Los Angeles: UCLA Yiddish studies benefactor dies

The Los Angeles Times published the obituary of TV writer-producer Michael Ross, 89, who endowed a UCLA academic chair in Yiddish language and culture. He died May 26.

Born Isidore Rovinsky in 1919 in New York City, he grew up in a Yiddish-speaking household that he once said was permeated by "the essence of Yiddishkeit," or Jewish way of life.

After his wife died in 2000, he had no heirs and decided to give most of his fortune to Jewish causes.

Last year, Ross donated $4 million to UCLA to endow an academic chair in Yiddish language and culture. He gave an additional $10 million to his alma mater, the City College of New York, to create Jewish studies programs and establish another Yiddish chair.

David N. Myers, director of the UCLA Center for Jewish Studies, called the gift "nothing short of transformative," one that "allows us to do a number of really extraordinary things, beginning with the development of a first-rate program in Yiddish studies.

Since 1992, he had also donated to Cal State Northridge's Jewish studies program.

He explained his interest in Jewish culture: "I was born of immigrant parents. I loved their attitude, their ways, their morals. I don't want to see that lost."

He was involved in such shows as "All in the Family," "The Jeffersons" and "Three's Company."

Read more at the link above.

Ohio: Jewish genetic diseases, June 3

Certified genetics counselor Gary S. Frolich will speak on “Our Heritage and Our Health – The Importance of Being Informed” at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland event on Wednesday, June 3.

The meeting at Menorah Park begins with a free dinner at 6.30pm, followed by Frolich's talk at 7.30pm.

Ashkenazi Jews share a history rich in eastern European traditions and a strong sense of community. But they also share an increased incidence of Jewish genetic disorders (JGD) such as Gaucher, Tay-Sachs, familial dysautonomia, cystic fibrosis, Niemann-Pick and Canavan. Early screenings for these disorders and others can identify inherited genes that could lead to genetic disorders in children, says Gary S. Frohlich, M.S., CGS, senior medical affairs liaison for Genzyme Therapeutics.

Many genes have been identified and work continues to find cures.

“During the Crusades, many Ashkenazi Jewish communities were driven from England, France and Germany and migrated to eastern Europe, settling primarily in modern-day Poland, Lithuania and Russia,” explains the affairs liaison for Genzyme Therapeutics. “Ashkenazi Jews tended to select marriage partners from within their own community, which played a role in limiting genetic diversity.”

Frolich asks genealogists to shake their family trees and help identify those with a Jewish genetic disorder so they can educate other family members. Today, there are screening tests for at least 11 disorders; some centers can screen for 15-25.

The most widely-known Jewish genetic disorder is Tay-Sachs, which has benefited from testing since the 1970s. Intensive community-wide testing has lessened the incidence by about 90% for this fatal condition.

Frohlich speaks to synagogues, genealogy societies, Jewish organizations and Hillels to raise awareness. Many rabbis also advise young couples to undergo genetic testing as part of pre-marital counseling.

[NOTE: Although this talk is centered on Ashkenazi disorders, there are Sephardic disorders as well. Additionally, screening is also important as more intermarriage takes place. A couple may feel they are safe as one person may not identify as Jewish today. However, the non-Jewish spouse could have unknown Jewish roots just a few generations back and might be a disorder carrier without knowing about the possibility.]

For more information on any Jewish genetic disorders, visit the Jewish Genetic Disease Consortium or the National Society of Genetic Counselors.

Read the complete story here.

South Africa: Their WDYTYA started this weekend

South Africa's version of the BBC series "Who Do You Think You Are?" starts Sunday, May 31 at 9pm on SABC2.

The family-orientated documentary series allows some of the country’s top celebrities to go face-to-face with the hidden history of their ancestors and provides a journey of emotional discovery for them and the audience.

“These are highly personal films, yet the wider historical themes they reveal relates each personal story to a wider history that the audience shares in,” says SABC2 publicity manager Zandile Nkonyeni.

This format allows us to get to know the celebrity better, but mostly it allows us to explore our history in a fascinating and neutral way. It allows us to discover areas of our country which today look very different.”

The six episodes connect by combining documentary, revelation of a detective story, biography and big picture history, shared by the audience of a nation.

Well-known personalities include actress Nthati Moshesh, TV presenter Candice Moodley, singer HHP Jabulani Tsambo, SABC2 news anchor Riaan Cruywagen, Isidingo star Meshack Mavuso and comedian Kurt Schoonraad.

The celebrities' stories demonstrate the history that created modern South Africa and will encourage viewers to start exploring their own history.

Ancestry24, a comprehensive ancestral and genealogical service, assisted the producers and researchers, while its channel manager spent hours in the archives and other repositories to assist with the research of the individual celebrities. If you have South African ancestry, you might want to check out the website, which offers a beginner's guide, the 1907 Who's Who, directories, vital records, biographies, community history, government gazettes, tombstones, a forum and a blog - even DNA testing.

“We effectively travel back in time to meet the featured celebrities’ extended family and those who knew them, and walk where their ancestors lived and worked,” she said.

The international series format has triggered a general interest in family history and a return to libraries, museums and domestic travel as people go back to the small towns they or their families came from.

The first episode focused on actress Nthati Moshesh, who's also the great-great-granddaughter of King Moshoeshoe, the first king of the Basotho people. In the segment she crosses into Lesotho to speak to historians and family members.

It seems everyone in the world is already watching the show in a local version, except for the US. Oh well.

Read more here.

Michigan: Erin Einhorn to speak, June 7

Journalist Erin Einhorn, author of The Pages In Between, will speak at the annual meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Michigan (JGSMI) on Sunday, June 7.

The meeting, which includes installation of new officers and a dessert reception, begins at 1.30pm at the Holocaust Memorial Center, 28123 Orchard Lake Rd., Farmington Hills. There is a fee.

When Einhorn found the family that hid her mother from the Nazis during WWII she thought she'd created a made-for-TV-reunion for two families thrown together by history. A man who had known her mother as a child embraced Erin and told her that her mother had been like a sister to him.

But the initial embrace soon gave way to 50 years of hurt feelings and resentments. Erin was apologizing for choices made years before she was born, untangling a real estate deal made on a handshake by people long gone. She found herself struggling to prove the death of a great-grandfather born in 1868. Then, as she confronted the circumstances of her family's tragic past, unexpected events in her own life altered her mission completely.

A Detroit native who lives in New York City, Einhorn is a reporter for the New York Daily News, and has also written for the Philadelphia Inquirer, Philadelphia Daily News and Fortune Magazine. She is a contributor to National Public Radio's This American Life. Einhorn's story was the basis for one of the show's most popular episodes.

