Ancestry.com: Gary Mokotoff webinar, Nov. 5

Gary Mokotoff of Avotaynu.com will present an Ancestry.com webinar focused on the new Jewish Family History Collections at 8pm EST, Wednesday, November 5.

While it sounds great, 8pm Eastern is 1am in London, 3am in Israel, etc. I queried Ancestry as to whether the webinar will be archived so all of us can see it no matter where we live. Suzanne Russo Adams of TGN (Ancestry's parent company) replied: "The webinars are always archived. If you go to the help section on Ancestry and click on the “webinar” tab you will see upcoming webinars as well as all the archived webseminars that have taken place in the past."

The combined databases comprise nearly 26 million records of Jews that can be searched by Ancestry's world class technology. Some collections are reserved for subscribers, while millions of records remain freely accessible to the public. Jewish genealogy expert Gary Mokotoff will walk us through the North American, European, Holocaust and other significant Jewish collections on Ancestry.com. He will highlight some of the benefits this collection and search technology will provide to people searching for their Jewish heritage.

A 20-minute Q&A session will follow.

Although Gary's name is familiar to most readers of Tracing the Tribe, here's some background:

Gary Mokotoff is an author, lecturer and leader of Jewish genealogy. He has been recognized by three major genealogical groups for his achievements.

He is the first person to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS); recipient of the Grahame T. Smallwood Award of the Association of Professional Genealogists; and the Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Humanitarian Award of the Federation of Genealogical Societies. Gary is also known for his application of computers to genealogy.

Among his accomplishments is co-authorship of the Daitch-Mokotoff soundex system; the JewishGen Family Finder, a database of ancestral towns and surnames being researched by some 50,000 Jewish genealogists throughout the world and the Consolidated Jewish Surname Index.

Register for the webinar on Ancestry's homepage. Look at the left sidebar and scroll down to Jewish Family History Webinar

California: Abraham's Children & Jon Entine, Nov. 10

Jon Entine, author of "Abraham's Children: Race, Identity and the DNA of the Chosen People," will be the speaker at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV).

Jon is an enthusiastic, entertaining speaker who connects genealogy and genetics. He has spoken to standing-room-only audiences at several international IAJGS conferences. The book is a great read. I was privileged to see it in galley form before it was published - I couldn't put it down!

The meeting begins at 7pm, Monday, November 10 (note different day and time), at Temple Adat Elohim, Thousand Oaks, California. There is no charge to attend.

Can identity be found in a pinprick of DNA? What can genes tell us about our ethnic and religious roots—what used to be called our “race”?

In ABRAHAM’S CHILDREN, author Jon Entine marries genealogy and genetics to vividly bring to life a new understanding of Western identity and the shared biblical ancestry of Jews and Christians. The book uses the latest DNA technology to reconstruct genealogical trees and captivating family narratives. This is a biblical epic told through the prism of our genes.

He examines the origins of many diseases, from breast cancer to brain disorders.

Jon is an internationally respected author, consultant and public policy expert focused on leadership, sustainability and science and society. He is an adjunct fellow at the American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C.

Attendees may purchase the book at the meeting and have it signed by the author. For more information or details, email publicity AT jgscv DOT org

Florida: 18th Mini-Conference, Nov. 19

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County will hold its 18th Workshop/Mini-Conference on Wednesday, November 19, in the Beifield Auditorium at the Levis JCC campus in Boca Raton.

The full day conference, open to the public, is geared to both beginner and intermediate researchers.

The conference chair is Sylvia Furshman Nusinov, a past president of the society.

Sylvia says that this year several changes have been made, resulting in lower fees, a shorter agenda, and innovative programming sessions focusing on beginner researchers as well as intermediates.

Five well known genealogical educators will present sessions on how to research family history with the latest resources. Here's the schedule.

9.30am: Registration

10am-noon: Concurrent sessions:

- Beginner's Workshop: "The Aleph Bet of Jewish Genealogy - Where do you begin - the Where, How and Why," with Phyllis Kramer, VP Education, JewishGen.

- Intermediate/Advanced Workshop: “Photographic and Document Preservation – Scanning and Restoring Old Family Photos, and Methodology and Technology in Genealogical Data Exchange,” with Beau Sharbrough, VP Content, Footnote.com.

12.15-1pm: Kosher box lunch

Afternoon: Sequential sessions

- How to navigate Footnote.com’s Jewish Records, and other online important historic documents, now available through an agreement between the National Archives Records Administration [NARA] and Footnote.com, with Beau Sharbrough.

- How to use your home computer to access Jewish genealogical resources available through the PBC Library, with Palm Beach County Library System's genealogical research staff: supervisor Bob Davidsson and research librarian Isabel Toolsie.

- How to convert genealogical research into compelling and interesting narratives, with writer/instructor Patricia Charpentier of “Writing Your Life.”

The Resource Room, manned by Natalie and Dr. Marv Hamburg, will be open to researchers and genealogy experts will be on site with displays of genealogically related maps, books, albums and family trees, etc. Translators will be available by appointment, to translate documents in Polish, German, Hebrew and Yiddish.

In the Plough Library, librarians Irving Skorka and Ben Karliner will assist with researching the JGSPBCI Genealogy and Judaic Book collection, along with computers for Internet research.

Fees, including lunch: Members, $25; others, $30.

For more information, visit the JGSPBC website.

Jewish Records: Largest online collection launches

Ancestry.com has announced the launch of the world's largest online collection of Jewish historical documents and databases from JewishGen and the American Joint Distribution Committee (JDC - known popularly as The Joint).

Joint and JewishGen databases in this release will be searchable for free in a new Jewish Family History experience on Ancestry.com. The Jewish historical documents - many online for the first time - offer photographs, immigration records, Holocaust records and memorials, for more than 26 million records of Jewish life, in combination with millions of relevant Ancestry.com records such as census records, passenger lists, military records and more.

The Joint's archives contain some 40-50 million pages of archival materials dating from 1914 to the present; many have genealogical interest to scholars and Jews around the world. Two important Joint collections were digitized for the first time:

Jewish Transmigration Bureau Deposit Cards, 1939-1954: This collection shows funds paid by American Jewish citizens to support the emigration of friends and relatives from European countries during and after WWII. There are deposit cards for about 60,000 individuals who emigrated from Germany, Austria, former Czechoslovakia, Holland, Belgium, and Luxembourg, mostly 1940-1942. Some cards show travel completed as late as 1956.

Munich, Vienna and Barcelona Jewish Displaced Persons and Refugee Cards, 1943-1959: This collection contains records of displaced Jews who were provided with food, medical care and clothing and emigration assistance by the JDC. It includes some 85,000 registration cards of Jewish Displaced Persons who registered with the emigration department of JDC in Munich and Vienna after World War II, in addition to cards for Jewish refugees for whom JDC provided care in Barcelona during and after the war.

More than 300 JewishGen databases will be available, representing 14 countries with more than 5 million records. JewishGen's 250,000+ users share genealogical information, techniques and more, utilizing a growing database of more than 11 million records. In July 2008, It entered into a partnership with Ancestry.com which will eventually provide Ancestry with access to some 10 million records, while Ancestry will provide technical support to Jewishgen. Databases available include:

·The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry: More than 1 million names of Jews represented in nearly 2,000 Jewish cemeteries around the world.

·Yizkor Book Necrologies: Names of those murdered in the Holocaust which directs users back to the Yizkor Books themselves – memorials which offer vivid, first-hand accounts of the Holocaust and its aftermath.

·The Given Names Database: Learn possible European, Hebrew and Yiddish translations of an ancestor’s given name.

·A Holocaust Database: Two million names including 1,980 names on "Schindler’s List," in Plaszów, Poland and Brünnlitz, Czechoslovakia.

·Jewish Records Indexing (JRI-PL) Poland and All Lithuania Database: More than 2 million indexed names from databases in Lithuania and Poland containing vital information.

Ancestry.com, JewishGen and the Joint celebrated the collaboration and unveiled the new Jewish Collection Wednesday mornin (October 29) at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (JewishGen is a Museum affiliate).

More on the partners:

The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) was founded in 1914, and today works in more than 70 countries to rescue those in danger, provide relief to those in distress, revitalize overseas Jewish communities, and help Israel overcome the social challenges that beset its most vulnerable citizens. It also provides non-sectarian disaster relief and long-term development assistance to the world's least fortunate populations.

JewishGen became an affiliate of the Museum on January 1, 2003. An Internet pioneer, JewishGen was founded in 1987 and has grown from a bulletin board with only 150 users to a major grass roots effort bringing together hundreds of thousands of individuals worldwide in a virtual community centered on discovering Jewish ancestral roots and history.

Ancestry.com's global network of family history sites is owned by The Generations Network, Inc, including nine Web sites in the US, UK, Canada, Australia, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden and China. Ancestry members have access to 7 billion names contained in 26,000 historical record collections. Tree-building and photo upload are free on all the sites. Users have created more than 7.5 million family trees containing 725 million profiles and 12 million photographs. In August 2008, more than 5 million unique visitors logged onto Ancestry.com in August 2008 (comScore Media Metrix, Worldwide).

For more on this collaboration:

Read Newsday's article here, with comments by JewishGen's managing director and a rabbi, on how this release will be valuable for Long Island's major Jewish population.

Seattle: Putting flesh on the bones, Nov. 10

Author and genealogist Ron Arons will speak at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State at 7pm, Monday, November 10.

Ron's topic is "Putting the Flesh on the Bones: Adding the "Why" to the Who, When and Where. He's a great speaker with a wealth of knowledge, so do try to attend his meeting.

Don't just collect names of relatives; learn an approach that concentrates on research efforts to explore their life examining "why" they may have acted the way they did.

The meeting is at the Stroum Jewish Community Center auditorium on Mercer Island. The JGSWS library will be available and WiFi will be available, so bring your laptops. Fee: JGSWS members, free; others, $5. Doors open at 7pm; the program starts promptly at 7.30pm.

For more information, click here.

Belarus: Dokshitsy Jewish Cemetery

Aaron Ginsburg, president of the Friends of Jewish Dokshitsy, recently reported that the town has re-erected 134 tombstones on the grounds of the Jewish cemetery, which was destroyed in 1965.

Most of the stones were buried under a road for 40 years.

Read more about the group at Jewish Dokshitsy and view photos of the tombstones here.

Aaron writes that help is needed to translate the inscriptions on the stones. If you can help, have questions or need more information, contact him here.

Read more about the history of the project and the group on our related blog, The Jewish Graveyard Rabbit, which focuses on Jewish cemeteries, preservation/restoration projects, reading Hebrew tombstones, Jewish customs and more.

Poland: Sites of Jewish interest

For an extensive list of Polish towns with sites of Jewish interest (cemetery, synagogue, and others), try JewishTravel.pl.

It offers an interactive map as well as an alphabetical list of towns with remaining sites of interest to family historians and genealogists. Most towns have minimal details (e.g., one cemetery remains), while other towns provide more details.

For a longer posting on the resources at JewishTravel.pl, how to use it for leads to further information and additional information, see this post on Tracing the Tribe's related cemetery site, Jewish Graveyard Rabbit.

Argentina: Paul Armony z'l

Jewish genealogy has lost a great friend, passionate colleague and dedicated researcher. I was deeply saddened to learn of the death of Paul Armony of Argentina, who died October 24, 2008 (25 Tishri 5769).

The founding President of the Sociedad Argentina de Genealogía Judia - today the Asociacion de Genealogia Judia de Argentina - Paul was truly the force behind that society and its many achievements. As editor of the society's journal, Toldot, he was honored by the IAJGS.

Paul is survived by his wife Eva; sons Ariel, Victor and Jorge; brother Alberto and family, two daughters-in-law and five grandchildren.

Burial will be this morning (Sunday, October 26) in the La Tablada cemetery according to Jewish tradition.

For more information and to read messages of condolence, view the AGJA site. Messages may be sent to info@agja.org.ar

.............................

I knew Paul for many years, and had known of him for several years before we finally met in person. We communicated occasionally through the years. He was always most generous with his time and assistance to colleagues around the world attempting to research Argentinean family branches.

Although living in Argentina, he spent time in Montreal - two sons are university professors - and returned to Argentina.

Stan Diamond of the Montreal JGS wrote that he experienced "first hand the depth of his [Paul's] interests, the breadth of his knowledge, the intensity of his spirit and the inner drive that has made the Asociacion de Genealogia Judia de Argentina a leader in making important Jewish genealogical resources available to researchers around the world. We are all diminished by the loss of this most generous colleague and friend."

Carlos Glikson of Argentina wrote that "Paul was an example of knowledge, generosity and strength, and - as a tireless, perseverant and devoted leader - resolutely impulsed and organized the advance of Jewish genealogy in Argentina."

He will be missed by everyone who knew him, who was inspired by him and who received his generous help. May his family be comforted.

Music: Sephardic music website

Sephardic family history researchers now have a chance to listen online to the same recordings their ancestors heard and sang. Perhaps you'll even remember a grandparent singing some of these beautiful melodies, or recognize a synagogue liturgical piece.

Joel Bresler has created the Sephardic Music site, showcasing more than a century of recorded Sephardic music, beginning with old 78s down to today's formats.

On the home page, on the right, are samples of the earliest Sephardic recordings and others more contemporary. Bresler has compiled extensive details about the recordings, the artists and performance styles.

The next section covers the second half-century of recorded Sephardic music, touching on the increasing recordings and diverse performing styles.

There is a discography of Sephardic 78s listed by label, by artist and by song title. Included is information on the record companies, as well as early catalogs and advertisements.

Eventually, the site will offer a comprehensive list of all modern era recordings and more than 10,000 song samples. Just as one example, there is a section for the discography and samples for more than 125 versions of the Sephardic song, a la una yo naci.

Definitions and history are included with the caveat that the site focuses on the music of Jews descended from those exiled from the Iberian Peninsula and who landed in the Ottoman Empire, Turkey, Greece, Yugoslavia, Bulgaria and Morocco. An important cultural marker is the use of Ladino (Judeo-Spanish) in most of the recordings.

Bresler does not cover music from Iran, Syria, Yemen, India, etc. even though he says "it is wonderfully enjoyable listening," and that explained why I didn't see our very famous cousin, the classical Persian singer Yona Dardashti, known as the Nightingale, in Teheran, Iran.

Bresler includes a plea to those who may hold old Sephardic recordings, and states that he will collaborate with collectors and record companies to spur re-release of the recordings on CD and the Web.

To date we have processed close to 8,000 song performances, along with accompanying graphics. When done, the digitized collection should include well over 90% of the modern corpus, and half or more of the 78s. The Phase II sephardicmusic.org site will list all known commercial recordings of Sephardic music, including sound samples of over 10,000 performances and cover graphics. Song titles in the broader discography will be linked as they are now for the 78s, enabling users to easily locate all versions of a particular song. We will include selected song texts as well.

He also wants to integrate the site's holdings into Hebrew University's library system, for the benefit of researchers and libraries worldwide. He's also looking for time, money and expertise to help build the future website and integrate with HU.

Contact Bresler through the site link above if you can help, have old recordings or for more information.

New York: Lodz film, Nov. 2

The last Yiddish film produced in Poland will be screened in New York on Sunday, November 2.

Our Children - אינדזערע קינדער - Undzere Kinder - was filmed in an orphanage (Helanovek, near Lodz) in 1948. It is in Yiddish with English subtitles.

The film screening and a panel discussion, hosted by the Freudian Colloquium Committee, will take place from 2-5pm at 802 Kimmel Center, 60 Washington Square South.

The panel moderator is Rivka Greenberg, with panelists Maurice Preter, Isaac Tylim, Judith Eckman-Jadow. Click here for information on the participants.

The film is part docu-drama, part melancholic comedy. Produced in Poland, it was never shown there. It depicts a comedy duo performing for an audience of Jewish orphans, many of whom were survivors of the Holocaust.

Their performance stirs up painful memories of recent events, and offends the children by the sentimentalized and naive depiction of war-time conditions. Having all lived through the reality of separation and loss, the children start telling their stories.

The film has become a tradition initiated by Dr. Preter, at international psychoanalytic conferences to explore post-Shoah psychological trauma and its representation in film.

Click here for information on the film and the participants.

There's a very interesting piece by Shimon Redlich describing Lodz, his experiences and the making of the film here.

Interested in more information for Lodz?

Roni Seibel Liebowitz of the Lodz Area Research Group (LARG) has listed these online Lodz resources:

Lodz ShtetLinks

Lodz Area Research Group (LARG)

Belchatow ShtetLink

Belchatow Yizkor Book Project

Jewish Records Indexing-Poland (JRI-Poland)

'Jewish Names of Morocco' back in print

An extremely useful book for Sephardic genealogy and Jewish names is Abraham Laredo's "Les noms des Juifs du Maroc," (Moroccan Jewish Names). Published in 1978, it has been out of print for many years.

The book offers historical analysis, social and geographical origins of each of the Jewish names in northern Morocco.

Spanish publisher Libreria Hebraica has now reprinted it in a two-volume facsimile edition (the book is in French). The first volume has 480 pages; the second volume is 1,161 pages. There appears to be a new name index in Latin letters. The price is 65 euros.

The publisher offers another book by Laredo, The Origins of the Jews of Morocco (Los orígenes de los judíos de Marruecos). It appears to have been re-edited with an introduction and notes by Jacobo Israel Garzon, and published in July 2007. According to the website, the book is necessary to understand the history of the Moroccan Jews. The 218-page book is 22 Euros.

Israel Garzon has also written The Jews of Tetuan (Los judios de Tetuan, Hebraica Editions, 2005)/ The 264-page volume is 24 euros. This book covers society, architecture (including old and new Jewish Quarters, the cemetery and more), culture, folklore, language, liturgy, as well as other topics.

Jacobo Israel Garzon is president of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain.

The website is in Spanish, but it isn't too difficult to navigate. On the left, find the Busqueda Rapida (Quick Search) box, followed by Busqueda Avanzada (Advanced Search). Type in an author or keyword. Under advanced search, there's a filter for a specific search (old books, new books, scholarly books, events, and Hebraica Editiones). The Spanish terms in the drop-down menu are libro antiguo, libro nuevo, libro erudite, eventos, and titulas de Hebraica Ediciones.

There are books in the list about Sephardim in many places (Turkey, various cities in Spain, etc.), dictionaries of Judeo-Espanol and many other topics.

info@libreriahebraica.com is the email for information on any of their works. I'm sure that someone there will be able to read and answer your query in English if you need help.

New Blog: Jewish Art Monuments

Samuel Gruber writes the Jewish Art Monuments blog.

Sam is a cultural heritage consultant involved in a wide variety of documentation, research, preservation, planning, publication, exhibition and education projects. Trained as a medievalist, architectural historian and archaeologist, his expertise for two decades is in Jewish art, architecture and historic sites.

I'm happy to announce that he will be contributing his expertise to the Jewish Graveyard Rabbit. And, if you think the name is familiar, he's the brother of expert Jewish travel writer Ruth Ellen Gruber; they often work together.

Here's how Sam describes his blog:

This blog provides news and opinion articles about Jewish art, architecture and historic sties - especially those where something new is happening. Developed in connection with news gathering for the International Survey of Jewish Monuments website (www.isjm.org), this blog highlights some of the most interesting Jewish sites around the world, and the most pressing issues affecting them.

His blog, he says, "allows me to clear my email and my desk, by passing on to a broader public just some of the interesting and compelling information from projects I am working on, or am following. Feel free to contact me for more information on any of the topics posted, or if you have a project of your own you would like to discuss. Much of this material on this blog I share with the International Survey of Jewish Monuments. ISJM is always looking for volunteers!"

His blog came to my attention with this posting on the Jews of North Carolina, recounting that the Jewish Heritage Foundation of North Carolina (JHFNC) premiered its documentary film "Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina" with showings in Greensboro, NC on October 11 and 19, to be followed on February 22, 2009 in Charlotte. The film is the first part of a much larger project (museum exhibit, educational resources and a book).

There's more information in this Greensboro News article.

North Carolina's only Jewish historical group, the JHFNC was established in 1996 and seeks to promote understanding of the Jewish people by educating both Jews and the general public about the history, culture, and religion of the Jewish people and by encouraging appreciation of the beauty of Jewish ritual and practice. It collects and preserves artifacts and records the history of Jewish settlement in North Carolina, presents programs on the state's Jewish experience, and connects state resources.

