people and a very different image of Iraq. Sabar vividly depicts daily life in the remote village of Zahko, where Muslims, Jews and Christians banded together to ensure prosperity and survival, and in Israel (after the Jews' 1951 expulsion from Iraq), where Kurdish Jews were stereotyped as backward and simple.

Sabar's career as an investigative reporter at the Baltimore Sun and elsewhere serves him well, particularly in his attempt to track down his father's oldest sister, who was kidnapped as an infant. Sabar offers something rare and precious—a tale of hope and continuity that can be passed on for generations. Photos.

For more, see the author's site, http://www.arielsabar.com/. There is also a Q&A with the author here (this takes some time to load, be patient).

The author has a full book tour arranged and he will be at most major Jewish book fairs and many book stores in coming months. It might be worthwhile to try to arrange for Ariel Sabar to speak; contact Carolyn Hessel.

Ladino: Now there's a textbook!

Looking to learn Ladino? This is a book I'm planning to order for myself.

The recently published, English version of Marie-Christine Varol's "Manual of Judeo-Spanish: Language and Culture" book is available from CDL Press (University Press of Maryland), PO Box 34454, Bethesda, Maryland 20827.

The 330-page volume is $35, and includes an audio CD to be used with each lesson in the book.

To order: Click here.

Carnival of Eastern European Genealogy

Steve Danko hosted the 11th edition of the Carnival of Eastern European Genealogy centered on given names.

These Carnivals of Genealogy are very useful. We are challenged to respond to topics we haven't really thought about or addressed in our blogs. Each participant handles the topic from his or her own viewpoint and we all learn from each other.

The charge for this challenge was:

The topic for this edition is First (Given) Names: Did any of your ancestors have an unusual given name? Have you discovered the meanings behind the given names of your ancestors? Did your ancestors use any naming patterns for their children? Are there any given names that are particularly common in your family history? Did any of your ancestors have given names that you particularly like or dislike? Does your family celebrate “Name Days”? Did your immigrant ancestors change their given names after they arrived in America? Tell us about the first (given) names in your family. You can concentrate on one name, a few names, or you can go wild and write about the first names of all your ancestors!

Participants included Jessica Oswalt of Jessica's Genejournal (German); Lisa of 100 Years in America (Hungarian and Croatian); Julie Cahill Tarr at GenBlog; Donna Pointkouski of What's Past is Prologue (Bavarian and Polish); Jasia of Creative Gene and Al’s Polish-American Genealogy Research on their Polish names; Steve's own Polish names; and, of course, Tracing the Tribe's "Here's a Leib, There's a Leib!" which touched on Belarus and Iran.

About Tracing the Tribe, Steve wrote:

Schelly Talalay Dardashti of Tracing the Tribe: The Jewish Genealogy Blog writes about her family’s practice of naming children after their relatives. This practice results in an interesting conundrum when all the children in a single family decided to name one of their sons after the child’s grandfather. And so, today, anyone with the name Leib Talalay, wherever he may live, is probably a cousin. Read all the details at Here’s a Leib, there’s a Leib! While you’re at it, you’ll find out why Schelly’s daughter loves her given name and initials, and why Schelly was once known as Shirley! Thanks for a great article, Schelly. It’s a fascinating read!

This was a great topic, Steve. Thank you for this opportunity.

Do read descriptions and pointers to all participant entries at Steve's link above.

New Site: GenSoftReviews

Always wondered how you can learn about genealogy software? There are so many different packages out there. Which is best for you and your needs?

Louis Kessler, who's been around for some three decades as genealogist and programmer, has now organized and launched GenSoftReviews, in addition to his venerable Lkessler.com, which has a Jewish genealogy page here.

The new site makes it possible for users of gen software to rate and review programs they've tried or used. The goal is to make it easier for others to compare and select the software best for their own needs.

If you are a non-techie, as many of us are, it can be confusing as you attempt to compare different programs and features. I hope this site will lessen confusion and help more people choose the program or programs right for them.

Some 355 programs are ready for review; categories include Windows, Mac, Unix, handheld and online programs, from full-featured, GEDCOM utilities, website builders and more.

The site is free and does not require registration.

There are five ranking levels: Whether you enjoy using it, if you use it often, if it has easy input, useful output, and an overall rating. You can write a short review and list the major advantage and disadvantage of a program. Viewers may use this information to make more informed decisions.

There is an RSS feed for all reviews as well as one for each separate program.

Why did he create this?

"I created my "Louis Kessler's Genealogy Software Links" page for my website in 1997 and that page has been a popular genealogy web resource with over 400,000 hits through the years. But I've always wanted to have more than just a list of programs. The new Genealogy Software Reviews site allows interactive user input and should be a more useful resource for everyone."

For more than three decades, Kessler has been a genealogist and programmer; written newspaper articles and made presentations on genealogy. He also developed the Behold genealogy program and is past president of the Jewish Historical Society of Western Canada (Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada).

Colorado: Secret Jews of San Luis Valley

Smithsonian Magazine's article "The 'Secret Jews' of San Luis Valley," focuses on a gene linked to a virulent form of breast cancer found mainly in Jewish women and discovered in Hispanic Catholics in southern Colorado.

One September day in 2001, Teresa Castellano, Lisa Mullineaux, Jeffrey Shaw and Lisen Axell were having lunch in Denver. Genetic counselors from nearby hospitals and specialists in inherited cancers, the four would get together periodically to talk shop.

That day they surprised one another: they'd each documented a case or two of Hispanic women with aggressive breast cancer linked to a particular genetic mutation. The women had roots in southern Colorado, near the New Mexico border. "I said, 'I have a patient with the mutation, and she's only in her 40s,'" Castellano recalls. "Then Lisa said that she had seen a couple of cases like that. And Jeff and Lisen had one or two also. We realized that this could be something really interesting."

Curiously, the genetic mutation that caused the virulent breast cancer had previously been found primarily in Jewish people whose ancestral home was Central or Eastern Europe. Yet all of these new patients were Hispanic Catholics.

Mullineaux contacted Ruth Oratz, a New York City-based oncologist then working in Denver. "Those people are Jewish," Oratz told her. "I'm sure of it."

Pooling their information, the counselors published a report in a medical journal about finding the gene mutation in six "non-Jewish Americans of Spanish ancestry." The researchers were cautious about some of the implications because the breast cancer patients themselves, as the paper put it, "denied Jewish ancestry."

The finding raised some awkward questions. What did the presence of the genetic mutation say about the Catholics who carried it? How did they happen to inherit it? Would they have to rethink who they were—their very identity—because of a tiny change in the three billion "letters" of their DNA? More important, how would it affect their health, and their children's health, in the future?

Some people in the valley were reluctant to confront such questions, at least initially, and a handful even rejected the overtures of physicians, scientists and historians who were suddenly interested in their family histories. But rumors of secret Spanish Jewry had floated around northern New Mexico and the San Luis Valley for years, and now the cold hard facts of DNA appeared to support them. As a result, families in this remote high-desert community have had to come to grips with a kind of knowledge that more and more of us are likely to face. For the story of this wayward gene is the story of modern genetics, a science that increasingly has the power both to predict the future and to illuminate the past in unsettling ways.

The long article also speaks with historian Stanley Hordes, has additional photographs, and discusses DNA, genetics and history:

By comparing DNA samples from Jews around the world, scientists have pieced together the origins of the 185delAG mutation. It is ancient. More than 2,000 years ago, among the Hebrew tribes of Palestine, someone's DNA dropped the AG letters at the 185 site. The glitch spread and multiplied in succeeding generations, even as Jews migrated from Palestine to Europe. Ethnic groups tend to have their own distinctive genetic disorders, such as harmful variations of the BRCA1 gene, but because Jews throughout history have often married within their religion, the 185delAG mutation gained a strong foothold in that population. Today, roughly one in 100 Jews carries the harmful form of the gene variant.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Cape Verde: Jewish memories

Cape Verde's Jewish roots are discussed in Naomi Seck's Voice of America broadcast. Here is the text and the broadcast itself is available as well.

In Cape Verde, a small stretch of islands just off the coast of West Africa, nearly everyone is Catholic. But as Naomi Seck reports for VOA from the capital, Praia, some residents talk about what it means to them to be the heirs of the islands' Jewish past.

At the main cemetery in Praia, white crosses stretch in every direction.

But a quick question to the guard, and he leads visitors sure-footedly up the hill to the left.

Here, a few stone tombs lie flat in the ground, and there are no crosses.

Jose Levy describes what he sees.

"Some of the graves have descriptions in Hebraic, others have descriptions in both Hebraic and Portuguese," he explains.

These are the graves of some of Cape Verde's former Jewish population. There are about half a dozen here. They mostly come from the late 1800s.

He shares his name with a man buried here. Only a few generations ago, the family were practicing Jews.

The island's Jews arrived in the 1400s, when Portugal colonized the uninhabited islands and it became an important trading post. The Portuguese Jews came under pressure when Portugal, following Spain's earlier example in in 1492, required all Jews to convert or be expelled.

The second wave of Jews came from Morocco in the 1850s, looking for economic opportunities. Levy's family descends from this group. At one time, says his father, Abraão Levy, his family owned and farmed a lot of land on Santiago, where Praia is located. Abraão also says the descendants of the Jewish immigrants have played prominent roles in Cape Verde, including a former prime minister and a finance minister.

"My grandfather and my great-grandfather came from Portugal and they married Catholic women, and I think the Catholic aspect was much stronger, because I never saw anything, my father told me he has never seen any practicing any rites in the house," Levy says.

Yet a gold Star of David, a symbol of the Jewish faith, dangles from a bracelet on his wrist.

Levy says he wears it to quietly remind himself of his Jewish heritage.

Read the complete article and listen to the program at the link above.

Tracing the Tribe has previously written about Cape Verde here and here.

Unlocking tales of family treasures

Just in time for the High Holidays - a time of year when we remember our ancestors, their stories and their histories - my story on family heirlooms was just published in the Jerusalem Post.

Genealogists in several countries participated.

To read it in the Jerusalem Post Online Edition, click here, or go to www.jpost.com -> Jewish World -> Jewish Features. Unlocking tales of family treasures is the second in the list of three today. By tomorrow you may have to hit "more" as more stories have been added for the holiday issues.

Asked about her collection of family heirlooms, Linda Silverman Shefler will likely say that as a child, she was somewhat of a nudnik!

As far back as she can remember, she would pester her grandmothers with questions: Who were those people in all the photographs? What did those documents she couldn't read really say? To whom did this or that object belong?

Eldest of the 10 grandchildren on each side of the family, Shefler was the only one who showed interest in the family history: "I believe that's what made me the logical candidate to inherit so many wonderful family treasures."

Shefler began researching her family 23 years ago after her grandmother died and she inherited a drawerful of photographs. She began to research a previously unknown Cleveland, Ohio branch, and her journey of discovery has gathered 80 direct ancestors, 10 generations and more than 11,000 relatives, going back (in one branch) to the late 1600s. "There's still so much research to do," she adds.

Other genners mentioned in the story: Stan Diamond (Canada), Bernard Kouchel (Florida), Ann Rabinowitz (Florida), Shelly Levin (California), Linda Silverman Shefler (US/Israel), Chaim Freedman (Israel), Rachelle Berliner (Georgia), Meryl Frank (New Jersey), Meyer Denn (Texas), Helen Horwitz (New Mexico), Frayda Zelman Naor (New York City), and Ina Levitt Yanover (Canada).

Shana tova u'metukah to all Tracing the Tribe readers. For you and your families, I wish you a happy, healthy, prosperous and sweet New Year, filled with amazing genealogical discoveries and everything else you wish for yourselves.

Tel Aviv: 1,800 rare photographs found

In Tel Aviv, Liselotte Grschebina worked as a photographer for more than 20 years. In 1957, she stopped and hid the photographs. In 2000, years after she died, the images were discovered. The Israel Museum is now holding an exhibit on her work. The story was in Haaretz.

Eight years ago, some 1,800 rare photographs taken by Liselotte Grschebina were gathering dust in several crates that for decades had sat in a storage space above the ceiling of her apartment on 18 Bialik Street in Tel Aviv. The negatives had been thrown into the trash and only the pictures remained - most of them which she had printed in her small kitchen, which was not usually used for cooking, as her only son, Benny Grschebina, testifies.

The German-born photographer died in 1994 at the age of 86, unknown to researchers of Land of Israel photography. She had already abandoned her profession in 1957, said her son this week. He doesn't know what made her stop taking pictures, but says that from then on she devoted her time to working in the clinic of her husband Jacob, a well-known gynecologist in the city.

"After my parents died, everything was transferred to me in cartons," says Grschebina. He didn't know what to do with them until a photography student, Itai Bar Yosef, heard about the find by chance and contacted the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. "The people in the museum's photography department chose the pictures they wanted. The family pictures remained with me."

The purchase of the collection was funded by Dov and Rachel Gottsman and donated to the museum in 2000. In 2003, some images were in the "Pioneers of Photography in Israel," and a few years ago, some were in an exhibit in Berlin.

On October 10, "Woman with a Camera," an exhibit solely devoted to Grschebina's work will open on October 10, at Ticho House in Jerusalem, under Israel Museum auspices. Included are 95 photos from 1930s-1940s.

Not much is known about Grschebina, who arrived in Palestine in 1934. Some photos appeared in newspapers of that period and in a 1938 calendar. Her son is quoted:

"Mother was not a tough woman, but she was a Yekke [a German Jew]," says her son. "Yekkes don't open blogs and don't write revealing diaries, and certainly don't pour out their hearts in their letters. The Yekkes lived among themselves and didn't open up even to their children. Therefore, my knowledge of her and her biography, and of the period in which she worked as a photographer, is quite limited."

The story carries an interview with her son, Benny, who says she wouldn't have imagined her work exhibited in a museum and didn't promote or preserve her work. In Germany, she studied photography at the highest standards.

Although the story says not much is known about Grschebina, there is quite a lot of genealogically-relevant information:

Born in May 1908 in Karlsruhe, Germany Liselotte Billigheimer as the daughter of wine merchant Todros-Otto Billigheimer. He was drafted into the Germany Army in WWI and killed, leaving his widow Rosa to raise two daughters, Liselotte and Hilde.

At 17, Liselotte began to study applied graphics and figurative painting in Karlsruhe. When she finished her studies she moved to Stuttgart and studied advertising photography at the academy, which was part of the drawing and design track in the graphics department. In 1929, she began to teach advertising photography in the academy, but was dismissed two years later.

In Karlsruhe, Liselotte met her Russian-Jewish husband, Jacob Grschebina, born in Tblisi. His parents moved to Danzig where he studied medicine. In Karlsruhe he was pathologist and the couple married in 1932.

In March 1934, they arrived in Palestine and settled in Tel Aviv, which was then full of German Jewish refugees. Among them were many with art world connections, including photographers. Only some of them made a living. There were so many photographers that the city of Tel Aviv limited the number of photographer's permits. Archival research, noted in the story, revealed dozens of letters from photographers asking for the revocation of rival photographers' permits.

This story is also interesting from a sociological view, as it explains why young women studied this craft in Germany: a profession and practical art that was relatively easy to learn and to work in. According to a researcher, the very first series of Swiss tourist photos, preceding photographed postcards, was created by a woman. More than 100 of Berlin's 600 photography studios in the early 1930s were run by women. The story goes on to detail her attempt to open a photography school; the permit was denied.

The story talks about her career in Israel, her associations and work, cameras and projectors, her friends and colleagues. It presents how refugees lived, worked and ate.

Read this fascinating complete story at the link above.

Barcelona: Preserving Jewish heritage

I have just received this update from good friends Dominique Tomasov Blinder and David Stoleru in Barcelona, who head up the Zakhor Study Center for the Protection and Transmission of Jewish Heritage

In addition to participation in the European Day of Jewish Culture, Zakhor prepared two sessions for Barcelona and one in Castello d'Empuries; organized a Jewish quarter walk during the 2008 Barcelona Jewish Film Festival, as well as visits to Jewish Montjuic.

Zakhor's scientific committee will be headed by Professor Yom Tov Assis (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, Israel), an expert on Sephardi Judaism in the Middle Ages. Other worldwide experts are being invited to this consulting team.

The group has signed cooperation agreements with prestigious institutions: Centre d’Estudis de Montjuïc, Barcelona; Fundación ATID, Barcelona; Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Barcelona; Editorial Raíces, Madrid; Department of Jewish Studies, Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Instituto Ben Zvi, Jerusalem; and the International Survey of Jewish Monuments, New York. Institut Ramon Muntaner, an institution which groups Catalan centers of studies in several disciplines, has included us in their membership, and conversations have begun with the American Sephardi Foundation, New York.

Zakhor's goals:

- To contribute with a Jewish dimension to the interpretation of Jewish history and legacy, for its better understanding and comprehension and for the best use of heritage sites (cemeteries, Jewish quarters, etc.). Ancient cemeteries require special and urgent actions to protect them from any kind of abandonment, damage, excavation or improper interventions caused by urban growth.

- As a non-profit association, thus financing has to be secured through public or private grants, matching funds, professional fees for our services and donations. This allows us to work with qualified professionals and consultants to assure the best quality of each project. Center of Studies ZAKHOR hopes to receive support from individuals, organizations and the public administration, on the endeavors to preserve our treasured history and historic sites for future generations to enjoy.

- There are many ways in which readers can help ZAKHOR: sharing this information with others, organizing a lecture in your community where we can present our work, writing letters in support of our efforts or choosing a project that deserves your interest and support.

Dominique and David will continue to inform readers about their progress. Visitors to Barcelona are always welcome to visit their office.

For more information, click here. The website is in English, Catalan and Castilian. and describes their activities in great detail.

Book: Vanishing traces of Jewish Galicia

Brown University professor of history and German studies Omer Bartov spoke at the recent Chicago 2008 conference to rave reviews.

His latest book, "Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine," (Princeton University Press, 232 pages, $26.95), was reviewed in the Haaretz Book Supplement, by Simon J. Rabinovitch, a University of Florida Jewish History postdoctoral associate.

"Erased" is a byproduct of Bartov's efforts to study the Holocaust's perpetrators and victims together in historical context. In the way that Jan Gross did in 2001 with "Neighbors," a book that investigated the 1941 massacre of the Jewish population of Jedwabne, Poland, Bartov, a professor of history and German studies at Brown University, intended to demonstrate that the murder of Jews often took place in the most intimate of settings.

Yet "Erased" is also a deeply personal project. While visiting the region of his mother?s childhood (he is writing a separate book on his mother's hometown of Buczacz), Bartov discovered that in town after town in eastern Galicia where Jews once made up a majority or plurality, the very memory of their existence and elimination is now imperceptible.

His travels resulted in this new project, a book that in its mixture of description and emotional commentary seeks to bring to light the shear success of efforts to expunge the Jewish past from eastern Galicia. It is as if not merely this region of Ukraine, but Ukrainian memory itself, has been ethnically cleansed.

Rabinovitch says Bartov is not the first to be shocked at what is missing in western Ukraine, and he mentions Daniel Mendelsohn's "The Lost," and Jonathan Safran Foer's "Everything is Illuminated." Both books grew out of the authors' trips to the same geographical area to find family history.

Writes the reviewer:

The genocide of the Jews in Ukraine was remarkable for its efficiency and simplicity. Though ghettos and extermination camps were used, most Jews were executed in mass graves in or around the towns in which they lived. Auschwitz satisfies those who seek to remember the destruction of the Jews, but the lack of either commemoration or restoration in the towns of Galicia thoroughly disturbs those who seek to remember Jewish life there.

Bartov rightly cares that Jewish life in western Ukraine be both remembered and properly memorialized, and his and the other books are all in some sense an effort to compensate for the failure of Ukrainians to do so. But the question remains, why do we as Jews care so deeply what the people who now live in this region (or for that matter the other countries of Eastern Europe) remember? Jews have made efforts to commemorate Jewish life in these towns through the compilation of memorial books and the creation of memorials in the Americas, Australia and Israel, even as the number of Jews who either live in or travel to this area remains very small. And yet as Jews, we still do care that synagogues and cemeteries themselves are preserved and mass murder commemorated through memorials, as a reminder to the current inhabitants about Jewish life there and the circumstances of its destruction.

Do read the complete review at the link above.

Photos: Old time images

Over the years, we've had old-time photos taken at various fairs and tourist spots. It involved putting on old costumes and becoming stars of sepia prints - you know, those brownish prints that at first glance indicates "old," as in historic?

They are here somewhere in my masses of photographs. I do remember the family looking like Daniel Boone's traveling companions, some with rifles; civil war-era fancy dress, uniforms of various periods, cowboys, pioneers, 1920s gangsters - you name it.

How confused will our descendants be when they discover these instant ancestors? Although my main line didn't arrive here until 1898, how did we get family photos of the Civil War, of frontiersmen and pioneers.

You too can confuse future generations and take family photos in historical costumes.

I guess it is like those painters who produced beautiful portaits of women, dripping with diamonds and other fantastic gems - although that jewelry never existed. How many descendants are still looking for that missing treasure, because it was in that painting of a great-grandmother.

Now, if you really want to confuse your descendants, inscribe the photos on the back using brown ink and a real pen-nib - not a ball-point pen or marker, please!

Is this payback for our own ancestors leaving us buckets of unlabeled photographs? I guess not, but perhaps it will inspire future generations to do some serious homework and realize those prominently displayed photographs are only fake family history.

Shoes are a dead giveaway, so be careful your newest Nikes - or whatever the top gear is today - aren't showing under those period costumes! Take off your glasses, if you wear them; a squint is more realistic. Hide those watches also! It's hard to claim a photograph as historic when the newest Swatch watch is showing under a sleeve.

Enjoy confusing your descendants - our ancestors certainly did the same to us with name changes, missing data, unlabeled photos and conflicting information.

Do leave a note, however, in your papers telling the truth about those "historic" images!

How many readers have these sorts of photographs? What were your favorite costumes?

DNA: The Epstein-Horowitz-Benveniste Projects

Are you an Epstein? Do you know an Epstein? What about a Horowitz or the many variations of this name? Or a Benveniste?

Itzhak Epstein of New York is looking for Epsteins around the world to participate in a DNA project designed to see how the various family branches are related ... or not.

Itzhak's project is at FamilyTreeDNA.com and can also be accessed through JewishGen. At the bottom of that link, check the map which shows heavy concentration of participant origins in Belarus and environs.

Itzhak recently wrote about the progress of this project to encourage others to participate in the painless mouth swab procedure.

We are working on identifying the various branches of our principal cluster, identifying additional members of our minor clusters, and on connecting our members to cousins. To accomplish this goal and to create as broad a search as possible, we need more male EPSTEINs to contribute a cheek swab as a DNA sample.

If you are female or an EPSTEIN through female ancestors, a sample from an EPSTEIN male relative can represent your family in the test. If you are not an EPSTEIN please share this post with male EPSTEINs who may want to participate in this project.

Names in this project include Ast, Chernin, Easton, Ebstein, Eppstein, Epshteyn, Epsteen, Epstein, Epsten, Epstien, Epsztajn, Epsztein, Epsztejn, Esten, Eylat, Levin-Epstein, Levitsky, Mulwitz, Ochs and Polonovsky.