For fees, additional details and reservations, click on the JGSMI site.

Webcast: Jewish life in Mr. Lincoln's City

Here's a new Library of Congress webcast, featuring "Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln's City," with speakers Laura Cohen Apelbaum and Wendy Turman. It runs 49 minutes.

View the Webcast here.


The women spoke about and showed a power point presentation on the new exhibit at the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington on "Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln's City."

A Washington area native, Cohen Apelbaum has been executive director of the Jewish Historical Society since 1994. Her work has centered on preservation of the 1876 historic synagogue, building the community's archives, expanding the Society's school and family programs, and outreach in the community. Previously she worked as an attorney for both the local and the federal government. She has a master's degree in taxation (Georgetown University), a law degree (George Washington University) and a bachelor's degree in American history (Duke University).

Turnman has worked at the JHSGW since 2000. She holds an MA in museum studies (George Washington University) and a BA in history (UC Santa Cruz) . She previously worked at the National Museum of Health and Medicine and at the Smithsonian Institution.

Caribbean: Jewish heritage sites

It must be travel time. If you are thinking about the Caribbean, here's a glimpse at Jewish heritage sites there, along with some history and websites for more information.

Read the article here. Here are some of the highlights:

Curaçao

In 1651, Joao d’Yllan, a Jewish merchant who migrated to Holland from Portugal as a result of the Inquisition, convinced the Dutch West Indies Company to colonize Curaçao. He and a small group set sail for the island that summer, and soon several independent Jewish businessmen from Amsterdam followed. In the spring of 1659, another group of Jewish immigrants brought Curaçao’s first Torah scrolls. Since that time, the Jewish community of Curaçao has remained one of the most active in the Caribbean islands.

Mikve Israel synagogue, with its sand-covered floors, was established in 1651, and today also houses the Jewish Cultural Historical Museum, home to a permanent collection of art and artifacts. Among the treasures is the original Torah scroll brought to Curaçao in 1659. Nearby Blenheim Cemetery is the oldest Jewish cemetery in the Western Hemisphere and has smore than 5,000 graves. For more information, click here.

Aruba

In 1754, Moses Solomon Levie Maduro, a prominent member of a Sephardic Jewish family in Curaçao, established himself in Aruba with his wife and six children. There, Levie Maduro founded a branch of the Dutch West Indies Company. Over 250 years later, Maduro and Sons operates as the main shipping company in Aruba.

Beth Israel Synagogue blends both Sephardic and Ashkenazi, with some 70 local and 180 overseas members. The Sephardic cemetery has graves back to the 19th century. For more information, click here.

Jamaica

When the first Jewish settlers arrived in 1511, Jamaica was a Spanish territory ruled by the family of Christopher Columbus. The island welcomed Jews, and when England conquered Jamaica in 1655, there was no attempt to expel or limit the Jewish presence. Jewish life flourished, and during the 17th century a small synagogue was established. The United Congregation of Israelites in Kingston recently celebrated its 350th anniversary with a permanent exhibition on Jewish contributions to Jamaica.

The new Jewish Her­itage Center offers important Jewish artifacts, an art exhibit by Jewish Jamaican artists, a family history center, and a reference library.For more, click here.

Nevis

The Jewish history in Nevis is vast and has had a prominent impact on the United States. It is suspected that Sephardic Jews first came to Nevis as traders from Barbados sometime after 1654. By the late 17th century, the Nevis Jewish community established a complete enclave, including a cemetery, a synagogue and a Jewish school. In fact, Alexander Hamilton, the first secretary of the treasury of the United States, was born in Nevis and attended Jewish day school. Though its numbers have since dwindled, at one time the Jewish community constituted one fourth of the island’s population.

The Jewish cemetery dates to 1679 and was rededicated in 1971. Jewish cemetery dating back to February 1679. For more, click here.

Barbados

The British first colonized Barbados in 1627 and actively promoted Jewish settlement during the years that followed. Later, Barbados became the first British territory where Jews obtained full political rights. In 1654, the Jewish community in Bridgetown established a Sephardic synagogue, and by 1679, nearly 300 Jews lived on the island. Many Jewish settlers engaged in sugar and coffee cultivation, and soon tensions between Jewish and British merchants rose. In 1668, the government forced Jews to live in a Jewish ghetto and forbade them from engaging in retail trade; the discriminatory laws were removed in the early 19th century. Despite persecution, the Jewish community thrived in Barbados until 1831, when a massive hurricane caused significant damage to the island, displacing some residents.

The Bridgetown Jewish Syna­gogue remains in use today. For more information, click here.

U.S. Virgin Islands

Jews first settled on the then Danish-ruled island of St. Thomas in 1655. After granting Jews religious freedom in 1685, the island has since had three Jewish governors. At its peak, around 1850, the Jewish population made up half of the island’s white community. After the opening of the Panama Canal, however, the number of Jewish residents declined. St. Thomas boasts the oldest synagogue in continuous use in a U.S. territory. Known as the Congregation of Blessings and Peace, the St. Thomas Synagogue was originally established in 1796 and was later rebuilt several times.

The present Sephardic-style synagogue was built in 1833. Everything in the historic building is original, and a small museum was added in 1996. For more, read here.

The article also includes information for those who observe kashrut.

Greece: Jewish history book and more

Tracing the Tribe has just discovered the excellent English-language AthensPlus, produced by the International Herald Tribune and Kathimerini.

This issue is a large PDF file, some 22 MB, but well worth it for a variety of reasons.

Page 20 carried the news that "Greece: A Jewish History," by K.E. Fleming (Princeton University Press, 2008) received the Runciman Award for books. The award is provided annually to a book on Greece or the world of Hellenism, published in English.

It also won the 2008 National Jewish Book Award for Sephardic Culture. Read the first chapter here, and read reviews here.

It was described as "a beautifully written and cumulatively moving account of how, and why, there is both Jew and Greek," by the judges' panel chair Martin Hammond.

Fleming is a New York University professor Mediterranean and modern Greek history and directs the Center for European and Mediterranean Studies and the A.S. Onassis Program in Hellenic Studies.

The book is the first comprehensive English-language history of Greek Jews, and the only one that includes material on the diaspora in Israel and the US. It tells the story of a people who for the most part no longer exist and whose identity is a paradox in that it wasn't fully formed until after most Greek Jews had emigrated or been deported and killed by the Nazis.