The exhibit, "Down Home: Jewish Life in North Carolina" will present four centuries of Jewish life and. in 2010, will travel to the state's major history museums.

The article indicates that Sara Lee Saperstein of Greensboro, a JHFNC board member, remembered only a single sentence about Jews in her eighth-grade state history book. As an adult, she learned about metallurgist Joachim Gans of Prague who arrived in 1585 with Sir Walter Raleigh. She hadn't realized that the state's Jewish history went back that far.

JHFNC research historian Leonard Rogoff has sought project support for 10 years. and said “We heard, 'I thought we were going to be forgotten,’ a lot.”

The documentary's audience is not only Jewish, however. Prior to Ellis Island, many immigrants (including Jews) entered through coastal shipping ports, such as Wilmington and Charleston.

“The interesting thing about North Carolina is not only that the story has never been told or presented, but it’s never really been researched,” Rogoff said.

Many early Jews were peddlers who settled where their money ran out. The story begins there but continues with those same families creating successful companies employing thousands of people and how they built their communities, including Brenner Children’s Hospital (Winston-Salem), Levine Children’s Hospital (Charlotte), Moses Cone Hospital (Greensboro) and the Brody School of Medicine (East Carolina University).

In 1949, Benjamin Cone became Greensboro's first Jewish mayor when Jews were only some 500 in the city of 70,000.

A line producer of the film said that in the 19th century, according to Southern historians, many Christians who lived in the stat had a strong affiliation with the Old Testament. “These people coming in were viewed as the 'people of the book’ and they were viewed with fascination. People would come to them and have their babies blessed.”

The flip side: There were also murders, mob attacks and social discrimination.

There's much more; read the complete story at the link above.

Canada: Woman traces ancestry to 700AD

A Belleville, Ontario paper carried a story that belongs in the "skeptic" category - if I had one.

I kept thinking it was just a typo, and the story said nothing else about these deep roots.

The roots of Linda Harris' family tree are deep, so deep in fact the Belleville woman has not only been able to trace her ancestry back to 700 AD, but learn some of her forebears were prominent Belleville citizens, too.

For the past eight or nine years, Harris has used the Internet as a tool to investigate her heritage and look for ancestors for both she and her husband's families. It's a time consuming hobby which has lead her across the world wide web and has allowed her to resurrect a number of interesting people.

Read the complete story at the link above. Even a casual reader would think that if she had traced family back to 700 AD, the reporter might have been curious and written more about it.

Poland: How Lodz became a casualty

Jewish genealogists researching Lodz, Poland will want to read "Ghettostadt: Lodz and the Making of a Nazi City," by Gordon J. Horwitz (Harvard/Belknap Press, 416 pp.,$29.95).

It was reviewed in the Boston Globe, by John Merriman, a Yale University history professor.

When German forces stormed into Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, Lodz was the country's second-largest city and the second-largest Jewish community in Poland. The city's population was well over 600,000, including about 200,000 Jews, most quite poor. The German population of Lodz was about 60,000. The city would never be the same.

German propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels proclaimed Lodz a hideous city, industrial, dirty, and diseased, because so many Jews lived there. The city was renamed Lodsch and the following April named Litzmannstadt, after a World War I general and fervent Nazi. Polish names had to go. The largest boulevard became Adolf-Hitler-Strasse.

Litzmannstadt was to be a modern city without Jews or other Poles, ready to welcome ethnic Germans from Soviet-occupied eastern Poland, Galicia, Estonia, and Latvia. Jews would be confined in a ghetto on the northern edge of the city, before being banished. In May 1940, 164,000 Jews lived in a ghetto no more than four kilometers square, barbed wire separating them from the rest of the city. The buildings they left behind were "decontaminated."

In 1941, a film crew recorded the efficient city: a park with pond and walkways, festivals, concerts, sports and a zoo of exotic animals.

The head of the Jewish community in 1939, Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski coordinated the implementation of Nazi policies dealing with the Jews, and organized the ghetto, schools, hospitals, orphans and the elderly.

The ghetto was to pay for its upkeep. Gold, silver, currency, and jewelry confiscated from Jewish families and then sold would not be nearly enough. Hans Biebow served as the German director of the industrial work of the ghetto, working with Rumkowski. Biebow's obsession was to assure the productivity of the work force. Tailors, seamstresses, and other workers and more than 5,000 sewing machines would turn out uniforms, underwear, earmuffs, gloves, hats, boots and shoes (200,000 pairs in December 1942) for Nazi soldiers, and clothes for the German domestic market.

The review says:

"Ghettostadt" is wrenching, absolutely heartbreaking. We of course already know the horrific outcome. The Jews then remaining in the ghetto, hoping against hope, did not. Part of the sheer horror of it all is the recounting of daily life, amid disease, hunger, and death, each rumor generating waves of anxiety, anguish, and panic, particularly as deportations increased. ...

The 68,000 people remaining in the ghetto at the end of July 1944 were were taken away to be exterminated.

Read the complete article at the link above.

New Blog: The Jewish Graveyard Rabbit

The Jewish Graveyard Rabbit is now online with two posts here and here.

In response to fellow geneablogger Terry Thornton's formation of the the Association of Graveyard Rabbits, many established bloggers (see the association site for the continually updated list) have formed local blogs dedicated to their local cemeteries.

According to Terry, the scope includes the premise "that member blogs will be devoted exclusively to cemeteries, grave markers, burial customs and thus promote the study of cemeteries, the preservation of cemeteries, and transcription of genealogical and historical information that may be found in cemeteries." He also suggested that such blogs be local in nature, restricted to a single geographic area.

I believe, however, that since Jewish cemeteries are worldwide and share specific customs, symbols, inscriptions and language - and also due to the growth in restoration and preservation projects - that an encompassing Jewish Graveyard Rabbit, with an international team of contributing writers, would provide much more information in one place, with less duplication and overlap.

JGR welcomes input from Jewish genealogists around the world who can provide information (and photographs) on their local cemeteries, restoration and preservation projects. This scope includes Ashkenazi, Sephardi and Mizrahi customs and traditions.

A team of writers is now being gathered, and readers are invited to contribute relevant postings. If you would like to be part of this effort, email jgrarab@yahoo.com, provide contact details, proposed topic/country, etc.

We'd be happy to welcome you at the Jewish Graveyard Rabbit.

John Newmark of the Transylvanian Dutch blog has established Arnevet Beth Olam (Hebrew translation) for Jewish cemeteries in St. Louis, Missouri.

UK: Sephardim on incoming passenger lists

Celia Male, in London, is one of today's Jewish genealogy research stars, who often focuses on Sephardic information. She has just sent me this report on the UK Incoming Passenger Lists (1878-1960) just released on Ancestry.com.

I believe they will be a boon to Sephardic researchers with ancestors in the Caribbean, USA, South America, Antipodes, India, Burma, etc etc.

Whereas Jewish genealogists looking for the arrival in the U.K. of their families from Eastern {and Western} Europe from the late 1800s onwards will probably be disappointed, many Sephardic records are in fact there as the database shows passengers picked up at various ports of call in the Mediterranean and other areas of the world.

Celia notes that the "small print" of this release provides the following:

1. The database is an index to the Board of Trade's passenger lists of ships arriving in the UK from foreign ports outside of Europe and the Mediterranean from 1878-1888 and 1890-1960.(NB: two years are missing.)

2. The database is an index to the Board of Trade’s passenger lists of ships arriving in the UK from foreign ports outside of Europe and the Mediterranean. Exceptions to this are vessels that originated outside of these areas but then picked up passengers in European or Mediterranean ports en route.

Thus, says Celia, such ports as Haifa, Port Said, Suez, Tangiers, Casablanca, Tripoli, Beirut, Brindisi, Lisbon, Naples, Gibraltar and Istanbul are included. Many of these are listed as transit stops and passengers are listed.

And, she writes, it explains "why I am there in 1945 with my parents and brother travelling from Alexandria to Southampton on a troop ship return with thousands of British troops from the Far East. It also explains why you can see a BROMBERGER travelling from Haifa."

Celia's research has unearthed many Sephardic names in this database, including among others: ABECASSIS, ADES, ADUTT, ALHADEFF, ANZARUT, ARBIB, BELLELI, BENATTAR, DWEK/DOUEK, FINZI, HATCHWELL (was HACHUEL), HENRIQUES, MIZRAHI, MONTEFIORE, SHASHOUA (as variant), ZILKA/ZILKHA and more.

Importantly, writes Celia, "They come from far and wide - it really is exciting to check them out." Her opinion is that "this database will be a very valuable resource for Sephardic research.

Caveat: The lists are searchable, but to see the manifests readers must subscribe to ancestry.com

Celia has also discovered other database tips, which readers should take into account when constructing a search:

If you enter a country into the port of departure field you get no response, i.e., Japan or Egypt - but enter Yokohama or Alexandria and you find the passengers.

However, there are discrepancies - If you enter Hamburg as Ports of Voyage you get over 55,000. Now try the same with Hamburg Port of Departure you get 1,597 passengers and they start with three passengers in 1902. I cannot believe that no ships ever stopped there before to pick up passengers.

Now try Genoa - you get nearly 1,571 with Port of Departure starting in 1928. With Ports of Voyage you get 137,272 starting in 1890. Many of these could have come from the Middle East as I know people from Egypt often travelled to Genoa and changed boats.

Conclusion: as with all databases one has to zap around and never take anything for granted. Careful researchers often discover things others do not know.

Celia suggests researchers try searching only by age or by port - such as Haifa, Port Said, Suez, Tangiers, Casablanca, Tripoli, Beirut, Brindisi, Lisbon, Naples and Gibraltar. Using Istanbul, she located ALHADEFF, a famous Sephardic family from Rhodes.

She adds that Odessa is mysteriously linked to Montreal and sadly shows very few, as does Danzig, although Bremen has many entries and, as expected, Piraeus also has many entries.

On a personal note, Celia says that for the first time, she knows the exact date her father returned to London from a year in New York, working for a bank listed as his address on the 1926 manifest. Following a Constantinople assignment, he was sent to Alexandria in 1927, and that's why her family is on the 1945 manifest noted above.
"This database will be a bonanza for many of us."

And that's why Celia is a star! Thank you, Celia.

Berlin: Kristallnacht remains discovered

Kristallnacht remains have been discovered in Brandenburg near Berlin, covering a site about the size of four soccer fields. The story appeared in the Guardian.

Israeli investigative journalist Yaron Svoray, who made the discovery, is the son of Holocaust survivors. He's a detective, Nazi hunter and FBI operative.

The dumping ground contains personal and ceremonial items looted during the November 9, 1938 night of terror which targeted Jewish property and places of worship. It is believed the items were brought by rail to the village and dumped.

Svoray said the historical significance of the find was pointed out to him by a historian. He was looking for something completely different when he came across the remains. Within two hours, he had uncovered the first items.

"The locals of this site have basically been living with this dark hidden secret for 70 years," he said.

Among the items he found were glass bottles engraved with the Star of David, Mezuzahs, painted window sills, and the armrests of chairs found in synagogues. He also found an ornamental swastika. His search continues, under the protection of bodyguards after threats to his life.

British historian and author Martin Gilbert said the size of the site wasn't surprising - some 1,400 synagogues, additional Jewish institutions, shops and homes were completely or partially destroyed.

The find was verified by educational historian Tanja Ronen-Lohnberg at a Holocaust research center - Ghetto Fighters' House - in Israel. "We don't want to falsify history, so we sent historians who confirmed these items belonged to the time." The center plans to organize a project for German and Israeli children to search together through the remains.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Philadelphia: Jewish archives to close

A budget crisis means the Philadelphia Jewish Archive Center will be closing after more than three decades as an independent organization, according to "Facing Tough Times," by Anthony Weiss, in The Forward,

The Philadelphia archive has been independent since its 1972 founding, aided by local historians who worried that valuable records and artifacts would be lost. The Jewish federation provided funding and the archive began in a basement at an annual rent of $1. Most local Jewish archives are connected with a historical society or university.

Its collections, which span nearly 200 years of Philadelphia Jewish history, will be absorbed into the archives of nearby Temple University.

“This was a decision that we did not want to make,” said Carole Le Faivre-Rochester, the archive’s president. “We wanted to stay here and be our little independent institution as we have been for 36 years. But given the climate, and the fact that we’re an archive and not that popular in the Jewish community, we couldn’t do it anymore.”

The closing comes at a particularly difficult time for small non-profits — charitable dollars are becoming scarce amidst the economic downturn. In Philadelphia, the fundraising field has been further crowded by a massive capital campaign to build a Jewish history museum. But it appears that the center’s most fundamental problem is that archives simply aren’t a big draw for local Jewish visitors or donors.preserved. On the other hand, they’re not really a funding priority for anybody.”

Brandeis University professor of American Jewish history Jonathan Sarna says everyone wants to see records preserved, but it's not really a funding priority.

Since the archives opened, the federation, synagogues, Jewish organizations and the prestigious Jewish Publication Society (JPS) have used it as a repository. Sarna says it is one of the best of local Jewish archives with "important collections of national significance."

Today, it is located in a downtown renovated factory.

In the modern, climate-controlled room, thousands of carefully labeled and sorted gray boxes hold the story of Jewish Philadelphia: records from Congregation Rodeph Shalom, the first Ashkenazi congregation in the Western Hemisphere; the original resolutions of the Hebrew Sunday School Society, the first organization dedicated to American Jewish education; the first Jewish cookbook, published in Philadelphia in 1871; and the only known records of the immigrant banks that thousands of Jews used to buy tickets for their relatives immigrating from Europe.

Despite the treasures, few visitors visit and an average day, according to staff, sees three or four visitors, if that many. It is mostly used by scholars, genealogists and some school groups.

in 2006, financial problems became severe (despite low rent, federation funding and some donations) and the board voted unanimously - "if reluctantly" - to send its holdings to Temple University's Urban Archives.

Nearby, the National Museum of American Jewish History, under construction and due to open in 2010, has raised more than $110 million of the $150 million needed. The major museum project has received funding from donors who might have given to the Archives if things were different.

Although the move will solve some problems, the Jewish archives is trying to raise funds to hire its own archivist. Some board members wish it could have been done differently and feel that not enough people know the archives exist and what the holdings contain.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Miami: The Jews of Ioannina, Nov. 2

The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Miami will host independent scholar Dr. Annette Fromm on the "Genealogy of the Greek-speaking Jews of Ioannina, Greece," at 10am, Sunday, November 2.

Fromm's book on the Romaniote Jewish community of Ioannina is "We Are Few: Folklore and Ethnic Identity of the Jewish Community of Ioannina, Greece" (Lexingon Books, 2007). She holds a Ph.D. from Indiana University.

The Jewish community of Ioannina, in Northwestern Greece, traces its roots to Byzantine times if not earlier. In the early 20th century, at least half of the community's population emigrated to settle in Athens, Israel, and the United States because of economic and religious reasons. The cataclysm of the Holocaust dramatically decimated the community. This steady outward movement created an abrupt rupture of their patterns of traditional culture.

"We are Few" brings this unique community to life in a series of ethnographic sketches of history and traditional culture in order to understand its intense allegiance to ethnic identity.

The venue is the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, 4200 Biscayne Blvd. Miami. Parking entrance at rear of building; bring picture ID.

For more information, click on the JGSGM site here.

Jamaica: Belisario biography

Isaac Mendes Belisario (1794-1849) was a Jamaican-born Sephardic artist. His biography - "Belisario, Sketches of Character, A Historical Biography of a Jamaican Artist" - by Jackie Ranston and Valerie Facey, was just published by The Mill Press, in Jamaica.

Born in the Caribbean island of Jamaica in 1794 to a family of wealthy Jewish merchants and notorious slave traders, Isaac Mendes Belisario is paradoxically remembered for having preserved the culture of the slaves with his works of art.

In the first historical study of this little-known painter and lithographer, the author begins by tracing the dramatic lives of the old and distinguished Sephardic Jewish families from whom Belisario is descended.

On the distaff side is the family Lindo, living double lives as crypto-Jews until they are denounced by their household slaves and escape the clutches of the Spanish Inquisition to live in seventeenth-century London. Here they are joined by another émigré, Jacob Mendes Belisario and his family; the poor but proud aficionados of the opera who elude the prying, predatory eyes of the Inquisition but still display the emblems of the kings of Spain on their coat of arms and remain loyal to the legend of their family name.

From the chocolate-maker to the rabbi, each generation marks time in London before this swirling Jewish family history moves to the island of Jamaica where its members seize the opportunities offered by the New World; but their meteoric rise is thwarted by the actions of such historical figures as Napoleon and Toussaint L’Ouverture, whose exploits unknowingly combine to witness their downfall.

I became aware of this book through a story in the Jamaica Gleaner, by Laura Tanna, who writes

Every paragraph reveals something about our world and history, which we ought to have known and probably didn't. There's enough material in this book to provide substance for a score more, but she deftly weaves astonishing strands of material into a cohesive whole and this is the real brilliance of the book.

Because Belisario was Jewish, Ranston goes right back to the Roman destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem when Jews were first scattered throughout mankind. She provides the most comprehensive introduction to the horrors of the Roman Catholic Inquisition suffered by Jews and their 1492 expulsion from Spain, accelerating their migration to Morocco, Turkey, Germany, to settlements in London, Amsterdam, Tuscany and subsequently the West Indies. Juxtaposing this story with the horrors of slavery imposed on those from Africa, who also settled in the West Indies, Ranston enriches every reader's understanding of the complexities involved in the creation of our fascinating nation, Jamaica, and the Caribbean region.

Read the complete story at the link above, and learn about Belsario's artwork and much more on Jewish history.

The artist's father served on the jury of the first white man brought up on murder charges for killing a slave in Tortola, and then wrote a London-published report to influence public opinion. Another report he wrote called for protection for the treatment of Africans in the West Indies, to no avail. In addition, the artist's maternal grandfather Alexandre Lindo was involved in the finances of the Haitian revolution.

Included in the book are depictions of the Kingston fires of August 1843, by Belisario and Duperly, as well as reproductions of Belisario's original art work.

There is much more on the book here.

A quote relevant to genealogy

Natan Sharansky spoke at the June 2008 conference of the American Jewish Press Association in Washington, DC. Attendees received copies of his new book, "Defending Identity: Its Indispensable Role in Protecting Democracy."

I just got around to reading this book (one of many brought back from my summer travels) and want to share with readers a quote on page 7. Although I am sure the author had a more political meaning in mind, I read it as illustrating the genealogy community and its individual researchers who work together to provide resources for all, in addition to their own personal family research:

Identity, in contrast, is fundamentally about the links to others. The individual understands himself or herself in terms of a community, not only as a singular independent person but also as an individual attached to others and interdependent with them. Here, identity means identification: solidarity with others with whom you identify. Identity in this sense is a kind of communal self.

This tie to community in the past, the present, and the future is what adds a further dimension to your own immediate activities. It requires that you not simply engage the world as a lone individual. What you do contributes to a larger picture: linking your live to the lives of contemporaries who are part of the same community or to past and future generations of that community.

History becomes as Burke described it: a pact between the dead, the living, and the yet unborn. Being part of such a community gives you great strength to defend your values and vision: a strength that comes not only from inside yourself but also in your ties to others who share with you these ideals and who are working to advance them. What you gain is solidarity - the sense of what is common among the members of this mutually committed community, from which each person draws support and strength.

Ukraine-born, Sharansky is a former Soviet dissident and political prisoner, was released and made aliyah, served as a member of the Israeli cabinet, in several posts. He received the Congressional Gold Medal and, in 2006, America's highest civilian award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Music: My Heart Belongs to Daddy

In 1938, Cole Porter wrote "My Heart Belongs to Daddy" for the Broadway musical, "Leave it to Me," introduced by Mary Martin (aka Peter Pan). The song was described by performer Oscar Levant (born to an Orthodox family) as "one of the most Yiddish tunes ever written."

And, if you happen to be a budding poet or song writer, the song offers a rhyme for "daddy" as "fine finnan haddie" (smoked haddock).