Through the end of September - what a great Rosh Hashana gift from Family Tree DNA - prices are discounted and two tests even include a free mtDNA test for the price of the Y-DNA test only!

To join the EPSTEIN surname project through JewishGen, which receives a portion of the proceeds for each test ordered through this link, click here.

To date, the project has 38 tested members, with a principal cluster of 15 members, who were mostly strangers to each other, yet appear to be related.

According to Itzhak, these members are likely descended from the historic EPSTEINs of Frankfurt am Mein, in the late 14th century.

- Four of the 15 cannot identify any EPSTEIN ancestry, but are included because of their uniquely close genetic relationship.

- Seven pairs of project members may also be mutually related.

- The other nine members are unrelated to any other current EPSTEIN surname project member.

- Most members are closely related to men whose surnames are other than EPSTEIN.

The tentative conclusion is that about half of the EPSTEIN ancestors chose the surname when authorities mandated Jews to take surnames in the early 19th century.

Other families are either related to the historic EPSTEINs from before the original surname's origination in Frankfurt or are EPSTEINs who chose a different surname at a later date.

To join the EPSTEIN surname project through JewishGen, which receives a portion of the proceeds for each test ordered through this link, click here.

As for the historic EPSTEIN ancient origins, says Itzhak, the haplogroup shows that ancient origins are probably in the Alps and not in the Levant.

Modern Epstein genealogy started with the publication of Gvurot He'ari by Efrayim Mordechai Epstein in 1888 and the issuance the Epstein family tree by Shim'on Arye Epstein in 1908. Both document ancestry back to the mid-17th Century. There are also references to earlier but lost Epstein genealogies. Family tradition connects us to the Benvenestes of medieval Spain. The historic Epsteins are Levites. There is a documented Levite Epstein family in Frankfurt aM in the 15th Century. Nevertheless, at this stage of Y-DNA research, we are unsure of whether there is more than one historic Epstein family.

Most of the tested HOROWITZ share a modal haplotype with about 50% of Ashkenazi Levites and there are also Khazar speculations. The EPSTEIN belong to a haplogroup whose ancient origins are probably in central Europe and rare in Iberia.

For more information about the project, click here.

There is also another twist to the story that needs more volunteers. Itzhak is asking for Sephardic families named BENVENISTE to test for another FamilyTreeDNA project here.

Two prominent Ashkenazi families claim descent from two brothers who lived in Spain during the 13th Century CE. The Epsteins’ alleged patriarch is Rabbi Aharon de na Clara ben Yosef haLevi. The Horowitzes’ alleged patriarch is Rabbi Pinhas, Rabbi Aharon’s older brother and mentor. These brothers are the direct male descendants of Rabbi Zerahyah ben Yitzhak haLevi Gerondi (died after 1186). Epstein family lore asserts that Aharon’s surname was Benveniste.

The first known male Horowitz is Yishayahu ben Moshe haLevi Ish Horowitz who came to Prague in the late15th Century from the village of Horovice. The first known male Epstein is Yaakov (Koppelman) ben Natan haLevi von Eppstein who came to Frankfurt am Main in the early 15th Century from the town of Eppstein.

Benvenistes were prominent in Spain and, after the expulsion, were prominent in the Balkans. We do not know whether there have been several Benveniste families or only one. We know that many Jews assumed the Epstein and Horowitz surnames in he 19th Century.

Itzhak says that from the EPSTEIN and HOROWITZ participants he has, they are probably not related. However the sample is still very small and more research - and participants - are required.

Says Itzhak, "Though my research is not that scientific, the Epsteins' and Horowitzes' most recent common ancestor was "R1" who allegedly lived around 18,500 years ago."

Why not participate now and learn more about your family and further the goals of these projects? The more participants in the projects, the more likely are matches. Learn more about your family and yourself, and enjoy the special FamilyTreeDNA discounts through September 30.

Help solve a mystery, learn more about your origins and receive a discount. What could be better?

More on MyHeritage and Kindo

Family history is all about connecting families. That's it - in a nutshell.

Today, there's some exciting news to share as MyHeritage has taken this goal a step further with its acquisition of Kindo, the UK-based social networking site. The acquisition will help MyHeritage - with 25 million international members - realize its vision to become the major source for connecting families, or as company executives called it, "Facebook for families."

The result is an easy, fun way to stay connected, organize events, share memories and strengthen ties across geography.

MyHeritage is known for its powerful technology helping families research their histories and stay connected, along with Smart Matching and automatic photo tagging - while Kindo's social networking and marketing expertise will help the site create a larger family network.

According to comments by executives at both companies, the two sites share a common vision for the future of families online.

MyHeritage also gives this pointer to its new photo tagging abilities, which, by all accounts, should be a boon to genealogists, family researchers and others.

Breaking News: MyHeritage acquires Kindo

The public announcement concerning the popular family web site MyHeritage's recent acquisition of UK social network site Kindo was made this morning. The release also points to a MyHeritage video featuring the new photo-tagging features recently announced (see link below):

Here is the official press release:

MyHeritage and Kindo join to offer the best online destination for families

London, England and Tel Aviv, Israel – September 23, 2008 – MyHeritage, one of the world’s most popular family Web sites, today announced the acquisition of family social network Kindo. MyHeritage has more than 25 million members worldwide and is known for its powerful technology that helps families research their history and stay connected, including Smart Matching and automatic photo tagging. The Kindo team’s experience in social networking will help MyHeritage realize its vision to be the Facebook for families. As part of this acquisition, MyHeritage will also establish new commercial operations in London.

“Adding the Kindo team to MyHeritage puts the company in an even stronger position to realize its vision of connecting families around the world,” said Gilad Japhet, founder and CEO of MyHeritage. “The synergy of our innovative, sophisticated technology and Kindo’s social networking and marketing expertise will further solidify our position as industry leader. Kindo successfully created a friendly service with an excellent reputation and great base of users.”

Founded by CEO Gilad Japhet, MyHeritage helps people around the world discover, connect and communicate with their extended family network and easily research their family history. The service is unique in its international reach, currently translated into 25 languages with more to follow. Its impressive growth is based on an increasing desire of families to stay closely connected, learn more about each other and share their photos. MyHeritage can be accessed through the Web site or by downloading a simple piece of software for free. Combining MyHeritage and Kindo will create a larger family network and instantly provide more value to its collective
user base.

The London-based Kindo team will become an essential part of MyHeritage, joining forces to accomplish the company's vision of creating the best online destination for families. Kindo’s users can now get easy access to Myheritage’s unique technology, helping them discover and learn even more about their family history. They will also benefit from MyHeritage's photo tagging technology, which automatically scans and identifies people in photos, making it easier for families to organize, search and share their photos.

“MyHeritage and Kindo share a common vision for the future of families online. We both want to give people an easy and fun way to stay connected, organize events, share memories, and strengthen ties across geographies,” said Nils Hammar, cofounder of Kindo. “When I worked at Skype, we saw first hand how powerful the Internet could be in helping families communicate, and now we want to take that a step further with MyHeritage.”

About MyHeritage

MyHeritage was founded by a team of people who combine their passion for family history with the development of innovative technology. It is now one of the world’s leading online networks for families, and the second largest family history website. MyHeritage is available in 25 languages and home to more than 25 million family members and 265 million profiles. The company is based in Bnei Atarot, near Tel Aviv, Israel. For more information, visit www.myheritage.com. View a video about the new photo tagging features here.

About Kindo

Founded in 2007, London-based Kindo is an internationally focused web-based family networking platform that spans generations. On Kindo, users can build their free next generation family tree and stay in touch with their loved ones. Kindo is available in 17 languages, as diverse as Arabic, Chinese, Russian, and Hindi. The company is funded by high-profile business angels and venture capitalists, including The Accelerator Group (TAG), Stefan Glänzer (last.fm, myblog.de, ricardo.de) and Ambient Sound Investments (ASI), the investment company of Skype's founding engineers. For more information, click here.

Here's a Leib, there's a Leib!

The newest Carnival of Eastern European Genealogy is focusing on family first names, hosted by gen-blogger Steve Danko.

Here's a bit of history, humor, naming traditions and patterns to peruse.

Anyone named Leib Talalay is sure to be a cousin, no matter where he is today.

The main branch of our Talalay family was from Mogilev, Belarus from the 1700s and, from 1832, from a newly established agricultural colony down the road apiece (Vorotinschtina, adjacent to Zavarezhye, about 12 miles south-southwest from Mogilev).

Rabbi Leib Talalay was a Talmudic scholar, and the son of a rabbi, Mikhl Talalay, and likely many generations of rabbis before that. Leib was rather famous and this, combined with the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition of naming children after a deceased relative, meant that each of Leib's children named a son after him. And so on and so forth, down to the present day.

Leib's claim to fame - at least the one I've heard the most about - is that he studied the Talmud through three times. There is a Yiddish term for that, but I've forgotten it. Because of this achievement, he was awarded all the stale bread in the bakery every day. Considering the number of mouths Leib had to feed, this was a rather good deal for his family.

Whether I find an olden-days Leib Talalay in Chaussy or Gorki (near Mogilev), or more contemporary days in Novosibirsk, Siberia, Moscow or St. Petersburg - he's more than likely one of ours.

In the New World, of course, Leib's namesakes became generally known as Louis and in more contemporary terms, some Laurences as well. In some Jewish families, keeping only the same beginning letter is considered enough to maintain the tradition.

His father was Mikhl (Michael) and so - again according to naming traditions - there are a lot of Mikhl and Michael and a large number of Moshe (Moses) - this name back to a 1353 document discovered in the Lerida, Catalunya archives (kosher winemaker Mosse Talalya). From London to St. Petersburg to Napoli, we have Michael Talalays.

This Ashkenazi naming practice can be confusing as women are also named for deceased grandmothers or other female relatives. Thus nearly every Leib had a sister named Gita (for her grandmother).

However, it is not as confusing as a family tree I received for the Ben Tolila family who left Spain in 1492 and settled in North Africa, also a rabbinical family in Meknes, Fez and elsewhere. We believe that this family is possible related to our Talalay before the Expulsion.

In any case, naming traditions in Sephardic families are different from Ashkenazi. The highest form of honor is to name a newborn after its living grandmother or grandfather. I received numerous pages in which nearly every generation was named Samuel (Shemuel) for the men and Mercedes for the women. It was impossible to fathom, and I got a headache trying to separate the generations.

My great-grandfather Aron Peretz Talalay, who would become Aron Tollin soon after he landed in New York and then Newark, was also honored with children named after him. One cousin's middle name became Paris instead of Peretz, although the first name remained the same. Great-grandmother's brother Hatzkel and their father Tsalel had a large number of Charles named after them.

And what were we going to do with a name for our daughter when we had a Leah and a Chana to name after? We racked our brains and came up with an Italian version, Liana, combining Lia (Leah) and Ana (Chana). It was a great success and she never met another girl with her same name until many years later. It also worked for the Persian family who could pronounce this "new" and strange name. Of course, many called her Diana, but we worked through that one also.

In Miami, a nurse told us we couldn't take the baby home without a middle name and we hadn't thought of one. We did ask about the hospital sending her to college if we left her there without a middle name; they said no. We finally settled on Shayne (for Shaine/Sheine, Yiddish for beautiful). We figured Liana Shayne would look great on a theater marquee if she wanted to become an actress, a doctor or lawyer. We did realize that with the last name of Dardashti, her initials would be interesting - you figure it out. We said to ourselves, "Oh, that's just a passing fancy. No one will recognize those initials when she grows up." Yeah, right.

Throughout her school years, her classmates delighted in her name and initials and thought her parents were soooo cool and that we must have been hippies living in a commune. Nothing could have been further from the truth. Can you spell "square," boys and girls?

How many readers hate their own names or have children who hate their names for a variety of reasons? We were lucky; she loves her first name and her initials!

My grandmother's names evolved as well. Born in Mogilev as Chayeh Feige (Chaya for life, Feige for small bird), she became known as Bertie in her Newark school, and later more elegantly as Bertha. Her mother-in-law from Suchostow (Austro-Hungary, Galicia, Poland, Ukraine) was Rebeka Halpern Fink, known variously on the Bronx's Grand Concourse as Rebeki and rarely Becky. But her headstone in the Suchostower Benevolent Society plot reads Regina Fink.

The other side of the family is Persian, and this is where the strange names to Western ears really come into play. Standard Hebrew and Persian literary names of the old generations include Yaqub (Jacob), Israel, Moshi (Moses), Ebrahim (Abraham)Parviz, Atollah and Faramarz are connected to wives and daughters named Khorshid (sun), Tavuus (peacock), Nane-jan, Sabh-jan, Paridokht, Farangis, Heshmat and Azam.

French names began to take hold when the Alliance Israelite Francais school opened its doors. Boys took on typical French names as a sign of education. In some families, two children might have French names, the others Persian names. Today, in Los Angeles (Tehrangeles), the younger generations are more likely to be named Tiffany, Ashley and the like, while boys have the same names as their non-Persian classmates.

The entire time we lived in Teheran, I was called Shirley instead of Schelly. I gave up trying to correct everyone; it was just easier to accept it. Just this summer, I visited a Los Angeles cousin who learned for the first time that it was really Schelly. She was shocked when her kids said she'd been saying it wrong (forever!).

What's in a name?

In Jewish tradition, it represents generations of family history. Think about who that person was named after, and the person who carried it before? Go back generations and generations and you'll see the same names repeated. These patterns are very useful clues in researching old documents including the days before surnames were required.

However, there are always exceptions in families: my mother was named after a cigar and an actress (Muriel, although the Yiddish version was Mirrel) while a Canadian cousin was named after the family's beloved dog. Really.

Looking forward to hearing your "name" stories in comments.

Tagged: I heart your blog!

Greyroots of Grey roots are showing has tagged me for “I Heart Your Blog” award.

I would like to suggest, however, that these memes be limited to nominating only four blogs each.

The rules associated with this particular tagging are that the tagged blogger

- can put the logo on his/her blog

- must link to the person who gave the award

- must nominate seven other blogs and link to them

- must leave a comment on each of the nominated blogs

And now for the envelope:

- Aimee's Women's Lens
- Joel's Jewish History Channel
- Chris's The Genealogue
- Janice's Cow Hampshire
- Hsien-Hsien's Eye on DNA
- Thomas's Destination: Austin Family

Yes, I know that's only six - Everyone else seems to have already been selected, so here are some more esoteric ones.

Why these six? That's easy:

Thomas has helped me in so many ways and his part in the Facebook Genea-blogging adventure is now the stuff of legends. Hsien-Hsien makes DNA seem so easy and her graphics are great! Janice and Chris offer quirky humor that is infectious. Joel has been busy and not posting often, but when he does, it is fascinating, while Aimee's view on Sephardic topics is always interesting.

Louisiana: Natchitoches Jewish cemetery, video

The Natchitoches Preservation Network has prepared a short video on the town's Jewish cemetery. View it here

The Jewish cemetery in Natchitoches, La., is located on the west side of the 900 block of Martin Luther King, Jr. Drive, formerly known as Lee Street. It is roughly an acre in size and is partly fenced.

Along the eastern boundary is a brick wall bearing a plaque stating that it was erected in memory of Adolph Kaffie.

Within the cemetery is lush foliage and numerous large trees, especially oak, cedar, and crepe myrtles.

The Jewish community of Natchitoches, though never large, is nevertheless very old. Its origins date to the time of the Civil War, prior to which a few Jews had settled in the area.

During the late 19th and early 20th centuries, a synagogue functioned at Natchitoches. Today, most Jews of Natchitoches (for several families remain) are associated with the Jewish community of Alexandria-Pineville, some 40 miles to the south. (updated 1995) source: Eric J. Brock, Historic Preservation & Planning Consulting, P.O. Box 5877 Shreveport, LA 71135-5877

For more information, visit the following sites here and here.

Family Tree DNA: What's happening in Houston?

Tracing the the Tribe just received the latest update from Family Tree DNA on what's been happening in Houston following Hurricane Ike and some issues impacting the company. In general, things are improving.

According to president Bennett Greenspan and vice president of operations and marketing Max Blankfeld:

a) The 5th Annual Conference on Genetic Genealogy will be postponed until February or March 2009, as the Sheraton Hotel has just informed us that they will not be in an appropriate condition to host our conference. The positive aspect of this postponement is that we will try our best to arrange the schedule in order for Spencer Wells to be one of our speakers. As soon as we have the new date we will advise you.

b) Labs: First of all there has been no interruption in the processes related to the standard Y-DNA and mtDNA tests, which are performed in Arizona. The batch was successfully closed this week and transmitted, a couple of days later than normal, due to networking issues that were resolved Friday.

The Genomics Research Center (Houston Lab) processes the full mitochondria, autosomal, and deep clade, as well as the advanced marker tests. These are the only ones subject to delays. We are pleased to announce that due to the outstanding efforts of our lab team and the restoration crew in place at our site, we were able to fully restore the freezing capabilities of our DNA storage robot. Yesterday, we were also able to power one of our sequencing machines. Our lab team is working this weekend and we will be able to advise you of the integrity of the DNA samples stored in Houston by mid-week. As soon as this is confirmed, our Houston lab will resume the work on our customer samples, while we restore the full capabilities of the lab.

As we have additional news, we will keep updating you.

We also want to take this opportunity to express our sincere appreciation for the hundreds of emails of support and encouragement that we have received during this difficult time. There is no adequate way to express how much this means to us and our entire team. Thank you so much!

Thanks, Bennett and Max, for letting us know. We are thinking of you!

Khazar capital found, says archeologist

A scholar claims to have found the medieval Jewish capital of the Khazars near the Caspian Sea, although the dig has not revealed neither Jewish artifacts nor Khazar writings. The AP story was published in the Calgary Sun here.

MOSCOW - A Russian archeologist says he has found the lost capital of the Khazars, a powerful nation that adopted Judaism as its official religion more than 1,000 years ago, only to disappear leaving little trace of its culture.

Dmitry Vasilyev, a professor at Astrakhan State University, said his nine-year excavation near the Caspian Sea has finally unearthed the foundations of a triangular fortress of flamed brick, along with modest yurt-shaped dwellings, and he believes these are part of what was once Itil, the Khazar capital. By law, Khazars could use flamed bricks only in the capital, Vasilyev said.

The general location of the city on the Silk Road was confirmed in medieval chronicles by Arab, Jewish and European authors.

Despite the fact that the dig has yielded no Jewish artifacts nor writings, Kevin Brook ("The Jews of Khazaria") believes the team has "truly found the long-lost city."

The Turkic tribe roamed from northern China to the Black Sea, and during the 7th-10th centuries, conquered large areas of southern Russia and Ukraine, the Caucasus Mountains and Central Asia.

The site, Itil, is some 1,300 km south of Moscow, may have had a population of up to 60,000 and covered 2 sq. km of marshy plains southwest of the Russian Caspian Sea port of Astrakhan, said archeologist Vasilyev.
Read the complete story at the link above.

Southern California Jamboree: 2009

Paula Hinkel of the Southern California Genealogy Society informed me that the dates for this group's 40th annual Jamboree have been changed to Friday-Sunday, June 26-28 2009.

The reason: a mix-up in the hotel's scheduling.

The call for papers has also been extended through September 30.

Paula Hinkle and her team put together a great experience for both attendees and speakers. In 2008, some 1,200 people attended, which makes it the largest "local" genealogy conference in the US.

This year, Jamboree will focus on the British Isles (English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh).

I have participated for two years and hope to be there again in 2009. For more on my experiences, click here.

Jamboree, in addition to a great line-up of well-known speakers, also worked in a popular Jewish track on Sunday with name speakers, thereby attracting conference-goers who might not otherwise have attended.

The conference team's very creative thinking-out-of-the-box also drew the largest number of genea-bloggers to one place, capped by our first-ever Blogger's Summit.

I'm looking forward to next year!

Pennsylvania: Family heirlooms and kids

When Rachel Glick, 14, heard about the planned Harrisburg Living Museum of Jewish Heritage, she decided to lend it an ordinary, yet priceless family heirloom: a soup spoon, according to a story in the Patriot News.

Glick is the third generation to use the only remaining piece of silverware from her paternal grandfather's family.

She said it seemed like a natural to be displayed Sunday in the Harrisburg Living Museum of Jewish Heritage. The one-day exhibit, a collection of Jewish artifacts on loan from the local Jewish community, was sponsored by the Rabbi David L. Silver Yeshiva Academy in the Jewish Community Center.

"I called my Bubbe [Yiddish word for grandmother] and asked her if I could borrow the spoon," said Rachel, 14 and an eighth-grade student at the academy. "She was happy to lend it to me. Everyone brought something given to them by a relative. It made me realize that a Jewish artifact can be very important in helping people remember a relative from a previous generation."

The 8 1/2-inch silver spoon belonged to Rachel's paternal grandfather, Eli Glick of Oshmiana, Poland in the 1930s.

"When my dad was 15 in the late 1930s, his family heard that the Nazis were coming," said Dr. Mark Glick, Eli Glick's son and Rachel Glick's father. "He, his parents and siblings wanted to escape. So they buried their silverware, silver candlesticks and jewelry in the backyard. His parents were killed, but the three teenagers walked several miles and lived in caves in the woods for the next 3 1/2 years. They came out at night and stole food to survive."

Meanwhile, Mark's mother, Sonia Lubetzka, then 14, was rounded up in the same village, taken to a cattle car, and then a concentration camp from 1939-1945. Her parents perished.

After the war, Eli and his two sisters returned to the family home, occupied by strangers who had taken all the family's possessions.

"The strangers told my dad and his sisters to leave," Mark Glick said. "When they went to the backyard to dig up the family things, the strangers said they already found that stuff. My one aunt begged for something and was given a soup spoon."

Mark's parents met in a Polish displaced persons camp in Poland, where they married and came to the US in 1951 - with the spoon.

"This spoon represents survival of a people and their faith," Glick said. "It's critical to learn about your heritage, who you are and what you will become. Rachel is very passionate about her heritage."

Rachel's grandmother, Sonia Lubetzka Glick, 87, said she uses the spoon every Sabbath "because it reminds me of my late husband."

Third-grader Madison Schwab,lent a copy of the manifest from the ship that brought her great-grandparents to the US from Russia in 1906 - the original name was Schwabsky.

David Schwab - Madison's father and grandson of David Schwab of Vilna, Lithuania, said the family came to the US to escape religious persecution.

"When they got to Ellis Island, they were asked questions like 'are you a polygamist?' Are you an anarchist? Are you deformed or crippled?" he said, pointing to the questions on the form.

Madison said she came to learn about history. The exhibit also featured antique candlesticks, scrolls, mortars and pestles, a yellow Star of David and pants worn in a concentration camp.

What a good idea for community programming!

Have Tracing the Tribe's readers heard of similar exhibits in their own communities?

If such an exhibit has not yet been organized, perhaps a local Jewish genealogical society, in conjunction with a local historical society, Jewish school, congregation or other community institution might collaborate to present one for people of all ages.