For centuries, Jews lived in areas that are now part of Greece. But Greek Jews as a nationalized group existed in substantial number only for a few short decades--from the Balkan Wars (1912-13) until the Holocaust, in which more than 80 percent were killed. Greece: a Jewish History describes their diverse histories and the processes that worked to make them emerge as a Greek collective. It also follows Jews as they left Greece- as deportees to Auschwitz or émigrés to Palestine/Israel and New York's Lower East Side. In such foreign settings their Greekness was emphasized as it never was in Greece, where Orthodox Christianity traditionally defines national identity and anti-Semitism remains common.

Genealogy was discovered on page 16, with a small listing indicating that the Foundation of the Hellenic World (FHW) held a public “Family Tree” discussion on May 24, at Hellenic Cosmos (254 Pireos) about its genealogy programs for Greeks, including those of the diaspora. Michalis Varlas is head of the foundation's genealogy department. The event aims to help participants discover their roots and family trees. Through screenings and group's archival digital collections, visitors can see how their own family history fits into the broader story of Hellenism.

Page 33 offers some interesting recipes from two women chefs. Sougania are stuffed braised onion shells filled with ground beef, rice and cumin. Sfougato is a thick baked grated zucchini omelet with eggs. Both sound delicious. [There are more recipes on page 32, for readers who eat octopus]

The travel section is on pages 42-43, if you're considering a visit to Greece. These pages might encourage you to do that sooner than later. Topics covered the island of Zykanthos, as well as other Greek locations for organic farms, wineries, spas and more.

Enjoy!

Judaica auctions: Selling the family jewels

About.com has experts on all sorts of topics. In the Collectibles pages, by Barbara Crews, I found an interesting article on J. Greenstein & Co, the only auction house dealing only with Judaica.

A leading antique Judaica expert and collector, Jonathan Greenstein, 41, explained that many unique pieces were lost in 1939 when Hitler had sacred ornaments melted down for their silver. Centuries of Jewish history disappeared - what remains is even more rare.

He's been working in the field for more than 27 years and is often retained to authenticate Judaica. He says that 70% of what he sees is fake. A lecturer at major museums and institutions, he wrote "The Lost Art," which describes the making of 18th-19th-century silver kiddush cups.

There are many family owned antiques that will be owned by generations, but none are so cherished or special as the Judaica items passed down through the family after the hardship of immigrating to another country or later when fleeing Hitler during the years of World War II.

The United States saw a mass immigration of Jewish people from 1880 through 1927 and many people brought with them their cherished family items, passing them down through the generations. These are the pieces that are often being sold as older people are dying off and younger family members might need the money due to the state of today's economy.

J. Greenstein & Co, Inc.'s next auction will be on June 8, 2009. Jonathan Greenstein says “Rare and one-of-a-kind artifacts and antiques are now surfacing that haven’t seen the light of day in generations as the effects of the sinking economy and the Madoff scandal congeal.”

In the sale will be sacred possessions of Reform Judaism leader Rabbi Alexander Schindler, a Madoff victim. His wife is not only forced to sell the family home but also to sell prized items given to the rabbi when he retired as leader.

"One of the artifacts is a silver Torah crown, an ornately detailed piece which adorns the holy scroll. Another is a silver Torah pointer, used so that fingers never touch the sacred text. It dates from the 1700s and is extremely, extremely rare," said Greenstein.

"Very few objects of this quality survived the Holocaust," said Greenstein, adding that Madoff raided "little old ladies' bank accounts" like the Nazis raided the temples.

Greenstein says he will not charge a fee to the family.

Founded in 2004, J. Greenstein & Co, Inc. is the only auction house solely devoted to the sale of Jewish Ritual objects. Its biannual auctions feature rare Jewish ritual objects, works of art, books and manuscripts.

Here's more on what's available at the June 8, 2009 Judaica Auction; many items have inscriptions, and there are also a few Persian ketubot.

For genealogists, there are some poignant items, such as the silver-bound Pinkhas of the Chevrah Kadisha of Nitra (Hungary, 1898). Hand written names of each deceased community member. 12.3-inches tall; estimated sale price $2,000-5,000. There's a large brass Syrian charger plate with applied copper and silver, 13" diameter. Made c1900, its estimated sale price is $800-1,200.

If money's no object, what about a very rare modern Italian menorah by Bucellati (pictured left), 10-inches tall, with a estimated sale price of #12,000-16,000. Or a finely written and decorated Italian 18th century megillah scroll, with an estimate of $17,500-24,000.

A very collectible item in the field of Judaica are dreidels (Hanukkah spinning tops), which come in many kinds and made in diverse materials. In fall 2004, some auction prices for this collectible were:

7" Silver musical dreidel - $16. 2.7"
19th-century Russian silver/enamel dreidel - $350.
.75" pewter dreidel, Poland c1800 - $41.
2" brass w/rhinestones dreidel - $65.
1.5 gilt silver dreidel, c1900 - $300.

Current Collectible Dreidels:
Lladro dreidel with dove - $105.
Lladro dreidel with star - $130.
Waterford Marquis dreidel - $50.
Waterford jeweled dreidel ornament - $35.
Christopher Radko Dreidel ornament - $40.

Some people collect antique and vintage menorahs. Here are some prices:

Oil Pal Bell bronze olive branch menorah - $210. "Made in Israel"
37cm wall hanging brass/bronze menorah - $114. very ornate
Bronze menorah with lions - $137. Jewish star on top
Silverplate, circa 1890 menorah - $925. Very ornate, Poland, 11"
Antique brass menorah - $225. Simple design
Antique sterling silver menorah - $416. 14.5" tall, elegant, simple
Copper menorah, 6.75" tall, - $130. Jerusalem during British rule, WWI bullet casings hold wicks

Look around on the net and find many resources.

If you were not lucky enough to inherit family heirlooms from your own ancestors, you can collect a bit of family history and make it your own to pass down.

Philly 2009: Program, restaurants, registration

The Philly 2009 website now offers a PDF conference program in grid format to download. While changes may still take place, this is an excellent start to planning your conference experience.

Click here, then click "Program" in the left sidebar. At the top, see the download message and click.

If you've been wondering about where to eat during the conference, a new section has been added. "Where to Eat" can be found at the bottom of the left sidebar of the conference homepage. Categories include those places quick and close, one or two blocks away, three to five blocks away, recommended, kosher, markets, prepared food and takeout.

Registration hours are now set for the Conference Registration Desk at the Sheraton Philadelphia City Center Hotel. Attendees who have already registered online can pick up their conference materials beginning Saturday night, August 1, after Shabbat, from 9:01-11pm, and again from 7am on Sunday, August 2. On-site registration runs from 7am-5pm each day except Friday, when hours will be 7-11am.

Try to pick up materials as early as possible as lines get longer on Sunday.