Talking about fish: In 1860, a Jewish immigrant in the UK - Joseph Malin - combined Irish fried fish and potatoes to create British fish and chips. It is not known in what newspaper Malin first wrapped his dish. According to Wikipedia - which is sometimes accurate:

Deep-fried fish and deep-fried chips have appeared separately on menus for many years[citation needed], though potatoes did not reach Europe until the 17th century. The originally Sephardi dish pescado frito, or deep-fried fish, came to the Netherlands and England with the Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the 17th and 18th centuries.[citation needed] (History credits the Portuguese with introducing the dish to Japan: see tempura.[citation needed])

The dish became popular in wider circles in London and South East England in the middle of the 19th century (Charles Dickens mentions a "fried fish warehouse" in Oliver Twist, first published in 1838) whilst in the north of England a trade in deep-fried "chipped" potatoes developed. The first chip shop stood on the present site of Oldham's Tommyfield Market.[9] It remains unclear exactly when and where these two trades combined to become the fish-and-chip shop industry we know today. Joseph Malin opened the first recorded combined fish-and-chip shop in London in 1860 or in 1865 while a Mr Lees pioneered the concept in the North of England in Mossley, Lancashire in 1863.[10]

Back to the music.

Here's a 1939 recording of Valaida Snow's voice, with an interesting bit of Holocaust-connected history, in the English version, as well as a Yiddish version by Lisa Fishman (no date given).

Fishman translated the son into the Yiddish "Mayn Hartz Iz Nor Far Daddy" with the help of Zalmen Mlotek of the New York Yiddish Theater and performs it klezmer style.

Attendees at the 2006 New York IAJGS International Conference of Jewish Genealogy were treated to an entire evening of song by Mlotek, one of the conference's major highlights. Those fortunate enough to be sitting in the right place heard the famous Steve Morse singing along in fluent Yiddish. Who knew?

Fishman's version is here.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NT7z9GpFHLA&feature=related

A 1939 (Decca) English original version sung by Valaida Snow, who also plays trumpet, is here.

Born in Chattanooga, Tennessee in 1903, Snow was part of a musical family with her sisters Alvaida and Lavaida. She turned professional at the age 15, and during the 1920s was part of musical reviews such as the Sissle-Blake show "The Chocolate Dandies" that toured the US and went overseas. She toured with the "Blackbirds" and then the famous Noble Sissle-Eubie Blake musical show "Rhapsody In Black", and in the 1930s, made feature films for black audiences.

In 1939, she went on an extended tour of Europe - perhaps not the best time to do that - with her all-girl orchestra. In Denmark, the Nazis imprisoned her in the Wester-Faengler concentration camp for almost two years until she was freed in an allied forces prisoner swap.

Although she returned to New York, the psychological and physical trauma meant she was never the same, although she tried to regain her career as an arranger, vocalist and trumpet stylist. In June 1956, she died of a cerebral hemorrhage backstage at New York's Palace Theater.

Snow shocked the US with her somewhat eccentric behavior. Orchid was her favorite color (her Mercedes, her outfits, her pet monkey's outfits and her chauffeur's livery).

Enjoy both versions of the song!

Illinois: Skeletons in your closet? Oct. 26

"Skeletons in the Closet" is the next program of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois from 12.30-4pm, Sunday, October 26, at Temple Beth Israel in Skokie.

Join Robin Seidenberg, JGSI executive vice president, who will demonstrate how to use various resources – newspapers, Internet, court documents – in researching family members with a notorious past.

Also included: Learn how to handle research minefields and what to do when sensitive or confidential family information is discovered.

For more information, click here.

Los Angeles: Appraisal Faire, Oct. 25

The Southern California Genealogical Society is holding an Appraisal Faire a la Antiques Roadshow from 9.30am-noon and 1-4pm, Saturday, October 25.

Have you ever wondered about the dollar value of that trinket your grandmother left you, even though you would never dream of selling it?

Ever dream of appearing on Antiques Roadshow and learning that your dumpster-dive doodad is worth a small fortune?

The Southern California Genealogical Society's Appraisal Faire is the place for you.

Bring in up to three items and have your priceless treasures checked by qualified appraisers. Fee: Donation of $5 per item, up to three items.

The Faire will be held at the Southern California Genealogical Society, 417 Irving Drive, Burbank. For more information, click here or email scgs417@yahoo.com.

New Blogs: Graveyard Rabbits

Fellow geneablogger Terry Thornton, the author of Hill Country of Monroe County, has added a new blog to his projects: Graveyard Rabbit of Hill Country. He is the founder of The Association of Graveyard Rabbits (GYA), complete with logo by our talented colleague footnoteMaven (left), founding member of the new association.

The GYA membership requirement is to write about cemeteries, preservation, restoration, grave markers and burial customs. For the most detailed info and the invitation to join the GYA, click here for the post on footnoteMaven's blog.

To learn more about the name and its origins, click on Terry's first post about the new blog here.

It is my hope that the charm of the graveyard rabbit continues to hold --- and that you will join me in this association of geneaBloggers and start writing a blog devoted exclusively to cemeteries, grave markers, burial customs and thus promote the study of cemeteries, the preservation of cemeteries, and the transcription of genealogical/historical information that is written in cemeteries.

May graveyard rabbits spring up everywhere to assist in this task.

Other posts on the newly created blog: "Looking beyond photographs taken in a cemetery" here, and "Tombstone genealogy . . . Getting to the back of things" here. For more information, email Terry.

According to footnoteMaven's post on October 20 here, there are 17 GYA members - I'm sure there will be more:

Founder:
Terry Thornton: The Graveyard Rabbit of the Hill Country (Mississippi USA)

Founding Member:
footnotemaven: Western Washington Graveyard Rabbit (Washington USA) go to WWGYR to pick up your official badge/logo

Charter Members:
Bob Franks: Graveyard Adventures in Itawamba County (Mississippi USA)
Randy Seaver: South San Diego County Genealogy Rabbit (California USA)
Wendy Littrell: The Graveyard Rabbit of South Denton County (Texas USA)
Denise Olson: Graveyard Rabbit of Moultrie Creek (Florida USA)
Jessica Oswalt: The Rural Michigan Cemeteries Graveyard Rabbit (Michigan USA)
Kathryn Lake Hogan: The Essex County Graveyard Rabbit (Windsor, Essex County, Ontario, Canada)
Janice Tracy: The Graveyard Rabbit of Attala County (Mississippi USA)
Amy Crow: Graveyard Rabbit of Central Ohio (Ohio USA)
Julie Cahill Tarr: The Chicagoland Graveyard Rabbit (Illinois USA)
Julie Cahill Tarr: The Graveyard Rabbit of Bloomington-Normal Illinois (Illinois USA)
Sue Edminster: The Graveyard Rabbit of North Snohomish County (Washington USA)
William Morgan: The Central Florida Graveyard Rabbit (Florida USA)
Midge Frazel: Granite in My Blood (Massachusetts USA)
Henk van Kampen: The Graveyard Rabbit of Utrecht and Het Gooi (Utrecht, The Netherlands)
M.Diane Rogers: The Graveyard Rabbit of British Columbia, Canada (BC, Canada)

I'm sure there will be more.

Nu? So where's the Jewish Graveyard Rabbit? Who's up for the challenge? I have some people in mind and have emailed them, asking them to consider. Where are our Jewish cemetery experts who would welcome this? I'd be glad to participate and will be happy to provide blogging assistance to someone or someones who take up this idea!

Yad Vashem: List of Jews in Germany (1933-1945)

On Thursday, October 23, Yad Vashem will receive a digital copy of the "List of Jewish Residents in the German Reich (1933-1945)" prepared over four years by the German government.

It contains the personal details of some 600,000 Jewish residents in Germany (1933-1945), according to the 1937 borders, who suffered anti-Jewish discrimination and persecution.

Data includes the names and addresses of Jewish residents, details of emigration, detention and deportation, and where and when many died. Information was gathered from registration documents - primarily in medium-sized and larger towns and cities - deportations lists, archives, museums, memorial sites and the Toten-Gedenkbuch (memorial book of the dead) compiled by the federal archives.

Some 2.5 million data records were collected from over 1,000 different sources. The list\ was produced by the Bundesarchiv (German federal archives), with assistance from Yad Vashem’s Archives and Hall of Names experts, on behalf of the “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” Foundation.

The list will be presented on by Bernd Neumann, the German Minister of State to the Federal Chancellor and Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media.

“This list adds to our understanding of what happened to the Jews in Germany,” said Avner Shalev, Chairman of Yad Vashem. “Every new piece of information allows us to piece together the story of individuals and communities during the Holocaust. This list, in conjunction with other material in our Archives, helps fill in gaps in our knowledge of what occurred.”

San Francisco: Erin Einhorn, Oct. 27

Erin Einhorn, author of "The Pages In Between: A Holocaust Legacy of Two Families, One Home," will give a reading and talk at 7.30pm, Monday, October 27, at the BJE Jewish Community LIbrary in San Francisco.

Einhorn is a journalist and contributor to NPR's "This American Life." She traveled to Poland, where her mother was saved as a child during WWII by a Polish woman who risked her own life to do so.

She traveled to Poland 55 years later to find the family that had rescued her mother in Bedzin, and finds the rescuer's son. He said they had been promised the family's home in exchange for hiding the mother and asked Einhorn to help fulfill that promise.

A trip down discovery road became a confusing route through 50 years of hurt feelings, resentment and archival records.

The program is co-sponsored by the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society and the Holocaust Center of Northern California.
For additional details, click here.

Food: Goldenberg's Peanut Chews

Anyone else have a penchant for these chocolate delights that are hard to find outside of New York City? I had to categorize this under food, even though it might not be entirely accurate. I just don't have a category for "items to store for the next major disaster."

Blogger Darren Zieger has written a post on his connection to these addictive bits, now manufactured under the name Chew-ets Original Peanut Chews, after the competition bought out the company:

Some more digging, and a thorough reading of my grand-cousin's autobiography, has allowed me to piece together a chronology of the Goldenberg branch of my family tree which includes a few more entertaining nuggets.

In a nutshell (he said, hoping to produce a less long-winded post than usual, a goal which this parenthetical statement does little to advance):

In the beginning (well, as far back as we know) there were Favel and Eva (nee ???) Goldenberg, a typical (for all we know) mid-19th century Romanian couple. Except that they weren't actually Goldenbergs. Favel's surname was Seltzer.

This fact got changed retroactively in the archives because one of his sons, Dovid Seltzer (1865 - 1935) changed his name when he arrived in the US around 1880.

It is said that, as the ship that took him across the Atlantic passed the Statue of Liberty on its approach to Ellis Island, Dovid asked a fellow passenger, a returning US citizen, "What is a good name to have in America?" The passenger replied "Sir, in America, the best name is Goldberg."

(Whether this was accurate is unclear; the National Archive only has Best Name data going back to the 1910 Census.)

And while it is not said, we can assume that at that revelatory moment, the fog lifted and, far off on the deck of next ship, Barbra Streisand began singing.

So, Dovid Seltzer became David Goldenberg (adding an extra syllable for, I'm guessing, subtlety).

David Goldenberg settled in Philadelphia, and, being a late 19th Century Jewish immigrant, he went into the candy business, as the law required (had he been wealthier, he would have had the option of becoming a diamond merchant).

He started out pushing a cart, later opened a candy store, and eventually, on the strength of one particularly successful confection, ran a factory, fulfilling the American Dream(TM) as the law required.

Let me emphasize here: I am a descendant of a man who owned a chocolate factory*. I find this quite marvelous for no practical reason.

The candy in question, you've probably encountered if you're from the Northeast. Goldenberg's Peanut Chews were a staple of my pre-diabetic diet. They rocked. Seriously, we're talking about Desert-Island-List food, here.

And here's my very own Peanut Chew story:

While working for the Jerusalem Post's Metro weekly in the old Tel Aviv editorial office, I sometimes went down the block to a shop offering delicious Iraqi Sephardic specialties cooked by the owner's mother and sister.

While waiting for my order to be packed, I noticed a few shelves holding snacks and candy. Imagine my surprise when I saw an entire box of Peanut Chews. The shop's owner wasn't there, and the manager had no idea where they had come from.

I bought the entire box. "Are they good?" the manager asked, having never tasted them, and I was afraid to give him a taste! The delights went home to live in our freezer, doled out small piece by small piece over the coming months.

Virginia: Solving a lake mystery

Two brothers, whose hobby is genealogy, believe they have found the the identity of the person whose bones were found in Mountain Lake, Virginia. Read about it here.

There's a two-minute video of the TV news segment providing more information on how Jim and John Dalmas used a Clemson University class ring, census records, a WWI draft registration card, a historic newspaper article and other resources to give a name to the bones in Mountain Lake.

They say that the person items near the remains belong to Samuel Ira Felder of New York.

"It's a giant puzzle, and all the pieces fit together and you have one picture," says Jim Dalmas.

It started with bits of pieces reported by the media, including important information investigators released last week about a class ring.

"The sheriff's department figured out the ring came from Clemson University, and of course the ring was the key to figuring the whole case out," says Dalmas.

According to their research, Samuel Ira Felder was born May 10, 1884, was a native of Orangeburg, South Carolina and graduated from Clemson University. He later moved to New York City where he was a telephone company engineer. Some census reports showed he was married, but had no children.

"The newspaper article clinched the deal," says Jim. "It said he had fallen out of a boat."

A July 27, 1921 South Carolina newspaper reported Felder fell overboard and drowned while boating with a party of friends on Mountain Lake.

Jim said Felder would have been 37 when he died. He also said Felder had siblings and might have living relatives.

Another case solved by dedicated genealogists!

South Carolina: Jewish genealogy, Oct. 25-26

The annual meeting of the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina (JHSSC) will take place Saturday and Sunday, October 25-26, at the College of Charleston's Jewish Studies Center.

"Jewish Genealogy: Explore Your Family Tree" will explore the subject through lectures and hands-on workshops.

Expert speakers leading the conference are Karen S. Franklin of New York, director of the Family Research Program at the Leo Baeck Institute, and Dr. Stephen P. Morse of San Francisco, creator of "One-Step Genealogy."

Karen and Steve together will present "Using Computers at the College of Charleston," using their expertise to guide participants in their person research using a variety of resources and developing strategies to solve a variety of research problems.

Karen will present "Tracking the Winter Family," demonstrating how she found the European roots of a Southern Jewish family in a remote village in Germany. Stories about four Civil War veterans, an “Embalmer on the Plain” (Jewish homesteader in South Dakota) and cousins-in-common will demonstrate search techniques.

Steve will present three talks based on his One Step website:

- "One-Step Webpages: A Potpourri of Genealogical Search Tools."
- "What Color Ellis Island Search Form Should I Use?"
- "Playing Hide and Seek in the US Census"

Fees for the two-day event: Jewish Historical Society member, $90; others, $125. For more information, click on the JGSSC site here, or the event brochure here.

Learn more about local resources and archives here:

The Jewish Heritage Collection documents the Jewish experience in South Carolina from colonial times to the present day. The archives grows out of an active program of collection, field work, and public education that was inaugurated in January 1995 by the Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina, the College of Charleston's Jewish Studies Program, and McKissick Museum at the University of South Carolina. Project staff spearheaded research and development of a major museum exhibition, A Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life, that opened at McKissick in January 2002, beginning a two-year national tour.

Located in Special Collections at the College's Addlestone Library, the Jewish Heritage Collection emphasizes individuals over institutions. It encompasses recorded interviews, manuscripts, photographs, genealogies, memoirs, home movies, and other primary sources. ...

Explore the JHSSC site for more information. Its newsletters and journals are online here.

Tracing the Tribe has previously written eight posts on South Carolina and the Southern US, in general. Topics include: Savannah, Georgia's 275th anniversary; Southern Jewish history grants, Deep South resources, Civil War's Confederate Jewish soldiers and books.

YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe

The Jewish Book Council sends out email alerts for new books. The newest edition offers information on the YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, edited by Gershon David Hundert.

The 2,400-page volume was published by Yale University Press in 2008; the price is $400, and includes entries by some 450 contributors in 16 countries. The project ran over 10 years before being published.

The review is by Michael Dobkowski, a professor of religious studies at Hobart and William Smith Colleges. He is co-editor of "Genocide and the Modern Age" and "On the Edge of Scarcity" (Syracuse University Press); author of "The Tarnished Dream: The Basis of American Anti-Semitism;" and co-editor of "The Nuclear Predicament."

This encyclopedia, which chronicles and seeks to recover and represent the rich history and culture of East European Jewry, is truly a treasure of information. It presents the life of this vanished culture, as dispassionately and as accurately as possible, without nostalgia and without undue celebrating.

The contributors are among leading scholars of various specialties of Eastern European Jewish Studies, and include: Jan Gross, massacre at Jedwabne; James Young, monuments and memorials; Antony Polonsky, Brody; J. Hoberman, cinema; Joseph Dan, Hassidic thought, Ruth Wisse, Y.L. Peretz; Elisheva Carlebach, messianism; and Paula Hyman, gender.

The reviewer writes:

The editors, in fact, were conscious of the need to redress the traditional imbalance in the coverage of women. All contributors were instructed to address gender in their entries and to use it as a category of analysis when appropriate. This resulted in some interesting and novel material, particularly in the areas devoted to daily life, economic life, and cultural and artistic expression, not usually found in reference texts of this type.

Geographically, the book generally covers contemporary Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Poland, the Baltic states and Finland, Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia. Chronologically, it covers the earliest presence of Jews in the region over 1,000 years ago to the end of the 20th century, focusing on Jews and events in the geographical area.

Dobkowski writes that the encyclopedia is "an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe."

The entries are accessible, written so that nonspecialists can benefit. Ten years in the making, it is the definitive work of its kind, carefully conceived and edited and a most reliable portal into the rich landscapes of Jewish life and loss in Eastern Europe.

Read more about this and other books at the link above.

For a history of the Jewish Book Council, click here.

The Council's origins date back to 1925, when Fanny Goldstein, a librarian at the West End Branch of the Boston Public Library, set up an exhibit of Judaic books as a focus of what she called Jewish Book Week. In l927, with the assistance of Rabbi S. Felix Mendelsohn of Chicago, Jewish communities around the country adopted the event.

Jewish Book Week proved so successful that in 1940 the National Committee for Jewish Book Week was founded, with Fanny Goldstein as its chairperson. Dr. Mordecai Soltes succeeded her one year later. Representatives of major American Jewish organizations served on this committee, as did groups interested in promulgating Yiddish and Hebrew literature. ...

Read more at the link noted, and also read about the quarterly "Jewish Book World" with each issue carrying many reviews. Look through the sample issues on the site. Reviews are categorized: American Jewish Studies, Contemporary Jewish Life, Cookbook, Fiction, Sephardic, Children's and others. Each issue contains author interviews and reviewer bios. There's an annual major Children's Book section. To subscribe, click here.

Kansas: Beginning Jewish Genealogy

I learned about this event too late to post it, but readers may wish to suggest a similar program in their own public libraries, co-sponsored/co-hosted by their local Jewish genealogical societies and/or Jewish historical societies.

The Topeka and Shawnee County (Kansas) Public Library offered a Beginning Jewish Genealogy program on Sunday afternoon, October 19.

Learn the basics of genealogical research and record keeping, including finding vital records, censuses, obituaries, immigration records, marriages, probate records, and cemeteries, as well as compiling pedigree and family unit charts. See how Jewish genealogy differs from that of other groups, including language issues and Holocaust research. Finally, learn what organizations can help with your research.

Participants learned how to use print and online resources offered by the library, and received a pedigree chart and other useful record-keeping forms.

I could not find information on the program presenters.

For more Kansas resources, click here for the state's page on the International Cemetery Project hosted by JewishGen. Learn about colonies, cemeteries and more. The Heart of America Jewish Historical Society is in Overland Park, while the Jewish Community Archives is in Kansas City

Indiana: Photos go high-tech

This Post-Tribune story about a library program on photographs is interesting not only because of its content but also for the list of genealogy magazines the library carries (Ancestry, Family Tree, Internet Genealogy and The Genealogical Helper).

Mary Shultz of Schererville recently acquired two unique photographs -- one of her great-great-grandfather in his Sunday finery, and another of him with one of his friends.

Although the pictures aren't unusual, the tintype on which they are printed certainly is. Shultz recently attended a program at the Lake County Public Library in Merrillville called "Repairing and Dating Family Heirlooms" to see what could be done with the tintype items, plus other photos dating to the late 1880s and early 1900s.

"There are a lot of pictures I need to work on," she said of her new quest to preserve family history. "I came here to see where I should start and what I can do."

The two-session event was co-sponsored by the library and the Northwest Indiana Genealogical Society.