Preserving projects: Lithuania, Poland, Belarus

The World Monuments Fund has provided grants totaling $235,000 for the repair, maintenance or preservation of three synagogues and one former yeshiva, according to this JTA newsbrief.

SYNAGOGUES

The Choral Synagogue (1903), the only functioning synagogue in the Vilnius, Lithuania received $70,000.

Subotica, Serbia's Art Nouveau synagogue which has been undergoing sporadic renovation for many years, received $75,000.

Recently restored to Jewish ownership, the 17th-century Zamosc, Poland synagogue received $75,000.

YESHIVA

Volozhin, Belarus: WMF also granted $15,000 for assessing conditions and conservation planning for the former yeshiva building - founded in 1803 - and considered the progenitor of Eastern Europe's yeshiva system.

These grants were provided through the fund's annual Jewish Heritage Program awards.

For more information, including how to submit proposals, click here.

Canada Passenger Records: Finding Zayde

When Ancestry made its Border Crossings (from Canada into the US) database available, a long search finally pulled up my great-grandfather's record.

Aaron Peretz Talalai (to become Aaron Tollin in Newark, NJ) was finally found, albeit under Aaron Tallarlay. It seems that he picked up some sort of a Cockney accent after a few months in London, and thus an "r" got in there somehow. I knew it was Zayde as I have seen some 30 variants of this simple phonetic name TALALAY/I.

In fact, I almost gave up looking when I said, "OK, just one more page!" And there he was! Moral: Don't give up, always look at an extra page or two or 20!

Viewing the original image confirmed what I knew. He was 31, from Russia, Hebrew, born in Moliv (today Mogilev, Belarus) and was going to Newark, New Jersey to join his mother's sister Dora and her husband Mendl Konviser. He arrived in Quebec on November 4, 1904 on the vessel Canada and, on November 18, came by train (the Dominion Railroad) down to New York City.

We knew he was going to organize things for the impending arrival of my great-grandmother Riva Bank Talalay, their son Leib (Louis), 2, and daughter Chaya Feige (Bertha), 5 months.

When the Canadian passengers immigration list became available on Ancestry just a few days ago, I ran to find Zayde in this new database. After four hours, nothing...nothing...and more nothing. Finally, I found several passengers who were also on the Canada and clicked on each in turn. The duds were Aron Henrick, Aron Hanark, Aron Bary and Aron Berg.

However, when I clicked on Aron Semanowitz, I hit gold. Scanning the page - image 7, line 37 - revealed my Zayde on the line under the other Aron. So here was TILLARLAI Aron, which I immediately saw wasn't much different from the Border Crossing misspelling of TALLARLAY. Unfortunately - after doing a truncated happy dance - I realized there was very little information, which was a bit disappointing. There had been much more complete information on the Border Crossing manifest.

I then checked the database for TALLARLAY, TELLARLAY and the other 30 variations of the name previously found in many sources. Nothing came up in the search. When I "refined" my search, I now put in Aron Tillarlai and waited expectantly for .... nothing. No hits, zilch. Did that initial T look like an S? .... Nothing there either. An L? No.

Fortunately, I found Zayde but he doesn't seem to be in the index, so I couldn't post a comment/correction that Aron Tillarlai is really Aron Talalai.

By the way, I also found our TALALAY branch which had settled in Windsor, Ontario, Canada, across from Detroit. That was a nice present as well.

I have queried Ancestry about my missing Zayde, and I'll report back when I hear something.

In case you missed the announcement of this new release, you still have 11 more days of free access to search the new database. Good luck!

Here's an official press release:

Ancestry.ca launches Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935

TORONTO, Sept. 16 /CNW/ - In a world first, Ancestry.ca, Canada's leading family history website, today launched online the Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935, which contains more than 7.2 million names, including 5.6 million of those who travelled from around the world to start a new life in Canada.

The collection is fully indexed by name, month, year, ship and port of origin and arrival of more than 4,000 ships, and includes original images for more than 310,000 pages of historical records. It is the first time that these records have been indexed and made available online.

The Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935, the originals of which are held by the Library and Archives Canada (LAC), are the official records of the arrival of the majority of people accepted as immigrants in Canada during this key immigration period.

An estimated 11.6 million Canadians or 37 per cent of its current population have ancestors included in this collection(1), which also includes records for many vacationers and travellers, business people, crew members and historical figures such as foreign leaders, scientists and celebrities.

The collection includes passenger lists from all the major ports of arrival including Halifax, Saint John, North Sydney, Quebec City, Montreal, Vancouver, Victoria and even east coast ports in the US where many arrived before proceeding directly to Canada overland.

The main immigrant nationalities arriving in Canada during this period of rapid growth were British, Irish, Ukrainian, Russian, German, Chinese and Polish (the majority of French immigrants, the second largest Canadian immigrant population, arrived prior to 1865).

Passengers from mainland Europe usually sailed to Great Britain where they boarded trans-Atlantic ships at ports such as Liverpool, London and Glasgow. Immigrants from Europe destined for western Canada landed at ports on the east coast, then continued their journey by train. Ships arriving on the west coast carried passengers from Asia, Australia and Honolulu.

Contained in the collection are records for a number of ships which tragically never made it to their final Canadian destinations, including that of RMS The Empress of Ireland, a passenger ship which was rammed in dense fog on the St Lawrence River near Quebec on the 29th of May 1914 and sank in just 14 minutes. 1,012 passengers and crew drowned - a larger loss of life than when RMS Titanic sank.

Individual records include information such as the passenger's first and last name, estimated birth year, year of arrival, port of arrival and departure, ship name, occupation, final destination in Canada and other family members listed with their relationship indicated.

Josh Hanna, Senior Vice President of Ancestry, International comments: "This is the first time that these important records have been brought together in one place online, making them accessible to so many; they will be of significance to literally millions of Canadians who want to know when their ancestors first came to Canada and how far they came."

"Due to the internet, family history is a rapidly growing interest among Canadians and Ancestry.ca is proud to play an important role in preserving and making important Canadian historical records accessible online."

Digitizing and indexing the collection took approximately 83,000 man hours, or the equivalent of a person working 24 hours a day, seven days a week for almost 10 years.

In addition to being a treasure trove of information on one's ancestors, enthusiasts can also find names and images of records of some of Canada's and the world's most famous politicians and personalities, as well as the anonymous ancestors of some of today's biggest names. Some came as immigrants and others as visitors.

The Canadian Passenger Lists, 1865-1935 will be available to Canada and World Deluxe members and through a 14-day free trial and can be viewed atwww.ancestry.ca/CAPassengerLists.

Jewish homesteaders: Prairie dogs weren't kosher

Footnote.com has released homestead records which should be a boon to those researchers whose Jewish ancestors were homesteaders. There is much information out there on these brave people who endured terrible hardship. Following are some resources. It will be interesting to correlate the resources against the Footnote.com homestead records.

At one point, North Dakota had five large and two small Jewish colonies; all failed, and residents moved to towns and cities and became businessmen.

Nearly 1,000 Jews homesteaded the region. Listen to a 2004 Dakota Digest broadcast of South Dakota Public Broadcasting, entitled "Jewish Homesteading Experience in the Dakotas." Linda Mack Schloff is the director of the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest and author ("And Prairie Dogs Weren’t Kosher: Jewish Women in the Upper Midwest since 1855"). The broadcast is here.

Check for Schloff's book on GoogleBooks and read some pages. The book focuses on the voices of four generations of Jewish women who settled the Upper Midwest. At the top of one page is a line by Isadore Pitts, whose family immigrated there in 1913. Why did they leave? "[My parents] got tired of eating potatoes and prairie dogs weren't kosher."

In 1936, Rachel Bella Kahn Calof wrote her memoirs about her life on the North Dakota prairie: "Rachel Calof's Story: Jewish Homesteader on the Northern Plains." Purchase the paperback from Amazon here.

"In 1894, the 18-year-old Calof, a Russian Jew, was shipped to the U.S. to marry an unknown man and stake a homesteading claim with him in North Dakota. She later set down her memories of that time in fluid prose that occasionally reveals a biting sense of humor. Although her circumstances were often pathetic, Calof never is. She writes matter-of-factly about her 12'x 14' dirt-floored shanty, her husband's unappealing family and their unsanitary living arrangements. Each winter, her husband Abe's parents and brother would join them in their home in order to save fuel-an arrangement revealed only on her wedding day. There are pleasurable moments here too, like an impromptu supper of wild garlic and mushrooms (Calof does a taste test to see whether they are poisonous-"It didn't burn or taste bad, so I swallowed it"). Childbearing is particularly difficult: Calof seems to be constantly pregnant, and her superstitious mother-in-law keeps her secluded after the birth of her first child until she begins to hallucinate about demons. An epilogue by Calof's son, Jacob, picks up the courageous author's story in St. Paul, Minn., in 1917, while an essay by J. Sanford Rikoon on the phenomenon of Jewish farm settlements provides fascinating background." (Publishers Weekly)

The Jewish Women's Archive offers discussion questions and an interesting essay on the Calof book here.

There's yet another book about this period, "Dakota Diaspora: Memoirs of a Jewish Homesteader," by Sophie Trupin (University of Nebraska Press, 1988. 160 pgs.)

The Bismarck Tribune offered a story (September 17, 2006) about a granite monument being dedicated to honor immigrant Jewish families who settled near Garske in the 1880s.

The monument, about 25 miles north of Devils Lake, will be dedicated Sunday at 1 p.m. at the Sons of Jacob Cemetery, which holds graves of Jewish settlers and family members.

Hal Ettinger, of Lawrence, Kan., led the effort for the monument. He was traveling in the state on business a couple of years ago and decided to research his great-grandfather's gravesite.

"I knew that my great-grandfather was buried somewhere in North Dakota," he said. "He was attempting to homestead in Ramsey County. I did some homework and found that cemetery."

He found his great-grandfather's gravesite, outlined by a ring of rocks. A crude, rusted metal nameplate with his name and the year he died, 1891, was attached with barbed wire anchored into the ground.

His great-grandfather, Simon Ettinger, arrived at Garske Colony in 1886 and died only six months after receiving a land patent free title to 160 acres. His widow, with five young children, moved away, with only $10 in their pockets.

Ettinger saw 12 grave markers, mostly stones. Carved into many stones were the names and dates of adults and children, some with Hebrew inscriptions. He wondered what could be done to preserve his great-grandfather's memory and his desire to know more led him to other descendants of the colony.

A permanent memorial was what was needed, he decided and began a fund-raising drive for the monument, which would cost $2,500.

He contacted people in Devils Lake. Mike Conner, whose family homesteaded near the colony, adopted the cause.

"My parents always talked about how tough the Jewish settlers had it at the turn of the century," Conner said. "They went through some times that we couldn't imagine."

Conner manages the Devils Lake Basin Joint Water Resource Board, which became the official sponsor.

The drive raised about $5,000 from all over the country; the extra funds are for cemetery maintenance.

The cemetery land is owned by the family of retired farmer Dennis Kitsch, 79. Nick Kitsch, his grandfather, bought the land in 1902 after most homesteaders had left, fencing it to keep the cattle out. The family has continued to maintain the cemetery, mending fences, gates and cutting the grass.

"It's a wonderful thing to put a monument here," the 79-year-old retired farmer said. "They were good neighbors. And future generations should know they were here."

Hal Ettinger agreed.

"It's been a very rewarding experience," he said. "It's important insomuch as it's a memorial to those individuals who attempted to homestead there. Without it, any record of their existence might just fade away."

Here's a link to Dianne Siegel's reflections on the visit to North Dakota to dedicate a memorial to the 90 Jewish homesteaders in the Garske Colony, near Devils Lake – September 17, 2006. Her RUBIN family was among the homesteaders

The Upper Midwest Jewish Archives at the University of Minnesota holds records on Jewish homesteaders. Box 34 holds records, including family histories, on the following families in North and South Dakota: SCHLASINGER, ROSEN, GREENBERG, EPSTEIN, PAPERMASTER, GINSBERG, CALOF, SIEGEL, WILENSKY, RUBIN, ZISKIN, STRIMLING, OSTRIN, GELLER, SCHWARTZ, SACHS, LOSK, SINYKIN, SHARK, MACKOFF, HURWITZ, BOBER, RIGLER and others.

The history of Rabbi Papermaster of Grand Forks, ND is detailed. Rabbi Isaac Elchanan convinced Papermaster to come to America to serve the community in Fargo. Although he moved to Grand Forks, his responsibilities were to every Jewish community in North Dakota without a rabbi. It includes the history of Congregation B'nai Israel, Grand Forks.

In the archives, find information on the Sons of Jacob cemetery in Ramsey County, ND, along with accounts of settling on farms or small and medium-sized towns, synagogue histories; a list of Jewish farmers who proved claims to homesteads and more. Find a flour sack and news clippings concerning flour sent to Israel in 1949 by the B'nai Brith in ND, lists of homesteaders who filed in clusters, lists of towns and Jewish merchants.

Here's a link to Dianne Siegel's reflections on the visit to North Dakota to dedicate a memorial to the 90 Jewish homesteaders in the Garske Colony, near Devils Lake – September 17, 2006. Her RUBIN family was among the homesteaders. She lists more names of homesteaders, and describes the community mikveh.

For the Jewish homesteading experience in Kansas, read this 2000 Jewish World Review article.

For even more information on North Dakota's Jewish community and cemeteries, click here for the IAJGS's International Jewish Cemetery Project, listing extensive details and more resources online.

There are more resources out there. Enjoy searching for them.

Footnote.com: Homestead records released

Footnote.com has just released homestead records.

Here's the official press release:

HOMESTEAD RECORDS BECOME AVAILABLE ON THE INTERNET FOR THE FIRST TIME ON FOOTNOTE.COM

Original Records Documenting the Lives of Early Settlers Offer a Unique View Into 19th Century America

Lindon, UT - September 18, 2008 – In an event held today at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Footnote.com along with several partners announced a project to make available hundreds of thousands of original Homestead Records on the Internet for the first time. This project involved the efforts of organizations including The National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), the National Parks Service, the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and FamilySearch.

“It’s exciting to see various organizations with different strengths and capabilities come together to make this information widely available,” says Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “This record collection is just one example how individuals on Footnote.com can connect their own family history to the big picture of American History.”

The Homestead Act of 1862 was a landmark event at a time when the American Nation was being torn apart by the Civil War. These records, most of which have never been microfilmed, contain more than simply the names of those who petitioned the U.S. Government for land. They tell the rich story of a fast-growing country and those men and women eager to live the American dream by becoming land owners.

Footnote.com has already digitized and indexed the Homestead Records from Broken Bow, Nebraska featuring almost 40,000 records. To view samples of these records and see what Footnote users have discovered, click here. Working together with its’ partners, Footnote.com will continue to release more records on the site.

Footnote.com has focused on making real history accessible to everyone and providing tools that enable people to connect with history and with each other.

Footnote.com recently released Footnote Pages, which allows users to create interactive pages for an individual, group, place or event. These pages bring history to life by allowing users to create:
• Interactive timelines and maps
• Photo galleries
• Stories
• Links to other related Footnote Pages and Footnote Members

“We encourage everyone with an interest in these Homestead Records to come and enrich this content with your contributions,” says Wilding. “When people come together and share their insights, a new and exciting side of history is revealed.”
Learn more by visiting http://www.footnote.com

About Footnote.com

Footnote.com is a history website where real history might just surprise you. Footnote.com features millions of searchable original documents, providing users with an unaltered view of the events, places and people that shaped the American nation and the world. At Footnote.com, all are invited to come share, discuss, and collaborate on their discoveries with friends, family, and colleagues. For more information, visit www.footnote.com.

The next Tracing the Tribe posting covers some 1,000 Jewish homesteaders who settled the region.

Moscow: Jewish museum planned

The committee for the Russian-Jewish Museum of Tolerance in Moscow approved a final architectural plan this week that would produce the world's largest Jewish museum, according to a story in Haaretz.

Baruch Gorin, the spokesman for Moscow's Jewish communities, told Haaretz that the museum would be established in a historic building at the Jewish community center, which the community received from the Moscow municipality about five years ago.

The complex of buildings already contains several Jewish institutions, including a soup kitchen, the Shaarei Tzedek health services, a Chabad school, and two buildings - a yeshiva and a university - in the final stages of construction. The new museum is meant to be the complex's crowning glory.

Gorin said the museum will commemorate Russian-Jewish history and include galleries of Jewish art and Judaica. Another section will commemorate the Holocaust. Plans include the construction of a large library, a center for Judaic studies and conference rooms. Gorin predicts that after the municipality provides technical permits, construction will begin in early 2009 and finish in 2011.

The Moscow Jewish community signed an agreement with the Russian Cultural Foundation to renovate, expand and create an international Jewish museum. Funding is from the Russian Cultural Foundation, the Moscow Jewish community and Jewish philanthropists - headed by Lev Leviev.

In charge of renovation and expansion is German architectural firm Graft Labs, with design by Ralph Appelbaum Associates. The 9,000 square meter building will be enlarged by adding underground floors totalling 15,000 square meters. This will be the largest Jewish museum in the world.

The space was obtained from Moscow municipality, whose mayor, Yuri Luzhkov understood the importance of creating a Jewish museum. The purpose is to educate about the Holocaust, Jewish history, Jewish culture and attempt to reduce anti-Semitism in the country.

Books: Home libraries are in again

Readers of Tracing the Tribe understand books. Most of us can't walk or drive past a bookstore without sneaking a peek.

Do we have room for the books we already have? What about future volumes?

When we went off to Iran in 1970, all our books came along and lived in huge bookcases. When we returned to the US, they came with us to Miami, and then to Los Angeles. Each of them should have received frequent flyer miles!

In Southern Nevada, I turned a downstairs bedroom into a floor-to-ceiling, wall-to-wall expanse of shelves, with a built-in desk by the window.

For the first time, I had a focused book space. Genealogy - full sets of genealogy journals, magazines and big reference books. Cookbooks. Languages. History. Old textbooks (true bibliophiles never discard books!).

I could scoot around in a wheeled desk chair to quickly reach almost anything I needed. The planning concept was that I would also quickly replace the books on the shelves; the reality was very different - I still had piles of books on the floor for different projects.

Of course, there were cookbooks in the family room near the kitchen, there were books upstairs in the bedroom - I'm always reading several concurrent books. And don't even ask about our daughter's room - she was also a confirmed reader from an early age.

Here, in Tel Aviv, I could easily use another apartment just for my books, and I only brought about seven or eight book cartons - the rest are in storage. Over the years, those few cartons have grown exponentially. An extra shelf unit in the kitchen (cookbooks), several in my office (mostly genealogy-related, conference syllabi, gen mags, etc.), bookcases in the living room (everything else). More books in the bedroom. My husband's books are on the coffee table.

Selecting those few cartons was a horrible experience - how does one choose which book to take to a new country? It was like choosing which "favorite" child to take on a journey.

The Wall Street Journal's online edition at WSJ.com has an interesting library story by June Fletcher, "Why Libraries Are Back in Style: It's Not Because of Books; They're 'Memory Rooms' Or TV-Free Private Spaces."

Although reading rates are down and owners may do most of their reading online, there's a resurgence in home libraries. The article and an accompanying podcast covers a variety of related angles: People turn to books during economic turndowns, Oprah Winfrey's magazine cover, popular builder's upgrades, books as design accents, and comments from architects and designers.

The latest annual consumer survey by the National Association of Home Builders indicated that 63% of home buyers wanted a library or considered one essential, with even mass-market builders adding them into house plans with rolling ladders and circular stairs.

An economic downturn means people turn to the classics according to a Long Island interior designer. Libraries are comforting during these times because they project coziness and comfort.

WSJ.com is also featuring a podcast with June Fletcher, discussing the resurgence of libraries. A Virginia architect calls libraries "memory rooms," and in addition to books, include photographs, family treasures and more.

The newest trend is "his and hers" libraries, so each person can keep their collections separate.

While I believe books should look like books, there are some designers who look for books with fancy bindings to match their client's color schemes, no matter the content.

Another trend: Some mass-market builders are replacing dens (or offices) which are redundant in many home which feature huge family rooms or great rooms, while others are putting the library on landings between the first and second floors. One Florida builder indicates that half his clients want library upgrades.

Some builders create mini-libraries throughout homes: under stairs, lofts, alcoves and along hallways. There's even a demand for children's room bookcases as they often have more books, trophies and collections than their parents.

And one person interviewed has a philosophy up there with mine:

A shopping center developer building a 10,000 square foot home in Memphis doesn't know how many books he owns - an estimate is several thousand. He has kept almost everything he's bought since college, his three grown sons' college texts, children's books for his five grandchildren and more. Nearly every wall is filled with volumes.

His decorator wanted him to recover them so their multi-colored spines wouldn't clash with the color scheme. He refused - good for him! - saying "The books are my priority."

Netherlands: Jewish home interior

Amsterdam researchers have found an almost-intact 1940s interior in a house that belonged to Jewish banker Lodewijk Korijn. According to them, the living room is apparently more authentic than the Anne Frank House.

In 1942, the Korijn family was transported to concentration camps. Since then, the interior has barely been touched.

The story is here, with photographs.

University of Amsterdam heritage studies instructor Alexander Westra discovered the room last year when working on a historic interiors project. He believes that the home should be protected heritage.

After the war, theology students used the house; the living room was their common area. In the hall is an original dresser, and the still-working lighting is historic.

Read more at the link above.

Award: Gary Mokotoff

Jewish genealogy's Gary Mokotoff has been honored with Honorary Life Membership by the Association of Professional Genealogists, at the Federation of Genealogical Societies' recent Philadelphia conference.

WESTMINSTER, Colo., September 9 – Members of the Association of Professional Genealogists gathered in Philadelphia on September 5th to an honor a long-time member for his professional accomplishments.

The Association of Professional Genealogists (APG) named Gary Mokotoff as the second recipient of the APG Honorary Lifetime Membership Award. The award was created in 2007 to recognize significant contributions to the field of genealogy by APG members. It recognizes members whose achievement in genealogy has spanned a significant length of time. The award was presented during the association luncheon at the Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) Conference in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Mokotoff, an author, lecturer, and leader of Jewish genealogy, has been recognized for creating an excellent body of work in the field of Jewish genealogy.

He is the author of a number of books including the award-winning Where Once We Walked, a gazetteer that provides information about 23,500 towns in Central and Eastern Europe where Jews lived before the Holocaust, How to Document Victims and Locate Survivors of the Holocaust, and Getting Started in Jewish Genealogy. He co-edited the Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy. For its publishing efforts in Jewish genealogy, his company, Avotaynu, received the “Body of Work Award” from the Association of Jewish Libraries (2004).

Mokotoff has been recognized by three major organizations for his accomplishments in genealogy. Mokotoff is also known for his application of computers to genealogy. His best known accomplishment is co-authorship of the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex System.

The Association of Professional Genealogists (http://www.apgen.org), established in 1979, represents over 1,800 genealogists, librarians, writers, editors, historians, instructors, booksellers, publishers, and others involved in genealogy-related businesses. APG encourages genealogical excellence, ethical practice, mentoring, and education. The organization also supports the preservation and accessibility of records useful to the fields of genealogy, local, and social history. Its members represent all fifty states, Canada, and twenty-six other countries.