Remember to sign up online for the added-fee computer workshops, the Friday workshops and SIG lunches. These special events fill rapidly, so don't be disappointed and do register as early as possible. Don't forget about the Thursday banquet with its IAJGS Achievement Awards and entertainment. Early arrivals to Philadelphia may be interested in the Saturday evening welcome dinner so they can meet others and begin to network.

Already registered? Go to "Registration Update." If you are a new registrant, go to "Registration" and follow the instructions.

See you in Philly!

Jewish genealogy and the conversion issue

When I mentioned our family history project to an Orthodox member of the family several years ago, her reaction was very positive. She said, quite enthusiastically, "Now we'll be able to know who's Jewish and who isn't in the family."

I realized that - from her particular perspective - this was a major reason to keep genealogical records, although I have never looked at family research from such a vantage point. To me, a family member is a family member no matter how they enter the family records - they are part of the family.

Over the years, I have heard of some family historians who wonder about including adopted children, non-Jewish individuals and inter-married couples. I have even known some genealogists who decide that daughters and their descendants should not be included as they marry and become part of another family.

Jewish genealogy did make it into the conversion issue in Israel just this week, when the Israeli High Court ordered the state to fund Reform and Conservative conversion institutes as well as Orthodox ones. This is an explosive issue in Israel for those who may not be familiar with it. The Orthodox rabbinate - Sephardic and Ashkenazi - slammed the court's decision.

Genealogical research could be boosted by a likely inadvertent comment by the religious services minister, who said, "the High Court would force anyone who observed Halacha [Jewish law] and who was concerned with maintaining his Jewish identity to keep genealogy records."

As long as families keep genealogical records - for whatever reason - I'm happy!
Read more here.

Is there be a circumstance in which you would not list a family member in your records? Share your thoughts.

Who's a Jew? Who isn't?

The New York Jewish Week tackled the reverse of the "Who's a Jew?" issue with Rabbi Joshua Hammerman's take on "Who isn't?" with his article, "Everybody's A Little Bit Jew-ish."

Jewish genealogy gets a mention:

Prior Pew surveys have shown how Jews have been more successful than other groups in stemming the tide of assimilation. But with sectarian lines dissolving rapidly, in a century or two, how many more millions of non-Jewish Americans will be searching their family trees for Jewish ancestry?

The article is here.

Considering its timing at Shavout and its connection with King David's great-grandmother Ruth, whose "conversion" would likely not be accepted today by the Orthodox rabbinate, the story talks about 10 million Iberian descendants of those who were forced to leave Judaism and become Catholic during the Inquisition.

He mentions the recent DNA studies indicating that 20% of today's Iberians - some 10 million individuals - have Jewish roots. And that number is only in Iberia. There are millions more who descend from conversos who left Iberia and settled in the New World. While they might not be Jews today, they are Jew-ish, it's in their DNA.

There's a midrash that every Jew was present at Sinai, including all future generations. What about those Iberians whose ancestors were forced to convert. "We can’t retroactively crop them out of the Sinai family picture."

Hammerman believes in traditional standards determining Jewish identity, but adds "the world has become far too complicated to ignore everyone else. So, yes, there are Jews, the ones who fall within normative halachic parameters; and then there are those who are Jew-ish, a group that includes many millions more."

He says that a lot of unconditional love - chesed (Hebrew) - is needed to reach out beyond those who are Jewish to those who are generations removed from their heritage - those he calls "Jew-ish."

Thinking bigger, is his advice - to look beyond the farthest fringe, "to millions of once-were-Jews," whose spiritual search will lead them back.

A team of geneticists has uncovered explicit evidence of mass conversions of Sephardic Jews to Catholicism in 15th- and 16th-century Spain and Portugal. The study, based on an analysis of Y-chromosomes and reported first in the American Journal of Human Genetics, indicates that 20 percent of the population of the Iberian Peninsula has Sephardic Jewish ancestry. That’s about 10 million people.

While anti-Semitism remains pervasive and the Jewish population microscopic, there is a deep fascination with all things Jewish. “We’ve gone from a period of pillaging the Jews and then suppressing and ignoring their patrimony to a period of rising curiosity and fascination [about them],” said Anna Maria Lopez, the director of Toledo’s Sephardic Museum in a New York Times interview.

Of course, Hammerman isn't counting the more than 6,000 in Barcelona's Jewish community, those in Madrid and smaller communities in cities throughout Spain. There are dedicated activists among them who attempt to reclaim Spain's Jewish history and get involved in restoration and preservation projects. There are Jews in Spain today who are vocal about Jewish heritage, and people are returning to the public Jewish community.

Hammerman lists descendants of historical and contemporary figures:

--None of Theodore Herzl's three children were Jewish.
--Nancy Pelosi has Jewish grandchildren.
--Eight of Moses Mendelssohn’s nine grandchildren were baptized.
--Thomas Jefferson reportedly had Jewish ancestors and African-American descendants.
--Fiorello La Guardia had a Jewish parent.

Hammerman says "We’ve become the La Guardia Airport of faith traditions; so many coming in, so many going out," and mentions websites which identify famous half-Jews, such as Halfjew.com and Half-Jewish.net.

Read the complete article at the link above.

UK: 13th century Jewish cemetery

Over in the UK, the city of Northampton has begun to excavate on the site of a possible 13th-century Jewish cemetery some 17 years after skeletal remains were found nearby.

Experts believe the cemetery, which is one of only 10 such sites in England, was situated in what is now Lawrence Court, in the town centre, between 1259 and 1290.

Their research seemed to be confirmed when bones discovered by workmen in a collapsed culvert in neighbouring Temple Bar back in 1992 were dated to the same period.

Now a team of forensic archaeologists from Birmingham University has begun a survey of the area, hoping to discover evidence of the cemetery's enclosure walls, grave cuts and associated buildings.

Anglo-Jewish historian and Northampton resident Marcus Roberts is leading the project and said: "This is potentially the last unexcavated known Jewish cemetery in the country and perhaps the only one accessible for study, so it is a site of huge national importance.

The project plans to use non-intrusive methods, and not to start digging things up, as it is a sacred burial site.

"If we do find evidence of the cemetery from this survey we may consider taking a look at the buildings or boundary walls but we would not want to dig up the graves."

The team recently marked a grid to begin the survey.

A Birmingham University archaeology student was quoted as saying passing electrical current through the ground could determine if there had been graves in the past.

"If you dig a grave you aerate the soil and a lot of moisture gets caught up in the soil. So when we look for grave cuts we look for an area of very low resistance, possibly with a mass within it causing high resistance, if there is all or part of a skeleton buried there."

Read the complete story here in the Northampton Chronicle & Echo.