Eric Basir, a teacher and author of "Digital Restoration Book 1," led the program. Basir owns a retouching studio in Evanston, Ill., and sponsored the launch of Lostandfoundphotos.net, a free service to provide a forum for genealogists to identify lost or unknown photos. He serves the genealogical community as a teacher and writer of "Ask the Retoucher," a column for genealogical publications.

Basir used photographs of audience members to demonstrate the techniques. In a nutshell, a photo is scanned into a computer, then digitally altered. To do this at home, one needs a flatbed scanner and a graphics software package. Restored photos can be saved on a computer or CD and printed as needed.

With the advent of graphics software, genealogists can do this themselves. Previously, one would have to pay large amounts to retouch or restore an image.

In addition to Basir's presentation, there was a traveling exhibit from the Indiana Historical Society. "A Perfect Likeness: Care and Identification of Family Photographs" focused on identifying and caring for such common 19th-century photographic formats as the daguerreotype, tintype and cabinet card. The exhibit was co-sponsored by the Lake County Historical Museum.

Check with your own library and see if it carries genealogy magazines such as those listed above. Libraries usually respond to patrons' requests, so if your library doesn't offer them, request that they be offered. You might also suggest that a similar program on high-tech photograph restoration be offered. Contact your local genealogy society or historical society and see if they can schedule, co-host or sponsor such a program.

Museum of Family History seeks Sephardic presence

I was happy to see Steve Lasky's posting on the discussion group at Sephardim.com, which holds a wealth of Sephardic resources, including the major Sephardic Name Search, compiled from many major published resources.

Steve, for those who do not already know him, is the dedicated creator of the online Museum of Family History, currently a treasure trove of Ashkenazi and Eastern European resources.

Steve writes on the Sephardic site:

As many of you know, I am the founder and "director" of the virtual (internet only) museum of Jewish family history. It is meant to honor and preserve the memory of our Jewish families for the present and future generations. I was very pleased that, two months ago, I received the IAJGS Award for "Outstanding Contribution to Jewish Genealogy."

Up to this time, the "Museum of Family History" has, for the most part, lacked a significant Sephardic presence. I have always wanted to include a good deal of representation of Sephardic Jewish history, but I've never had good contacts to do so. I hope this forum will change that.

I am looking for photographs (family and otherwise), mostly taken anytime before the end of World War II; also stories, testimonies about the Jewish experience. I am looking for audio and video, as my site is very multimedia.

It would be nice to talk about Sephardic life over the past 200 years (or more) in both an historical and personal context. I am also looking for those who are willing to write about Sephardic life, etc., even as it exists today where you live, as this would expedite the inclusion of Sephardic material on my site, and would make it more participatory, which can only be a good thing. It might even encourage others to follow suit.

I look forward to hearing from some of you. If you have any questions, just ask.

For those of you unfamiliar with my site, the best overview is via the Site Map page.

If you have resources to provide or questions to ask, email Steve.

This day in Jewish history

This Day in Jewish History is an interesting blog mentioned previously on Tracing the Tribe. New readers may find it useful in understanding the impact of historical events on their families.

Compiled by Mitchell A. Levin, it is part of the adult education Jewish History Study Group at Temple Judah in Cedar Rapids, Iowa.

Here is a portion of the entry for October 21 :

1553 BCE (11 Cheshvan 2207): On the civil calendar, this date marked the death of Rachel, the matriarch and wife of Jacob, at the age of 36. She died during the childbirth of Benjamin, near Efrat, and is buried in Beit Lechem (Bethlehem).

1096: During the First Crusade, the Turks destroyed the portion of the Crusader army led by Peter the Hermit. Peter escaped and joined the main crusader army. The main body took Jerusalem from the Moslems in 1099. The Crusaders slaughtered the Jews of Europe as they made their way to the Holy Land. When they got to Jerusalem, the continued their bloody behavior as they slaughtered the Jews living in David’s City.

1512: In what may have been one of the most reaching decisions in the history of academia, Martin Luther joined the theological faculty of the University of Wittenberg. It would be almost five years to the day (October 31, 1517) from his appointment, that Luther would post his 95 Theses on the door of Wittenberg’s Castle. (This gives a whole new meaning to the term “publish or perish”). Seven years after his appointment (1519) “Luther denounced the doctrines” regarding the treatment of the Jews. His final view of the Jews would be codified in the 1544 pamphlet “Concerning The Jews and Their Lies” that included a call for burning synagogues and destroying the homes of Jews.

1553: Volumes of the Talmud were burned in Venice

1781: In Austria, Joseph II rescinded the law forcing Jews to war a distinctive badge. The regulation had been in effect since 1267, more then 600 years.

1833: Birthdate of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, creator of dynamite and the Nobel Prizes. As of 2005,at least 170 Jews and persons of half-Jewish ancestry have been awarded the Nobel Prize, accounting for 22% of all individual recipients worldwide between 1901 and 2005, and constituting 37% of all US recipients during the same period. In the scientific research fields of Chemistry, Economics, Medicine, and Physics, the corresponding world and U.S. percentages are 26% and 39%, respectively. (Jews currently make up approximately 0.25% of the world's population and 2% of the US population.)

· Chemistry (28 prize winners, 19% of world total, 27% of US total)
· Economics (22 prize winners, 39% of world total, 53% of US total)· Literature (13 prize winners, 13% of world total, 27% of US total)
· Physiology or Medicine (52 prize winners, 28% of world total, 42% of US total)
· Peace (9 prize winners, 10% of world total, 11% of US total)3
· Physics (46 prize winners, 26% of world total, 38% of US total)

Take a look at the site. Its entries will help place your ancestors in history and you may learn what happened in their communities during certain historical events.

New York: Bringing crowns to Berlin

A woman with deep Sephardic roots in Spain, Cuba, and the Canary Islands will dedicate three Torah crowns to her home-away-from-home synagogue in Berlin, on the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht, as related in this Staten Island Live story.

STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- Esther Rodriguez of St. George will play a meaningful role in Berlin next month as the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht is observed, but her story begins much earlier than that terrible night in 1938 that ushered in the Holocaust.

In 1536, her family fled the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal to avoid a forced conversion from Judaism, or its alternative: Death.

Her mother's family settled in Cuba; her father's, in the Canary Islands. Ms. Rodriguez was born in Cuba, where her family did not live as Jews. For years, she did not know her history. Although she said her family was "as Cuban as could be," she later realized many of their traditions were Jewish. Even her father's name, Abreu, means Hebrew in Portuguese.

In 1961, Ms. Rodriguez was among 14,500 children flown out of Cuba -- without their parents -- following the Communist takeover. A great-aunt in Miami opened her home to Ms. Rodriguez and seven cousins. She was reunited with her parents four years later.

Ms. Rodriguez moved to Staten Island in 1985 and converted to Judaism in 2003 in Borough Park, Brooklyn. She now attends services at Congregation Toras Emes in Oakwood and Temple Emanu-El in Port Richmond.

A radio journalist for the United States government, she travels frequently to Berlin and Geneva. In Berlin, she prays at Adass Jisroel, a yeshiva and synagogue opened in the 1800s by a New York rabbi.

Adass Jisroel was one of 92 Berlin synagogues targeted during Kristallnacht; 35 of its 36 Torahs were burned. The synagogue reopened after the fall of the Berlin Wall; its new rabbi brought two Torahs from Israel.

In April 2007, Rodriguez donated a third Torah to the congregation in memory of her mother, Aida Fernandez de Varona, who died the previous month. The congregation had three Torahs, but no crowns. Her two congregations helped her purchase two silver crowns and a friend whose family fled Leipzig on Kristallnacht bought a third. The crowns will be dedicated at Adass Jisroel on November 7, just before Shabbat begins.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Sephardi-Mizrachi conference, Nov. 16-18

"Integrating Sephardi & Mizrachi Studies: Research and Practice" is a major conference to take place in Los Angeles, November 16, 17 and 18 at several city venues, sponsored by the Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion.

While this field has significantly increased in recent decades, it has not integrated the diversity of contemporary Jewish experience.

The conference event will demonstrate today's Sephardic studies, provide scholarly research and models of integration for teachers. Public programs feature scholars and members of the Los Angeles Jewish Community.

Activities include lectures, panels, lunch, reception, concert.

I'm especially delighted that Divahn - headed by cousin Galeet Dardashti - will perform with Galeet's father, Hazzan Farid Dardashti in a "Jewish Voices of the East" concert at 7pm, Sunday evening, November 16. See below for details.

The event is sponsored by The Maurice Amado Foundation in conjunction with UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, USC Casden Institute for the Study of the Jewish Role in American Life. Programs will take place at Sephardic Temple Tifereth Israel, Stephen S. Wise Temple, USC's Davidson Executive Conference Center, HUC-JIR, Sinai Temple, UCLA's Royce Hall and UCLA Hillel.

Sunday, November 16
Who are the Sephardim and How Have They Been Studied

12:30-2:30pm
Panel: Intellectual Issues of Sephardim/Mizrachim Today
3-4:30pm
An Assessment of Sephardic Studies
7pm, Concert
Jewish Voices of the East: Divahn and Hazzan Farid Dardashti

Monday, November 17, USC
Sephardic Cultural Studies Today

9-10:30am
Sephardi/Mizrachi Cultural Interaction
10:45 am-12:15pm
Distinctness in Sephardi/Mizrachi Jewish Languages
12:30-2pm (HUC-JIR near USC)
Speaker and art exhibit
2:30-4pm
The Diversity of Sephardi/Mizrachi Culture
7pm
Rise of the Persian Jewish Community in Los Angeles

Tuesday, November 18,UCLA
Promised Lands? Israel, America, Los Angeles
9–9:45am
Where are the Sephardi/Mizrachi Jews?
10–11:45am
Sephardic Jews in Los Angeles
noon-2.30pm
"Future Directions." Lunch/Discussion Panel
2.30pm
Centropa Exhibition: "Witness to a Sephardic Century: Images of a World Destroyed"

Registration required by October 31. Full conference, $150; One day (include's evening session), $65; Sunday evening, $25; Monday evening, $15; Students should email here.

An excellent guide to Sephardic Internet resources is here.

Read the conference brochure here. For expanded details, click here.

Los Angeles: The Breed Street Shul

Los Angeles' Breed Street Shul, in Boyle Heights, has an interesting history here

Located at 247 North Breed Street in the Boyle Heights district on the Los Angeles River’s east bank, the Breed Street Shul served a once thriving Jewish neighborhood in Boyle Heights that has since become predominately a Latino community.

The property on Breed Street was purchased after 1910. In 1915, Beth Hamedrash was built on the back of the property. Construction on the shul itself began in 1920 and it was dedicated in 1923. The large building is constructed of brick and the interior fixtures are polished wood.

The Breed Street Shul served as the focal point of the neighborhood that was the heart and soul of the Los Angeles Jewish community. Even if you have never been to Los Angeles, you might very well have seen the shul. Both the 1927 original and the 1980 remake of “The Jazz Singer” featured the Breed Street Shul.

The Breed Street Shul was, at one time, one of the largest synagogues on the West Coast and home to the largest Orthodox congregation west of Chicago.

After World War II, The Jewish presence in Boyle Heights began to diminish as the area became more of an industrial area. An influx of other cultures resulted in young Jewish men returning from military duty during the war to use their VA loans to move to other areas. This resulted in the shrinkage of the congregation at the shul.

The story covers the 1987 Whittier Narrows earthquake damage, the building's abandonment in 1996, and attempts to renovate it. The Jewish Historical Society of Southern California took over the renovation in 1999 and set up the nonprofit Breed Street Shul Project.

In addition to preserving the historical Jewish site it was also meant to serve the current community as a center. Several Latino organizations and the J. Paul Getty Museum worked with the Jewish Historical Society on the project. Young Latinos from the Imaginando Manana ("Imaging Tomorrow") worked on it, learning the Jewish history and tolerance and respect for other cultures.

Sunday clean up events became popular with the entire community, strengthened community bonds as well as with the area's Jewish heritage.

Involved were JHS President Stephen Sass and Robert Chattel Brent Riemer of Chattel Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Inc., who is quoted as saying, "This building should continue to be a place of congregation." One idea to serve the contemporary community and preserve its heritage is a computer lab with displays depicting the Jewish history of the site.

Read the complete article at the link above.

The Breed Street Shul's website is here.To read more about the history of the Breed Street Shul, read through the National Register of Historic Places nomination (it was registered in 2001) for the site here. There is a wealth of detail about the building, the neighborhood, a bibliography and more for those interested in history and architecture.

For more general comments on Los Angeles' members of the tribe, see Hadassah Magazine's article (June/July 2008) here.

I just received a note from Jan Meisels Allen, who writes that her father, William Samuel Meisels (1907-1998) was the last president of the congregation.

An extensive LA Times story was published on October 18, 1984, when he was still president and he was quoted extensively. Jan also notes that some time ago when the Autry Museum's exhibit on Jews of the West was running, the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles visited. The exhibit included a video of the shul and her father was in that as well - she was very surprised to see that.

Jan is president of the JGS of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV) and also serves on the board of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS).

Gendisasters.com: Our Jewish ancestors

Gendisasters.com is subtitled "events that touched our ancestors' lives." It compiles information on historic disasters, events and tragic accidents our ancestors endured. We can learn about their lives and deaths, unfortunately, in some cases.

Database and records are searchable by surname. I tried a quick search for COHEN and obtained numerous references to articles detailing someone with this name as a victim (or related in some other way) to disasters involving a fire, hurricane, tornado, avalanche, train, plane, ship, mine, home accident and others. Locations were across the US, with events from the mid-1850s, 1860s, 1880s, 1900s, 1910s, 1930s, 1940s and into more contemporary times.

A recent post details a September 23, 1892 synagogue panic on Rosh Hashanah. According to the transcription by Tim Taugher, the story appeared on September 24 in the Knoxville, TN The Daily Journal, the Journal and Tribune, and the Baltimore, MD Sun.

There were four synagogues in the tenement building at 27 Ludlow St., named as Talmud Torah Ohel Itzchok, Padolski/Podolski Society, Sons of Aaron and Beit Achim Anschel. Some 2,000 men, women and children were worshipping, when the fire started in Talmud Torah as the cloth covering the bima (altar) caught fire from a burning candle, causing the ensuing panic. The Rabbi was named as WALIOZINSKI, the assistant SOLOMON and secretary KRAMER.

The article gives the first and family names, type of injury (or death), ages and addresses (in some cases). There are spelling variants - likely a result of OCR (optical character reading) processing - in the articles. Here are only the family names of the victims: FRIEDMAN/FREIDMAN, MILLKER/STILIKER, ALTMAN, BOISUK/BORSUK, COHEN, DACKOWITZ, SMILOWITZ, GREENBURG, BECKER, ROSENTHAL, BEYMA/BOYAM, PORTMANN.

In addition to the named victims, the police captain said an additional 25 individuals were taken to their homes with no report given.

Here is a portion of the transcription. Read the complete story via the link above.

FATAL PANIC
Is a Jewish Synagogue in New York City.
CAUSED BY A FIRE ALARM.
A Rush Results in Packed Stairways and Frightful Confusion.
FOUR WOMEN ARE KILLED
And More Than a Dozen Persons More or Less Seriously Injured.

NEW YORK, September 23. - There are four Jewish synagogues in the tenement house, No. 27 Ludlow street. They were all crowded this morning with devout Hebrews attending the festival services of New Year when some person in one of the places of worship raised the cry of fire. Immediately there was a panic, everybody rushing for the doors. The stairway, which is not very wide, became packed with people. They piled right on top of one another in the stairway. Some person out on the street had enough presence of mind to send out the fire alarm which brought the department to the scene. The firemen succeeded in extricating the people from the blocked stairway and found four dead and about a dozen injured.

Following are the names of injured persons at Governeuer's hospital:
Rebecca Freidman, 40 years, fractured skull.
Tillie Millker, 33 years, skull fractured and will probably die.
Julius Altman, 9 years, thigh injured.
Rachael Boisuk, 47 years, skull fractured.
Ida Cohen, fractured skull, injuries fatal.
Herman Cohen, 15 years, wrist fractured and internal injuries.
Rachel Dackowitz, skull fractured.
Annie Cohen, 58 years, widow, skull fractured, injuries fatal.
Mrs. Annie Smilowitz, several ribs broken. Simon Greenburg, 33 years, skull fractured, injuries fatal.

The alarm was caused by setting fire by a burning candle to the cloth drapery over the altar in the synagogue of Talmud Thorah, which is on the second floor front. There were four congregations, numbering nearly two thousand persons, men, women and children, worshipping. The stairway was narrow, and Mrs. Annie Smilowitz, a very short woman, fell, blocking the passage way and causing the deaths of those right behind. The four synagogues were the Padolski society, Talmud Thorah, Sons of Aaron and Betti Achin Anschef. There was also a Hebrew school in the building. ...

Historical newspapers can be valuable to all researchers. You could learn important family details that might explain a family mystery or a relative that disappeared.

Canada: Moose Jaw's members of the tribe

Jewish life in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan is the Philadelphia's Jewish Exponent's travel story this week by Lauren Kramer. Learn about the town's hot springs, underground tunnels and more.

It's Friday night, and I'm in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, standing outside the House of Israel Synagogue and wishing there were a service I could attend.

As it happens, I'm late -- by nearly 18 years. This synagogue closed its doors in September 1990, leaving only a cement plaque outside as evidence that it was, indeed, a synagogue, serving a Jewish community in this small prairie town since 1926.

Today, it's a dance school, with windows boarded up against the sunlight and weeds growing prolifically around the building. But there was a time when the House of Israel Synagogue was a hub of activity, with regular Shabbat services and social get-togethers.

"Everybody pitched in and was friendly in our Jewish community; it was like a big family," recalls Sam Cohen, who lived in Moose Jaw from 1957 until 1988.

"We had a Hadassah that was very active, and a B'nai Brith that did a lot of work in the gentile community. We kept kosher, and we knew we were Jews, but ultimately the community disintegrated because you brought up the children to leave -- you didn't want them staying, you wanted them in more of a Jewish environment."

Lillian Butts, 85, was born there in 1921 and lived there until 1943. Her parents were from Russia and Romania, and recalled going to cheder three days a week and hating it.

"My mother, Rose Schwartz, was one of the few Jews who kept a kosher home in Moose Jaw, so when Jewish travelers came to town and required kosher meals, they came to us. My mother would be up at 5 a.m. on Fridays baking challah, and all week, we'd look forward to our traditional Shabbat dinner of chicken soup and
meat."

The natural spring was discovered in 1910 as someone was drilling for oil. It became a popular place. I assume the hot mineral water was really popular in those Saskatchewan winters.

Those visitors also explored the underground connecting passages under the city, used by bootleggers. The city denied the tunnels existed for more than 70 years. In 1985, they couldn't them it anymore when a heavy truck disappeared into a hole when the pavement collapsed.

Today, they are a hot tourist attraction and offer two tours. One focuses on the lives of poor Chinese laborers who in the early 1900s lived in the tunnels; the other is on the bootlegging history (the town became a mob retreat for the mob).

The Jewish Exponent also has an earlier story on the Calgary, Alberta stampede here, which mentions the Fairmount Palliser Hotel's kosher kitchen, the kosher Haifa Deli and kosher Karen's Cafe & Catering. The Jewish community numbers some 9,000 people.

Recently, the community restored a 1913 prairie synagogue, called Little Synagogue on the Prairie, which Tracing the Tribe has noted previously, which also provides the Jewish history of the city; the first Jewish settler arrived in 1898, the 1904 purchase of land for a cemetery, and the eventual schools, synagogues and facilities that made a real community. The JCC houses community institutions, such as the Jewish Historical Society of Southern Alberta.

A recently published book, "A Joyful Harvest: A History of Jews in Southern Alberta," tells the story of the community.

Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean

"Putting the Oy Back into 'Ahoy'" by Haifa University professor Steven Plaut appeared recently in the Jewish Press.

They did not sing "Yo Ho Ho and a Bottle of Manischewitz," nor do they ever seem to appear in any of the Disney films about pirates in the Caribbean. The website piratesinfo.com carries not a single reference to them.

And while September 19 has for a number of years now been designated International Talk Like a Pirate Day (there are even Internet courses available in pirate lingo), none of its initiators seems to have had Ladino (the language spoken by Jewish refugees expelled by the Spanish and Portuguese after the Reconquista) in mind.

Swashbuckling buccaneers who took time to put on tefillin each morning? Better get used to the idea. Long overlooked, the history of Jewish piracy has been garnering increasing interest, with several serious books and articles telling its epic tales.