Congratulations, Gary!

Wisconsin: Jewish life documentary

Although Andrew Muchin believed he would find that Jews have lived in some 100 Wisconsin communities, the local historian was surprised by evidence of Jews in more than 300 state villages, town and cities.

This story in the Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle describes a documentary on small town Jewish life in that state.

Most of the 300 towns have no Jews left, said Muchin, director of the Wisconsin Society for Jewish Learning’s Wisconsin Small Jewish Communities History Project.

“There are Jews, that I know of, in fewer than 100 communities right now and where there were synagogues in maybe 21 or 22 communities at the peak, outside of Milwaukee and Madison, I think it’s 11 now that have synagogues and some of them are, frankly, fading — synagogues in aging communities.”

Muchin’s research has resulted in a soon-to-be-released documentary film, “Chosen Towns: The Story of Jews in Wisconsin’s Small Communities,” made in collaboration with docUWM.

The one-hour film will be aired statewide on Wednesday, Oct. 15, at 7 p.m. on both Wisconsin Public Television and Milwaukee Public Television.

The state's small town Jews included merchants, farmers, cattle brokers, and fur and scrap metal wholesalers, who lived in communities such as Arpin, Sheboygan, LaCrosse and Appleton.

WSJL was founded in the 1950s to research Wisconsin Jewish history, but in 2001, then-president Dan Weber restarted the project and Muchin was hired to direct the project.

The film idea developed in 2005, when the WSJL contacted Milwaukee documentary maker Brad Lichtenstein, founder/director of docUWM at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee Peck School of the Arts Film Department. He had just launched the media center to teach undergrad and grad film students how to make documentaries from community projects.

Funding included a two-year grant of $125,000 from the Helen Bader Foundation and support from the LE Phillips Family Foundation and the Lucky and Jack Rosenberg Philanthropic Fund.

Eight students - none Jewish - began the project in fall 2006, using Muchin's resources.

Future plans are to raise more funds to create a small Jewish communities curriculum for public and Jewish schools, a museum-quality exhibit to travel the state, and perhaps a book.

Free public screenings of the film in eight cities prior to the TV screening wll feature Q&As with student filmmakers and local experts:

7pm Thursday, September 18, Discovery World, Milwaukee
2pm Sunday, September 21, Mt. Sinai Congregation, Wausau
7.30pm Tuesday, September 23, UW-Madison, Madison
7pm Thursday, September 25, Moses Montefiore Synagogue, Appleton
7pm Sunday, September 28, Congregation Sons of Abraham, LaCrosse
7pm Thursday, October 2, Beth Hillel Temple, Kenosha
1pm Monday, October 6, Jewish Museum, Milwaukee.
noon Sunday, October 12, Congregation Beth El, Sheboygan.

Muchin and Lichtenstein will speak at the Milwaukee screenings. For more information, read the complete article at the link above.

Washington DC: Father Desbois, book launch

The US Holocaust Memorial Museum will host Father Patrick Desbois for a presentation and book signing at 7pm Monday, September 22, in the Helena Rubinstein Auditorium.

The event commemorates the launch of the English translation of his book, "The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest's Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 Million Jews." (Palgrave Macmillan, 272pgs, 16 photos). Paul A. Shapiro, Director, Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies at USHMM, wrote the foreword.

In this heart-wrenching book, Father Patrick Desbois tells the poignant story of how he spent most of a decade locating 800 mass gravesites and other execution sites of Jews exterminated by Nazis in Ukraine. Using forensic evidence, eyewitness accounts, and new archival material, Desbois brings new focus to the Einsatzgruppen mobile killing squads in Ukraine. He moves on to honor the victims with proper burials, bring life to their stories, and interviews aging Ukrainian witnesses to this travesty.

Dr. Deborah Lipstadt writes, “Father Patrick Desbois has performed a special act of loving kindness not for one person but for hundreds of thousands of people who were murdered in cold blood. He has done so despite the fact that many people would have preferred this story never to be uncovered and others doubted that it ever could be done."

Reception and book signing to follow.
For more information, click here.

Houston update: Family Tree DNA

I received an email from Bennett Greenspan of FamilyTreeDNA.com which is located in hard-hit Houston, Texas, now recovering from Hurricane Ike.

The building - housing company offices and the Houston laboratory - is without power, as are most of Houston's office buildings, and sustained damage, like so many other city office buildings. The building will be closed for the next few days until tenants can return.

Despite this situation, several staff members worked over the weekend to transfer equipment to other locations so normal office operations can resume on Monday or Tuesday from an alternative location. Mail will be picked up at the local post office so kits can be checked-in and processed.

Other important points:

-FamilyTreeDNA's standard Y-DNA and mtDNA tests are processed at the University of Arizona lab in Tucson. This processing is functioning normally with no storm impact.

-Appropriate measures were taken to safeguard and protect data and servers and all computer systems are in place and functioning normally. The web sites have been up, available and running normally as they were before and during the storm.

Writes Bennett:

"The coming days will allow us to have a better assessment of when our Houston lab will resume normal operations, at which point we will be back to you again with additional information about any delays in delivering results for the advanced tests that our lab processes in Houston. (Advanced panels, FGS and Deep Clade Y SNP's)

Please forgive us if in the next few days we don't meet our standard level of customer service as to e-mails and phone calls. We will be back to normal as soon as possible. We appreciate your continued support."

Tracing the Tribe sends its best wishes to everyone at FamilyTreeDNA.com: Bennett Greenspan, Max Blankfeld, their employees and their families.

Germany: Cologne Jewish museum to open

A new museum in Cologne, Germany, will show Jewish life dating back 1,700 years, according to this article

Medieval Cologne's strategic location on the river Rhine at the crossing of trade routes brought it prosperity. Its Jewish community thrived until pogroms and expulsions in the 14th and 15th centuries.

The museum will help revive the city decades after the Holocaust, according to city leaders.

An archaeological site from Roman times will be at the heart of the museum which the organizers also want to illustrate modern Jewish life and customs.

The strongly Catholic city, best known for its Gothic cathedral, claims to have the oldest Jewish community north of the Alps, dating back to at least 321, during Emperor Constantine's reign.

"This project is extremely important to show that Jews have been in Germany for as long as Christians -- people in this country should be made more aware of that," Wilfried Rogasch, head of the project, told Reuters.

An architectural firm was recently named and plans call for the museum to open ni 2010, financed by a private foundation and the city.

The concept is for an integrated project of archaeological findings and the museum. Excavation has revealed a synagogue and mikve and the museum will be suspended over the the site.

The local Jewish community of some 5,000 also wants the museum to include a meeting area or place of worship. The German Jewish community has grown by some 300% in the past 15 years, mainly because of FSU immigrants - now the majority of the 105,000 registered Jews and a similar number of non-practising Jews.

Turkey: Jewish Culture Day

All over Europe, Jewish communities in more than 30 countries celebrated the European Day of Jewish Culture on the first Sunday in September. This year's theme was music.

It was celebrated for the sixth time in Istanbul, according to this story.

Among the programs were a simulation of a traditional Jewish wedding. Programs on Jewish historical and cultural heritage were held in Galata Square, which was the 19th-early 20th century Jewish residential area.

The Neve Shalom, Italian and Ashkenazi synagogues were open to the general public.

Some 11 concerts were performed during the day, including Turkish-Sephardic music, Klezmer music, and liturgical music. These included Turkish composer/pianist Tuluyhan Uğurlu and Israel-born percussionist/composer Yinon Muallem's ensemble.

Neve Shalom Synagogue was the setting of a Jewish wedding. The bride and groom, Cenk and Izzet Rofe, who were celebrating their first anniversary, re-enacted their ceremony.

First the groom's family came forward with religious hymns being sung in the background. Then the bride entered holding her father's hand. The groom signed the marriage contract and gave the wedding ring to the bride's father. After the marriage, the groom stepped on a glass.

The couple stood under the chuppah (wedding canopy) while rabbis sang hymns in Hebrew and, at the end, the couple and their families turned their backs to the crowd and showed their respect to a scroll of their holy book, the Torah, which was rolled up and placed behind a door that was in turn covered by a curtain under the Star of David.

Jewish artists held exhibits in several places: Neve Shalom Cultural Center, Schneidertempel Art Center, the Quincentennial Foundation and the Jewish Museum of Turkey.

Jewish history lectures included "The Star of David in Anatolia," by Ersin Alok, and "A Musical Search for Jewish Identity and Its Expression in the Diaspora," by Cem Mansur and Cihat Aşkın.

A conference hosted by Mesut Ilgım, who has been researching Mustafa Kemal Atatürk's 1933 university reforms and the contribution of German-Jewish scientists to Turkish universities after their escape from the Nazi regime in Germany, documented a short history of these scientists' lives in Turkey.

Chicago 2008: Two sessions on migration

Fellow gen-blogger Dan Ruby - who also attended the Chicago 2008 conference - has a post on some interesting sessions he attended, focusing on migration.

In Dan's "Two takes on the migratory narrative," he covered "Litvak Migratory Decisions in the 19th Century and Their Consequences," by University of Klaipeda Professor Ruth Leiserowitz, and gave a pointer to her Jews in East Prussia online exhibit.

He also covered my dear friend Valery Bazarov's presentation on "HIAS Archives: What Can and Cannot Be Found There." Valery, originally from Odessa, is a HIAS historian and also works with the relocation service. He has contacted Talalay relatives still in Russia for me and is a fascinating guy.

Valery is well-versed in the HIAS files, in 150 worldwide branches and he still finds hidden boxes; files may be in different places and not indexed.

Do read Dan's complete post at the link above.

Pakistan: A semi-secret Jewish community

About 100 years ago, some 2,500 Jews lived in Karachi, Pakistan and a few hundred more in Peshawar. However, most left for Israel, India, the UK and other points following establishment of the state of Israel and subsequent violence.

Karachi's Magen Shalom synagogue was the victim of arsonists; its artifacts have vanished and property developers demolished the building in the 1980s.

Jerusalem Post editor David Horovitz wrote this story on Pakistan's Jewish community.

Two of Pakistan's last known Jews, sisters Sara and Rachel Joseph, who lived in Karachi, are thought to have died in the past few years; a third woman, Rachel Joseph, a relative of the Karachi synagogue's last custodian, was still alive in 2005 and would be about 90 today.

Occasionally, through the decades, however, reports have surfaced suggesting anything from a few individuals to a couple of hundred Jews may still be living in semi-secrecy in Pakistan. A census a few years ago, intriguingly, showed 10 government employees had identified themselves as Jews.

And three years ago, as president Pervez Musharraf was gently warming unofficial Pakistani ties to Israel, The Jerusalem Post wrote about one Ishaac Moosa Akhir, who had e-mailed our paper describing himself as "a doctor at a local hospital in Karachi," from a Sephardi Jewish background, who personally knew "approximately 10 Jewish families who have lived in Karachi for 200 years or so. Just last week was the bar mitzva of my son Dawod Akhir."

For the complete story, click on the link above.

I know several families in Israel that lived in Lahore, Karachi and other cities, and who had helped Iranian Jews escape after the Revolution. Some continue to travel back and forth but they rarely speak to reporters and do not want their names publicized.

The aftermath of Hurricane Ike

In the aftermath of this terrible storm in Texas and Louisiana, Tracing the Tribe hopes that all our friends in impacted areas - individuals and the Jewish communities in general - came through safely without physical injury, even as we know that millions of area residents are without electric power and other services, and that property damage has been severe.

We hope that all services may be restored quickly and that life return to normal as soon as possible.

Jan Meisels Allen has written that JewishGen has been down since last night as the servers are still in Houston.Jewish genealogical societies hosted on the JewishGen servers are also not working nor are the site's staff emails - even though the individuals are based elsewhere. This situation has also effected some of special interest groups (SIGs) hosted by JewishGen and for some components on Steve Morse's website.

Bennett Greenspan of Family Tree DNA - also based in Houston - wrote before the storm hit, indicating that backups were being made every 15 minutes and no loss of data was expected.

As soon as Tracing the Tribe hears more concerning our friends in Houston and other impacted areas, we'll post the information.

Ashkenazi, Sephardi: Essential Jewish genealogy books

The 56th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy challenged us to choose 10 essential books for our personal genealogical research.

Tracing the Tribe is tweaking the challenge a bit to reflect both its readership and my personal interests in both Ashkenazi and Sephardi genealogy.

-Jewish communities considered Ashkenazi include individuals whose ancestors generally spoke Yiddish and lived in Eastern Europe, although they may actually have emigrated from Western Europe and the Mediterranean and vice versa. Ashkenazim are found around the world today.

-Jewish communities considered Sephardic in the broadest sense of the word, including Jewish communities whose roots are not in Eastern Europe - although individuals, families and communities did migrate there - but rather in Iberia and places beyond (immigration from Iberia from 1391 and after the 1492 Expulsion to many Mediterranean countries, Amsterdam, the Caribbean and elsewhere), as well as those communities called Mizrahi - the Jewish communities of the Middle East and Asia, such as Iraq, Syria, Iran, India, Afghanistan and others. Sephardim are also found around the world today.

These books - and many others in each category - are always near my desk. The rules for this challenge indicated only 10 should be mentioned. Tracing the Tribe readers are invited to post additional books in both categories.

10 Essential Ashkenazi Research Books

1. Where Once We Walked: Revised Edition: Gary Mokotoff, Sallyann Amdur Sack with Alexander Sharon. It identifies more than 23,500 towns where Jews lived before the Holocaust. Includes 17,500 alternate names, soundex index and "nearby town" index.

2. A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian
Empire: Alexander Beider. 74,000 surnames from the Czarist Empire including etymologies and where names appeared, origins and evolution of Jewish surnames in Eastern Europe. (Two vols.)

3. Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names: Alexander Beider. A huge, detailed resource providing the origin and evolution of 15,000 given names.

4. Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland: Alexander Beider. Award-winning compilation of 32,000 surnames.

5. Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia: Alexander Beider. Identifies 35,000 surnames from the region.

6. Jewish Personal Names: Shmuel Gorr. Roots of more than 1,200 Jewish given names showing Yiddish/Hebrew variants with English transliteration.

7. Surnames: Lars Menk. More than 13,000 surnames from pre-World War I Germany.

8. Russian-Jewish Given Names: Their Origins and Variants: Boris Feldblyum. Comprehensive collection of Jewish given names from czarist Russia.

9. Encyclopedia of Jewish Life: ed. Shmuel Spector. 6,500 towns in Europe where Jews lived before the Holocaust.

10. Sourcebook for Jewish Genealogies and Family Histories: David Zubatsky, Irwin Berent. Reference to family trees with more than 10,000 Jewish surnames.

10 Essential Sephardi Research Books
(Languages include Spanish/Catalan/French, with documents in Latin and Hebrew in original and in translation. The bibliographies provide many more resources. Sephardic research requires different resources and languages.)

1. Sangre Judia: Pere Bonnin. Thousands of Jewish names taken from pre-Inquisition, Inquisition courts and other documents, with year of document and city.

2. Sephardic Genealogy: Dr. Jeffrey S. Malka. Award-winning and pioneering comprehensive guide to Sephardic research.

3. Dictionary of Sephardic Surnames (2nd ed.): Guilherme Faiguenboim, et al. 17,000 surnames from more than 24 countries where Sephardim lived.

4. Per A Una Historia de la Girona Jueva (2 vols): ed., David Romano. History of the Jews of Girona, with archival documents, encyclopedia articles, photographs, bibliography.

5. La Catalunya Jueva: Maps, photographs, history, documents; excellent bibliography.

6. Els Jueus de Valls (The Jews of Valls): Gabriel Secall i Guell. History, archival documents, names, bibliography. The same author compiled a book on the Jews of Tarragona.

7. Perpignan: L'histoire des Juifs dans la ville (XII-XX siecles): Perpignan Archives Histoire (Perpignan Historical Archives). Jewish History, archival documents, names, bibliography.

8. La Via Judia en Sefarad: Ministry of Culture. History, archival documents, names, photographs, bibliography.

9. El Libro Verde de Aragon: ed., Monique Combescure Thiry, Miguel Angel Motis Dolader. History, Conversos and the Inquisition in Aragon, genealogical charts; three editions of the Green Book compared, bibliography.

10. Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews: David M. Gitlitz. Religious customs of Iberian Jews who converted by force to Catholicism, 14th-15th centuries. Details crypto-Jewish culture in Spain, Portugal, the Americas. Records include Inquisition documents, history, rabbinical rulings, eyewitness accounts and more.

As with my Ashkenazi book list, I could have added many more books collected in the US, in Barcelona (Catalunya, Spain) and Perpignan, France. Additional topics include Sephardim in the Caribbean, Turkey, food customs, and much more.

New York: Italian immigrant bank memories

An Italian-accented story in the New York Times offered information on an immigrant bank on Little Italy's Mulberry Street. The building re-opened as a museum a few days ago.

The echoes of Italian accents filled the old bank at 155 Mulberry Street.

Joseph V. Scelsa, standing in front of a teller’s window marked “Steamship Tickets” on a recent afternoon, held a receipt in his hand dated Dec. 3, 1894, that had belonged to a man named Raffaele Alonzo, who had paid $30 for a third-class ticket that had taken him to New York from Naples, Italy.

“He probably sat in steerage,” said Dr. Scelsa, a sociologist and professor emeritus at Queens College. “In those days, $30 was a lot of money.”

Those days will be celebrated beginning on Tuesday at the opening of the newly relocated Italian American Museum, at the site of what was once Banca Stabile, a bank used by Italian immigrants who flocked to Lower Manhattan in search of a better life. The bank operated from 1882 to 1932, when the area that would become known as Little Italy had one of the largest populations of Italian-Americans in the United States.

According to Scelsa - the museum's president - fewer than 1,000 Italian-Americans still live in Little Italy, adjacent to Chinatown, adding that the Stabile family was the community's financial engine.

In the bank’s vault, he discovered bankbooks filled with handwritten transactions, Italian and American money, steamship luggage tags from various passenger lines, cablegrams and a small revolver. In the bank itself, tellers' windows are marked in gold writing: Drafts-Money Orders, Foreign Exchange and Paying-Receiving.

The vault’s contents revealed that the neighborhood elite also banked with the Stabiles. A ledger card shows that Antonio Ferrara, who in 1892 founded the pastry shop that is still in business across the street, closed his account on Jan. 31, 1931, taking his $211,131 fortune with him. Before that, a telegraphic receipt from April 3, 1920, shows that Mr. Ferrara wired 75,000 lire from Banca Stabile to the Hotel Londres in Naples to reserve a vacation room there. Two years later, Mr. Ferrara bought two first-class steamship tickets from New York to Naples for a total of $110.

Museum board member Maria T. Fosco said that the neighborhood was a cluster of enclaves within an enclave; various streets represented various regions of the old country: Mulberry Street for those from Naples, Elizabeth Street for the Sicilians, Mott Street for the Calabrians, and north of Broome Street, for Bari.

“So if a boy from Mulberry Street married a girl from Elizabeth Street,” Ms. Fosco said with a grin, “that was considered a mixed marriage.”

If you are a New Yorker of any ethnicity, you've likely attended the annual San Gennaro Festival in Little Italy. Scelsa and Fosco said they were hoping that Thursday's popular festival opening would bring in descendants - who now live elsewhere - of these immigrants.

Funding - $9.4 million - was raised from city and state grants and contributions from museum trustees. The museum will be enlarged to 10,000 square feet over three lots which the Stabile family sold to the museum in June, including the bank building and two adjacent lots).

Retired surgeon Dr. Jerome Stabile III, 76, - great-grandson of the bank's founder - said everything in the bank building is original: “I never removed anything from the bank or its vault because I had hoped all along that the space would one day be used as something more significant than just a restaurant or some other store.”

Read the complete story at the link above.

Roots travel: What I did on my summer vacation

Professor Larry Volk of Endicott College (Massachusetts) shared his summer trip in the Boston Globe's three-part series on what three scholars did during the summer.

Volk went to France to learn more about his Holocaust survivor mother, interned there during World War II.

The professor of visual communications has been working for three years on a project incorporating old photoggraphis, digital imagery and a loose narrative of biography and family history.

"It doesn't necessarily go from beginning to end, but it allows me to trace the story of my mother's history of immigration and her history in the United States," said Volk, whose work has been included in collections at the University of Virginia and Danforth Museum of Art in Framingham, among others.

The exhibit, "A Story of Rose's," will be presented in January at the Rubin-Frankel Gallery at Boston University's Florence and Chafetz Hillel House.

"Going to France was pivotal because my mother's youngest sister is there, and I hadn't had a chance to talk to her directly about events during the war," Volk said. He also went to the town where she'd been interned, and was able to locate a man who knew his mother in the camp.

"It helped clarify a lot of questions that I had," Volk said.

His mother rarely spoke about the war years. Volk's Jewish grandparents were born in Turkey, but lived in Cuba - which at that time had a close relationship with the United States - when his mother and brother were born, and in France when their youngest daughter was born.

When Nazi Germany occupied France, Volk's grandparents and youngest aunt were allowed to return to Turkey, but the Germans held his teenage mother and uncle because they held Cuban passports and might be of value for a potential prisoner exchange with the United States.

Volk says that as a photographer you go out and learn about things by capturing imagines and exploring the world. This way, he explores his own history,

"As a photographer you go out and learn about things by photographing. You investigate the world," Volk said. "In this case, it's a way for me to explore my family history. It's about trying to extend the story to people and get them involved in it."

Looking for a Jewish author?

A new website, Host-a-Jewish-Book-Author.com is a resource for internationally-based authors of Jewish-themed books.

Jewish genealogy societies, libraries, synagogues, community institutions may find excellent programming ideas by inviting a nearby author to speak during Jewish Book Month or at any other time. Check the site's listing for lecture topics.

Created by children's book author Anna Olswanger, the site is searchable by name, location and genre. Each listing offers the author's city of residence, book titles, lecture topics, areas of travel, contact information, along with information on links to author interviews and podcasts.

More than 70 authors are participating. Among them are Maggie Anton, Ron Arons, Hava Ben-Zvi, Haggai Carmon, Poopa Dweck, Michelle Edwards, Rabbi Dov Peretz Elkins, Barbara Kessel, Sarah Lamstein, Gregory Levey, Anna Levine, Sonia Levitin, Bob Morris, Rosalind Reisner, Rabbi Dennis Ross, Sylvia Rouss, Arthur Schwartz, Steve Sheinkin, and Yale Strom.

Where are young people's Jewish genealogy awards?

I have always advocated awards for various genealogical achievements, particularly for achievements in non-traditional areas, such as outreach and encouraging young genealogists.

When I read the following release from the Association of Professional Genealogists, I again wondered where Jewish genealogy is in this arena.

APG awarded its first Young Professional Scholarship to high school senior Michael Melendez of Fullerton, California at the APG Professional Management Conference held in Philadelphia on September 3. The award included conference registration and a $500 award toward travel and accommodations.