Morocco: A Jewish oasis

Walter Ruby has a fascinating inside look at Morocco in New York's Jewish Week, which also showed his photographs. Ruby and his fiance visited during Passover.

The Moroccan idyll I shared with my fiance Tatyana began with a Passover evening service at the ornate Neveh Shalom Synagogue in the heart of Casablanca’s Jewish Quarter — an upscale French-flavored district in this mostly modern city where 3,500 Jews live among a much larger number of Muslims — and a sumptuous seder at the well-appointed apartment of prominent community member Sammy Ifergan, his wife Natalie and their two charming teenage daughters.

The elegant century-old synagogue was packed with about 200 worshippers, many of them members of the worldwide Moroccan Jewish diaspora of up to one million, stretching from Jerusalem to Paris, Montreal and Caracas. Then Tanya and I experienced our very first Sephardic seder, with Ifergan performing fascinating rituals like holding a platter of matzah over the heads of family members and guests, while intoning, “You were once slaves in Egypt, but now you are free.”

Among Moroccan Jews, bitter herbs aren't bitter but are a celery-like plant (the Persians also use celery!). Ifergan says in the story, “Maybe because our 2,000-year exile in Morocco hasn’t been as bitter as some others."

Their seder dinner included charoset of dates and figs, soup with ful, salads, lamb with truffle mushrooms, homemade pareve ice cream and more.

The history of the Moroccan Jews is more than 2,000 years old, before the Arabs arrived in the 8th century CE. The original inhabitants of Morocco include the Berber tribes, some of whom converted to Judaism centuries ago. There are shrines to Jewish-Berber holy men like the 14th-century sage Shlomo Bel-Hench.

Moroccan Jews today include descendants of both Berbers and Spanish Jews who arrived in 1492.

The sprawling souk within the walled city of Marrakesh is a vast, pulsating marketplace where every product ever conjured by humankind seems to be on sale; including carpets, metalwork, pottery, jewelry and exotic herbs and spices. Visitors can watch robed and turbaned tradesmen plying timeless crafts including leather working, cloth dying and slipper-making. Adjoining Jemaa-el-Fna Square, with its snake charmers, fire-eaters, and fortune tellers, has an almost hallucinatory quality at sunset, with storks flying eerily overhead.

The couple also visited the seaside town of Essaouira, where Jews were the majority until the 1930s.

If you'd like to visit Morocco, the story includes websites and other resources.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Southern CA: Genealogy in the round, June 7

Genealogy in the round, focusing on sharing genealogical successes, failures, artifacts and brick walls, will be the next meeting of the JGS of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV) on Sunday, June 7.

The meeting begins at 1.30pm, at Temple Adat Elohim, Thousand Oaks.

Come and share a genealogical success, failure, brick wall, or genealogical artifact. This is a meeting to learn from one another. Take this opportunity to share your genealogical story - success or failure, brick walls or questions and more.

To share your experience at the meeting, contact president Jan Meisels Allen here. Each person will have about 5-10 minutes.

The meeting is open to all and free of charge. For more information, visit the JGSCV website.

Postcard Festival: Wheels go round and round!

If postcards of bygone days and modern subjects interest you, make sure to see the first Festival of Postcards at Evelyn Yvonne Theriault's blog, A Canadian Family.

The new carnival is for bloggers to share their love of vintage and modern postcards, and some two dozen bloggers (some international) participated in this inaugural edition.

The topic was wheels, and entries showed bicycles, boats, cars and trains, water wheels and oil derricks, spinning wheels and amusement park rides. Cards included old black-and-white, shiny chrome, and subjects went from serious to funny.

Categories ranged from motorized transportation, non-motorized transportation, wheels in the workplace, to grab bag. Some two dozen bloggers participated. See the article link above.

The deadline for the next Postcard Festival is June 20, and the topic is Main Street. Interpret it literally or creatively. The post should contain the front and back of the card, its size and other details.

Another way to participate is an article on the topic of deltiology. Evelyn asks bloggers to share their expertise and passion and answer why you collect cards, how you got started and whether your collection serves a specific purpose.

Sounds like this Postcard Festival may really fly! I'm guessing "wings" will be a future topic.

Washington DC: Arlington Cemetery Project

Due to blog problems, Tracing the Tribe could not inform readers about the Arlington Cemetery Project event on May 27 to take grave photos at the Arlington National Cemetery, sponsored by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington.

The project is too important to neglect, so here are the details.

The Arlington Cemetery Project is sponsored by the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington (JGSGW). The original data was collected by Kenneth Poch (z'l) prior to his death in 2003.

In 2008, Ken's family donated his materials to JGSGW. Since that time, the society has created a database, added more than 1,100 names and digitized Ken's 2,000 photos. During his lifetime, he also interviewed family members, collected obituaries and other memorabelia from the families. This material will also be digitized and will be available to researchers from the JGSGW website.

The spreadsheet and photos will be donated to the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR), while Ken's original materials and photos will be donated to the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington for preservation and conservation.

The project committee includes project manager Marlene Bishow, webmaster Ernie Fine, Rabbi Marvin Bash and Eli Savada. Visit the project site here. More than a dozen JGSGW members entered data for the project.

Even if you missed the volunteer day, there is still much that area residents can still do. Volunteers are always welcome to participate. For more information, email the project.

Marlene writes that anyone who would like to participate should contact the project administrator to obtain a list of needed photos. Volunteers may visit the cemetery on their own to take the photos.

Those who think ahead should mark their calendars for the 31st IAJGS Conference on Jewish Genealogy - DC2011 - which will be hosted by the JGSGW in Washington DC.

For more information on the JGSGW, click here.

Illinois: Skokie beginner's workshop, May 31

The Skokie Library will host a beginner's genealogy workshop given by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois (JGSI) on Sunday May 31.

Experienced researcher and past JGSI president Judith Frazin will present the program, which starts at 1pm.

The practical workshop will focus on available records, books and websites available to help with your family research, and a comprehensive handout will be provided.

Frazin is the author of two editions of A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish Language Documents (Birth, Marriage, and Death Records) and has developed two unique forms for recording genealogical information. A genealogist for 26 years, she was program chairperson for the 1984 international Jewish genealogy conference.

For more information, click here.

Nearly back to normal! Thank you!

Tracing the Tribe thanks its loyal readers for bearing up in the face of some technical problems. We think things are much better now.

Tracing the Tribe was informed of the problem by readers, for which I am thankful.

And now back to business as Tracing the Tribe continues to inform its readers of what's new in the world of Jewish genealogy and related topics.