Many Jewish pirates came from families of refugees who had been expelled by Spain and Portugal. They took to piracy as part of a strategy of revenge on the Iberian powers (though lining their pockets with Spanish doubloons was no doubt also a motive). Many of these pirates mixed traditional Jewish lifestyles with their exploits on the high seas.

Plaut covers Portuguese Jewish refugees in Jamaica in 1511, and the British takeover from the Spanish in 1655 with the help of local Jews and Conversos. In 1720, 20% of Kingston residents were Jewish. Ashkenazi and Sephardic synagogues operated side by side, finally merging in the 20th century. Cemeteries hold Jewish tombstones back to 1672, inscribed in Portuguese, Hebrew and English.

The official website of today's Jewish community of Jamaica is here, with a pirate page here. Plaut says that municipal workers in Kingston recently uncovered a long forgotten pirate graveyard, with tombstones featuring Jewish stars, Hebrew inscriptions and skulls and crossbones. Pirate graves have also been found near Bridgetown, Barbados and in the old Curacao Jewish cemetery.

Jamaican-born Jewish historian Ed Kritzler wrote "Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean" and offers private tours of Jewish pirate coves on the island.

In 1628, Moses Cohen Henriques sailed with Dutch Admiral Piet Hein (Dutch West India Company), a former Spanish galleon slave who hated Spain. They raided Spanish ships off Cuba, and "liberated" gold and silver. Henriques also had an island off Brazil where Jews could practice Judaism openly.

Rabbi-pirate Samuel Pallache, a leader of the Fez, Morocco community, was the son of the leading rabbi of Cordoba, Spain, and recruited Conversos for his crew.

Jewish pirates worked for the Ottoman Turks. Born in Turkey, Sinan, known as "The Great Jew," worked from Algiers; his flag bore a six-pointed star. He defeated a mercenary Genoa navy (hired by Spain), conquered Tripoli (Libya) and became an Ottoman naval commander. He's buried in an Albanian Jewish cemetery.

Read about Yaakov Koriel who commanded several ships before repenting and deciding to study Kabalah with Rabbi Isaac Luria in Safed, where he is buried; and David Abrabanel (aka Capt. Davis), who after his family's massacre, joined British pirates with his ship, The Jerusalem. There's a Chilean maritim museum with pirate letters written in Hebrew.

The rabbi of Curacao scolding his community's own pirates when they attacked a Jewish-owned ship. Did that sermon make it into the historical newspaper archive of Curacao?

Josephus writes about Jewish pirates off Roman-era Israel, and Plaut adds that Haifa was once known as Little Malta because of its pirates.

Why were so many Jews in this profession? Jews specialized in map-making during the 15th-16th centuries, such as Zacuto and Cresque who provided maps to explorers; others served as ship navigators and translators.

On the Lighter Side of Pirating a la Mad Magazine, Plaut names a Jewish humor site which lists halachic challenges for pirates, such as how long do you wait, after capturing a ship, to put up a mezuzah in the captain's cabin? Or, if your parrot's on your shoulder, is that carrying?

What costumes do Jewish pirates wear at Purim, Plaut asks. Do they dress up as accountants?

It's time, he says, to put the oy back into "ahoy."

Do read the complete article here. Enjoy!

New York: From here to eternity, Nov. 16

"From Here to Eternity: Jewish Cemetery Research, Preservation and Restoration" is the focus of the Jewish Genealogy Society of New York's Lucille Gudis Memorial Fund All Day Seminar on November 16.

The format includes four sessions with major experts.

Session 1:
The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR)
- Joyce Field, JewishGen VP, Data Acquisition

Session 2:
How to Catalog Jewish Cemeteries for JOWBR
- Ada Green, chair, JGSNY Cemetery Project

Session 3:
Do Stones Speak? - Interpreting Jewish Monuments; Visiting Jewish Cemeteries
- Rabbi Abraham Laber, founder, Jewishdata.com

Session 4:
Panel on Cemetery Preservation and Restoration
- Chaim Bruder, Heritage Foundation for the Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries
- Steve Lasky, founder, Museum of Family History
- Norman Weinberg, executive coordinator, Poland Jewish Cemeteries Restoration Project

Cost: $30 (JGSNY members); $36 (others). Advance registration required by November 10; there will be no onsite registration. Click here for the registration form and other details.

Israel: Judeo-Spanish material culture series

Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel, is holding a series of six meetings on the material culture of Judeo-Spanish speakers at the Salti Center for Ladino Studies.

"Possessions Tell a Judeo-Spanish Past" is the topic of the first meeting on Nov. 19.

Topics will include Balkan Judeo-Spanish dress, home and synagogue textiles, Ottoman Empire Jewish homes and their contents, religious artifacts, Sephardic synagogue art, anthropological research on Sephardic Jews and Judeo-Spanish musicology.

The series will take place in 2008, on November 19, December 3, 17 and 31; in 2009: on January 14 and 21.

The website is here; unfortunately, it is only in Hebrew, thereby excluding thousands of interested readers around the world. The Salti Center's email is ladinocn@mail.biu.ac.il. Readers who feel that it would be good to have an English version of the site might wish to send an email with that suggestion.

There will also be a series on Ladino song during April, May and June 2009 at the Salti Center, with musicologist Dr. Shoshan Weich-Shahak and singer Orit Pearlman.

Jewish DNA: AARP magazine article

There's an interesting Jewish DNA article online at the AARP magazine site. Turns out that author Richard Rubin - despite his ostensible Eastern European roots - is actually one of our IberianAshkenaz types.

It's not surprising to either Judy Simon or me as co-admins of the IberianAshkenazi Project at FamilyTreeDNA.com. Every week, more and more people join the group, and Judy has been able to connect some 30% of ostensible Eastern European Ashkenazim with Hispanic, Converso and other Sephardic families today. The more people who test, the more information is gathered, enlarging FamilyTreeDNA's database potential genetic matches

Here's the part from Rubin's story that really made me happy:

The more obvious discoveries will reveal themselves first. For instance, in comparing myself with my matches, it quickly became apparent that I am of Jewish descent—something I had suspected at least since my bar mitzvah. I also wasn’t too surprised to learn that my matches’ ancestors were mostly, like
mine, from eastern Europe.

But eastern Europe is a big place; while I had believed that my maternal line originated in Lithuania, I found close matches in western Poland, Romania, the Czech Republic, and eastern Ukraine.

Even more dispersed is the family on my father’s side: while my earliest known ancestor in that line came from Belarus, I found close matches in such distant locales as Germany, Latvia, Hungary, and Bosnia. Oh, and also Puerto Rico, where the family of a man I’m supposedly related to has been living for more than 300 years.

Now that was a head scratcher. At first I thought it must be a mistake. But we are, indeed, a match. There is a 96.56 percent chance we share a common ancestor within the past 24 generations. That’s about 600 years ago—or some 85 years before all Jews were expelled from Spain. Which means there’s a good chance I’m not only eastern European but Spanish.

Welcome to the club, Richard!

I can hope that he will now be encouraged to read up on Sephardic history and learn about the exodus after the 1391 pogroms that resulted in the murder or forced conversion to Catholicism of thousands of Spanish Jews and, along the way, decimated or completely destroyed Jewish communities across Spain.

Click here to read the complete AARP article. For more information on the IberianAshkenaz group, click here. To join, or for more information, email Judy.

Tagged: Fives and Tens

The newest meme is out, and I was tagged by both the Genealogy Insider's Diane Haddad here and The Chart Chick's Janet Hovorka here.

10 years ago I:

1. was living in Southern Nevada.
2. chaired the Jewish Genealogical Society of Southern Nevada-East, based at Midbar Kodesh.
3. was slogging through - in Cyrillic - the seven microfilm rolls of 19th century rabbinical records for Mogilev, Belarus at the Clark Street FHL in Las Vegas.
4. was getting over bronchitis.
5. was the mother of a Brown University junior.

5 things on today's "to-do" list:

1. Catch up on blogging.
2. What to make for dinner.
3. Work on a story for a major publication.
4. Decide if we're doing a Persian barbecue for the Sukkot holiday.
5. Find my mini-digital recorder for my husband.

5 snacks I enjoy:

1. Reese's Peanut Butter Cups - frozen.
2. M&Ms - peanut.
3. Chocolate anything.
4. Toasted onion bagels - Tal's Bagels are the best in Israel!
5. Tiny tomatoes (grape or tear-drop), by the handful.

5 Places I have lived:

1. Four of the five New York City boroughs
2. Teheran
3. Miami
4. Los Angeles
5. Southern Nevada

5 Jobs I have had:

1. Day Camp organizer, American Women's Club, Teheran, Iran
2. Country library organizer, major international company
3. Freelance writer/journalist
4. Genealogy columnist
5. Assistant editor

Some colleagues have added two more categories.

5 places to visit again:

1. Barcelona, Spain
2. Vancouver, BC, Canada
3. Zurich, Switzerland
4. Santa Fe, New Mexico
5. Seattle, Washington

5 places I want to visit for the first time:

1. Mogilev, Belarus
2. Melbourne/Sydney, Australia
3. Skalat/Suchastaw, Ukraine (was Galicia, Austro-Hungary)
4. Prague, Czech Republic
5. St. Petersburg, Russia

This meme is being passed on to these genea-bloggers:

1. Renee Zamora, Renee's Genealogy Blog
2. Craig Manson, Geneablogie
3. Kathryn M. Doyle, CA Gen Society Blog
4. Terry Thornton, Hill Country of Monroe County
5. Steve Danko, Steve's Genealogy Blog

ItalianGen receives IAJGS Stern Grant

The Italian Genealogical Group (Italiangen.org) was awarded the 2008 Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Grant from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Associations (IAJGS) at the Chicago 2008 conference in August.

IGG will use the $2,500 grant to create an online Brooklyn Brides Index for 1910-1930.
IGG provides free public access to online databases it creates from print and card indexes to 19th- and 20th-century birth, marriage, and death records and naturalization records for New York City’s five boroughs (Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Richmond, Manhattan), Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties, and some northern New York State counties. Every name listed in the print and card indexes is included in the databases.

The group was nominated for the annual grant by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Long Island.

According to IAJGS, “The grant will make it possible for the IGG to create and computerize a Brooklyn Brides Index for 1910-1930 from original records on 268 rolls of film from the Family History Library. There is currently no such index available for this period of massive Jewish immigration.

The Jewish genealogy community has greatly benefited from the 12 million records computerized by earlier IGG projects, and it is most appropriate to support the 1910-1930 Brooklyn Brides project, one that will surely allow many researchers to identify the descendants of female relatives who have to date been untraceable.” This marks the first time that the IGG will create a database from the records themselves rather than from an existing index.

More than 500 volunteers from local genealogy groups - and individuals in Canada, Ireland, and England who learned about the IGG’s projects through the Internet - compile the databases under the leadership and supervision of the IGG’s Project Coordinator John Martino. The IGG first participated in an indexing project in 1999 when it partnered with New York City’s Jewish Genealogical Society to create a database of Kings County (Brooklyn, New York) naturalizations.

Rabbi Malcolm Henry Stern (1915-1994) is widely considered to be “the dean of American Jewish genealogy,” and the grant honors his efforts to increase the availability of resources for Jewish genealogical research. It encourages institutions to pursue projects, activities, and acquisitions that provide new or enhanced resources to benefit Jewish genealogists.

IAJGS is the non-profit umbrella organization coordinating activities of more than 75 national and local JGSs around the world, and was formed in the 1980s. The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies is an independent, non-profit umbrella organization that coordinates the activities of more than 75 national and local Jewish genealogical societies around the world.

The Italian Genealogical Group, based in Long Island, New York, is dedicated to furthering Italian family history and genealogy. The databases it creates include every name listed in the indexes, without regard to nationality or religion. Volunteers from the IGG and other New York area genealogy organizations transcribe and index record collections held at local and regional archives.

Naming a Jewish baby

Judaica Journal is a blog focusing on Jewish art, artists and holidays. The author spotlights some very interesting items.

Why is this blog different from all other blogs?

On all other blogs, Judaica is not featured. JJ offers collectors, shoppers, artists and wanderers alike a place to find inspiration- or simply the perfect gift. This blog will educate about the meaning of religious articles and the meaning of holidays. On JJ you may even learn to make your own Judaic items. Above all, you will share in the beauty of crafted items created under the guidance of G'd.

The most recent post is about naming a Jewish child, and spotlights Hebrew name bracelets.

Topics addressed include the spirituality of a name, Ashkenazi and Sephardi naming customs, what the Talmud says concerning naming and more.

WHAT IS IN A NAME?

The naming of a Jewish child is a most profound spiritual moment. The Sages say that naming a baby is a statement of her character, her specialness, and her path in life. For at the beginning of life we give a name, and at the end of life a "good name" is all we take with us. (see Talmud - Brachot 7b; Arizal - Sha'ar HaGilgulim 24b)
Further, the Talmud tells us that parents receive one-sixtieth of prophecy when picking a name. An angel comes to the parents and whispers the Jewish name that the new baby will embody.

Yet this still doesn't seem to help parents from agonizing over which name to pick!

So how do we choose a name? And why is the father's name traditionally not given to a son -- e.g. Jacob Cohen Jr., Isaac Levy III? Can a boy be named after a female relative? Can the name be announced before the Bris?

Ashkenazi Jews name after a deceased relative, which keeps the person's name and memory alive, forming a bond between the baby's soul and the namesake. The child can be inspired by the person's good qualities.

What should parents do if you want to use the name of a deceased relative, but another living relative has that name? Tradition says that if the living relative is closely related to the infant, the parents should choose another name.

However, it was very common at times for each child in a family to name a boy and a girl after the paternal and the maternal grandparents. For one of our 19th century TALALAY relatives in Mogilev (Belarus), each of eight children named a boy and a girl after the paternal grandparents. So how close is closely related? The paternal grandfather was a local famous rabbi and Talmudic scholar and several sons were rabbis. It did not seem to be a problem for them to have eight little Leibs and eight little Gittes running around at the same time.

The Sephardic tradition is to name infants after living relatives - it is considered a great honor and sign of respect.

Some names indicate a holiday around the time of the birth, such as Esther or Mordechai for a Purim baby, Ruth for Shavuot, Menachem or Nechama for Tisha B'Av. Names may be selected from the weekly parsha (Torah portion) for the birthweek.

The post illustrated Italian rubber bracelets with slide-on sterling silver letters to form Hebrew name bracelets from Alefbet.

Footnote: Civil War widow's pensions

Footnote.com has released Civil War widows' pension records, and is also offering a special free seven-day trial with registration.

Jews fought for both sides - Confederate and Union - during this war. If your ancestors came to the US early on, you may discover important details relevant to your research.

Footnote also has the records of the Civil War Soldiers and the Southern Claims Conference and I have located Jewish records in that as well, such as that of Private M.J. Cohen of Georgia (left). Cohen enlisted April 1862 in the lst (Olmstead's) Georgia Infantry CSA, was transferred to the Confederate States Navy in August 1863, was 3rd assistant engineer on the steamer Drewry in June 1964, was captured April 1865 at Appomattox River and releasted June 1865 at Johnson's Island, Ohio after taking the oath of allegiance.

Searching for Cohen+civil war soldiers+confederate resulted in 1,624 items on this one name and historical period alone. There are 12 Levys in the Southern Claims Conference group, and 226 in the Civil War pension record group.

Civil War Widows’ Pension Now Available
On The Internet For The First Time

Lindon, UT – October 16, 2008 – Today, Footnote.com released the first digitized versions of the Civil War Widows’ Pension Files.

Through its partnership with Footnote.com, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and FamilySearch, Footnote.com has worked together to prepare, scan, index and now publish these highly popular original documents. “These are one of the most heavily used series of original records at the National Archives,” said James Hastings, NARA Director of Access Programs.

Having never been microfilmed before, the Civil War Pension Files were previously accessible only at the National Archives in Washington, DC. Now, through this project, anyone can access these records via the internet exclusively on Footnote.com.

“The significance to family historians is obvious,” says Cynthia Fox, a NARA Deputy Director. “However, these records offer much to the scholarly community as well. They document the lives of common Americans; people who rarely left journals or collections of letters. They often tell the life stories of people whose daily lives would otherwise be undocumented. Having these records online opens this virtually untapped resource for the study of social history in new and exciting ways.”

Footnote.com has additional paper-to-digital projects to the site including:
• The Southern Claims Commission
• WWII & Vietnam War Photos
• Homestead Records

“It’s crucial to preserve this information and make it available on the internet where more people can interact with these records,” explains Russ Wilding, CEO of Footnote.com. “At Footnote.com we believe it’s all about people connecting with history in a unique way and our goal is to make sure we provide the best content to help make that connection.”

Footnote.com now features over 45 million records ranging from the time of the Pilgrims and the Revolutionary War to the Vietnam War. Millions of documents are added every month with increasing numbers of people adding their own piece of history to the Footnote.com site through photos, documents, letters and stories.

Visitors can view every image on Footnote.com by signing up for a free 7-day trial. To learn more, visit www.footnote.com today.

GenealogyBank: Happy Anniversary

Tom Kemp of the GenealogyBank blog reminded us that the website is celebrating its second year of service to genealogists on October 18.

GenealogyBank has grown over the past two years, and today is 60% larger than when it launched.

Its resources, which grow every day, include:

- Over 240 million books, records and articles
- Over 1 billion names
- Over 3,700 newspapers - from all 50 States; 1690 to today
- Over 115 million obituaries and death records - more than any other source
- Complete American State Papers
- More coverage of the Serial Set than other genealogy sites
- Newspaper coverage just not available anywhere else
- Fast, easy to search, easy to print, e-mail or save each item

You'll never know what amazing details are hiding in these resources until you look!

Decoding Russian names

Melissa Hahn's blog BraveTheWorld is not a genealogy blog, but she has posted a nice piece on understanding Russian names. She's planning to write about various aspects of Russian culture and history, but this post was on Russian names.

So if you're just starting out, put this on your list. Jewish names are mentioned in the complete article.

The first key is to understand the structure. Most Russian full names consist of three parts, just like American ones. The difference is the middle name: whereas Americans tend to select a middle name for the way it rolls off the tongue between the first and last name, or as an opportunity to squeeze in an additional family or saint name, in Russia the middle name nearly always consists of the father's first name.

This is called the patronymic (patro meaning father), and has two components: the father's name, plus an ending that means "of" (as in son or daughter of). These endings usually look like "-ov/ova/ovna", "-ev/eva/evna", or "-ich/ovich/evich". (The versions with an -a at the end would be for the daughter, and the other versions would be for the son).

We can use Vladimir Putin as an example. His full name is Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin. Looking only at the middle name, we see a compound name: Vladimir + "ovich". Thus, his full name is Vladimir -"Son-of-Vladimir"- Putin. Another example is Leo Tolstoy, whose full name is "Lev Nicholaevich Tolstoy". His middle name, Nicholaevich, is the compound of "Nicholai" + "evich", and means "the son of Nicholas."

Melissa includes lists of common formal names (diminutives and nicknames as well) for men and women. Many given names are Biblical, Latin and Greek, as well as Old Slavic.

She discusses the polite way of addressing people, using the given name and patrynomic; addressing close friends or family members with pet names that get longer as the relationship is more intimate.

Example: Andrei Andreyevich (formal), Andrei (casual), Andrushka (very close), Andrushochka or Andrushenka (extremely close).

Sometimes, however, the nickname does not resemble the original name at all. For example, Sasha is the short form for Alexander, Vova for Vladimir.

To satisfy your curiousity, the following are popular nicknames (in parentheses). Anastasia (Nastya), Anatolyi (Tolia, Tolik), Anna (Hanna, Ania), Boris (Borya), Dmitri (Dima, Dimochka), Elizaveta (Liza), Ivan (Vanya, Vanechka), Larisa (Lalya, Lara), Natalia (Natasha), Oleg (Olezhka), Olga (Olya, Lyolya), Pavel (Pasha), Pyotor (Petya), Sergei (Seryozha), Stepan (Styopa), Vadim (Vadik), Vasily (Vasya), and Viktor (Vitya).

Surnames and endings, which tend to be adjectives or like patronymics, are also addressed.

In the adjective category: "Joseph Stalin (born in Georgia with the last name Dzhugashvili), chose his future last name to match the adjective meaning Steel- a choice whose significance was not lost on Soviet citizens."