Awhile back, one of Jewish genealogy's brightest stars, Logan Kleinwaks, asked me why neither Jewish genealogical societies nor the annual international conference on Jewish genealogy ever offered student or young genealogist discounts. I told him sincerely that I believed they should. and I do try to talk this up in every possible venue.

Logan is right.

Just the idea that the established community is trying to interest younger people may encourage interest in our obsession. I also advocate high school and even junior high school awards sponsored by local Jewish genealogical societies, with state, regional and international winners climbing the ladder with an award to the annual conference.

Such awards can be given for a younger person's personal achievement, for major contributions to Jewish genealogy in technological fields and in other "thinking out of the box" areas. Highlighting younger genealogists - there are already several active in Jewish genealogy in areas such as technology and DNA - will attract younger people.

As societies - including Jewish genealogical societies - complain about declining memberships and attendance, there is still resistance to outreach, which I simply don't understand.

We moan that there are no for-credit Jewish genealogical courses anywhere and that, generally speaking, genealogy is not considered a mainstream academic study (a few minor exceptions), we are missing an opportunity. Seniors receiving these awards and spotlighting the honor when applying to colleges send notice to higher education admission offices that genealogy is now something to be recognized and rewarded. It sends a message that genealogy is not only for old folks looking for even older folks.

Our young people are so competent in technology - much more advanced than we will ever be - why aren't we encouraging them to put their talents and creativity to family history research?

The more awards that schools see on the transcripts of bright students applying for excellent schools could mean that genealogy may find itself creeping up the academic ladder. Informing Judaic studies departments at schools that such awards exist will increase awareness. Perhaps a student receiving a genealogy achievement award and attending one of those school might eventually be responsible for a course or two or even an entire program.

Jewish genealogy in general can't afford to ignore the possibilities. Aging demographics and declining numbers make outreach imperative for our societies.

Melendez, a senior at Troy Hill High School in Fullerton, already has a long resume of genealogical achievements. He performed a 150 hour internship at the Orange Regional Family History Center in California. He completed the Staff Training Program and is currently a staff member at the center.

He is also a member of the Federation of Genealogical Societies' Youth Committee as well as the Future Genealogists Society. As part of his Eagle Scout project, Melendez put on a Beginners Family History Jamboree.

Why isn't the Jewish genealogy community organizing similar programs? I'd like to hear from Tracing the Tribe readers who understand why this should be the wave of the future. If you have ideas on organizing such a program, let me know.

One person cannot do this alone; a core group of people who think along the same lines is needed to go forward with such a project.

Footnote Page: The possibilities for all of us

I was intrigued by Footnote.com marketing director Justin Schroepfer's comments in his email that also included the Footnote Pages press release. Among the points he stressed:

"Multiple Uses – Footnote pages can be used to create tribute pages for family & friends, memorial pages for our ancestors or research pages to gather information. Pages can also be created for events, places and organizations."

Do Tracing the Tribe readers see the same opportunities that I do for pages devoted to long-lost communities, cemeteries, landsmanshaftn and other groups, including Jewish genealogy societies? This is another alternative to getting the word out in a fast-growing networking opportunity.

I just had a fruitful conversation with Justin, who says we are on the same page (Footnote Page) about events, places and organizations. It appears to be a win-win situation for many groups. Of course, I'm looking at how Jewish genealogists and societies can utilize this new means of communication.

This is just the beta version, he reminded me, and there are many possibilities that will be worked in. Footnote wants everyone to utilize this new feature. There are no restrictions on the amount of content that can be uploaded, he stressed. It is completely open, and it is free. The Pages can include Footnote documents as well as photographs and content from other sources.

If an organization is researching a community, for example, it can set up a page for that community and its history, post historic and contemporary photographs, add to the timeline, locate and upload documents for descendants of that community, including immigration records, naturalization records, with items from Footnote and from other sources.

I asked Justin specifically about using these pages for memorials to destroyed communities or the Jewish history of other places, or for landsmanshaftn (immigrant societies). His answer: All of this and more, and we're looking forward to it.

Genealogy societies can set up a page for future events, for community history, for all sorts of information.

The first beneficiary of this feature is my grandfather, Sidney (Shaje) Fink. Although the only thing now featured is this photo. He was born "on Purim, the day of the big blizzard" in 1898, raised in Sukhostaw (Galicia, Austro-Hungary ->Poland ->Ukraine), and immigrated to the US as a young teenager.

The photo is from 1914, when he signed up to serve in the Jewish Legion's 39th Royal Fusiliers and serve in then-Palestine when it was still part of the Ottoman Empire.

In a pleasant surprise, I had also forgotten how many pages were already in my Gallery (the place to store documents obtained from Footnote), and I will be posting more of those to his page. His page is here.

My to-do list includes posting additional Footnote and other documents, photos, texts and descriptions for members of my FINK, DARDASHTI, TOLLIN/TALALAY and BANK families.

A quick search of the cool - is there an age limit on using this word? - interactive SSDI feature made it a snap. I could have set up numerous pages in a matter of minutes just from the results of that one SSDI search. All you need to do is click the little Footnote Page icon to set up a page. Try it, you'll like it!

I'm looking forward to hearing from Tracing the Tribe readers who have set up Footnote Pages. Do share these with us.

New York: Preserving rare documents

A grant from the Baker Foundation is helping the Jewish Theological Seminary Library in New York City prevent the disintegration of nearly 1,000 rare documents through the latest methods of digital photography.

A $100,000 foundation grant is paying for the technological rescue, according to this Jewish Week story.

On a recent Thursday, Melissa Buschey, a conservationist at the Jewish Theological Seminary, opened up a hand-written Judeo-Arabic manuscript dating from the 1600s C.E. “Probably from somewhere in Italy,” Buschey said casually, turning the page.

Thick, clear polyester sheets encased each piece of paper, which would later be digitally photographed to be accessible online.

Buschey and her colleague Amy Armstrong had come to call the heavily-pocked text the “Swiss cheese document.” Without the careful encasement of each page and its digital photograph, the Swiss cheese document would have eventually become illegible—a scholar’s gold mine lost to impending parchment decay.

But that didn’t happen. The document was preserved because of their work and so will roughly 900 more rare manuscripts—some dating from at least the 12th century C.E. and held by the Library of The Jewish Theological Seminary. The preservation is made possible by a recent $100,000 donation given jointly by the Morris and Beverly Baker Foundation and an anonymous donor.

“With the grant money these very fragile things can be re-housed,” said Armstrong, the Library’s senior conservationist, in the Library’s sanitized white conservation laboratory. (The workspace seems more like a medical office than a library.) The donation will directly pay for a two-year fellowship for Buschey, as well as two additional part-time conservationists.

At New York University, Buschey specialized in paper conservation and earned an art history master's degree a few months ago. Armstrong had been the sole preservationist fighting against manuscript decay. The rare documents are the last group left from the JTS Library’s 11,000 rare Hebrew manuscripts - the world’s largest - already microfilmed.

The Baker Foundation is an endowment; the annual budget comes solely from investment dividends and interest. It has given away between $500,000-$750,000 a year, with some 80% to Jewish-related education and cultural activities.

The JTS Library is the largest owner of rare Hebrew manuscripts in the world, some back to the 10th century CE. Manuscripts have been gathered since JTS's 1886 founding, but it didn't really grow tremendously until German Jewish scholar and librarian Alexander Marx arrived in 1903.

Preservation has always been problem for this library and other libraries with rare manuscriptions.

Librarians and scholars are currently enthralled in a debate over how Google plans to digitize millions of old books, some of which only have one extant copy remaining. Google plans to digitize as many books as quickly as possible, which means tearing out pages to scan them. Critics fear the loss of the original book itself, while Google argues that the information it holds is much more important.

For years, librarians have relied on microfilm, which requires photographs of the book’s pages for scholars to later consult. But scholars still have to go to the particular library holding the microfilm to see them. And the microfilming process is crude, requiring heavy glass plates to be placed on extremely fragile pages with aging book spines. “You can’t photograph it without it falling apart,” said Armstrong.

Newer methods have nearly overtaken microfilming. The costly polyester plastic sheets (about $50 a page) encase single manuscript pages, then are digitally photographed and digitized to allow anyone with Internet access to look at them.

Most of the JTS collection has been microfilmed except this last batch, which will be preserved the new way using this grant.

UK: Jewish Chronicle revamp

The UK's venerable Jewish Chronicle has added social networking to its website revamp, reports this Marketing story by Alison Donnelly.

LONDON - The Jewish Chronicle has launched a social network in the latest stage of its major website overhaul.

Users of thejc.com can now upload their own photos and videos, write blogs, or comment on news stories on the site. The launch is the latest addition to the site, which is undergoing a major overhaul with the aim of increasing user interactivity.

Last month, the Beta version of the site was launched, enabling the weekly title to break news stories online, post video reports, and host blogs written by columnists.

The website features video footage of London's Salute to Israel parade, football highlights, and quirkier contributions such as Grandma's Kugel Recipe, which shows viewers how to make a traditional Jewish dessert.

The newspaper hopes to make video reports a regular feature on the site and editorial staff are to receive training on how to present to camera.

Jewish Chronicle managing editor Richard Burton said: 'A lot of the bigger papers are finding it hard to identity communities within their readership. What struck me was that we had a ready-made community and the opportunity to harness that.'

Conde Nast has lured the Jewish Chronicle's editor, David Rowan, to edit its forthcoming UK version of Wired magazine, which is due to launch, both in print and online, in the first half of 2009.

Very interesting and good to hear! The venerable JC is doing what many US-based Jewish papers should be doing.

This article pointed up the discussions at the American Jewish Press Association conference back in June, when members discussed the future of newspapers in America for three days. The bottom line was that discovering and creating niche marketing linking readers, the print and online editions is the wave of the future.

GenealogyBank: SSDI now free for everyone

What a week! Announcements are flying through cyberspace.

Tom Kemp at the GenealogyBank blog announced that from today, its Social Security Death Index database is free.

Yes, SSDI is also available on other sites, so I asked Tom to enlighten me on some differences.

Why is GenealogyBank's SSDI better?

-Updated with corrections and new data weekly.
Other sites are updated quarterly or monthly, and one site hasn't been updated for a long time. Remember it isn't just updated with newly deceased persons -the weekly updates also include SAA older cases that have been worked on and added.

-Expands the life dates to give the name of the day of the week.
This is helpful for estimating when the funeral occurred. For Jewish burials, this will help determine the Jewish funeral date as there are no burials on Shabbat (Friday sunset to Saturday sunset) or Jewish holidays, along with the religious law - with certain exceptions - that the burial should be completed within 24 hours,. It may also help to factor in deaths after sunset, which are counted as the next day of the Jewish calendar.

-Lets you search on foreign country of death.
Tom said that he found a woman who died in London that way - we didn't know her married name at death - just her first/middle names; and that she died in London. With this feature, was able to narrow down the place of death and locate her.

-Gives GPS coordinates.
Some techies want that today

-Gives list of all location options for zip code .
Not just one default location, means researchers can determine the actual place of death.

-Age given at death in years, months, days , not just chronological age.

Tom writes - in a purely subjective comment - that it's easy to cut-and-paste and add to his genealogy software. Also, the URL can be saved for citation and will always be in your notes. Want to see it again without searching? Just click on it.

The best part, he adds - is that it's free, no subscription necessary - so enjoy what GenealogyBank calls the best SSDI site on the planet - free to all researchers.

Also, GenealogyBank is approaching its second anniversary on October 18.
It is hard to keep track of all the field's achievements.

Footnote Pages launch at Techcrunch50

The launch of Footnote Pages was at Techcrunch50. Here are the official communications (press release and statement by the site's marketing director. Another post follows with my personal experience.

What's TechCrunch50, you ask?

In 2007, the leading technology blog TechCrunch and entrepreneur Jason Calacanis founded TechCrunch50, a conference which provides a platform for early-stage, and frequently unfunded, companies to launch for the first time to the technology industry’s most influential venture capitalists, corporations, angel investors, fellow entrepreneurs, and the international media. Participants are selected exclusively on merit.

Here's the official press release:

San Francisco -- September 10, 2008 Losing a loved one can result in a range of emotions, from the grief and sorrow to comfort, which often comes from reminiscing stories and memories with family and friends. The challenge arises when there is no single place where all of these stories can easily come together to be shared, enriched and preserved.

Now at Footnote.com, anyone can find or create Footnote Pages where users connect and share stories, photos, and information about the people important to them.

To kick-off the new Footnote Pages, Footnote.com today released over 80 million of these pages created from data from the Social Security Death Index. Most visitors will find existing pages about several deceased friends and family members already on the site.

Footnote.com was selected from over 1,000 applicants to launch Footnote Pages at this year’s TechCrunch50 held in San Francisco. Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote, demonstrated Footnote Pages to an audience of over 1,500 investors, bloggers, and major media outlets.

“We encourage people to upload their personal shoeboxes of photos and documents to Footnote.com,” explains Wilding. “Now with Footnote Pages, friends and family can come together to share stories and memories about the people they care about.”

Described as Facebook for the Deceased, these pages feature a photo gallery, an interactive timeline and map, and other tools that bring people together to create a more colorful and rich picture of the past. “Social networking is not only for the younger generations any more,” explains Wilding. “We are seeing Baby Boomers contribute and connect online in increasing numbers. Footnote Pages are an easy way for this audience to interact with each other and learn things they would not otherwise know about deceased friends and family.”

Beyond profiling people, Footnote pages can also be used to document and discuss historical events or places including: the Vietnam War, the Assassination of JFK and the Lincoln-Douglas
Debates.

Unlike other social networking sites, Footnote.com provides content that enables users to tell and share stories from the past. Through its partnership with the National Archives, Footnote.com has digitized over 43 million documents including historical newspapers, military records, photos and more. Footnote.com adds about 2 million new records to the site every month.

Visit Footnote.com to learn more about Footnote Pages and get a new perspective on the lives of your own friends and family who have passed away.

About Footnote.com

Footnote.com is a history website where real history might just surprise you. Footnote.com features millions of searchable original documents, providing users with an unaltered view of the events, places and people that shaped the American nation and the world. At Footnote.com, all are invited to come share, discuss, and collaborate on their discoveries with friends, family, and colleagues. For more information, visit www.footnote.com.

Footnote.com marketing director Justin Schroepfer sent out these additional details:

In addition to the press release, I wanted to provide you with some additional details about Footnote Pages.

These pages will be useful to family historians for a number of different reasons:

Social Networking – Even for an audience that might not be as familiar with social networking, these pages allow multiple users to easily contribute content and insights helping to create a more complete picture of the people we care about.

Interactive Features - Maps, timelines, and photo galleries bring these pages to life and add context.

Flexible Environment – For those that want a more open environment than a family tree, Footnote Pages helps to associate and link related pages in addition to the immediate family; i.e. Friends, people of influence, prominent figures, etc.

Multiple Uses – Footnote pages can be used to create tribute pages for family & friends, memorial pages for our ancestors or research pages to gather information. Pages can also be created for events, places and organizations.

In order to help family historians get started, Footnote.com created over 80 million Footnote Pages from the information contained in the SSDI.

Other sites have the SSDI database. However, in comparison, you could say that this version is SSDI on steroids; an interactive SSDI. In addition to the SSDI, users can search the Footnote content to add additional information and details about their ancestors lives. Best of all, it’s a fun product to work with. This is only the beta launch and we will continue to work to improve this product.

Iowa: Celebrating Alexander Levi

A Dubuque museum highlights Iowa's Jewish history as it focuses on Alexander Levi, the city's first Jewish settler. "From Distant Places to Dubuque's Shores: 175 Years of Jewish Life" runs through December 30, at the National Mississippi River Museum Aquarium.

Click here for the exhibit website.

In July, I received an email from lead project director Karin Pritikin who informed me about The Alexander Levi Project, and Tracing the Tribe posted here at that time.

I am posting information again as this project may be of interest to other congregations and organizations who also wish to honor early Jewish settlers or the history of a Jewish community. This is the time of year when boards get together and discuss future plans so I hope this information may capture the imagination of other groups. Funding solutions are noted which may be useful for similar projects.

Has your community or congregation carried out a project? Are you planning to develop one or are you now considering the possibilities? I'd like to hear about it. Such projects further awareness of Jewish history and provide opportunities for genealogists to get involved in important projects in diverse ways.

Pritikin is vice president of Temple Beth El in Dubuque, Iowa, and the project director of a museum exhibit conceived by a group of congregants to honor the 175th anniversary of the arrival of Levi - Iowa's first Jewish settler - designed to coincide with Dubuque's own 175th anniversary.

"From Distant Places to Dubuque's Shores: 175 Years of Jewish Presence in the Tri-State Region" focuses on the city's Jewish community, but also details how entrepreneurial "new Americans" have shaped the civic and cultural landscape.

In February, the Dubuque City Council unanimously approved funding the project as part of a competitive award designed to encourage community-based groups to participate in the city's anniversary celebration. The group has also received a mini-grant from Humanities Iowa and the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Open now, the exhibit is at The National Mississippi River Museum and Aquarium in Dubuque, a Smithsonian affiliate. In conjunction, Temple Beth El held a two-day Jewish Family Reunion weekend (August 23-24) focusing on past clergy, congregants and everyone with a Jewish connection to Dubuque.

For more on the exhibit, click here.

Dubuque's first Jewish settler, Levi became the state's first naturalized citizen, spent 50 years as a Mason and served as Dubuque Justice of the Peace. A successful miner and mine provisioner, Levi's dry-goods establishment became one of the largest and best-known retail stores of its time.

An immigrant from France in 1833, he was followed by other French Jews. By the end of the 19th century most of the city's Jews were from Russia or Poland. Levi founded the first congregation; the community eventually founded several synagogues, a cemetery, schools and more.

Organizers received a $5,000 competitive award from the city of Dubuque and a $3,000 "mini grant" from Humanities Iowa/The National Endowment for the Humanities to create a multimedia exhibit. Dubuque's climate of religious tolerance is indicated by the fact that Levi was a donor for the first Catholic Church, Jews were elected and appointed to government posts at the local and state levels; and the 1939 dedication of Temple Beth El was presided over by a Catholic judge, included an ecumenical service with Methodist clergy participation and attended by residents of many faiths.

Read the story at the link above; there is also a multimedia section and more. Karin Pritikin is the lead exhibit organizer for the Alexander Levi Heritage Project, a volunteer projet of Dubuque's Temple Beth El.

Washington: Bellingham's Jewish history

The Bellingham Herald (Washington) discusses the history of Congregation Beth Israel here.

Tim Baker has been researching the community for more than 12 years, and will present "A Century of Jewish Life in Bellingham," a slide show about the congregation's history at 2pm, Sept. 21, at Whatcom Museum. In addition, there will be a photo exhibit on local Jewish life, a display of religious items, and a display of plans for a new Beth Israel synagogue.

Bellingham's synagogue is celebrating the 100th anniversary of its incorporation, and its membership is looking forward to breaking ground for its new building.

Beth Israel is one of the oldest synagogues in Western Washington. The oldest in the state, in Spokane, was dedicated on Sept. 14, 1892, followed four days later by Seattle's first synagogue.

The roots of the congregation start in the late 1800s, when Jewish immigrants from Skopishok and Rakishok, Lithuania settled here, perhaps attracted by the Klondike gold rush.

The first religious services were in 1900. Six years later, the community of 25 or so families bought a vacant church at 1406 F St., and remodeled it into an Orthodox synagogue. Russian immigrant Joseph Polakoff, the first rabbi, was hired in 1908.

Bellingham's early Jews lived in the Lettered Streets neighborhood so they could walk to services. Many worked or owned businesses in Old Town. Local Jewish businesses included gold rush outfitters, tailor shops and second-hand stores.

In 1925, Beth Israel moved into a new synagogue at 2200 Broadway, and in the 1950s, it became a Conservative synagogue. In 1986, members voted to become a Reform synagogue, which spurred another Conservative synagogue which later disbanded

Today there are some 200 families at Beth Israel.

Click here for the cemetery list of Beth Israel Cemetery.

Norway: Jewish museum opens

There were four Jewish congregations in Oslo in the early 1900s; by 1917, there were only two serving some 1,300 Jews, according to this article.

In 1920 and 1921 they had constructed their own buildings. synagogues. The first, in 1920,was Det Mosaiske Trossamfund i Oslo. It reopened after Jewish survivors returned to Norway in 1945 and after. Still open for services, it is located at 13 Bergstien.

The other, at 15 Calmeyers St., remained closed after the Holocaust as there were too few Jews in Oslo to maintain two congregations.
Calmeyers was used for various businesses; today, parts of the building is now occupied by the Oslo Jewish Museum and it will be used as a museum and cultural center.

A temporary exhibit in honor of Norwegian poet Henrik Wergeland will open this month., and the museum will offer a week of Jewish culture, with theatre, concerts and other events.

The museum was officially opened by Crown Prince Haakon.

Norway was one of the last European countries without such a museum in its capital. Although Trondheim has had a local Jewish museum, Oslo had little display of Jewish history and culture other than minor exhibits at the Norwegian Folk Museum and at the recently opened Holocaust Center.

The old Calmeyers Gate 15B's synagogue has been restored and reopened to tell the story of Jews in Norway since the first immigrated more than 150 years ago.

Norway's government ministers for defense and culture joined the crown prince at the opening, along with Israel's ambassador to Norway.

The debut exhibit describes how Norwegian Jews influenced cultural life and the struggle against German occupation during World War II.

Ireland: Jewish culture festival, Oct. 18-19

Irish Family History - the blog - had a neat piece on the documentary, "Shalom Ireland," at the Cork Festival of Jewish Culture, Oct 18-19.

In 1861, there were only 341 Jews living in Ireland, but by the turn of the 20th century the Jewish population had risen to more than 3,000.

In 1901, the largest Jewish populations were in Dublin (2,048), Belfast (708), Cork (359) and Limerick (171).

This autumn, Cork celebrates the Jewish community in the Cork Festival of Jewish Culture, October 18 – 19, 2008. If you are interested in the history of the Jewish community in Ireland, don’t miss out on the screening of ‘Shalom Ireland’.

In this documentary, director Valerie Lapin Ganley reveals Ireland’s remarkable, yet little known Jewish community.

"Shalom Ireland" chronicles the history of Irish Jewry while celebrating the unique culture created by blending Irish and Jewish traditions.
From gun running for the Irish Republican Army during Ireland’s War of Independence to smuggling fellow Jews escaping from the Holocaust into Palestine, "Shalom Ireland" tells the untold story of how Irish Jews participated in the creation of both Ireland and Israel.

Events will take place in Main Restaurant and Boole Lecture Theatre 1, University College Cork.