Blogger.com: Update on IE problem

Blogger.com has finally posted an update on the Internet Explorer problem:

Update (May 26): We are still working on resolving this bug. This only affects viewers using IE to view the blog; for right now, blog owners can either move the Followers gadget lower in their sidebar, or remove it altogether. Either action will eliminate the pop-up dialog box in IE.We will update this post when a fix has been made.

Tracing the Tribe removed the Followers gadget during the weekend, but some readers are still experiencing problems and I am following up with Blogger.com. Other readers have reported that things are fine now. Do let me know if you are experiencing any problems.

Tracing the Tribe's posts are duplicated at its mirror site, tracingthetribe.wordpress.com.

The simplest workaround is to download Mozilla Firefox. It takes about 5 minutes to do, imports all contacts and bookmarks, and does not replace IE. You will then have both IE and Firefox to choose from when using the Internet. I've done it myself and it is not at all complicated.

According to stats for Tracing the Tribe, some 50% of readers use IE, while about 25% use Mozilla Firefox.

Hungary: Jewish Vital Records Project grows

Does your family history connect to Hungary? Do you know where to find records? JewishGen is a good place to start.

Did you know that Jewish Gen's All-Hungarian Database (AHD) has been increased with an additional 105,000 new vital records. The AHD now includes some 800,000 records (180,000 birth, 45,000 death, and 25,000 marriage).

Thirteen databases are incorporated into the AHD: including 1828 property tax census, 1848 Jewish census, 1869 Hungarian Census, 1781-1850 other censuses; births, deaths and marriages databases; Holocaust Memorials, Who's Who in Budapest 1837 and 1845, Yizkor book necrologies, Holocaust Database, JewishGen Family Finder, and the JewishGen Online Worldwide. Burial Registry. Click here to learn more about each database.

Here's a map showing (circa1900) the ratio of Jewish residents in geographic areas. The darker the area, the higher the percentage of Jewish residents.


Geographical locations for records include Bezi, Budapest, Csenger, Eger, Erdotelek, Erk, Eperejes, Fuzesabony, Gyomore, Gyongyos, Hodasz, Jarmi, Kassa, Kemcse, Kisleta, Koszeg, Mateszalka, Miskolc, Moson, Sztropko, Szeged, Szobrance, and Vag Besztercze.

Still ongoing are the records for Budapest, Gyongyos, Miskolc and Szeged. Today, the database includes 20,000 records from Miskolc and 60,000 from Budapest.

This efforts was made possible by many volunteers who contributed their time, effort and skill to the preservation of these valuable resources. For more information on the volunteers (there were too many to list here) see the AHD site.

The Hungarian Vital Records Project coordinator is Sam Schleman of Malvern, Pennsylvania.

The AHD contains multiple databases searchable on one form. These databases have been contributed by the JewishGen Hungarian Special Interest Group (H-SIG) and individual donors.

The combined databases have over 660,000 entries, referring to individuals living in the current and former territory of Hungary — this includes present-day Hungary, Slovakia, Croatia, northern Serbia, northwestern Romania, and subcarpathian Ukraine. The database is a work in progress and new entries are being added regularly.

There is a volunteer opportunity for transcribers as the project is now working on the Budapest records, including the Orthodox community, and for the towns of Miskolc, Anarcs, Apagy, Baja, Papa, Sopron, Szeged and Lackenbach. According to Schleman, no language skills are required. Their philosophy is to use as many transcribers as possible to lighten the workload. If you'd like to volunteer, email Sam.

Tracing the Tribe: Mirror site activated

Tracing the Tribe has reactivated its mirror site, http://tracingthetribe.wordpress.com, while the Blogger.com glitch producing access errors with Internet Explorer continues.

If you are in the category of readers having error message problems, click on the mirror site above. All the posts are there, although not all comments, etc. have been loaded.

Many blogs have been impacted by the problem, and everyone hopes that it will be fixed as quickly as possible.

Happy reading!

Seattle: Lady Luck and the Hungarian Archives, June 8

Extreme Hungary is on the menu when Theodore Grossman presents "Lady Luck on the Hungarian Archives Roller Coaster," at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State, on Monday, June 8.

The program begins at 7pm at the Stroum Jewish Community Center on Mercer Island.

Grossman will talk about researching Jewish family history in Hungary and Slovakia, where his father was born and raised.

His father lived 15 years in what is now Slovakia. For nine years it was in Hungary and part of Czechoslovakia for six years. Neither his father nor the town moved - only the border!

Jews living outside Austria-Hungary proper but inside the empire – Slavs, Czechs, Poles, Ukrainians, Romanians, Serbs, Croats, etc. – were subjects of a Hungarian government that demanded that they speak the Hungarian language and embrace Magyar culture. Many were thrilled to be rid of Hungary when the borders changed at the end of World War I. But there was no joy among Hungarian Jews, among them the members of his father’s family. They were super patriots who spoke only Hungarian, opposed the Zionist movement, and shared their countrymen's contempt for the other ethnic groups within their borders. “We used to laugh at those who spoke Yiddish,” his father once told him, adding that he and his friends waved Hungarian flags and sang songs that disparaged the non-Hungarians. What a shock it would become when these super patriots were forced to watch many of their non-Jewish countrymen join with the Nazis and attempt to kill all of them.

This program is important for researchers whose quest takes them to more than one country and documents in several languages. Grossman knows some Hungarian so he could research there. In Slovakia, however, he needed help. His archival experiences differed according to the archivists he encountered and ranged from acts of kindness to the proverbial runaround.

A retired newspaper editor and publisher for three decades, his obsession then turned to his father's family. For three years, he studied Hungarian in Seattle and New York, auditing Eastern European classes and researching in libraries. He traveled twice on extended visits to Hungary and Slovakia and wrote a paper, “Riding Lady Luck on Archive Roller Coaster.” (click here to read).

Fees: JGSWS members, free; others, $5. For more information, see the JGSWS site.

Argentina: Basavilbaso community site

For 25 years, Yehuda Mathov (Monosson, Israel) has collected information on more than 6,000 residents of the town of Basavilbaso, Argentina, also known as Lucienville. It was established by Baron Maurice de Hirsch and the Jewish Colonization Association in the 1890s.

The photo above shows immigrants arriving at Buenos Aires port circa 1900.

Mathov has created a new JewishGen ShtetLinks website for the town; view it here.

Many settlers emigrated from Kherson and Bessarabia (southern Ukraine and Moldova). The first South American agricultural cooperative was established in this settlement.

To see names of immigrants in the smaller settlements of the area, click here. These smaller areas were Novabuco, Aquerman, Villa Mantero, Las 1300, Escrinia, Gilbert, Lucienville, Colonia San Juan, Linea and others. This link shows the size of the plot and plot numbers for each person/family.