Professions fall in this category: "The name Boyarsky is derived from the title "Boyarin", meaning landed gentry or nobility."

In the patrynomic category (endings of ov/ev), names are generally male first names, animals, colors or cities of origin: "Chernov contains the root word "Chyor", which means black; Medvedev contains the root word "Medved" which means bear...".

Don't be intimidated, says Melissa, the next time you see a Russian name:

Simply look for the markers- the endings of -y, -sky, -in, -ov/ev, -ovna/evna, and -ich. Sound it out and see if it sounds anything like the names that are already familiar to you. And, if you are especially ambitious, look up the root word to get a sense for the way that the name comes across to Russians. (You don't even need to know the Cyrillic alphabet; you can go to an etymology site in English). At the very least, when you come across a Russian name, you will be a little less lost than before.

Read the complete post at the link above.

Israel: One Day Seminar, Dec. 1

Registration is now open for the registration for the Fourth Israel Genealogical Society One Day Seminar to be held Monday, December 1. The theme is "Oral Tradition and Lore as Sources for Family Roots Research."

Genealogy research usually relies on official documents such as birth, marriage, and death certificates. Even tombstone inscriptions can supply important data. Dates and names gathered from the above are used as the basis for constructing family-trees.

Gathering materials based on both private and public memory can fill the gap where official data is missing - a well known problem in Jewish genealogy - and serve as a cultural bridge between generations.

At the Fourth Annual One Day Seminar [Yom Iyun] which will take place on Monday, December 1, 2008 – 4 Kislev 5769 we will wander together between past and present.

We will examine legends and anecdotes with memories that are a leitmotif in every family. We all have relatives who tell us they are sure of "what was . . ."

Join us for a fascinating program in which we will get a taste of what we were always too impatient to hear about. Our families are transmitting unique traditions from generation to generation: From King David to the de Vinci code, from the Magreb to Aram Tzova, between Ukraine prairies and the new vineyards in Gedera there are tales to tell.

The event will take place from 8.30am-5.45pm (with lunch and coffee breaks) at Beit Wolyn, the Givatayim branch of Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies. For more information, click here.

Fees (lunch not included): Members, IGS/JFRA: NIS 105; others, NIS 125. Seating is limited; register early.

The opening keynote speech (Hebrew) by Dr. Anat Gueta is "The Family Traditions Relating to King David's Pedigree – Michael Halperin's Case Study."

There are two concurrent program tracks in English (E) and Hebrew (H).

11-11:45am
"Oral Documentation, Genealogy and History;" Dr. Margalit Bejarano [H]
"The Legacy of An-sky in the search for roots;" Rosemary Eshel [E]

11.45-12.30pm
"The Myth on the Chelouche Family Immigration to ‘Eretz Yisrael’in the order
of Time and Research;" A. Chelouche [H]
"Family Oral Tradition and Lore: Blind Loyalty or Critical Confrontation;" Paul King [E]

1.30-2.15pm
"Amnon Hurvitz as an Historian of GEDERA’s First Days;" Dr. Nili Arieh-Sapir [H]
"Stories my father told me;" Ida Chaya Schwartz Se-Lavan [E]

2.15-3pm
"The ANTEBI Family History in the Light of Traditional Family Stories;" Dr. Elioz Antebi–Hefer [H]
"The Jewish Historical Clock: The case of 'Megale Amukot;'" Michael Honey [E]

3.30-4.15pm - workshops
"Collect Genealogical Materials 'in the field;'" Yehuda Etsba'a [H]
"Gathering Oral Information for a Genealogical Research;" Shoshana Ben Dor [E]

4.15p-5pm
"10 Words, 7 Months, and a 5-Languages’ Meeting;" Arnon Hershkovitz [H]
"So, We are not really Friedmans?" Roni Golan [E]

5-4.45pm - Closing Session
"The Family Code: A Literary or Pseudo Scientific Subject?" Eli Eshed [H]

California: Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival, Oct. 26

The Silicon Valley Jewish Film Festival is branching out for its 17th annual edition, which runs Oct. 26 through Nov. 19. It will include some 22 full-length, short, and short short films, speakers, special programs and a concert.

On November 13, "Ladino: 500 Years Young" will be screened. It's about an Israeli singer who keeps alive the songs of Sephardic Jews. Following the film, the Sephardic Music Experience, led by Bay Area jazz vocalist Kat Parra, will perform.

Check out a full schedule and ticket information here.

Germany: 47 Jewish cemeteries documented

The Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute for German-Jewish History in Duisburg, Germany has documented 47 Jewish cemeteries in the Euregio Rhein Maas region - part of North Rhine Westfalia and part of the Dutch province of Limburg

The online searchable database of these cemeteries offers more than 3,400 gravestone inscriptions (1715 is the oldest), with German translations, commentaries, biographical details and photographs. It will be continuously updated. The Institute welcomes additions, corrections and biographical details.

Names, years of death, the Hebrew, German and Dutch inscriptions and translations into German are fully searchable in both German and Hebrew.

These are the cemeteries (NL=Netherlands; D=Germany):

B: Boxmeer/Vierlingsbeek (Nl), Brueggen (D), Brueggen-Bracht (D),
D: Dormagen (D), Dormagen-Zons (D),
G: Geldern (D), Gennep (Nl), Grevenbroich (D), Gr-Hemmerden (D), Gr-Huelchrath (D), Gr-Wevelinghoven (D), Grimlinghausen (D),
I: Issum (D), J: Juechen (D), J-Garzweiler (D), J-Hochneukirch (D),
K: Kempen (D), Korschenbroich (D), K-Glehn (D), Krefeld (new cemetery) (D), Kr-Huels (D), Kr-Linn (D),
M: Meerbusch-Lank-Latum (D), Moenchengladbach (D), Mg-Giesenkirchen (D), Mg-Odenkirchen (D), Mg-Rheindahlen (D), Mg-Rheydt (D), Mg-Wickrath (D),
N: Nettetal-Kaldenkirchen (D), Neuss (D),
R: Roermond (Oude Kerkhof, old andnew part) (Nl), Rommerskirchen (D), R-Butzheim (D),
S: Schiefbahn (Bertzweg) (D), Schiefbahn-Knickelsdorf (D), Schwalmtal-Waldniel (D), Sittard (Nl),
T: Toenisvorst-St. Toenis (D), T-Vorst (D),
V: Venlo (old and new cemetery) (Nl), Viersen (D), V-Duelken (D), V-Suechteln (D),
W: Willich (D), W-Anrath (D)

The "image-text inventory, documentation and comparative research on Jewish cemeteries in Dutch and German frame of reference" was carried out within the framework of a "setup of a euregional network for regional historic research" sponsored by the euregio rhein-maas-nord, the provincial government in Limburg and the government of North Rhine Westfalia.

The database, which has now been presented online, contains more than 3,400 gravestone inscriptions, the oldest from the year 1715, with German translations, commentaries, biographical details and photographs. It will be continously complemented (additions and corrections,particularly those of biographical details, are welcome!).

Access the database here, and also view Arolsen, the old cemetery of Frankfurt am Main (Battonnstrasse), Hamburg-Altona, Muelheim an der Ruhr and Winsen.

Here's an example of a burial in Muelheim an der Ruhr.

Hitzle bat [Jeho]schua ∞ Schimon Mülheim [23.06.1725]

‎‏פה‏‎
‎‏טמונה אשה[...]
‎‏מרת היצלה בת‏‎
‎‏[...]ושע ז״ל אשת
‎‏שמעון מילם [?] שנפטרת‏‎
‎‏ונקברת ביום ד׳ כ״ג תמוז‏‎
‎‏שנת תפ״ה לפ״ק‏‎
תנצב״ה
Hier
ist geborgen eine Frau [...]
Frau Hitzle, Tochter von
Jeho]schua (?), sein Andenken zum Segen, Gattin des
Schimon Mülheim. Verschieden
und begraben am Tag 4, 23. Tammus
des Jahres 485 der kleinen Zählung.
Ihre Seele sei eingebunden in das Bündel des Lebens

The database is constantly being extended to include more cemeteries and inscriptions.

To access the database, select cemeteries under "Auswahlmenue." Searching can then be carried out in German or Hebrew (change language by [alt]+[shift]).

To look at only one cemetery, go to "Inschriften" to access chronologically arranged inscriptions. Go through the list individually or select a specific year at "Jahr."

There are more details under "Information," which now only appears in German.

Everton Online free through Oct. 17

Everton's Genealogical Helper has been around for a long time in print. This summer, an online edition was offered and many people subscribed to it. World Vital Records hosted it on their servers but there were access problems, so Everton will now host it themselves with easy access.

Two online edition issues are now available free through October 17: July-August 2008, and September-October 2008.

Even better, there's now another chance to subscribe to the Online Edition for only $10 (regularly $12), and to the print edition (including online access) for $25 (regularly $29). The reduced prices for annual subscriptions are good through October 27.

The Genealogical Helper has been widely recognized for its content, educational and research information, as well of lists of organizations, events, and repositories. The online edition is the complete edition and all websites in the content or ads are conveniently hot-linked.

For more information on Everton, click here.

Boston: Jews in the news, Oct. 26

Increasing numbers of family history researchers are exploring the treasures contained in historic newspapers. If you are just beginning to explore these resources and live in the Boston area, here's a fascinating look at what you just might find.

Pamela Weisberger will present “Jews in the News: Historical Newspaper Research,” at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, from 1.30-4.30pm Sunday, October 26, at Gann Academy, 333 Forest St., Waltham.

Some of the most exciting resources for persons researching their family lineage are the online databases and microfilms of old newspapers and journals.

From the scanned and digitized New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and Times of London—to regional newspapers and Jewish community journals, following this oft-neglected “paper trail” will enhance your genealogical knowledge.

From obituaries, birth, engagement, marriage announcements, to curiosities such as “Yesterday’s Fires,” “News of the Courts,” and articles covering Eastern European towns and businesses, you will be astonished by the unexpected appearances immigrant ancestors make in the pages of these tabloids and broadsheets.

Learn techniques for locating people and events meaningful to you, with examples of unexpected insights gained into your relatives’ lives by exploring this under-utilized research tool.

Weisberger is the program chair for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles's program chair, Gesher Galicia's research coordinator and active in the Hungarian and Sub-Carpathian JewishGen SIGs.

For more than 20 years, she has documented her family’s history, traveling throughout Eastern Europe visiting ancestral towns and villages and conducting research in Polish, Ukrainian and Hungarian archives. A special focus has been late-19th-early-20th century city directories, newspapers and court records.

Weisberger has produced the documentaries “I Remember Jewish Drohobycz” and “Genealogy Anyone? Twenty-Five Years in the Life of the JGSLA,” and coordinated the popular film festivals, since 2006, at the annual IAJGS international conferences on Jewish genealogy.

She holds a BA (English), Washington University in St. Louis and an MS (Broadcasting), Boston University.

The program is free for JGSGB members; others, $5; refreshments will be served. For directions to Gann Academy, click here. Click here for more JGSGB details.

TV: New genealogy reality shows coming

Reuters/Hollywood Reporter mentioned genealogy in its television news here.

LOS ANGELES (Hollywood Reporter) - "Survivor" producer Mark Burnett is developing a remake of the classic TV show "This Is Your Life."

The show, which surprises celebrity guests with people from their past, launched as a radio program in 1948. It aired as a TV series on NBC from 1952-61, and then had a brief revival in 1972. ABC developed a remake in 2005, but the project, to be hosted by Regis Philbin, never made it to air.

"'This Is Your Life' is one of the most enduring programs to air on television, and we are thrilled to be bringing it back with the top producer of unscripted entertainment," said Barbara Dunn-Leonard, president of Ralph Edwards Prods., which owns the rights to the format.

Broadcasters have shown recent interest in biographical reality shows. Fox's dark-side effort "The Moment of Truth," NBC's "Amnesia" and ABC's "Opportunity Knocks" are game shows in which contestants are quizzed about elements of their own lives. NBC and Fox also are developing genealogy reality shows, where researchers discover secrets about participants' ancestral history.

Fideos or Fidellos - the recipe

Both Thomas MacEntee and Sally Jacobs asked about my mention of Fidellos in my menu for our erev Yom Kippur dinner. Thomas has asked before about other recipes, and I've been too busy to provide them. I apologize. Hope this one makes up for the past.

Wrote Thomas:

Fidellos? Interesting - since you mentioned it is Sephardic I am certain it must be related to the Catalan dish fideua which is what I describe as a paella made with elbow macaroni.

Wrote Sally:

I'd love to see your fidellos recipe someday...it sounds delicious!

I have many fond memories of breaking fast with family friends as a child. They were heirs to a large toy company and their basement rec room was stuffed to the gills with every toy imaginable. Even so, my *fondest* memories are of hot glass baking dishes bubbling hot from the oven and overloaded with cheese blinzes. Oh my oh my. I have to stop now.

Fidellos - sometimes called Fidellos de Tostados - are simply golden-brown sauteed noodle coils which are then simmered in chicken broth and/or crushed tomatoes. It can be served with a sauteed chicken, roast chicken or anything else. It can be a soft noodle dish, more like spaghetti, although it may also look like a kugel and sliced into wedges.

Why two spellings? Fideos or Fidellos: The double-L sounds like Y in Spanish and Catalan, so Fideos and Fidellos are voiced the same way. Fidellos is the Ladino term.

This is a very old Sephardic dish, found everywhere the Sephardim went (Greece, Italy, etc.). Because it is mild, it is great for the meal before Yom Kippur, providing carbohydrates for the long fast and not too salty or spicy, which would increase thirst.

Tomato dishes generally improve if made the day before, and I usually do this, reheating before serving. I add a dash of cinnamon when working with tomato dishes, such as this, as it adds another dimension. Just a dash - too much will be overwhelming.

For the meaning of fidellos/fideos, Joyce Goldstein ("Sephardic Flavors") writes:

In Spain, fideos is a classic noodle dish prepared in the manner of paella. The noodles are sauteed to give them some color, then they are cooked in stock until the liquid is absorbed...In the Turkish book Sefarad Yemekleri, these fried noodles are called skulaka, and in some Greek cookbooks they are called fideikos. Fidellos is a Ladino term.

This is the basic recipe:

One 12-oz bag of fidellos or fideos, coiled nests of very thin pasta
1/2 cup good olive oil
2 cups peeled whole Italian tomatoes, diced (San Marzano or Muir Glen Organic are good brands)- Save all the liquid in the can and from dicing.
3 cups liquid (the juice from the tomatoes, with water or chicken stock added to make the total amount).
1 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
dash garlic powder
dash cinnamon

NOTE: Some fidellos come in 16-oz packages. If using that, increase liquid to 4 cups (tomato juice plus water or chicken stock). In any case, I prefer chicken stock to plain water for more flavor.

Heat olive oil in a 4 quart pot. Fry the noodle coils until golden brown on each side. Be very careful not to let them get dark brown or to burn. As they turn golden, remove to a plate covered with a paper towel (to drain off extra oil). When all the coils are toasted and removed, add the tomatoes, liquid and seasoning to the pan and bring to a boil. Add the noodle coils and immediately lower heat to very low. Simmer uncovered for about 10 minutes to soften the noodles. Stir occasionally with a long-handled fork to open up the coils and prevent sticking. Cook gently until the liquid is absorbed. Remove from heat, cover and let sit for another 10 minutes. Stir again and serve. I follow a recipe which includes a finely chopped sauteed medium onion (sauteed in the oil after the noodles are toasted)

While I serve this dish soft, the other method takes the noodles, after all the liquid is absorbed, and turns it into the serving dish, allowing the pasta to solidify into a cake or kugel-like consistency. Do this ahead of time. Reheat and cut into wedges to serve, but it can also be eaten at room temperature.

More technology tips

I've recently discovered New York Times blogger David Pogue who writes Pogue's Posts - the latest in technology, and always has something interesting to read. Reader comments also supply even more tips and useful knowledge.

Don't know why I haven't mentioned him before, but again Genealogy Insider reminded me that Tracing the Tribe's readers might also benefit from his expertise.

His detailed post last week on tips for computer users was interesting and, as of today, there are nearly 1,200 reader comments, many with additional tips.

His post covers many "essential tech bits" that a lot of people assume everyone knows. However, many people are simply not aware of these shortcuts. Mac and iPhone tips are also covered.

- Double-click a word to highlight it in a document, email or Web page.

- Reminders about "phishing" and other scams and where to find real information on them, at http://www.snopes.com.

- Enlarge text on any Web page, using keys as well as your mouse wheel.

- Use Google to do math for you. [That's one this math-challenged blogger really likes]

- Remember to empty the Recycle Bin or Trash. Get rid of months or years of computer-slowing trash.

Pogue's past posts (how's that for alliteration?) have covered flash drives and many other topics.

Here's his post (September 25) on Google search tips.

I did try his tip on using the "I feel lucky" option to search. I typed schelly genealogy in the Goggle searchbox and clicked "I feel lucky" - up popped Tracing the Tribe. Neat. Typing dardashti genealogy brought up Ancestry.com's surname search index. schelly dardashti genealogy again brought up Tracing the Tribe.

Try some of his suggestions.

Help for the technically-challenged

The Genealogy Insider blog (part of Family Tree Magazine) had a great tip for the technically-challenged among us. Since I still consider myself in this category, I thought I'd check out the CommonCraft Show.

This is the place to go to learn some Web technology couched in plain English. The low-tech short videos explain the new stuff we face every day, from blogs to wikis, Twitter, social networking, social bookmarking, podcasting, photo sharing and more.

CommonCraft has its own YouTube channel with all the videos.

And, in this election season, there's even a video on "Electing a US President in Plain English." Tracing the Tribe readers from around the world may enjoy trying to understand the system.

Thanks, Genealogy Insider, for this great pointer.

Florida: 'Chicago' and All That Jazz, Oct. 29

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County's membership meeting will present guest speaker Ron Arons on Wednesday, October 29, at the South County Civic Center, Delray Beach.

The day begins with a choice of two SIG group meetings (Hungary/Romania and Lithuania) from 11.30am-12.30pm, followed by a Brick Wall session, and the main program at 1pm.

Genealogist, author and lecturer - Ron is a popular speaker with the JGSPBC, and his new program is “The Musical 'Chicago' and All That Genealogical Jazz.”

The Broadway musical and Hollywood movie “Chicago” were based on the stories of two real-life women by the name of Belva and Beulah. Just as in the show and movie, these women killed their lovers. By collecting standard genealogical documents, Ron pieces together their lives as well as puts their tales into context relating to Chicago history.

And you thought Jews didn’t commit crimes! Or you thought the number of Jews who broke the law was small. Think again. Ron Arons has spent much of the past decade researching Jewish criminals – big name gangsters and lesser-known individuals.

Born and raised in New York, Arons has traced his roots to England, Poland, Romania, the Ukraine, Belarus and Lithuania. He has given presentations at many international genealogy conferences and to local genealogical societies across the country. In January 2008, he appeared on the PBS television series "The Jewish Americans" as the resident expert regarding Jewish criminality on New York’s Lower East Side. Arons earned degrees from Princeton and the University of Chicago.

For directions and additional details, click here .

Los Angeles: Archives Bazaar, Oct. 25

USC will host the third annual Los Angeles Archives Bazaar from 10am-5pm Saturday, Oct. 25, according to this Los Angeles Times blog post. The event is free.

Anyone who has researched Los Angeles history knows that the material is spread all over the city and not always in the most logical spot. For example, items from the early history of USC's medical school are housed at UCLA. The archives bazaar, sponsored by L.A. as Subject, is an annual gathering to show off Los Angeles history and provide a clearinghouse for researchers, whether they are working on a scholarly project or family genealogy.

Hosted by USC Libraries, L.A. as Subject is an alliance of research archives, libraries, and collections dedicated to preserving the rich history of the Los Angeles region. It works to increase the visibility of local archives and improve access for everyone interested in Southern California history, including students, researchers, and educators. It promotes tools and mentoring to help members with everything (preserving, cataloging, fundraising, public outreach, etc.).

Exhibitors include the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, Autry National Center, Los Angeles City Archives, Los Angeles Public Library, and UCLA Special Collections, in addition to less well-known resources, such as: Boyle Heights Historical Society; Chinese Historical Society of Southern California; Filipino-American Library; Japanese American National Museum; LA84 Foundation-Sports Library; Mayme A. Clayton Library and Museum; One National Gay and Lesbian Archives; Orange Empire Railway Museum; Society of California Archivists and the UCLA Chicano Studies Research Center Library and Archive.