Saturday,October 18
7-7:15pm
Opening, Cork Festival of Jewish Culture
7:15-8:15pm
Klezmer dance, Yiddish song workshop; Vivi Lachs (London); accompaniment, Klezmer Klub (London)
8:30-9:45pm
Concert, Klezmer Klub (London)
10:00-11:30pm
Concert, The Fireflies (klezmer band, South West Ireland)

Sunday,October 19
4-4:45pm
Lecture, Professor Dermot Keogh, UCC History Department; history of Cork's Jewish community
5-6pm
Screening, “Shalom Ireland” - history of Ireland's Jewish community in Ireland
6-6:30pm
Break & refreshments
6:30-7:30pm
Concert, Festival Ensemble
8-9:30pm
Concert, North Strand Klezmer Band (Dublin)
10-11:30pm
Concert, Yurodny (Dublin)

The Festival is held under the patronage of the Lord Mayor of Cork, Brian Bermingham and University College Cork president, Dr. Michael Murphy.
Concert tickets: €10/ €15. For more information: corkjewishfestival@gmail.com

Google: Digitizing historical newspapers

Reuters reported on Google's digitization of old newspapers here.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Google Inc has stepped up efforts to digitize dozens of historical newspapers and make scanned images of the original papers available online, the Internet search leader said on Monday.

In a blog post on the Silicon Valley-based company's website, Google said it is looking to make old newspapers searchable online by partnering with newspaper publishers to digitize millions of pages of news archives.

The effort involves the archives of dozens of newspaper titles and expands on a two-year-old effort by Google to work with two major U.S. newspapers -- The New York Times and Washington Post -- to index old papers in Google News Archive.

"Not only will you be able to search these newspapers, you'll also be able to browse through them exactly as they were printed -- photographs, headlines, articles, advertisements and all," Google product manager Punit Soni said in the blog post.

The new papers range from the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, "the first newspaper West of the Alleghenies" (the Allegheny Mountains), to the Quebec Chronicle-Telegraph, which has continuously published for 244 years, making it North America's oldest lasting paper.

Initial project partners - ProQuest and Heritage - are in the US and Canada. Click the link above for the complete story.

The original Google blog link is here, and stated:

This effort is just the beginning. As we work with more and more publishers, we'll move closer towards our goal of making those billions of pages of newsprint from around the world searchable, discoverable, and accessible online.

For more on the Google/Proquest partnership, check out Randy Seaver's posting here and Dick Eastman's posting here. For the New York Times article, click here.

I'm looking forward to the day when enterprising sites will scan, digitize and place online collections of Ladino and Judeo-Farsi newspapers.

Family Tree DNA: Special pricing ends Sept. 30

Family Tree DNA is extending its summer sale until September 30. This is great news for the many procrastinators out there, who have always wanted to do DNA testing, but became sidetracked by other events.

Start off the Jewish New Year by joining a group project and learning more about your family's relationships and origins.

The promotion is geared toward bringing new members to group projects by offering major incentives which will also grow databases - it is a win-win for both researchers and the company's databases. Both the Y-DNA12 marker (sale $99) and Y-DNA25 marker (sale $148) tests will include free mtDNA testing, a big saving.

Other reduced price tests: Y-DNA37 ($119, was $189), Y-DNA37+mtDNA ($189, was $339), Y-DNA67 ($218, was $269), Y-DNA67+mtDNAplus ($288, was $409) and mtDNAplus ($149, was $189).

As of September 8, Family Tree DNA claims it has the largest genetic genealogy DNA databases and that they are several times larger than all other databases on the market ... combined! Latest figures:

Surname projects: 4,999
Unique surnames: 83,017
Y-DNA records: 134,653
12-marker haplotypes: 29,555
25-marker haplotypes: 46,070
37-marker haplotypes: 45,983
mtDNA records: 76,029

Why is the size of the database important?

That's simple. If a researcher's goal is to verify relationships, or discover more about recent or deep ancestral origins, then the database size is essential to compare results to as many samples as possible.

Now's your chance to do what you've been wanting to do and see where your genes will lead you. There are surname, geographical and lineage groups to choose from if you have a particular interest to follow.

Click here and see all the projects along with information on starting your own group.

Just one example of the nearly 5,000 groups is the IberianAshkenaz group project. Want to track down that oral history of your Ashkenazi family having Sephardic roots? Now's the time to do it.

This group is growing by leaps and bounds, and its co-administrator Judy Simon is finding connections to Hispanic and known converso families for a growing percentage of seemingly Eastern European Ashkenazi Jewish families. To learn more about this group, email her at heyjude0701ATgmailDOTcom (replace AT and DOT with the appropriate symbols).

Remember the sale ends September 30.

Oregon: Film, roots travel, Sept. 16

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon, in Portland, welcomes readers in the area to its first meeting of the program year.

The two-part program includes "Genealogy Successes and Successful Techniques" and the screening of "Beshert," a short film by Rick Kolinsky.

The meeting begins at 6.45pm Tuesday, Sept. 16, at Ahavat Achim Synagogue.

One of the many things that we like about genealogy as a hobby is the opportunity to interact with others as we pursue our goals. We all have stories about how we pursued some item of information and the results we achieved. Learning from each other will help to break through those brick walls we encounter. JGSO's Board Members will lead an open discussion about our experiences.

In the second part of our program, we will show a short film, "Beshert",which chronicles Rick Kolinsky's discoveries on his visit to his ancestral home in Ukraine.

Admission is free for JGSO members; others, $2. For more information, address and more, click here.

Shanghai: Two women's stories

Two Chicago-area women relive their years in the Shanghai ghetto after their families fled Europe, in this Chicago Tribune story by Andrew L. Wang.

Though the two women had never met, they soon were trading names, each taking stock of whom the other knew in Chicago's Jewish community.

Before long, they learned their paths had almost crossed once before—six decades ago in the Jewish ghetto of Shanghai. It turns out they were neighbors, one at 83 Wayside Rd., the other at 91, and they had some mutual friends too.

"Rabbi Ashkenazi! Sure, I know him, sure. I know Ashkenazi," Ellen Rita Winston Berland exclaimed.

"So, we know a lot of people, huh?" said Judy Kolb, whose father asked the rabbi in 1948 for a character reference to support his immigration to the United States.

The women were among a large number of Jews who survived the Holocaust in World War II Shanghai, arriving in the late 1930s from Germany, Austria, Poland and Lithuania as refugees. Although Sephardim had been present in the city since the 1800s, but it took the war to bring in masses of Ashkenazim, and at its largest, some 30,000 Jews lived in the city.

Both women have donated items to exhibits on the Jewish diaspora at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center, which is planned to be finished and open in March 2009.

The personal items include a tiny red wool dress Kolb's grandmother knitted for her in Shanghai — to the "stateless" ID papers Jews had to carry. The museum's executive director Richard Hirschaut said the artifacts will follow the sequence of personal histories juxtaposed against larger historical events.

Born in Berlin in 1922, Winston Berland's teen years were marked by restrictive Nazi policies against Germany's Jews, followed by Kristallnacht on November 9, 1938. Her parents fled first to Italy, then took a Japanese freighter to Shanghai. Most relatives left behind were sent to concentration camps and perished.

The Japanese ship - with thousands of Jews onboard - arrived in Shanghai 54 days later. There were few restrictions on entering China (Japan had occupied it in 1937) and European Jews poured in, overcrowding available space.

"We shared everything, even the washroom," said Winston Berland, now 86 and a resident of Chicago's Uptown neighborhood, describing the cramped apartment she and her parents shared with other families. "Ten people for one washroom."

In 1943, the Japanese ordered Jews into a ghetto where they were required to carry ID papers.

Winston Berland traveled by rickshaw around the city, learned to speak some Shanghainese and Japanese and worked three jobs while her father repaired watches in a corner of the apartment. One job was at a library where she met her Lithuanian husband, Arno Wischtinetsky.

She has donated to the museum her ketubah (Jewish wedding contact), signed on August 11, 1946, which spells their names in Chinese characters and identifies bride and groom as "formerly of Germany, currently without nationality." The ketubah was written on a printed form used for Chinese weddings, watermarked with a traditional Chinese wedding greeting, "Beautiful flowers, round moon."

Holocaust scholar and museum consultant Michael Berenbaum said the Chinese ketubah shows Jewish culture's ability to "acculturate but not assimilate."

Born in Shanghai, Northbrook resident Kolb, 68, has fond memories of life there.

In 1939, her father bought tickets on a ship from Germany to Shanghai; his parents did not go, believing they would be allowed to go to the US - they died in Auschwitz. Although she was born in China, she was still considered stateless, and donated to the museum her United Nations form, "certificate of identity in lieu of a passport," identifying her as a refugee. "Since I was stateless, I needed some kind of document to show who I was."

By the late 1940s, they were again moving to Israel, Australia or the US.

Kolb's family arrived in San Francisco in 1948 and became US citizens. They moved to Chicago in 1955, where her father, Leopold Fleischer, became the Habonim Jewish Center cantor.

Winston Berland and her husband went to Israel in 1949 and to the US in 1954. In America, Wischtinetsky became Winston.

At a meeting in the museum's Evanston offices they played "Jewish geography," seeing where their lives may have crossed. Long ago, Winston Berland traveled with Cantor Fleischer to a reunion of Shanghai refugees in San Francisco.

"I'm speechless," Winston Berland said when she learned she knew Kolb's father and that they had been neighbors once upon a time in China. "If I read it in a book, I wouldn't believe it."

Read the complete story at the link above.

Los Angeles: Wilshire Blvd. Temple rebuilds

The Los Angeles Times has a great story (and photographs) on the city's oldest synagogue.

What would become the Wilshire Boulevard Temple was founded in 1862 and moved to its current site in 1929. It was associated with motion picture industry moguls and famed Rabbi Edgar Magnin, sometimes called "Rabbi to the Stars," who served nearly seven decades.

The sanctuary seats 1,800 and has some 2,500 member families. The congregation has begun a multimillion dollar expansion and renovation project.

Senior Rabbi Steven Leder said he didn't know how much the project will cost because the details are evolving. But the Reform temple already has spent $20 million buying the five pieces of land it didn't own on the block that runs from 6th Street to Wilshire Boulevard and Hobart to Harvard boulevards in Koreatown. It expects to spend an additional $30 million renovating its sanctuary - and that is just a piece of the project.

"It's a massive job," the rabbi said. "It's not hard to run up a bill."

"The synagogue world has never seen a campaign of this magnitude," said David Mersky, a senior lecturer on Jewish philanthropy at Brandeis University whom temple leaders consulted. "If this campaign were to succeed, it will dwarf every other campaign by a minimum factor of two."

Leder hopes the project will turn Wilshire Boulevard Temple, still one of the largest congregations in L.A., into the center of Jewish life in the region, and especially for the eastern part of the city, an area mostly abandoned by other congregations as Jews have moved west and dispersed throughout Southern California.

"We will build the most vibrant center of Jewish life the city has ever known because we can and we must," Leder told the congregation in his Yom Kippur sermon last year.

The temple, according to its rabbi, notes the return of younger Jews to neighborhoods such as Silver Lake, the Wilshire corridor, downtown and Los Feliz. According to a survey it commissioned, from 1995-2005, the number of Jews increased by 28% (some 4,000 people) in an area approximately from La Cienega Boulevard to Glendale and from Hollywood Hills to the Santa Monica Freeway.

Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles head John Fishel says the temple is positioned to attract Jews who live east of Beverly Hills, including younger adults and younger families. Some 500,000-600,000 Jews live in Southern California, the second-largest US Jewish community after New York.

Plans include renovation of the listed historic building, a six-story parking structure, a K-6 day school, parenting center and a cafe. Overseeing the project is Brenda Levin, a temple member who has headed the restoration of the Griffith Observatory and other structures.

The congregation also has a $30 million campus in West Los Angeles, two summer camps and a 200-acre Malibu conference center.

There is much more; read the complete article at the link above.

Miami: Chicago 2008 report, Sept. 14

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Miami's next program is a report on August's Chicago 2008 conference.

Join Marcia Finkel, Barbara Musikar and Frances Waxman in a conference review, at 10am Sunday, September 14, at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation building.

Parking is in the rear, bring picture ID. For more information, click here.

Sacramento: From shtetl to Hester St., Sept. 15

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento, California, will present "From Shtetl to Hester Street," with Allan Bonderoff, at 7pm Monday, September 15.

There will also be a report on August's Chicago 2008 conference, and the library will be open prior to and following the meeting.

The group meets at the Albert Einstein Residence Center, 1935 Wright St, Sacramento.

By the way, the JGS Sacramento also gets my vote for the best cookies award (thanks, Linda!). There really should be an award category for this. Perhaps recipes should be posted on the website?

For more information, click here.

Australia: UK's Anthony Joseph, Sept. 9

Dr. Anthony Joseph of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain will present "In Search of Jewish Ancestry," at the Society of Australian Genealogists in Sydney.

The meeting is from 10.30am-12.30pm Tuesday, September 9, at Richmond Villa, 120 Kent St., Sydney. For fee details, see the website link above.

Anthony Joseph will speak on the growth and development of interest in looking for Jewish forbears over the past 60 years. His talk encompasses a brief outline of the history of Jewish communities’ world wide (especially English speaking countries), research methodologies and the vast increase in sources that have become available in modern times.

He'll also look at some of the paradoxes of researching Jewish families, the pitfalls of which to be aware and the interface between the Jewish and non-Jewish worlds.

It was a great pleasure seeing Anthony in August at the Chicago 2008 conference. He played an essential role - so many years ago - in locating my London-based TALALAY relatives which led to the reconnection with this branch's US and Canadian relatives.

Virginia: Fairfax County Library resources, Sept. 16

Local libraries may hold genealogical treasures for researchers.

"Genealogical Resources in the Fairfax County Library Virginia Room," will be presented by Suzanne Levy, Virginia Room librarian since 1981. The program is under the auspices of the Mount Vernon Genealogical Society and the venue is room 112 of the Hollin Hall Senior Center in Alexandria.

The Virginia Room has a collection rich in regional history and genealogy, local and state government information and legal resources. Materials cover more than Virginia and also focus on Confederate Civil War military history. Other resources include maps, extensive photographic archive, manuscripts, local newspapers, and rare books.

Levy, who holds a BA in history (Michigan State University(, and a Master of Library Science (Pratt Institute), is a member of the Fairfax Genealogical Society, American Library Association, Historical Society of Fairfax County (chair, 2004-2006), and Historic Fairfax City, Inc.

She has worked as Cataloger, North Carolina Collection, UNC-Chapel Hill library; State Documents Librarian, North Carolina State Library; Acquisitions Librarian, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York Public Library; and at two NYPL branch libraries.

For more details, see the link above.

Vancouver: Oral history workshop, Sept. 21

Readers in Vancouver, BC, Canada now have an opportunity to learn the techniques of oral history interviewing.

The Jewish Museum and Archives of BC will offer training for novice and experienced interviewers from 1-4pm September 21. The workshop cost is $25, or $5 for those who are already interviewers with the Jewish Historical Society of BC.

Irene Dodek - who has been interviewing survivors for the Shoah Foundation - and archivist Janine Johnston will lead the training.

Individuals who take the workshop may be interested in getting involved in the JHSBC Oral History Project or in the Vancouver Holocaust Education Center's Survivors Testimonies Project. This class will also assist family history researchers and genealogists as they prepare to interview older relatives.

Among the topics will be the difference between oral history and oral testimony, the role of the interviewer, dealing with difficult topics, interviewing methodologies, skills and technique.

To register (by September 14), call 604-638-7286.

MyHeritage.com: $15 million capital injection

There's no business like gen business, and Israeli company MyHeritage.com should know.

I've known CEO Gilad Japhet since before the site went online. We met at a genealogy conference in Israel, and I wrote one of the first articles on the company for the Jerusalem Post. Gilad then presented a program on the site during New York's 2006 International IAJGS conference on Jewish Genealogy.

Located in the pastoral setting of Bnai Atarot, near Tel Aviv, everyone who works there seems to be a genealogist - in addition to their diverse technical expertise - and loves what they do.

Another milestone has now been achieved as the site has now garnered a $15 million capital injection from Index Ventures.

Today's UK Times Online article is here, "Family-tree website MyHeritage tracks down £8m capital injection."

FAMILY-TREE website MyHeritage aims to put down commercial roots after raising $15m (£8.4m) to fund expansion,writes James Ashton.

Set up in 2005, MyHeritage has grown quickly because of interest in genealogy fuelled by TV shows such as the BBC’s Who Do You Think You Are?, which has featured actress Patsy Kensit, pictured, tracing her ancestors.

It wants to link together families in the same way that Facebook connects friends. MyHeritage already has 25m registered users, 260m personal profiles and 230m photos on the site.

The second-round funding was led by Index Ventures, which counts internet-TV service Joost and gaming website King.com among its investments. Accel Partners, an investor in Facebook, also took part, taking an undisclosed stake.

“Because of people’s fascination with their history and the growth in social networks, we believe and hope this can be a significant business,” said Saul Klein, a partner at Index, who will join the board.

Founder Gilad Japhet wants people to use his service to pool photos already posted on sites such as Flickr and Picasa.

Techcrunch.com's story is here

It’s been just a few days after our post on Geni’s big growth numbers - and now big news from Israeli competitor MyHeritage.

The site has grown from 180 million profiles a year ago to 260 million today, they say.

Registered users have also grown, from 17 million to 25 million. Compare that to almost 2 million users for Geni. 230 million photos have been uploaded to the site, which is available in 25 languages and has 5 million monthly unique visitors. Support for ten more language will be released this month.

Investors have certainly noticed MyHeritage’s stellar growth. The company has raised a new round of funding - $15 million in a Series D round led by Index Ventures and joined by current investor Accel Partners. That brings their total capital raised to $24 million.

New Features - Recognize Those Faces

MyHeritage’s facial recognition, which works a little like recent Picasa enhancements, lets you train the service by tagging a few photos of an individual. MyHeritage then starts to auto-tag other photos that you upload of that person, too. Users don’t have to upload photos directly, either. They can sync from Picasa, Flickr, Facebook, etc. And once the photos are properly tagged with people’s names, MyHeritage will re-sync them back to the original services.

Just to reiterate that, MyHeritage has created a heck of a tool to let users auto-tag photos with people’s names on the services they already use.

If you haven't already checked the site, do take the time to look around.

Colorado: Jewish intelligence, Sept. 9

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado will offer a program on "The Natural History of Jewish Intelligence - Benefits and Costs."

Denver University professor emeritus of psychology Bernard Spilka, who has written on psychology and religion, will be the speaker.

The meeting is Tuesday, September 9 at Congregation Emanuel, at 1st and Forest. A coffee and questions session is at 6.30pm, followed at 7pm by the main program.

For more information, contact Terry Lasky, talaskyATcomcastDOTnet (replace uppercase words with the appropriate symbols).

Montreal: Czech Mate, Sept. 25

The next meeting of the JGS of Montreal, Quebec, Canada will feature Thomas O. Hecht, who will present "Czech Mate - A Life in Progress," and speak on his biography and his family's genealogy.

Born in Czechoslovakia, he escaped from Europe during World War II, and arrived in Canada in 1942.

The meeting, in conjunction with the Jewish Public Library, is at 7.30pm Thursday, September 25, at the Gelber Conference Center, 5151 Cote Ste-Catherine Rd.

The JGS of Montreal also offers Sunday morning Family Tree workshops. For more information, click here or call the JGS 24-hour hotline, 514-484-0969.

Pittsburgh: A crucial JGS meeting, Sept. 15

An important meeting to discuss the future of the Pittsburgh (PA) Jewish Genealogical Society is set for 7pm Monday, Sept. 15.

The meeting will be held at the Rudolph Family Holocaust Center, at the JCC Robinson Building, 5738 Darlington Road, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

At the Chicago 2008 conference, I was privileged to meet Rae M. Barent of Pittsburgh who feels that it is crucial to revive the Pittsburgh society. The meeting will discuss where the group is going and how it can get there.

Susan Melnick of the Rauh Jewish Archives will also speak and discuss how the archives can serve the genealogical community.

New York: Hidden legacy of two families, Sept. 14

She found the Polish family that hid her mother from the Nazis, and thought she’d created a made-for-TV-reunion.

In a special presentation for the New York Jewish Genealogical Society, Erin Einhorn will share "The Pages In Between: Unearthing the Hidden Legacy of Two Families, One Home," at 2pm Sunday, September 14, in room 710 of the Conference Center at the UJA-Federation Building, 130 E. 59th Street (Lexington/Park).

When reporter Erin Einhorn found the family in Poland that hid her mother from the Nazis during World War II, she thought she’d created a made-for-TV-reunion for two families thrown together by history. A man who knew her mother as a child threw his arms around her and – tears streaming down his face – told her the little girl had been a sister to him. But when Erin is asked to fulfill a decades-old promise involving the house that her family still owned, she must search through centuries of dusty records, maneuver an outdated, convoluted legal system, and prove the death of a great-grandfather born in 1868 to right the wrongs of the past.

In this special presentation to the Jewish Genealogical Society, she tells what she discovered in ghetto records, property and social service agency archives, and in troves of birth, marriage and death records that had been harboring family secrets for decades. In a year spent living in the country where her mother was born, she found the only known photo of her grandmother and shocking news about how she may have died. She learned that her mother’s only memory of Poland was provably false. And she discovered, as with most family stories, that memory is not always the same as truth.

For more information, click here.

Erin Einhorn is the author of "The Pages In Between" (Simon & Schuster, September 2008) and a reporter for the New York Daily News, covering the New York City public school system and education-related issues. She has written for the Philadelphia Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Fortune and is a contributor to public radio’s This American Life.

Florida: The Cantonists, Sept. 10

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County is celebrating its 18th year. Congratulations to the leaders of this society, which provides some of the best programming to its members.

Set for Delray Beach's South County Civic Center, the first meeting of this program year - on Wednesday, September 10 - features, from 11.30am, a Belarus SIG meeting, a brick wall session and a report on the recent IAJGS Chicago 2008 conference.

At 1pm, author Larry Domnitch will speak on his book, "The Cantonists: The Jewish Children's Army of the Tsar."

Domnitch holds degrees in political science and Jewish history, and writes for newspapers and journals in the US and Israel.

Some of us grew up hearing about the "khappers" (kidnappers), those who would kidnap young Jewish boys, ages 12-25, into the tsar's army where they were tortured and pressured to convert. Some may have also heard stories about male ancestors who had undergone the loss of a finger or a damaged hand - to prevent their being taken.

From 1827-1856, the Cantonist law demanded 25 years' service in the Tsar's army, and was finally abolished by Tsar Alexander II after Russia was defeated in the Crimean War.

Estimates are that some 30,000-70,000 Jewish boys served as cantonists. After 25 years, the young men could live and own land anywhere outside the Pale of Settlement. Finland's Jewish community began with such men. Conversion rates were high, intermarriage followed, and many never returned home. An 1844 figure indicated that one-third of all Jewish cantonists had converted.

In some families, boys who had served the required number of years settled in towns other than their birthplaces and established family branches. This accounts for the branch of our Mogilev, Belarus TALALAY family that sprung up in Novgorod-Severski, Chernigov Gubernia, Ukraine, even as later marriages were made with girls from hometown Mogilev, including the AZBEL family. It answers questions as to why some young boys disappeared from the family tree, and the absence of local death records for them.

At previous programs, Domnitch has shared such stories as that of Israel Itzkovich, 7, abducted in October 1853 from Polotzk. A large group of children were eventually forcibly marched to Siberia, from November 1853-June 1854, where they were tortured and beaten to pressure conversion.