Under Historical Records, find documents from many sources, including business records, occupations, farm records and censuses, town residents and addresses, abandoned farms. One interesting example lists the assets of a farm back in 1896 and compares it with the much more extensive assets in 1926.

Under Family Stories, find memoirs (PDF format) in English, but mostly in Spanish. The Photo Gallery shows images of people and documents. There is a list of useful links and a bibliography.

Readers with connections to the town are invited to contribute memories and material. Contact Mathov here.

Philippines: Israel and a much older connection

Two items this week focused on the Philippines, which has a little-known and very interesting Jewish history dating from Inquisition days, when the islands were a refuge for Jews escaping from persecution.

Additionally, the Inquisition used the Philippines as a sort of penal colony. There are Mexican Inquisition records indicating that people were sentenced to Manila for several years.

One story concerned a monument to be dedicated in June in Israel commemorating the "Open Doors" program, and remembering the courage, hospitality and determination of the Philippine government, through President Manuel L. Quezon, to give humanitarian support to European Jews seeking refuge from the Holocaust in the 1930s.

The second story was about a Philippino family that learned about its Sephardic Converso background and has just returned to Judaism in Kansas City.

Tracing the Tribe posted on the country's Jewish history in March 2007. Here's a link to the Embassy of Israel's web site for an online exhibit telling the Manila community's history since the Spanish colonial days through to more contemporary times.

The islands were a Spanish colony from 1521-1898, and conversos accompanied Spanish adventurers who settled the islands, according to Harvard University history professor Jonathan Goldstein, who wrote a paper on Jewish merchants in Far Eastern ports.

New Christians Jorge and Domingo Rodriguez are the first recorded Jews to have arrived, reaching Manila in the 1590s. In 1593, both were tried and convicted at a Mexico City trial ( auto-da-fe) because the Inquisition was not operating in the Philippines. At least eight other New Christians were also tried and convicted. Others with Jewish roots kept very quiet, settling in rural areas, living a precarious existence and keeping their traditions very secret in a very Catholic colony.

The Suez Canal opened in March 1869, cutting the travel time from Europe to the Philippines from three months to 40 days. In 1870, brothers Adolf, Charles and Rafael Levy arrived from Alsace-Lorraine, fleeing the Franco-Prussian War, and established a Manila jewelry store famous throughout the Philippines, La Estrella del Norte included general merchandise, gems, pharmaceuticals and automobiles. Leopold Kahn, also from Alsace, arrived in 1909 and joined them in business.

Many refugees were welcomed during the Holocaust. Later, Sephardic Bagdadi Jews from India arrived, as well as those from the American-European Ashkenazi community.

Some Sephardic discussion groups, such as Sephardim.org have recently seen messages from Filipinos discussing their Jewish backgrounds and remnants of Hebrew still preserved.

Click here to read the story of Cantor Cysner and more.

The Manila Bulletin's story about the monument in Rishon-le-Zion, Israel is here.

Recognizing the generosity and humanitarian assistance of the Filipino people to the Jews during the Holocaust, the Israeli government is set to inaugurate the first Philippine monument in Israel’s Rishon Lezion Holocaust Memorial Park on June.

The Israeli embassy in Manila described the first-ever monument as a "lasting symbol" of more than five decades-old bilateral partnership between the Israel and the Philippines.

This year marks "another milestone for the cordial ties" between the two countries with the inauguration of the "Open Doors" monument, designed by Filipino artist Jun Yee, on June 21, the embassy said in a statement.

"The warm hospitality of the Filipino people undoubtedly shed light to one of the darkest and most difficult periods in Jewish history," the Israeli embassy said.

Holocaust survivor, Frank Ephraim, documented the Holocaust in his book "Escape to Manila," which prompted the creation of the "Open Doors" monument, which was initiated by former Ambassador Antonio Modena, who died in 2007.

The Kansas City Jewish Chronicle covered the story of a group of individuals who recently converted to Judaism. Involved in this story was Rabbi Jacques Cukierkorn, a Brazilian native, well know for assisting converts and in outreach efforts in South and Central America. The group included a Filipino family:

It’s been a long road for Romeo Bagunu, his wife, Araceli, and their three children, Yeremeya, 10, Yonatan, 9, and Annaliza, 6. Both Romeo and his wife were born in the Philippines and raised in the United States.

“The whole process has taken many years for us, from study, trying to work out our faith,” said Romeo Bagunu.

He estimates they’ve been studying Judaism on their own for 11 years. Research into their ancestry sparked a curiosity about Judaism. Both Romeo and Araceli found that their heritage was Spanish and that their ancestors had settled in the Philippines after the Spanish Inquisition. The Inquisition expelled Spain’s Jews and forced those who remained to convert to Christianity.

“During the Inquisition, a lot of the Jews settled in the Philippines. In learning that, we became more interested that our family had a lot of Spanish-Jewish culture they kept,” Bagunu said.

In exploring their faith, “we went from a very charismatic Christian background to a Messianic congregation, then to an Orthodox congregation and finally settled last year with Rabbi Cukierkorn’s New Reform Temple… Moving from the Christian faith to this, we wanted to know where the paths were alike and different,” he said.

Read the complete articles at the links above.

Texas: Discovering Jewish roots

Rabbi Stephen Leon of Congregation B'nai Zion (El Paso, Texas) relates why he does what he does:

“God said to me, 'I cannot bring back the 6 million who were killed in the Holocaust, but there was another group before who are alive in much larger numbers than Holocaust survivors because it's been 500 years, generation after generation of generation," he said. "Their souls are still alive. … You have to do something about it.’”

The story of Hispanics with Jewish roots returning or searching in various ways to discover who and what their families really were so long ago is told in a story by Amy Klein here.

Three strange things happened to Rabbi Stephen Leon the first week he moved here in 1986 to lead Congregation B'nai Zion, the Conservative synagogue in this border city.

“Rabino,” said a Catholic man calling from Juarez, Mexico, about 30 minutes away. “I need to talk to you.”

Every Friday night from the time he was little, the man's grandmother took him into a room, lit candles and said some prayers in a private language he didn't understand. His grandmother had just died, and he asked his mother if she would continue the tradition. She told him to go find a rabbi.

Three days later, a Catholic woman from El Paso came to the rabbi after visiting a relative in mourning, where she noticed that all the mirrors were covered.

“Why are you doing this?” she asked her relatives. They said it was a Jewish custom.

Then the cable guy came, and the rabbi told him, “Shalom Y'all.” The man -- a Catholic Hispanic -- opened his shirt and showed his Jewish star necklace -- he had just found out about his Jewish roots.