Also featured: films, genealogy programs, teaching sessions and book signings.

Experts from the Southern California Genealogical Society will demonstrate how to research attendees' family history using the 1930 census, DNA analysis, online databases, as well as some California resources for genealogical research.

See the complete program here.

The event will be at the USC Davidson Conference Center, Figueroa at Jefferson. The event is free; parking is $8.

Not fare for this holiday!

Tracing the Tribe wishes all its readers gmar hatima tova, an easy fast, and an excellent year filled with all the best things in life, including - of course - amazing genealogical discoveries.

My cooking is done. Chicken soup, matzo balls, fidellos (a Sephardic noodle dish with tomato sauce and chicken). Break-the-fast is ready to go for tomorrow, including the annual bagel fest (lox, cream cheese, etc.), and a great baked eggplant casserole.

For a last post prior to signing off for this holy day, I couldn't resist this one, even though it's neither fair nor fare for this holiday. Warning: this story will make you hungry.

Tracing the Tribe readers in Riverside, California may be interested in this new Jewish deli (not kosher). Read it here at the online edition of the Press-Enterprise.

So, have you heard the one about the Jewish deli that opened in downtown Riverside?

Say, you can actually order hot corned beef or hot pastrami sandwiches on rye and homemade matzo ball soup.

Only this isn't a joke.

Owner Steve Braslaw chose downtown to recreate an old-time Jewish deli, with a neighborhood feel, called Relish. The last real deli closed more than 20 years ago.

"It's about nostalgia," said Braslaw, 38. "Food is memories. I want to capture my childhood."

Delis are encoded in his maternal side's DNA. His great-grandfather owned a deli in LA. His grandfather operated one in the San Fernando Valley where young Braslaw and his brother noshed on corned beef and kosher pickles at the counter every Sunday while their grandmother waited on them.

The menu, according to the story, includes Dr. Brown's sodas and egg creams, fancy salads, signature deli favorites such as hand-carved pastrami and cole slaw, a hot brisket sandwich and lox and bagels. His gefilte fish bombed the first week, but he'll soon be introducing the major deli delights of knishes; kishka; chopped liver; blintzes; borscht; tongue, smoked white fish and herring.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Israel: Shanghai Sephardim, Oct. 12

"The Sephardic Journey of Leah Jacob Garrick" is the program at a special event in Israel.

The Ra'anana branch of the Jewish Family Research Association (JFRA, member IAJGS) and ESRA (English Speaking Residents' Association) are co-sponsoring the program, according to JFRA president Ingrid Rockberger.

Born in Shanghai, Garrick is the fourth generation of her family to have lived there. She had a typical colonial upbringing, living through the war years under Japanese occupation, immigrating to the United States in 1947. She has returned to Shanghai several times and currently resides in San Francisco. Leah has an extremely interesting family history to relate.

The meeting begins at 8pm, Sunday, October 12, at Yad Lebanim, 147 Ahuza St., Ra'anana. Admission: NIS 30. ESRAcards and JFRA members, NIS 20.

For more information on JFRA (member, IAJGS), click here.

Museum of Family History - Newest holdings

Steve Lasky, founder of the online Museum of Family History, is a busy guy. There's always something new or an updated feature. We always wonder how he finds time to get this done. Steve is one of Jewish genealogy's most dedicated and inspired people. Take some time to see the resource he has compiled.

Here's his latest update:

1- Cemetery Project:
Mt. Lebanon Cemetery, Glendale, New York, with more than 88,000 burials, has created a searchable database. This is the seventh such searchable database in the New York area (including Mt. Moriah Cemetery in New Jersey.; the total is some 700,000 burials. For information and links to all of those websites, click here.

2- Great Artists Series:
The famed tenor and hazzan (cantor) Richard Tucker is the fifth artist in the series. Read all about him - and listen to recordings from Turandot, I Pagliacci and Tosca - here.

Steve notes that so far five male artists have been honored, but he welcomes suggestions on which female artists should be included in this series. Read the series description here and nominate an artist.

3- Education and Research Center:
The non-profit DNA Shoah Project is working to build a global genetic database of Holocaust survivors, their children and grandchildren in an attempt to match displaced relatives, provide Shoah orphans with information about their biological families and eventually, when the database has reached sufficient size, assist European governments with the identification of Holocaust-era remains that continue to surface. Read more here.

4- Research Groups:
A page has been created that lists and provides links to all material on the site about Hungary. country of Hungary.

An informational page for Balassagyarmat, Hungary researchers is being compiled. Steve invites readers with connections to this community to forward any information on your Balassagyarmat families for inclusion on that page.

5- Postcards from Home:
More pre-war family photos have been added from these European locations: Belarus: Brest-Litovsk; Hungary: Balassagyarmat; Lithuania: Vilnius; Sweden: Stockholm; Ukraine: Czernowitz.

6- The Synagogues of Europe, Past and Present:
See synagogue photos from 16 countries and more than 110 towns here.

7- Yiddish Actors
The only biography about Yiddish acting, "Once a Kingdom," about Maurice Schwartz is presented exclusively to Museum viewers. Chapters 32-39 have been added; the final chapters will be online in December.

8- Search Engine:
Steve reminds visitors that the site has a helpful, though rudimentary search engine. Click here to learn more. He is always available to answer questions, receive suggestions and more. Contact him here.

Pittsburgh Jewish News: Online improvements

Archivist Susan M. Melnick writes that the Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project search interface has been improved.

The project includes The Jewish Criterion (1895-1962), The American Jewish Outlook (1934-1962) and The Jewish Chronicle (1962-Present). It serves both as an online reference source and as a digitized historical documentation of the Jewish community of Pittsburgh and its outlying areas.

The project is a collaboration of Carnegie Mellon University Libraries, the Rodef Shalom Congregation Archives, the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Senator John Heinz History Center, and the Jewish Chronicle of Pittsburgh, with help from the United Jewish Federation of Pittsburgh.

Improvements:

- Search results now show search term in context in "snippets."

- Enlarged fonts and columns.

- viewers can change text size via their browser.

- Number of hits and page navigation are on a white background for better visibility.

- Names of newspapers now spelled out, not abbreviated.

- Layout changed to allow snippets to fit generally on one line

- Up to four snippets displayed for each issue.

- Snippet color changed to distinguish from links.

For more information, visit the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History center online here, and search the newspaper project here .

Armenia: Hebrew manuscripts found

A collection of Hebrew manuscripts is being studied in Armenia. It appeared in the AZG Armenian Daily, in the Science section, here, noted on PaleoJudaica.blogspot.com (written by James Davila).

An old collection of Hebrew manuscripts in Matenadaran includes those brought from Etchmiatsin in 1940. The old collection was enriched during the 1920s-50s; some 21 manuscripts are registered. In 1969, Dr Yosif Amusin - of the Russian Academy of Science's Institute of Oriental Studies - studied 13 of these.

According to the article, there also appears to be a new collection of more than 100 18th century parchment scrolls brought from Ukraine in the 1980s, although this article focuses on the old manuscripts. In March 2008, a new researcher in Matenadaran, Ruzan Poghosian - who studied at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem - began working with the 21 manuscripts noted above.

Among the seven items studied for the first time, she found a Sanskrit manuscript received from Varuzhan Malatian in 1967.

In a 185-page leatherbound manuscript, she found not just copies of Old Testament writing, but interpretations of both Old Testament and Talmud sections. The report said that there were several unfamiliar titles found as well, such as one called "After Death" (akharey mavet), about which she could not locate any information.

The manuscript is written in small, strange and "illegible" handwriting, according to the report. More skills are required to work with it and the article indicates that a collaboration needs to be established with the Jerusalem Instistute of Hebrew Manuscripts.

The old collection manuscripts include sections from Genesis, Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy and Esther. There are also three amulets that, according to the researcher, provide a way to study comparison of such written amulets in Armenian.

If more information becomes available, Tracing the Tribe readers will read about it.

Miami: Jewish female DNA comparison, Oct. 19

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Miami hosts Dr. Abe Lavender in "Jewish Female DNA: Comparisons of Ashkenazi and Sephardi Women From Recently Released Research Findings," at 10am, Sunday, October 19, at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation.

This mtDNA talk is based on data released only a few months ago that allows for comparisons on the ancestries of these two groups.

For more details (directions, parking, etc.), visit the JGS Miami website.

Head's-up: The group's November 2 meeting will feature Dr. Annette Fromm on "The Genealogy of the Greek Speaking Jews of Ioannina, Greece," on this Romaniot community in northwestern Greece. She has authored "We Are Few: Folklore and Ethnic Identity of the Jewish Community of Ioannina, Greece." Many immigrants from the community settled in New York City and established a synagogue. Fromm has previously spoken on Sephardic naming patterns.

Disasters and preservation

After reading the Galveston story, I thought it might be a good idea to again remind Tracing the Tribe's readers to be prepared for disasters. No one wants to lose forever all that hard-won research. Protect your valuable documents, files and photos.

- Make sure you have made copies of your documents and photos. Keep copies somewhere else - in another state or country - by sending them to relatives in several places. Even if those relatives never look at the items, you know they will be safe sitting on a shelf in a closet somewhere and from where they can be retrieved if necessary. Make both hard copies and electronic copies (CDs, flash drives, portable hard drives); investigate online storage and back-up services for files, documents and photographs; place your family tree and photographs online in a family website (such as MyHeritage.com). Make sure you have made negatives - any photographer can do that - from important photographs and store them separately.

- Where will you store items at home? Make sure they are not in damp basements (think humidity and possible flood or other water damage) and not in attics (hot, cold and possible wind and rain damage). Top shelves of closets may be a good start.

- Protect photographs and documents in page protectors (plastic sleeves); most are hole-punched for handy album storage. Tracing the Tribe has frequently advised readers about the dangers of those old "magnetic" albums where photos are affixed permanently to an adhesive backing. Often, photos cannot be removed without serious damage. Instead, bring pages to a photographer to make negatives and prints of each image, or if you're an expert with a digital or film camera, do it yourself. Consult an archivist at a nearby museum, library or university if valuable antique photos are stuck on those pages for advice on how to liberate them, if at all possible.

- In California and other earthquake-prone states, use sticky wax to anchor small items to shelves and walls (in addition to nails and wire for pictures). Attach heavy bookshelves and cabinets to walls for stability, add shelf protector strips to open shelving to keep items from tumbling to the floor. There are also special closures for cabinets to keep doors from flying open and items spilling out.

- Store items in plastic containers (such as Tupperware or Rubbermaid) - these come in a large variety of sizes. Some have lids that clamp down, which are better than just pressing lids closed. Try not to store items in cardboard cartons on the floor, which may flood. Using transparent containers also helps you see what's where - and they float!

- Spend some time thinking about what you would grab first in an emergency, whether it's a hurricane, fire, earthquake, tornado, flood, etc. After making sure family members are safe, what's next? What can't you live without, and where can you store it for easy access in an emergency?

Sally Jacobs of the Practical Archivist blog has compiled a great page of preservation information from reliable sources here. It's called the Preservation Answer Machine - try it out. Great job, Sally!

It's always better to be prepared now when you have time to think calmly about tasks to be done. As a former Florida (hurricanes) and California (earthquakes and fires) resident, I know anything can happen and just might - usually at the most inconvenient times.

What are your best tips for protecting your genealogical treasures? Have you personally experienced a disaster? What would you have done differently? What improvements have you made to prepare for the future? Your experience may help other readers.

Prague's Jewish treasures

Prague and environs are the focus of this Los Angeles Jewish Journal story on Jewish sights in the Czech Republic.

The Czech Republic's strong cultural balance between bustling urban life and calm rural communities features a wide variety of tourism options, from breweries to castles to Jewish ghettos. Major cities like Prague and Pilsen are ripe with history at nearly every corner, and Jewish tours offer everything from the construction of the second-largest synagogue in Europe to the creation of the mythical Golem.

Birthplace of Theodore Herzl, Franz Kafka and Sigmund Freud, this increasingly progressive country is trying to shed the specter of the Nazi and Soviet occupations and embrace its Jewish past and present to bolster tourism, an important part of its national economy.

The story touches on Prague's Jewish Museum, its Jewish Quarter, the Old Jewish Cemetery with some stones more than six centuries old; famous synagogues (Maisel Synagogue, Spanish Synagogue, Klausen Synagogue and Ceremonial Hall and Pinkas Synagogue) and their artifacts.

More than a half-million tourists visit the museum annually. The revenue aids the Federation of Jewish Communities of the Czech Republic, which compensates Holocaust survivors and develops programming for young people. Two active synagogues (Alt-Neu Shul and the High Synagogue) are not on the tour, but visits can be arranged through the museum.

The Alt-Neu Shul's fame, of course, is tht Rabbi Judah Loew is rumored to have created the Golem there in the 16th century.

In Bohemia, visit Europe's second-largest synagogue, The Great Synagogue of Pilsen, built in 1892, when there were some 5,000 Jews in the city. Pilsen is also branded as the beer-drinking capital of the world.

A visit to Moravia demonstrates the smaller Jewish communities, such as the Jewish Quarter of Trebic, a UNESCO World Heritage site, with 120 homes along the bank of the Jihlava River. Although no organized Jewish community exists today, the town maintains the Jewish cemetery, a renovated synagogue-turned-museum and a recently discovered mikvah.

In Boskovice and Mikulov, non-Jewish villagers preserve the memory of Jewish cultures, with tours of old synagogues, buildings and cemeteries. One of the largest Czech cemeteries is in Boskovice.

Terezin, the former concentration camp and memorial, is also on the itinerary.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Galveston: A sense of community after Ike

Galveston was decimated by Hurricane Ike. Read about the Jewish community of this city of survivors and how it is picking up the pieces of communal life in this story, "Island of Hope," by Michael C. Duke, in Houston's Jewish-Herald Voice.

GALVESTON – An island of hope emerged in a largely devastated city of Galveston this past Tuesday morning, Sept. 30, as 110 local Jews congregated on the back patio of Temple B’nai Israel for a spirit-uplifting and community-rebuilding Rosh Hashanah morning service.

The state of Texas’ oldest extant Jewish congregation, formed in the 1850s, was forced to usher in the New Year 5769 outdoors, after Hurricane Ike caused flooding and power-outages to its synagogue building, back on Sept. 13. Like much of the island, both Galveston synagogues, Temple B’nai Israel and Beth Jacob synagogue, still were without electricity and plumbing more than two weeks after the storm.

B’nai Israel, a Reform synagogue, is home to 180 member households, serving two-thirds of Galveston’s Jewish community. Beth Jacob, a Conservative congregation, did not host High Holy Day services this year, after its building suffered heavy damage by the storm.

Service outdoors

With sun blazing overhead, and mosquitoes feasting below, B’nai Israel Rabbi Jimmy Kessler held an abbreviated Rosh Hashanah worship service, which included Torah reading and the blowing of the shofar. Music was provided via battery-powered Karaoke machine, perched next to a folding card table, which supported a Torah scroll that had been protected in a watertight container during the hurricane. Narrow rows of chairs were laid out in partially shaded areas along the patio.

Some B’nai Israel congregants turned out for the service wearing slacks, neckties and dresses. Many, however, followed the rabbi’s lead and showed up in shirtsleeves and shorts. Most slathered on sunblock and insect repellent shortly before the service began at 10:30 a.m., and swapped kippot for broad-brimmed hats and dark sunglasses.

The shofar blowing, in particular, was a poignant part of the service. Rabbi Kessler sounded one shofar from the front, while simultaneously, congregant Steve Feldman sounded a second shofar from the back of the patio. The horns’ blasts echoed around the surrounding neighborhood, still largely devoid of life.

Read about the service, how both young families, newcomers, old timers and even visiting Red Cross workers have reconnected, and why they returned for this Rosh Hashanah service amid the destruction and devastation.

Husband and wife, Dr. Armond and Barbara Goldman, have lived on and near Galveston Island for the past 60 years. The couple was married by former B’nai Israel Rabbi Henry Cohen, of blessed memory. The Goldmans made the trip to the Rosh Hashanah service from the mainland to support Rabbi Kessler and to see his wife, Shelley, a former classmate of Barbara’s.

“We also thought it was important to show support for the community here – not just for the Jewish community, but for the Galveston community, at large,” Dr. Goldman said. “Having gatherings like this will help the island come back, we hope.”

Immediately after the storm, Debbie Shabot said she was planning to ignore Rosh Hashanah and not celebrate the Jewish New Year, given all the hardships she and her family have endured after Hurricane Ike. “But then, at the last minute, I decided that it would be good to be part of the community. And, I’m glad that I changed my mind, because you can see how much community there is here today – people who have lived on the island their whole lives, and newcomers, as well,” she observed.

A family living in a century-old home across from B'nai Israel have been living in their home despite the 6 feet of water in the basement and first floor during the storm. Michael and Carla Brandon and their son Josh, 14, are determined to stay on the island. Brandon said:

“I think it reinforces the fact that Galveston is a city of survivors, and that many people will come back and rebuild.

“And yet, the hardest part for us is seeing a lot of friends and neighbors not return. We’ve seen some friends return right after the storm, become overwhelmed, and move,” he pointed out.

B'nai Israel's president Barbara Crews also served as the island's third Jewish mayor and first female Jewish mayor, 1990-1996.

“There’s so much Jewish history in Galveston, that it really hasn’t been any different,” she observed. “Jewish life here has been very much a part of the city, especially since the Galveston Immigration Movement at the turn of the last century. And so, I think it’s safe to say that Galveston has always been a diverse community and an integrated community. Jews have been so much a part of the civic life and the secular community, in addition to the religious community here, that we suffer and we celebrate alongside our non-Jewish neighbors.

“Galveston will come back,” Crews promised, “and the Jewish community will be an important part of the rebuilding, as we have been in the past. Those of us who are staying on the island are hopeful – as Jews have been throughout our long history – as we begin the New Year.”

Rabbi Kessler said that B'nai Israel will hold an abbreviated Yom Kippur service at 10.30am Thursday, October 9.

Emergency funds have been set up to accept donations. There are links at the Jewish Federation of Greater Houston website.

Do read the complete article here.

Chinese pandas love 'Jewish penicillin'

The affinity of the Jewish people for Chinese food is well-known. Now we learn of the affinity of the Chinese - pandas - for Jewish food, namely chicken soup.

To be fair, the Chinese do have a long tradition of drinking slow-simmered chicken broth for health. I'm wondering if the Persian Jewish merchants who arrived so long ago in Kaifeng brought it with them?

Celia Male of London just emailed me:

Flavour of the month in your blog is cooking [re your Iranian Jewish Cookbook] and for many, it means home-made chicken soup, as it gets colder and the nights draw in. "We" always knew it was good for us and now the pandas are getting it too. What could this mean genealogically-speaking?

"Don't worry, bubbelah. The soup's almost ready!"
Here's the Yahoo News link to the AP story Celia sent:

Everyone needs some chicken soup for the soul — even pandas.

The Wuhan Zoo in central China has been feeding its two pandas home-cooked chicken soup twice in a month to reduce stress and give them a nutritional boost, a zoo official said Friday.

He Zhihua said 3-year-old Xiwang and Weiwei — literally meaning "Hope" and "Greatness" — were tired and suffering from a little shock since the start Monday of the weeklong National Day holiday, one of the biggest travel seasons of the year.

On Wednesday, up to 30,000 people swarmed the zoo and about 1,000 tourists packed the panda enclosure, shouting to get the animals' attention, He said. The pandas paced restlessly.

"They had been getting less sleep, and they had to run around more," he said. "We felt it would be good to give them the soup because they were fatigued and had a bit of a shock."

Reflecting the Chinese tradition of drinking slow-cooked chicken soup for health, the zookeepers boiled roosters in water overnight and added a pinch of salt to the concentrated stock.

The pandas were served 2.2 pounds (1 kilogram) of soup in giant dishes, in addition to their regular diet of bamboo, milk and buns, He said.

It was a hit.

"They drank it all like they drank their milk. They loved it," he said.

Hey, if all YOU had to eat was tough bamboo, chicken soup would also sound good. I'm looking for a chain of fast-food chicken soup places in the nature preserves in which the pandas survive. And the tourists might like it also!

The story does not mention either matzo balls or Persian gondi. However, since pandas are also known to eat meat and small birds, the gondi might be of interest.