This program should reveal some relatively unknown history, and help researchers to understand why family branches suddenly appeared in far-flung places, or why some names on a tree simply disappeared without a trace.

Roots Travel: Poland and Israel

Tragedy and triumph was discovered on Melvyn H. Bloom's trip to Poland with his son Steven, in this New York Jewish Week opinion piece.

Eighteenth-century ancestors, ancient synagogues, rediscovered relatives in unmarked graves, Jews and Jewish communities that are no more, a sense of loss and regret. But also, a renewed sense of connection, pride, privilege and hope.

These are some of the experiences and emotions -- so many beyond words-that marked a recent personal odyssey to Poland and Israel. What began as a "roots" trip to Poland with my son Steven, a trip we surely didn't expect to be "fun," turned out to be filled with both sadness and joy. We frequently felt overwhelmed by a sense of loss. For one sees and feels first hand not only the sense of individual loss, but the loss of an entire community, an entire way of life which is no more. Ultimately, however, what stayed with us is a sense of renewal and opportunity.

As a Jew, I never thought of our family as Polish, but for sure we are. Our DNA swabs confirm our Eastern European ancestry, and hint that we had ancestors in the Middle East centuries before.

So the notion of a "roots" trip to Poland had been very much on Steven's and my mind for some time. And so, together with several other multi-generational families, couples and individuals, we arranged such a visit prior to an American Technion Society (ATS) mission to Poland and Israel last May.

Their 10-day trip visited Lodz, Aleksandrow Lodski, Pabiance, Piotrkow, Radomsko and Prezedborz, where his Blumensohn family had lived, and Ciechanow, near Warsaw, where his mother's Antkes family lived.

Although they saw stories and names from the past everywhere, there was little physical evidence of a disappeared community, until they visited the Lodz Ghetto railroad station.

What was once the railroad station in the Lodz Ghetto has been turned into a museum, which includes some of the boxcars on which our people were taken to the camps. On the station walls are samples of the meticulous lists of victims the Nazis kept. Typewritten or in beautiful penmanship are the names, addresses, ages and destinations. And there I was stunned to come upon our cousin Hinda, sent to her death in Chelmno in 1942.

Bloom recalls services at Krakow's 16th century Remu synagogue, in Birkenau and the Great Synagogue in Piotrkow Trybunalski, built 1791-93 and today a library:

In the stacks, a wall had been uncovered where we could see a brightly painted section of the wall on which the Aron Kodesh once stood. At the top, it read "Keter Torah"…and beneath that legend were numerous bullet holes. For this was the very wall against which many Jews were forced to stand for their executions following torture at the nearby "special police" station.

He recounts their wanderings in their ancestral land, but that "our cousin's name on a deportation list was on a vastly different scale from anything I have ever read, heard or viewed;" father and son complete their trip in Israel.

The endnote states:

Melvin H. Bloom is executive vice president of the American Technion Society. Steven Bloom and his brother Bradley, whose passion for genealogy was ignited in 6th grade, wrote a joint column on the subject for the Jewish Week.

Read the complete story at the link above.

WorldVitalRecords: Jewish genealogy

WorldVitalRecords.com has included Tracing the Tribe and Jewish genealogy in its newest newsletter here.

Thank you, WorldVitalRecords, for this pointer. Please note that the site includes databases for researchers of Jewish ancestry: Jewish Cemeteries, JewishData and the Heritage Florida Jewish News. See below for details.

Beginning Jewish Genealogy

How do you start a search for Jewish ancestors? As with any genealogy search, the best place to begin is to start with the individuals you know, and the information you currently have. Next, you will want to talk to family members who may be able to fill in some of the blanks. From there you’ll want to expand the search by searching original and derivative sources like census records, vital records, naturalization records, etc. For Jewish ancestors, you will want to try some additional ideas including: join your local Jewish Genealogical Society, attend a Jewish conference, and consult with other individuals who are performing Jewish research.

A great resource for Jewish Genealogy is the Tracing The Tribe blog (http://tracingthetribe.blogspot.com). Tracing The Tribe is filled with resources, tools, and insights on Jewish genealogy. The blog is written by Schelly Talalay Dardashti who adds a nice personal touch to her work. ...

Read more at the link above.

WorldVitalRecords.com offers several Jewish databases:

1. Jewish Cemeteries: The Old Jewish Cemeteries, Charleston, South Carolina (1762-1903); 5,209 records

The Old Jewish Cemeteries at Charleston, South Carolina. A Transcript of the Inscriptions on Their Tombstones. 1762 - 1903. With an Introduction and Full Index by Dr. Barnett A. Elzas. Rabbi of K. K. Beth Elohim. (1903). Charleston, SC: The Daggett Print. Co. From the Quintin Publications Collection.

Although the data on Jewish cemeteries at JewishGen and IAJGS was not referenced in the WVR newsletter, there are additional free resources at both sites. For the IAJGS International Cemetery Project's South Carolina resource page, click here. For the JewishGen Jewish Online World Burial Registry, click here. Thanks to Jan Meisels Allen who indicated that my original note here might be a big confusing, and therefore I have elaborated.

2. JewishData: 352,709 Birth, Marriage and Death Records

Jewish Data.com claims to be the word's largest online database (more than a half-million records) of Jewish cemetery images and immigration documents with images from hundreds of entire Jewish cemeteries from many locations in the US, Canada, Germany, and Israel, which are in searchable indexes. It also includes thousands of Declaration of Intention documents rare books, and other records, such as yearbook pages.

A search here located 13 TOLLIN (TALALAY) relatives of the West Springfield, Massachusetts branch, date of death and cemetery name, including the earliest immigrant ancestor (1898) to the US - Max/Mendl - who died in 1958. Additionally, two of the Newark, New Jersey branch (Uncle Sam and his wife Bessie) were listed in Beth Abraham on South Orange Avenue.

3. Heritage Florida Jewish News (Fern Park, Florida): 1,072,275 records

This is from the SmallTownPapers® Collection, a searchable digital archive back to 1846; 1967-2007 are now online, and SmallTownPapers is currently producing 20-million pages of small-town content from across the US.

New York: Sephardic lecture, Sept. 7

I was just made aware of this opportunity for Sephardic researchers to hear Devin E. Naar's program on Sephardic immigration to the US, at 2pm, Sunday, September 7.

The venue is the Kehila Kedosha Janina Synagogue and Museum, 280 Broome St., on the Lower East Side.

Despite the late notice, I hope that some Tracing the Tribe readers may be able to attend "Between Old World and New: Sephardic Jews in New York during the Early Twentieth Century," which focuses on those from Salonika, Greece.

Naar was born in New Jersey to a Sephardic family. His great-grandfather, Rabbi Benjamin Haim Naar emigrated from Salonika in 1924 to New Brunswick, New Jersey and was rabbi of the Etz Ahaim Sephardic congregation.

Impassioned with learning about his Sephardic heritage, Naar has become a promising young scholar. He majored in history at Washington University (St. Louis, Missouri) where he was an Undergraduate Honors Fellow and graduated summa cum laude (May 2005).

He spent summer 2005 - with grants from the Maurice Amado Foundation and the US Holocaust Memorial Museum - cataloguing a collection of archives from Salonika at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York. Before beginning his studies as a PhD candidate in history at Stanford University, he spent a year in Greece as a Fulbright Scholar.

He is the author of "From the Jerusalem of the Balkans to the Goldene Medina: Jewish Immigration from Salonika to the United States," to be published in the next issue of "American Jewish History."

The program is free and is open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Holocaust Suitcase: Personal artifacts

Much is being written about Holocaust artifacts these days, whether famous works of art whose provenance is questionable, or simpler personal objects.

Here is an interesting post by Bruce M. Hood:

Jennifer Anglim Kreder, an associate professor of law at Northern Kentucky University, has recently written an interesting piece on the legal and ethical implications when museums retain personal artifacts, focusing on the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum.

In it, she identifies the conflicting interests of museums to display personal items and the wishes of relatives who want to have such items returned because of their sentimental value. In particular she reports the same story about Michel Levi-Leleu and his father’s suitcase that I discuss in my book, “SuperSense.”

This is the bizarre story of Michel, a 66-year old retired engineer who took his daughter to see a temporary exhibition in Paris on the Holocaust on loan from the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. This exhibition contained some of the many suitcases that the Holocaust victims were encouraged to pack and label in a cynical ploy used by the Nazis to trick the Jews into thinking that they were being relocated rather than being sent to death camps.

Pierre Levi, Michel’s father, was one such individual who disappeared during the war. The last time Michel saw his father was in 1943 when he left the safety of a refuge in Avignon in France with a cardboard suitcase looking for a new home with his Jewish family. In 2005, Michel’s daughter spotted a battered cardboard suitcase in the Paris exhibition bearing the name of her grandfather.

Michel response was immediate. He wanted the suitcase back and was soon locked in a legal battle to get the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum to return the item to the family.

Kreder reported on the Museum's response - "no such items had ever been returned and that if such claims were ever allowed then this would compromise the whole future of the Museum ever allowing access."

The Museum also attempted to deny the suitcase ever belonged to Levi, even though the case also bore his prisoner number, claiming there were many Pierre Levi’s, although the case also bore his father's address. The Museum characterized Michel’s claims as “highly dubious.”

Kreder’s article is thought-provoking. In a time when many museums are compelled by law to return sacred objects, there is a question of whether museums would survive if they could not display authentic items. This is because we value authentic items more than copies because of our psychological essentialism.

However, in this case, or suitcase to be more precise, it seems unjust to withhold the item from the Levi-Leleu family. For a start, it is very unlikely that all the suitcases in the Holocaust museum could be identified and returned to relatives and there must be thousands. More importantly, Michel does not want the suitcase simply to stick it in the attic. He stated,

“I’m not asking that they give it back to me and I’ll put it in a cupboard. I want it to be seen by the people who visit the memorial.”

Michel wants to keep the suitcase in France so it doesn't repeat the journey already made to Auschwitz.

Kreder, says Hood, makes the analysis of legal precedent of individuals making claims and ends by concluding that museums are morally obligated to return symbolic objects.

I found this piece very interesting. The Kreder article - "The Holocaust, Museum Ethics, and Legalism" - is in the Southern California Review of Law and Social Justice, Vol. 18, 2008, and the abstract is available.

Hood asks in his blog posting: "Do you think that the museum is right by acting on behalf of the majority rather than the individual? I am not so sure."

What do Tracing the Tribe's readers believe?

ShtetLinks welcomes new pages

Susana Leistner Bloch and Barbara Ellman have announced the following webpage additions to JewishGen ShtetLinks.

ShtetLinks are memorials to Jewish communities which once lived in those towns and villages. The pages provide a place for text and photographs so that these communities may be remembered by future generations. The creators and designers are to be commended. Look through ShtetLinks and see if there is a site for your town of interest. If not, consider creating one.

Chabanivka (Bacsava, Bacovo, Batschive), Ukraine
Created by Marshall Katz
Click here.

Hirlau, Romania
Created by Lea Haber Gedalia
Web Design by ShtetLinks volunteer Robert Zavos
Click here.

Kamenka (Kamionka), Belarus
Created by Ze'ev Sharon
Click here.

Koden (Kodni), Poland
Created by Joyce Oshrin
Click here.

Kolonja Izaaka (Kolonia Isaaka, Isakova), Belarus
Created by Irwin Keller
Click here.

Krasnoye (Krasne), Belarus
Created by Eilat Gordin Levitan and Kevin Lo
Click here.

Minsk, Belarus
Created by Eilat Gordin Levitan and Kevin Lo
Click here.

Susanna is the newest JewishGen VP for ShtetLinks, and Barbara is the ShtetLinks Technical Coordinator.

Add Susanna and Barbara:

If you wish to follow their example and create a ShtetLinks webpage for your ancestral shtetl or adopt an exiting "orphaned" shtetlpage, please contact us at shtetl-help@jewishgen.org

There is now design help available to help those who wish to create pages. A recent appeal for HTML volunteers means that a dedicated team can help create a webpage for your ancestral home. Contact Susanna and Barbara at the email above if you'd like such help.

Mexico: Syrian Jews' conference, 9-11 Sept.

An international conference - Syrian Jews and its Diaspora in America - will be held September 9-11, at Mexico City's Mount Sinai Social Center and the Maguen David Center.

Planning and organization is by Dr. Liz Hamui Sutton de Halabe, Professor at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, and specialist on the Jewish Syrian communities in Mexico; Lic. Renee Dayán, Comunidad Maguén David; Lic. Marcos Metta, Alianza Monte Sinaí; Dr. Daniel Fainstein, Director of the Universidad Hebraica; Dra. Shulamit Goldsmith, director, “Programa de Cultura Judaica de la Universidad Iberoamericana;” Tere Urfali, conference assistance and logistics; and Sr. Isaac Aspani, Federation Sefaradí Latinoamericana.

Sponsoring institutions include Alianza Monte Sinaí (Jews from Damascus and Lebanon); Comunidad Maguén David (Jews from Aleppo); Universidad Hebraica (Mexico); and the Jewish Culture Program, Universidad Iberoamericana.

The arrival of Jewish immigrants from Aleppo and Damascus and their descendants has been of great interest to academics despite the fact that Jewish communities in Syria are nearly extinguished. However, the culture is still preserved through intergenerational transmission of values, beliefs, practices and representations that had been remade in Israel and in a century of American Diaspora.

Syrian Jewish congregations in different geographical locations have different characteristics according to the culture and social, economic and political conditions in the places where they have established themselves.

The goal of this conference is to get to know the history of the Aleppo and Damascus communities, their similarities and differences in America and Israel.

Scheduled programs include lectures as well as music, dance and food.

Topics range from Aleppo and Damascus culture and heritage, Rabbi Isaac Abulafia, Aleppo Alliance Schools, migration from Aleppo in the 18-20th centuries; rabbis of Syria; popular culture, superstitions, culture and identity, anthropological perspectives on Mexico City Syrian Jewish life; minority way of life; Latin America's Syrian Jews and Arabs, Syrians in Brazil, Syrians in Lebanese eyes; Argentina's immigrants, Jews and Lebanese in Mexico; entrepreneurial Jewish-Aleppo life; educational models, orthodox women, and Syrian Jewish identity in Mexico; North American Syrian Jews, Syrian Jews in Brooklyn and New Jersey, Syrian Arabs and Jews in New York City, Syrian Jewish immigration to early 20th century New York, identity and memory of Syrian Jews in New York City; Syrian Jews in latin America, Buenos Aires Syrian Jews, Argentinean Syrian Jews, Brazilian Syrian Jews, changing customs and boundaries in Latin American Sephardic Jewry.

Program abstracts are here.

For more details, click here.

South Africa: Yiddish Theater book

A new book on the South African Yiddish theater has been published by Veronica Belling in Cape Town.

"Yiddish Theatre in South Africa: a History from the Late Nineteenth Century to 1960" was published by the Kaplan Centre for Jewish Studies and Research, University of Cape Town, Cape Town, 2008. 194p. 1SBN 978-0-7992-2335-4.

The price is $25 (including airmail postage); order at Kaplan-Centre@uct.ac.za
Belling previously published "Bibliography of South African Jewry" (1997) and an English translation of Leibl Feldman's classic work on the Jews of Johannesburg (2007)

Switzerland: The Bollag family camp

The Bollag family summer routine has followed a schedule set more than a century ago by an ancestor, and detailed in this New Jersey Jewish Standard story by Abigail Klein Leichman

You might call it an extreme family reunion — an event far beyond a Sunday afternoon of picnics and Frisbee.

Every other summer, Aliza and Avi Picard — among other relatives from France, Switzerland, Israel, the United States, Britain, and Belgium — send their children to a two-week family camp ("familiienlagger") in the Alps.

Avi Picard explained that the camp was an outgrowth of a foundation started in 1901 by his ancestor, Samuel Bollag, a Swiss Jew. Bollag, then 80 years old and the father of 12 children, intended the foundation ("Stiftung") as a vehicle for aiding family members and maintaining contact between them as they started moving to distant places.

"The second daughter, Berta, had already moved to Alsace at that time, which was then in Germany and is today in France," said Picard, who is descended patrilineally from Berta.

"The foundation is still active, and every six months we receive a report about births, weddings, and deaths, and also about donations given to the family fund for members in need," said Picard, an Israeli who is living in Teaneck temporarily while teaching Israeli studies — last year at Rutgers and this year at New York University. His wife teaches at the Moriah School in Englewood.

After WWII, the far-flung family created a biennial foundation-funded familiienlagger for cousins aged 7-17. The volunteer staff are relatives who are educators, experienced in hiking and mountain climbing, or who help in the kitchen.

"My father was in those camps, I was there, and my kids have attended the last four camps," said Picard. "Aliza and I served twice as staff members." This summer, the Picards’ four older children — ages 16, 14, 12, and 10 — attended the family camp, leaving their 5-year-old sibling at home.

Though the camps take place most often in the Swiss Alps and sometimes in France, for the foundation’s 100th anniversary the camp was held in Israel, where many of Bollag’s descendants now live. But the campers still come from all over.

"This summer, the majority of the expenses were for flights," said Picard.

The family rented a campsite to accommodate 45 children and a group of adult leaders in a remote Alpine village for the last two weeks of July.

Six months in advance, things are planned, especially for the kitchen. There are family utensils to bring and while most kosher foods can be bought locally, others must be brought.

In Picard's youth, most campers spoke French and Swiss-Germany. He and his brother were the only Israelis. Today the most common language is Hebrew, as some 60% of the campers are Israeli, although English is the main communication langauge, as the French, Swiss and Israeli campers can all speak it at some level.

Activities include hiking, gamesand swimming, while campers over 12 take part in a challenging two-day trip involving hiking to a high-altitude glacier and sleeping in a cabin.

Although the attendees' religious observance varies, all food is kosher and there's a lot of Shabbat singing.

"The atmosphere is traditional, but it’s not religious, and there is no morning service during the week," said Picard. The more fervently Orthodox members of the extended family choose not to attend, nor does the Argentinean branch come.

Nevertheless, the camp still brings together a large mix of nationalities and cultures, he added. And they all attempt to learn more about each other.

"My kids came back telling us that they had seen old 8-millimeter family movies, and had learned more about their relatives," said Picard. "They are trying to understand the family tree and how they are all connected. This is the Jewish history of a family that emigrated everywhere."

What a wonderful family tradition ensuring these young people remain connected and learn about their common family history.

Obama: A rabbi in the family

Tracing the Tribe does not usually comment on political matters, but this was just too good to pass up - and it does connect to Jewish genealogy.

While attending the Chicago 2008 international Jewish genealogy conference, several conference-goers attended Shabbat services at Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in southwest Chicago, headed by Rabbi Capers Funnye. It was inspiring and I recommend it to other Chicago visitors.

A story by Anthony Weiss in The Forward is headlined:
"Michelle Obama Has a Rabbi in Her Family
Capers Funnye, Leading Black Israelite, Is Aspiring First Lady’s Cousin."

While Barack Obama has struggled to capture the Jewish vote, it turns out that one of his wife’s cousins is the country’s most prominent black rabbi — a fact that has gone largely unnoticed.

Michelle Obama, wife of the Democratic presidential nominee, and Rabbi Capers Funnye, spiritual leader of a mostly black synagogue on Chicago’s South Side, are first cousins once removed. Funnye’s mother, Verdelle Robinson Funnye (born Verdelle Robinson) and Michelle Obama’s paternal grandfather, Frasier Robinson Jr., were brother and sister.

Funnye (pronounced fuh-NAY) is chief rabbi at the Beth Shalom B’nai Zaken Ethiopian Hebrew Congregation in southwest Chicago. He is well-known in Jewish circles for acting as a bridge between mainstream Jewry and the much smaller, and largely separate, world of black Jewish congregations, sometimes known as black Hebrews or Israelites. He has often urged the larger Jewish community to be more accepting of Jews who are not white.

Funnye’s famous relative gives an unexpected twist to the much-analyzed relationship between Barack Obama and Jews in this presidential campaign. On the one hand, Jewish political organizers, voters and donors played an essential role in Obama’s rise to power in Chicago, including some of the city’s wealthiest and most prominent families. But the Illinois senator has struggled to overcome suspicions in some parts of the Jewish community, including skepticism about his stance on Israel and discredited but persistent rumors that he is secretly a Muslim.

Funnye, who described himself as an independent, said he has not been involved with the Obama campaign but that he has donated money and was cheering it on.

“I know that her grandfather and her father and my mom and all of our relatives that are now deceased would be so very, very proud of both of them,” Funnye told the Forward.

Michelle Obama and the Obama campaign did not respond to requests for comment.

Read the complete article at the link above.

FGS 2008: Ancestry's new world initiative

Genealogy news is made public at the various annual genealogical conferences. Just announced at the FGS conference - underway in Philadelphia - is Ancestry.com's World Archives Project and first collaboration with the Federation of Genealogical Societies.

Researchers know that handwritten historical records may disappear or disintegrate quickly if not carefully preserved in a variety of ways. This new project allows the genealogy community to help bring free historical record collections to public access.

The process includes gathering historical records and scanning them into the system, entering facts to create a searchable index, and adding that index to Ancestry free to all.

Large collections will be broken down into smaller image-sets and keyers will log in to download a set. Each record will be seen by two keyers and the results compared. If data matches exactly, it will be published on Ancestry. If data is different, an arbitrator will review each keyer's results and decide which is most accurate. There is a tutorial explaining more.

According to the Ancestry.com site, the searchable indexes will be available free to all, while document images will obe accessible for-fee, although "active contributors" (those who help index 900-plus records per quarter) will also receive image access.

Here is the press release:

Ancestry.com Introduces the World Archives Project to Preserve and Provide Online Access to Historical Records

Philadelphia – Sept. 4, 2008 – Ancestry.com, the world’s largest online family history resource, today launched the World Archives Project, a global public indexing initiative designed to give individuals everywhere the opportunity to help preserve historical records. The Federation of Genealogical Societies (FGS) is the first organization to partner with Ancestry.com during this beta phase of this new venture, enlisting genealogists and family history enthusiasts to help test the software and prepare it for a more public release.

Now in public beta, the World Archives Project allows individuals to transcribe information from images of original historical records and to create indexes that will remain accessible for free on Ancestry.com and on Ancestry’s localized sites in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, Germany, France, Sweden, and Italy. Active contributors* will soon be able to access all original images that are part of the World Archives Project. Organizations can also partner with the World Archives Project and sponsor indexing projects. Ancestry.com will donate a digital copy of the sponsored index and images back to partnering organizations.

“As a global society, we are falling further and further behind when it comes to digitizing historical records,” said Tim Sullivan, president and CEO of The Generations Network, parent company of Ancestry.com. “The World Archives Project allows us to work collectively as a community to preserve and to digitize records that will otherwise surely be lost to the wear and tear of time. By providing free access to these indexes on the world’s most popular family history website, we will provide millions of people with access to records that might help them unlock new clues about their ancestors.”