The pair were first fed chicken soup on Sept. 28 - nearly Rosh Hashanah - to help them brave the upcoming cold weather. When they exhibited no stomach problems, they ate it again this week.

Coverleaf: Read magazines online

I just received notice of a new website, Coverleaf.com, that features digital magazine editions and free previews of some popular magazines. Family Tree Magazine is one of them.

How does it look online? Try the link below to see a Family History Magazine story by genealogy writer Lisa Alzo - who happens to be a GenClass.com colleague. Not only will you see each page in the story, but also thumbnail images for the entire magazine. The site also offers a "my stuff" page, where you can place "clipped articles" and add notes about the piece.

Lisa's story, Make No Mistake, highlights 10 common pitfalls to avoid when researching family histories. View Bruce's blog posting with the link here.

My immediate impression was very good, and I liked the idea that those of us who live around the globe could easily access favorite publications (more are signing up), read them online as they become available and wouldn't have to wait for the issues to come through the mail - usually very late - or pay exorbitant newsstand prices for "foreign" publications or have to load up on magazines at airports when we travel abroad.

In the case of Family Tree Magazine, the US rate is $24, while the international rate is $31 - a $7 difference. Multiply a similar savings for many magazines, and anyone can easily see this would be an advantage.

For those of us who can give up hardcopy, combined with the advantages of article clipping and note taking, it sounds good. And, if you can tear yourself away from traditional paper copies, there will be fewer piles of magazines on your coffee table, desk and other horizontal surfaces in your home, not to mention a happier mailman who won't have to schlep the magazines each month to your mailbox.

I remembered that Everton's Genealogical Helper had also gone digital, and asked Bruce about digital-only subscriptions - after all, none of us want to pay international rates for solely digital access.

Great minds think alike, I guess. Here's Bruce's response:

Regarding digital subscription prices and offering digital subscriptions separately from print subscriptions, we are actually in the process of working on trying to set these up exactly as you suggest. It's a publisher decision obviously, and some of the publishers that are part of the Coverleaf service have already agreed to sell digital-only subscriptions (and for even less than the domestic sub price) and we're working on convincing all of the publishers that this is a good idea.

So, the future looks good and I have a whole list of mags (family history and many others) that I'd like to see sign up to offer digital editions.

For the press release on the launch of Coverleaf.com, click here.

How do Tracing the Tribe readers feel about this new development? Would you be interested in subscribing digitally to publications?

Online: Internet security speaker's warning

A consumer advocate speaking at the Utah Attorney General's Economic Crime Conference in Salt Lake City warned attendees that Internet predators are finding new ways to exploit even Web users who consider themselves safe and savvy, in this Salt Lake Tribune story.

"Every one of you . . . is a commodity," Internet security expert Linda Criddle said at the Utah Attorney General's Economic Crime Conference at Salt Lake City's Embassy Suites. "Somebody is willing to pay to know the color of your eyes."

That kind of personal information can give criminals access to financial accounts, help them select and profile potential victims, and even put users' friends and relatives at risk, Criddle said.

Criddle described a family tree her own father posted online to display the fruits of his genealogical research. He took it down once she pointed out that "mother's maiden name" is a common security backup question for online accounts.

"Utah is a big state for genealogy," she said. "If you are into genealogy, you should not be putting that information out there."

Online obituaries, wedding registries and birth announcements often contain much of the same data - along with a notice to potential identity thieves that those named are involved in an emotional event and may not notice new, mysterious debts.

"There is an opportunity every step of the way," Criddle said.

Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace also give predators a bevy of clues into the lives and families of users, many of whom believe they have preserved their anonymity, Criddle said.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Illinois: Online declarations of intent database

The Cook County (Illinois) Archives hold more than a half-million naturalization petitions, 1871-1929. Of these, 400,000 are Declarations of Intent (1906-1929), also called "first papers."


Why are these so valuable for researchers?

- These papers were generally filed closer to the time of immigration, so details were fresher in the minds of the immigrants at that earlier date;

- With higher rates of mortality in overcrowded cities, and not discounting the impact of the Great Influenza Epidemic, an immigrant could have died before filing other papers on the way to becoming a citizen; these declarations might be the only available document for an individual.

Learn more here about these records in the archives of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Cook County. Search the database here.

The Declarations of Intention database was created with a grant from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission (NHPRC), a division of the National Archives. The project began in November 2006 and, since then, more than 150,000 of the Circuit Court records have been entered through 1923; additional entries are ongoing and will include through 1929 when complete. The plan is to also include the Supreme Court declarations.

What can a researcher find on a Declaration of Intention? The document includes the following fields: declaration number, name, age, occupation, physical description, birth city, birth country, birth date, current address, current city, departure, location, vessel of departure, last foreign residence, arrival location, arrival date, signature and declaration date. Most also include marital status, spouse's name, birthplace and residence information.

Philly 2009 on Roots Television

Dick Eastman interviewed key players for the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy on Roots Television. He sat down with event co-chair David Mink and program chair Mark Halpern at the early September FGS conference in Philadelphia.


The Jewish genealogy conference will be co-sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia and the IAJGS, and takes place Sunday-Friday, August 2-7, 2009, at the Sheraton City Center Hotel in downtown Philadelphia, convenient to major tourist locations.

Mark mentioned that the conference would begin programming on Sunday morning, there would be a film festival, the first two days will be how-to days, a repository fair will take place on Sunday, walking tours arescheduled of recent Jewish history as well as colonial Jewish history, workshops on Friday morning and much more.

David mentioned several areas of interest to general researchers (other than those searching specific Jewish ancestry) such as DNA sessions, computer skills workshops and other programming.

The conference website will be www.philly2009.org, although it has not yet been launched.

View Dick's interview with David and Mark here.

Iranian Jewish cookbook planned

In Southern California, Tannaz Sassooni is planning a book of Iranian Jewish recipes and kitchen stories. Readers of Tracing the Tribe with Iranian ancestry are asked to spread the word among their immediate and extended families around the world.

I'm delighted that she is working on this project, and I am sure that many people will contact her with stories and recipes.

Writes Sassooni,

The Iranian Jews have a rich kitchen culture, and each region of the country has its own culinary tradition, with recipes that are not seen anywhere else. Dishes like gondi Kashi and the Mashhadi chelo-nokhodab, or the beloved abgoosht-e-gondi, are culinary treasures that need to be documented before the recipes are lost. Iran’s Jewish population is also responsible for the nation’s wine and spirits.

Sasooni is interested in conducting interviews, over the phone or in person, in English or in Farsi, with the people responsible for feeding their families every day, following traditions passed from generation to generation, and knowing
without the help of any cookbook how to make delicious feasts for Shabbat, holidays, and even weeknight dinner.

If you or someone you know is interested in being part of this unique history, I recommend that you email Tannaz Sassooni, who also writes a food blog, allkindsofyum.com .

Iranian Jews: Book on American experience planned

The published Jewish immigrant experience in America has been overwhelmingly Ashkenazi, with only a few smatterings of Sephardi or Mizrahi recountings.

This week I was happy to learn about two planned book projects focusing on the Iranian Jewish community. One is an Iranian Jewish cookbook planned by Tannaz Sassooni (see separate posting), and the other is a general volume on life in America as an Iranian Jewish-American by Nazanin Lahijani Cohen and Ninaz Khorsandi Beral.

It's about time that these experiences are recorded in different ways by Iranian Jewish Americans looking at themselves and their community. Both projects will, I am sure, elicit support from the community. In the future, when the younger generations are completely assimilated - except perhaps in their love for gondi - these books will have preserved the wisdom of the community's elders and cooks, and will also bear witness to the not-always-so-easy immigration experience of this community.

First, my comments on perhaps the most well-known Persian Jewish food anywhere in the world: Gondi.

Do you know what "gondi" are?

Gondi are the Persian Jewish versions of matzo balls. No Shabbat or holiday dinner is complete without golden peppery gondi, either as an appetizer (with lavash bread and assorted herbs) or served in the traditional Persian chicken soup called abgusht ("water of the meat"), with turmeric, potatoes, chickpeas and white beans.

The basic recipe includes roasted (not raw) chickpea flour, ground meat (beef, veal, chicken, turkey or a combination according to each family's traditions), onions, fresh-ground "hel" (cardamom), fresh-ground black pepper (lots) and salt. Mix together, addding some flour if too soft, a little water if too thick. The trick comes in forming the ball. This is not a matzo ball rolled between both palms, this is a gondi and it is authentically tossed in a rolling motion in one hand until perfectly round and then added to a pot of simmering chicken soup. There is a trick to doing this, but you have to see it in action as I cannot adequately describe it in words.

Gondi also feature in a project called Gondi Lunchbox by two young Iranian Jewish women, Nazanin Lahijani Cohen and Ninaz Khorsandi Beral. Click here to read more about the project and the women.

For 15 years, they have wanted to put together a book about the Jewish-Iranian community in America, to contain stories, essays, commentaries, cartoons, jokes, one-liners, photographs - all pertaining to the good, bad and ugly of life in America as a Jewish Iranian-American.

In their invitation for submissions, the best friends write:

We are, to say the least, an interesting people. We are the sons and daughters of Isaac and Rebecca, the heirs of the greatest empire the world has seen, and relics of a revolution that uprooted us from a desert oasis and re-earthed us in the land of the free . . . a revolution that re-routed our destinies and changed our lives forever.

There is no one story to explain our collective experience and, yet, there is something which we all share. An understanding as to what it is to be a Jewish-Iranian American.

Think of the tales our grandparents tell us at the Shabbat dinner table: nine year-old brides, 80 year-old feuds, love, and betrayal. It's enough to inspire a novel and thank G-d, in recent years, it has.
But another story has not been told. YOURS. It is the tale of being raised in America as a Jew of Iranian descent.

It is about culture shock and assimilation. It is about being a first generation American at the turn of the millennium. It is about leading a double life, giving in to the demands of others, or taking your non-conformity to the grave. It is about clashing, reconciling, and, hopefully, finding yourself in the end.

Perhaps in a hundred years it won't matter. Our progeny will be completely assimilated and the situations that terrorized our first generation lives (think: heavy accents, heavier cologne, and getting parental permission to wax your eyebrows) will just be something to laugh at.

But the stories of our lives deserve to be heard, shared, and recorded. And if, in the process, we have a couple of laughs (or cries) sharing our tales with each other, well, then, our lives will just be the richer for it.

If you have one or more stories, essays, journal entries, poems, cartoons, or writings in whatever format – send them to us! We are taking submissions – authored or anonymous, fiction or non-fiction (but please specify), in English or Persian – for publication.

Feel free to change names for privacy. Give as much (or little) biographical information as you wish but please indicate what information about yourself you do or do not wish to have published. In fact, no contact information or return address is necessary (i.e., if you are making an anonymous submission). Of course, if you'd like the recognition you deserve or wish to use a pen name, that's fine too.

To a large extent, your submissions will determine the parameters of our book. After all, we want it to be about you . . . about all of us, without any restrictions. Some brainstorming topics are family, in-laws, parental restrictions, "khastegari," dating, marriage, sex, double-standards, immigrating to America . . . you get the
picture. Please be as serious, funny, or explicit as you want.

Just tell your story, tell it straight up, and tell it like it is. Because it just may be the only chance you'll get!

Send submissions to: Booksubmissions2008@gmail.com

Please note that by sending us your submission, you are allowing us to reprint your submission without receiving compensation (i.e., you are giving us a release). If you would like the opportunity to approve any editing, please provide your contact information with your submission.

Please feel free to pass this e-mail along to other members of our community.

The submission deadline is December 31, 2008. For more details, click www.gondilunchbox.com.

Music - and food - of the Jews of India

Writer and musician Rahel Musleah - originally from Calcutta with ancestry to 17th century Baghdad - has created a website for the music of Jewish India, announced the Jewish Music Web Center

Musleah has spoken widely on Indian music and her CD, "Hodu: Jewish Rhythms from Baghdad to India," features ancient text, Indian melodies and contemporary rhythms. The Hebrew texts and English translations are included. Here you can listen to her version of tzur mishelo.

A songbook, "B’Kol Arev: Songs of the Jews of Calcutta," included more than 50 songs for Shabbat, holidays and special occasions (Tara Publications), with a cassette featuring 18 songs.

For more details, see her website at the link above.

Under "books," see her article on the Sephardic/Mizrahi Rosh Hashanah seder, related to her book "Apples and Pomegranates: A Rosh Hashanah Seder."

In this respect, families of Sephardic and Mizrahi origin have a secret to share with the rest of the Jewish world. On the first night of Rosh Hashanah, we hold a special ceremony at home, during which we recite blessings over a variety of foods that symbolize our wishes for the new year. The ritual is called a “seder yehi ratzon” (may it be God’s will) because we ask God to guide us and provide us with bounty, strength and peace in the year ahead. Many of the foods are blessed with puns on their Hebrew names that turn into wishes that our enemies will be destroyed.

The Talmudic origins of the seder date back to a discussion by Rabbi Abaye about omens that carry significance (Horayot 12a). He suggested that at the beginning of each new year, people should make a habit of eating the following foods that grow in profusion and so symbolize prosperity: pumpkin, a bean-like vegetable called rubia, leeks, beets and dates. Jewish communities throughout the world have adapted this practice, creating seders of their own.

So my shopping list for Rosh Hashanah includes fat, juicy, red-skinned pomegranates; glossy, sticky-sweet dates; apples that will blush spicy pink when they are cooked into preserves with a drop of red food coloring and whole cloves; savory pumpkin; pungent leeks or scallions, foot-long string beans (available in Indian shops) and deep-green spinach. Often, my parents and my children prepare the foods together. It’s an art to separate the jewel-like pomegranate seeds without splattering their scarlet juice all over the kitchen counter; to split the dates, stuff them with walnut halves and arrange them in concentric ovals on a newly polished silver dish.

The foods become vessels for meaning, effective because of their tangibility. “Before Rosh Hashanah I try to concentrate on the content of day,” says my friend Marilyn Greenspan, “but repentance and reflection give way to thinking about what I’m serving for dinner.” The seder makes it not only forgivable but desirable to think about such practicalities.

The seder begins with biblical verses to usher in the new year: Dates, pomegranates, apples, string beans, pumpkin, spinach or beetroot leaves, leeks or scallions, honey. Musleah provides the blessings for each of the Indian symbols in her article.

In Iran, however, we added a fish head (fertility and leadership), brains (intelligence and the binding of Isaac), lung (to breathe easy and lighten life), cooked whole beets, sometimes tongue and black-eyed peas.

According to Musleah, there is a reason why not all these symbols are sweet (like honey, dates, apples and sweet pumpkin):

Because the seder doesn’t focus exclusively on sweet symbols, it mirrors the realities of our lives. The bitter truths, fears and enmities we live with mix with the sweetness. Life is not just beginnings; it is also endings. It’s not just honeyed dates, it’s also the sting of scallions. It is about uncovering blessings despite the elusiveness of peace.

Read the complete article here.

Click here for a series of articles touching on Sephardim, the various Indian Jewish communities and holiday traditions.

Illinois: 250 Holocaust documents to go on display

More than 250 World War II postal documents — cards, letters and stamps — have been acquired by an Illinois foundation from a private collector and will soon be on permanent display in a museum in suburban Chicago, according to this AP story on Fox News.

The collection belonged to longtime postal memorabilia collector and activist Ken Lawrence of Pennsylvania, and was called "The Nazi Scourge: Postal Evidence of the Holocaust and the Devastation of Europe." Former vice president of the American Philatelic Society, he collected the documents for more than 30 years in answer to claims that the Holocaust never occurred

The Florence and Laurence Spungen Family Foundation of Northbrook, Illinois bought the collection and added to it.

The faded papers hint at stark details in the lives of Nazi concentration camp inmates.

Letters secretly carried by children through the sewers of Warsaw, Poland, during the 1944 uprising. A 1933 card from a Dachau camp commander outlining strict rules for prisoner mail. A 1943 letter from a young man, who spent time in Auschwitz, to his parents.

The collection will be housed at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, when it opens. It includes a handwritten Bible scroll in Hebrew that was used by a German soldier to mail a package. There are also documents sent to a Nazi doctor on trial for war crimes at Nuremberg.

The exhibit will go to Billings, Montana in December, followed later by Santa Barbara, California.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Seattle: Paul Shapiro, USHMM, Oct. 23

Although it seems somewhat early to announce an October 23 program, Tracing the Tribe wants to make sure that all Seattle-area readers mark their calendars now for this special event, which should attract wide community participation.


The Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State (JGSWS) will present "Opening the Archives of the Holocaust International Tracing Service," with Paul Shapiro, director of the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies, United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM), in Washington, DC.

Doors open at 7pm, and the program begins promptly at 7.30pm, Thursday, October 23, at the Stroum Jewish Community Center Auditorium, Mercer Island. Admission is free for JGSWS members; others, $5.

Paul Shapiro led the Museum’s effort to obtain the international cooperation necessary to open the archives of the International Tracing Service—the largest and last major inaccessible collection of Holocaust-related records anywhere. He has also led the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s effort to provide focused leadership to the field of Holocaust Studies in the US and abroad. A member of the Congressionally-mandated Interagency Working Group on Nazi War Crimes and Japanese Imperial Government Records, Shapiro serves on the Academic Advisory Committee of the Center for Jewish History in New York.

In 2003-4 he wrote major sections of the final report of the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, chaired by Elie Wiesel. Before joining the Museum, he served at the United States Information Agency and Department of State, where he was responsible for the Fulbright Fellowship Program and other major international exchange programs.

Shapiro was an editor of the journal "Problems of Communism" and editor-in-chief of the "Journal of International Affairs." He was a consultant to the Board for International Broadcasting, Radio Free Europe-Radio Liberty, and the Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigations (OSI).

With a BA degree in Government (Harvard University), a Master of International Affairs and a Master of Philosophy degree in History (Columbia University), he has been a Fulbright scholar, an IREX scholar, and a Visiting Fellow at the Institute for Eurasian Studies at The George Washington University.

Program Background:

The International Tracing Service (ITS) archive, located in Bad Arolsen, Germany was established by the Allied powers after WWII to help trace missing family members and reunite families.

Contents of the archives remained closed to the public until this year. The archive contains millions of pages of documentation captured during the liberation of concentration camps. Sixteen linear miles of shelving are required to hold all of the files.

The archive now contains approximately 50 million digital images providing documentation on 17.5 million people arrested, deported, killed, forced into slave labor or displaced from homes to which they were never able to return.

CBS’s “60 Minutes” ran a poignant story (updated in 2007) about the opening of these archives bringing several camp survivors back to see their own records. You can view that segment here.

Click here for more details, directions and future programs.

Gesher Galicia: Annual meeting, Oct. 19

The Gesher Galicia Regional Meeting is set for Sunday, October 19, at the Center for Jewish History, in New York, announced Pamela Weisberger.

Gesher Galicia is for those those with Jewish roots in the former Austrian province of Galicia:

From 11am-1pm, there will be four presentations:
- Cadastral Map and Landowner Records Project Update - Pamela Weisberger

- Researching Galician Records in Vienna

- JRI-Poland - Update by Mark Halpern

- "Good-Bye Bohorodchany" with Bernard Reiner

After an update on the newest map and land­owner records project in Lviv, waltz through the myriad resources in Vienna for Jewish genealogists researching Galician relatives. Also covered, the vast holdings of the IKG's (Israel­itische Kultusgemeinde Wien - Jewish Community of Vienna) vital records collection, the treasures found in the Gasometer ar­chives (household registration records and city directories) and the Austrian National Lib­rary col­lections (school records).

Mark Halpern will provide a short status report on JRI-Poland's activities with vital records from Galicia.

Bernard Reiner illustrates his 2007 'homecoming' trip with Alex Dunai, when he returns to the Bohorodchany, Galicia burial site where his ancestors were laid to rest more than four centuries ago, reads the megillah in the Great Stanislawow syna­gogue, attends shul in Kolomea on Purim morning, and eats from the 'conflicted soil' of his ancestors.

Following a lunch break, the program resumes at 2pm, with the JGSNY meeting, which will cover the May 2008 trip to Bad Arolsen by some 40 genealogists. A short video isn included providing a first-hand look at ITS resources and what the onsite process is like. A four-person panel - Valery Bazarov, Janet Isenberg, Renee Steinig and Pamela Weisberger - will offer unique perspectives on the experience.

The day is open to the public. Directions are here. For more information, click here.