Already, several thousand individuals have joined the World Archives Project private beta, indexing Wisconsin Mortality Schedules and Nebraska State Censuses. Participants provided feedback and recommendations for this public beta release.

“We are thrilled to be a part of this cause and to help spread the world about this new initiative,” said Wendy Elliott-Scheinberg, president of FGS. “The World Archives Project is a great way for enthusiasts and genealogical societies to directly impact and further family history research.”

“FGS has been enormously helpful in the development of our vision for the World Archives Project,” said Sullivan. “The 500+ genealogy societies that FGS represents are absolutely critical to the continued health and growth of genealogical research. We’ve been searching for years for the right way to partner with genealogy societies, and we think this project will allow us to help them attract new members by leveraging the popularity of Ancestry.com. We appreciate the encouragement and support FGS provides and look forward to continuing our relationship as this project marches forward.”

According to the site, all indexes will remain free to the public at Ancestry.com, which will donate copies of record indexes and project images to partnering government archives and genealogy societies. Project images and indexes will also be available at subscribing US libraries, and Ancestry will provide free advertising to partnering genealogy societies. This last bit of information was intriguing and I asked Suzanne Russo Adams of Ancestry's Professional Desk, who just responded:

"Free advertising means society partnership logos will be placed on a designated partnership page as well as society logo and link on the database page for the specific project. For example, the Nebraska State Genealogical Society is the partner for the NE State Censuses; therefore, they will get their link and logo on a World Archives Project partner page as well as on the database, when completed. A partner society also receives a copy of the images and indexes for the society."

Active contributors (those helping to index 900-plus records per quarter) will be able to vote - in the future - on which records are indexed next. They will receive free access to original images in the project’s databases. Those who already subscribe to Ancestry.com will be eligible for a discount (10% US Deluxe; 15% World Deluxe) on renewal.

Note that according to this wording, searchable indexes will remain free to all, but that public access to the document images will be for-fee. General researchers who either wish to download an image or to check the accuracy of a transcription will need a subscription.

For more information, click here. Active contributor guidelines are here.

New York: Jewish book sale, Sept. 7

While some of us crawl the malls, there are other delights. For me, it's books. A book sale is even better. For the bibliophiles among us, here's a great New York City event to investigate.

Several of the northeast's top antiquarian Judaica booksellers will offer hundreds of unusual, rare and out-of-print Jewish books for sale from 10am-4pm Sunday, September 7.

Dan Wyman Books is among the exhibitors. According to various list postings by that company, readers who bring a printed copy of the notice of their participation will receive a 10% discount. Check out their website for some interesting collections, including Yizkor books. However, I don't know what the company will be bringing to the sale.

The venue is the Workman's Circle Building, 45 E. 33rd St., New York, NY 10016 (between Park & Madison).

If you go, let your fellow Tracing the Tribe readers know what treasures you found!

Click BookSaleFinder.com for a website completely devoted to book sales.

Los Angeles: Chicago 2008 report, films

The next Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles meeting will feature a Chicago 2008 conference report and film festival highlights, beginning at 1pm Sunday, September 14.

The schedule offers a variety of important topics, interspersed with films shown in
Chicago:

1pm: Film - "Word Travels: Lithuania - Digging Up Roots."

1:30pm: JewishGen managing director Warren Blatt will review where JewishGen has been and where they are going, outlining its expanding databases, new tools and services.

2pm: Film - "A Torah Returns to Poland"

2:30pm: Gesher Galicia Cadastral Map & Landowner Records Project Update, Lviv vital records, H-SIG Update, South American programs and IAJGS elections.

3pm: Film - "Nicholas Winton: The Power of Good" (Czech)

The JGSLA traveling library and IAJGS conference materials will be available before the program begins (12:30-1pm).

The venue is the University Synagogue, 11960 W. Sunset Blvd. Free admission for JGSLA members; $5, others.

For more details, click here.

UK: Searching Jewish ancestors

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain offers a series of well-written guides to researching Jewish ancestors in the UK and elsewhere.

Rosemary Wenzerul's newest book (July 2008) is "Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors: A Guide for Family Historians." (ISBN: 978 1 84415 788 4; Pen and Sword Family History Books, www.pen-and-sword.co.uk)

This lively and informative guide to researching Jewish family history will be absorbing reading for anyone who wants to find out about the life of a Jewish ancestor.

In a clear and accessible way she takes readers through the entire process of research. She provides a brief social history of the Jewish presence in Britain, with descriptions of the principal communities all over the country. She gives a concise account of the history of genealogy and looks at practical issues of research – how to get started, how to organize the work, how to construct a family tree and how to use the information obtained to enlarge upon the social history of the family. She describes, in practical detail, the many sources that researchers can go to for information on their ancestors, their families and Jewish history.

Vivid case studies are a feature of her book, for they show how the life stories of individuals can be reconstructed with only a small amount of initial information. In addition, there are chapters on Jews in the armed forces and Jewish heraldry. Her invaluable handbook will be essential reading and reference for anyone who is trying to gain an insight into the life of an ancestor or is researching any aspect of Jewish history.

A JGSGB council member and trustee, Wenzerul is active in its educational and family history work.

Other publications in the series include "Jewish Ancestors: A Beginner's Guide to Jewish Genealogy in Great Britain," "Genealogical Resources Within the Jewish Home and Family," "Jewish Ancestors: A Guide to Organising Your Family History Records," "Jewish Ancestors: A Guide to Reading Hebrew Inscriptions and Documents" and "Jewish Ancestors: A Guide to Jewish Genealogy in the United Kingdom."

California: CGS September calendar - Updated

The California Genealogical Society has published its September 2008 calendar of events, including meetings of the Jewish Genealogical Society of San Francisco Bay Area (SFBAJGS) and other area genealogical societies.

Click here for the complete schedule.

Jetlag caused me to miss the link to gen-blogger colleague Steve Danko's San Francisco Bay area gen calendar here. Apologies to Steve.

1pm, Saturday, September 13
Ron Arons: Best Bet Web Sites for Genealogical Research.
Click here for CGS details.

Arons will explore many "best bet" Web sites that allow researchers to find materials online, including historical documents, newspapers and articles, living people, maps and photos, foreign language translators and aids and provide numerous examples of how the Internet has worked for him. He'll slip in some tales from his new book, The Jews of Sing Sing, described as "the true story of Jewish gangsters and other shady characters who served time 'up the river' and the New York Jewish community’s response."

1pm, Sunday, September 21
SFBAJGS panel discussion: - “Post-Conference Review”
Jewish Community High School, 1835 Ellis Street, San Francisco
Click here here for SFBAJGS details.

Among the long list of topics presented by regional genealogy groups are genetic genealogy tests, 10-week genealogy class, software sessions, beginner breakfasts, intro to genealogy, land records and homestead papers, book repair group, New York research group, California State Archives, immigration, US naturalization records, German special interest group, city directories and more.

Humor: Half of the 10 Commandments

All mothers are Jewish, with slight adjustments for accent, gastronomy and origin. Why do we mothers worry so much? Here's one mother's take on our history.

It seems to me that almost every Jew I know suffers from terminal anxiety. And why not? With a history filled with tsouris we've probably developed a Yiddishe mutation: a W-strand on our DNA for "Worry." Forget Murphy's Law. Chances are his real name was Murphosky and his family taught him: "If anything can go wrong, it will."

Picture it. First day of school. September, 1950-something. Eighty-two degrees. I was polished, brushed, dressed, breakfasted, and school bagged ...

MOM:
"The school bus will be here in an hour. Take your scarf and mittens."
ME:
"But mommy ... it's hot."
MOM:
"It could snow."

There's more - much more.

But first sit down in a nice comfortable chair - maybe go horizontal on a nice bed (with side rails???) before clicking on the link. Your mother wouldn't want you to fall down and hurt something while you were laughing.

No, I haven't looked up Murphosky using Steve Morse's One-Step, but I'm sure some of my readers will. Do report back if you find Mr. Murphosky!

Enjoy!

New Jersey: Weequahic's Jewish history

Does Weequahic ring a bell?

If you have a family connection to this Newark, New Jersey neighborhood, here's a new book of interest.

"Images of America: Jews of Weequahic," by Linda B. Forgosh, was reviewed here by Jay Levinson. Although disappointed by the book's lack of serious research, he says it could offer former residents a nostalgic glimpse of the past (1940s-50s).

Our Tollin family lived in Newark and some families also moved to Weequahic, so it was interesting to see the names.

In its heyday Newark, New Jersey boasted one of the largest and most vibrant Jewish communities in the United States. In the early twentieth century the focus of immigrant settlement was in the center-city highlighted by the Prince Street commercial center, but as the second generation entered the work force, the area of residence shifted to a part of the newly developed and quasi-suburban South Ward - the Weequahic neighborhood.

At first the transition from center-city was gradual, but by 1933 Weequahic had its own high school. Not at all surprising, even in its early years a majority of the students were Jewish.

By the early 1950s virtually nothing was left of the old neighborhood, other than a few beleaguered stores and a Reform synagogue whose massive building was hard to sell. For Jews, all eyes were on Weequahic as the place to live.

This book is a major disappointment. Rather than systematically documenting the rise and subsequent fall of a thriving Jewish neighborhood - from a population peak in 1960 to mass flight that left barely a Jew in Weequahic ten years later --- the 128 page paperback has the aura of a bound scrap book.

Weequahic Park was once known as the Waverly Fair Grounds, even though it is outside the neighborhood boundaries.  The reviewer notes information on Weequahic High School and its historic neighborhood rivalries and games. Former Newark residents may find this peek of the past pleasant.

(Images of America: Jews of Weequahic. Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing (2008). $19.95. ISBN 13 978-0-7385-5763-2, 10 0-7385-5763-3)

China: Kaifeng's Jews

This Ynetnews story focuses on Shih Lei, now 30, who studied in Israel for several years.

As a Bar Ilan student, he spoke to an overflowing meeting of JFRA Israel. It is always nice to read more on what he is doing.

1,000 Jews cannot be wrong

Descendants of centuries-old Jewish community in China's Kaifeng rediscover Jewish heritage after near complete assimilation in local community

In Chinese terms, the city of Kaifeng, about 500 miles southwest of Beijing, is reminiscent of the Israeli city of Hadera: The number of its residents is 700,000 – as opposed to Beijing's 15 million or Shanghai's 20 million – and it doesn't even have its own airport.

However, a thousand years ago, Kaifeng was the capital of the Chinese empire, the largest, richest and most advanced in the world at the time, with 600,000 residents that made it the most populated city on earth.

Ancient Kaifeng had a Jewish community – a small but thriving one, whose story is unique in the history of the Jewish people. For the 800 years of its existence, Kaifeng's Jews never suffered from persecution or discrimination. The Chinese authorities, as well as the general population, welcomed their Jewish neighbors, viewed them as citizens in every respect and allowed them to observe their religion with complete freedom.

The story touches on their lineage and rediscovery of the Kaifeng Jewish descendants, now about 1,000 people - some have converted, some are making aliyah.

Thirty-year-old Shi Lei does not try to hide his excitement when he takes his guest, an Israeli journalist, to the central room in his parents' home. His family, which is of Jewish descent, has lived in this home for more than 100 years. After the death of his grandmother and grandfather, Shi, together with his father, turned this room into a mini-museum and a small Jewish center, where he gives classes on Jewish tradition to children and adults of Jewish descent.

Shi Lei, who graduated with a degree in English from the University of Kaifeng, spent close to three years in Israel studying at Jerusalem's Machon Meir and at Bar-Ilan University: "I was the first person from Kaifeng that studied in Israel. I was privileged to receive a wonderful welcome at the Machon Meir yeshiva, and I was treated as a Jew in every respect, although I am not technically a Jew according to Jewish law, and had not yet undergone conversion.

"I decided to return to Kaifeng and to develop my mini-museum, because if I would leave here then there would be no one to teach the younger generation. We feel connected to the Jewish people and to the State of Israel – it's in our blood."

There's more on the community's history and clues. According to the books of Charles White and other scholars, the inscriptions on the synagogue were written in Farsi, Hebrew and Chinese and names on ancestor stones indicated Persian names common into the contemporary era.

DNA testing done over the past few years on the descendents of the Kaifeng Jews, proved them distant relatives of Armenian, Iranian and Iraqi Jews. Most of the researchers, as well as the Kaifeng descendents themselves, tend to suggest that the original Jews in China were merchants from Persia that came by way of the Silk Route (in today's southern Turkey) to the city of Xian in central China.

Now in the city museum, a stone tablet dating to the 1489 synagogue is inscribed inscribed: "According to the commandment of their god, the Jews came from Tian-Sho (Chinese for "India" and "every state to the west of China") with woven materials from the west as a gift for the emperor." He was pleased with the gifts and welcomed the strangers to dwell and keep their customs.

The ancient stone tablet also states that one of the emperors from the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644) bestowed "the gift of incense" upon the Jewish community. It was given to the Jewish doctor Yung-Ching who appears to have been his personal physician. This indicates that Kaifeng's Jews used Chinese names rather than Hebrew names, and incorporated a Chinese ceremony into their religious rituals – the lighting of incense.

Assimilation proved the downfall of this community - all residents could qualify to become government officials by passing exams. The multi-lingual Jews had somewhat of an advantage and Jewish descendants who applied for government jobs was higher than their actual percentage of population.

Officials studied for five years, and were then sent to other places in the empire. The lack of Jewish brides contributed to assimilation, and Jewish life in Kaifeng ended some 150 years ago. The 700-year-old synagogue was destroyed in an 1854 flood.

Some customs still remain and descendants still live in the old Jewish section of the city. In 1953, 55 minorities were recognized, but the Jews ("youtai") were not one of them.

Read the complete article at the link above.

DNA: Vending machines?

Here's a new resource for strange and funny news. It caught my eye because of its article on the future possibilities of DNA vending machines.

Disclaimer: This is in the realm of fun, humor and other jetlag-alleviating treatments.

Hmmmm ... want to get a lot of relatives tested in one place? Photo booths already seem to be on the scene of social events. Imagine getting a DNA booth for your social event? The possibilities are there. It may be easier than trailing Uncle Max during the party trying to grab a glass and test the only hold-out of your great-great-grandfather's direct line - and Max may have more fun doing it. All you'd need to do is pay for the booth. Getting genetic DNA samples from those who don't want to be tested requires some creativity - and a somewhat deep pocket.

Read NonsenseNews.net for the story.

Chicago, IL – Have you checked out the new vending machine in the break room? your co-worker asks. No, you say and ask, Why? It’s weird, he replies. How so? you inquire. I can’t even explain it man, he replies. C’mon, you say and it goes on like this for some time until you get off your lazy butt and walk yourself down to the break room and there it is. Left of the soda, but right of the snack machine. No, not the sink. Your other right. Ah. What? D.N.A.? What does it sell? Ten dollars! That seems kinda steep.

DNA Vending Machines are now popping up all over workplaces across North America and Europe. These machines dispense easy to use DNA Test Kits that can be used by two people looking to find out if they are related and how closely.

A kit costs $10 and is no larger than the box set of Season 1 of LOST. It contains two cotton swabs, four plastic pouches for hair follicles and a small, baseball sized device with a paper feeder that reads the DNA samples, lights up and prints out results.

MENO-DNA, the distributor of DNA Test Kit Vending Machines has reported strong interest and sales since installing the machines in March. “The technology is very exciting to people and they are happy to finally have such unlimited access.” MENO-DNA seems to strongly believe that there is money to be made in vending machine-style DNA Test Kits.

Read more to learn who might be buying if this is ever available, and other equally funny if false stories.

Book: I am my family

PublishersWeekly.Com previewed a book expected to be available in October.
Click here and scroll down to Rafael Goldchain's "I Am My Family: Photographic Memories and Fictions."

Photographer Goldchain describes his family history as one “defined by exile”—many of his Polish-Jewish ancestors immigrated to North and South America; most of those who stayed in Europe perished in the Holocaust.

The photographer conceived this “family album” as a means of rebuilding his “self-identity through affiliation with Polish-born ancestors and East European Jewry.” Working with reminiscences from elderly relatives, old photographs, his own memories and imagination, he has created a series of formal studio portraits in which he—with the help of makeup, elaborate costuming and digital retouching—poses as his relatives from the 19th century on.

While a few images have the look of amateur theatrics, most of the images are deeply affecting; Goldchain summons up youth, age, heartbreak and hope, and his features, the one constant, reappear in every photograph to suggest family resemblance and continuity.

Accompanying narratives lend an almost novelistic depth to the series of photographs, and an appendix that includes production stills, his jottings and pages of vintage family snapshots rounds out this fascinating, commemorative project.

(Princeton Architectural, $40 (168p); 56 duotone and 72 b&w illustrations; ISBN 978-1-56898-738-5; October 2008.)

UK: GenPals Jewish Cemetery update

I returned from my extended trip to the US and found this email from Gaby Laws with a UK Genpals Cemetery Project update.

Tracing the Tribe is happy to cover this excellent project and has previously written about GenPals here and, more recently, here.

Genpals.com now features the following additions to the website:

London: Bancroft Road, Old Maiden Lane Synagogue Cemetery (48 stones)
This cemetery is in a sad state of decay. Many of the remaining stones are severely damaged and frequently offer scant clues as to whom they commemorate.

Yorkshire - Bradford Scholemoor Cemetery (34 stones) & Hartlepool Jewish Cemetery (19 stones)

Kent, Halfway (Queensborough) (8 stones)
There are now two sets of photos. The most recent is from this summer, while the other set was taken in January 2007, when a plastic flower was been placed in front of each grave. This occurred a few days following Holocaust Memorial Day, but extensive local research has failed to find the mystery visitor or the flower significance.

Hope Street, Old Burial Ground (11 stones)

Wales: Glamorgan (Merthyr Tydfil Cefn Coed - 12 stones), Swansea - 14 stones); Gwent (Brynmawr - 1 stone, Newport - 1 stone)
Dr. Helen Fry, co-author, "The Lost Jews of Cornwall": has generously made available her private collection of photographs. We cannot overestimate the value of this archive, nor sufficiently express our gratitude to her for making it available to the project. These are as yet incomplete and additional photos for these and other Welsh cemeteries are very welcome.

Devon: Plymouth Hoe Old Burial Ground (28 stones) & Exeter (25 stones) (more to come)
The project seeks additional pictures for these cemeteries.

Hampshire: Aldershot (31 stones).
This cemetery has now been fully recorded (pre-1927). Photographs were taken before the cemetery was desecrated and many stones irreparably damaged. Other photos, after that year, feature among those desecrated. Alder shot also includes a tragic story.

A visitor drew Laws and Shires' attention to some "lost burials" in a non-Jewish (municipal cemetery); click here

A short article in the local Evening News (1959), reporting on the ‘mystery’ of Jewish burials at Doughty Road, suggests that the 13 Jewish burials found were the result of disease striking a ship from Russia and that the bodies were landed at Grimsby. But it also concludes that this is more of a legend than fact..

However, a much earlier report in the Jewish Chronicle of 1874 seems to hold a more plausible answer as to why Jewish burials had taken place in a cemetery they describe as Christian.

In the 1870’s there was no Jewish burial ground in Grimsby, so burials took place in Hull. However, when small pox hit the area in early 1870’s, Health Officials refused permission for the bodies to be transported to Hull for fear of spreading the disease further. As a result, those who died of small pox were buried at Doughty Road.

An article in The Evening News 1959 reports that there were 5 women and 8 children buried there. It lists the names of three of the women: Rebecca Baranov, Deborah Baranov and Berthe Emily Hyman. The rest remain nameless.

and also here for background. "Our research into the above hit upon this which we felt we had to include even though we don't yet have photos of the tombstones. Immigrants from Russia traveling to America; click here:

‘In a lonely corner in the little Hebrew graveyard out in the country near Grimsby …’ is how the Jewish Chronicle begins their report on the burial of 5 immigrants from Russia who died on board a steamship in 1908.

The burials took place at Nunsthorpe Jewish Cemetery and the tragic incident that lead to their deaths is well reported in various newspapers of the time.

These reports give a small insight into the experiences of immigrants from Russia on their way to a new life.

At least 3 of the immigrants were from the same family: Miriam Woloff, the eldest was 19 years old, Blumah, 15 years and Michel, 11 years. The others 2 were Pesach Leib Ronin 35 years and Schije Kuperstein 32 years.

Gaby Laws and Angela Shire add:

Our thanks to all those who have contributed photographs and to all those who have taken the time to add their comments via our on-line contact facility. We value your support and welcome your input.

Take some time and visit GenPals' very interesting resources at the links above.

UK: JGSGB Conference, Oct. 26

Last year's Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain's annual conference - in London - was an excellence experience with a large interested audience.

The 15th annual event will be held Sunday, October 26, announced
JGSGB chair Laurence Harris, who added that three major experts will be:

- Dr. Nick Barratt, consultant genealogist and presenter of the BBC Who Do You Think You Are? series. He will speak on Family History and the Media.

- Sharon Hintze, director of the London Family History Centre, will cover Jewish Family History Resources on Exhibition Road (The London FHC) and through FamilySearch (including records such as the major London synagogues of the early-mid 19th century and the Knowles Anglo-Jewish Collection)

- Else Churchill, genealogical enquiries officer of the Society of
Genealogists will cover Resources for Jewish Family History at The Society of Genealogists.

Brian Godfrey of JGSGB will also speak on how - with nothing but a 1944 birth certificate, adoption papers and a vague East End address - he was approached by a stranger who had been adopted by non-Jewish parents, to help unravel her Jewish past. With nothing other than her 1944 birth certificate, adoption papers and some vague notion of an address in the East End, Brian will explain the techniques he used to solve this mystery. An emotional story with lots of surprises along the way.

Other sessions include Q&A sessions with a panel of experts on the future of genealogical research; lunch with experts (discuss research with an expert genealogist at your table).

Lunch will be fish or vegetarian, with morning and afternoon refreshments.

A genealogical fair and the JGSGB Library access will round out the day. Early registration (by October 7) costs 30 pounds; afterward, 35 pounds),

Because this event often sells out very early, it is strongly recommended to reserve now (at least by October 7) or face possible disappointment. Until that date, the cost is 30 Pounds, and the price will increase to 35 Pounds for later reservations.

For more information, click here for The Conference Newsletter and registration. All other queries: 2008conferenceATjgsgbDOTorgDOTuk - replace uppercase words with appropriate symbols, please).

Back now in Tel Aviv

Hello, readers!

New York was lovely and relatively cool last week. I managed to see some friends and cousins in the city and on Long Island - at times, it seems that everyone in Great Neck and environs is related to our family.

My flight into Geneva, Switzerland was delightful with a ground temperature of 50F and sunny. With only a very short connecting flight to Tel Aviv, I didn't even have time to call our Dardashti cousins who live in Geneva. Both flights were smooth and comfortable.

However, Tel Aviv was a nearly unbearable 30C when I got outside the terminal at about 6pm tonight. That's hot! Think sticky, humid and the rest of it.

Fortunately, I'm back now in air conditioning, unopened suitcases all over the place and just doing a quick email scan and blog comment check before tackling the aftermath of this summer's trip.

Look for numerous postings in the next few days.