“Three incidents in a week and a half?” Leon recalled. “There has to be something going on.”

Twenty-two years later that something is still going on: A steady trickle of Hispanics in the Southwest, from Juarez to Texas to New Mexico, are discovering Jewish roots.

Some people remember unusual customs (not eating pork or not working on Saturday) holiday traditions. For others, it's a word, a name, and they wonder who or what their family really was once upon a time and long ago.

There are several names for these people - such as Crypto-Jews. Anusim (Hebrew, child of the forced). Judios (Spanish, Jews). Conversos (Spanish, converts), as well as the insulting, pejorative Marrano that should never be used - it is an infuriating word to Hispanics with Jewish roots.

All the terms refer to Jews and their descendants whom the Inquisition forced to convert after Spain, Portugal, and later Sicily expelled non-Catholics, forcing Jews to convert to remain. They went underground, continuing to practice traditions in secret and even maintained certain customs after migrating to Europe and the New World, including the Southwest US.

Some are interested in genealogy but not returning to Judaism, some are messianics observing both Jewish and Christian customs. Some return to Judaism openly.

“Who do you count?” asked Stanley Hordes, one of the foremost experts on the Crypto-Jews and author of “To the End of the Earth: A History of the Crypto-Jews of New Mexico” (Columbia University Press, 2008).

“Chances are really good that many people have Jewish ancestors going back 500 years,” he said, estimating that after half of Spain's several hundred thousand Jews left the country, half converted to Catholicism -- half of those Jews converted willingly, assimilating and eventually blending into Catholic society.

“There were certain families that held onto ancestral Jewish faith and continued to practice,” he said. “Today, the overwhelming majority are perfectly content in their Protestantism and Catholicism. Only in a handful of cases people are exploring a relationship with mainstream Judaism.”

On Shavuot, some returnees will celebrate bnai mitzvot at B'nai Zion, a 400-family synagogue, where conversos number 10%. Leon quips that without the anousim, he might not have a minyan.

Blanca Carrasco, 43, returned to Judaism last year and is about to celebrate her bat mitzvah on Shavuot (this year it begins the evening of May 28). She has journeyed from Catholic child in Mexico, Evangelical Christian, a decade at a Messianic congregation, and finally she and her husband returned to Judaism.

Some members of Leon's congregation began their journey at El Paso's Messianic Center where they learned about Judaism, festivals, holidays and Crypto-Jews. Carrasco found some Converso names and that a grandmother spoke Ladino.

“Now we belong -- we are not longing anymore, we are here," Blanca Carrasco said. "We reached the place we were heading to.”

Leon has returned 50 anousim families to Judaism since arriving in El Paso. Previously he headed a New Jersey congregation for 22 years.

Disagreeing with Leon's approach is El Paso's Chabad Rabbi Yisrael Greenberg. He also receives calls from Hispanics who think they have Jewish roots, but he discourages conversion or return

“I think the Crypto-Jew is a real thing -- 500 years ago in the Inquisition hundreds of thousands of Jewish boys and girls disappeared from the Jewish community … Jews always disappeared from the Jewish community -- most of it by force,” Greenberg said.

But, he added, referring to the strong religious ties of Mexican families and the community, “We have to be careful -- we break families.”

“We should put our energy into the Jewish people rather than to try and bring anusim back,” Greenberg said. “If the anusim have a desire to understand Judaism, then let's teach them about their ancestors and let them have an understanding,” he added, implying that the best thing to do would be to leave it at that.

Another person quoted is "just curious." He's been researching his genealogy and considering DNA testing. He discovered Dr. Hordes' book and heard him speak at the New Mexico Jewish Historical Society in Taos, NM.

Leon helped start an anousim/Sephardic learning center and yeshiva in El Paso with Rabbi Juan Pablo Mejia (of converso background himself), a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary's Rabbinical School in New York, and Sonya Loya, director of Bat-Tzyion Hebrew Learning Center in Ruidoso, N.M.

The goal is to raise awareness in the Jewish and general community about the Inquisition and Crypto-Jews, on a par with Holocaust remembrance.

“The anusim will come back eventually; there is a yearning. There is a divine plan out there,” Leon said.

With Hispanics being the fastest-growing population and the Jews constantly concerned about their diminishing population, Leon says the Jewish community should welcome those Hispanics who want to explore their Jewish ancestry.

“I think the anusim are the only answer,” he said. “They are returning one way or another.”

Read the complete article at the link above, as well as other Tracing the Tribe posts on the various aspects of the Converso issue. There is a companion piece to this story, an interview with Dr. Stanley Hordes, "So You Think You're a Crypto-Jew?"

Oregon: Jews in the News, May 31

Genealogists know that newspapers can be our best friends in our quest for family information.

Pamela Weisberger of Los Angeles will present two excellent programs focusing on newspapers resources at the annual brunch of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Oregon (JGSO), on Sunday, May 31.

The program begins at 10.30am at Ahavath Achim Synagogue in Portland.

"Jews in the News: Enhance Your Research with Newspaper Databases" offers techniques for locating people and events of interest to your quest.

Some of the most exciting resources for genealogists are the online databases and microfilms of old newspapers and journals. Following this oft-neglected “paper trail” will enhance your genealogical knowledge. From obituaries, birth, engagement and 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.

"When Leopold Met Lena: Marriage, Divorce and Deception in the 1890s" is a fascinating case study.

First came love, then came marriage - but after the baby in the baby carriage came adultery and two trials in New York’s Court of Common Pleas. A divorce decree in the 1890s New York Times “News of the Courts” leads to scandal-ridden NYC court transcripts and revelations of a family secret. From Czestochowa , Poland and Cracow , Austria to Manhattan ’s Lower East Side and Little Rock , Arkansas - the tumultuous, romantic and litigious world of our ancestors is brought to life in court records, newspaper articles, census and vital records. Learn how present-day research can be used to solve 19th century mysteries.

Pamela is program chair for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, Gesher Galicia president and research coordinator for Gesher Galicia, and co-chair for the 2010 IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (July 2010, Los Angeles) .

Her first job in the film industry was working for Otto Preminger who never took no for an answer. This was the perfect training for becoming a genealogist. Documenting her family’s history for more than 20 years, she has visited and researched her ancestral towns and villages conducting research in Polish, Ukrainian and Hungarian archives. Her special interest is late-19th-early-20th century city directories, newspapers and court records. She has produced two genealogy-related documentaries.

Fee: JGSO members, $7; others, $9. For more details and reservation information see the JGSO website.

SephardicGen: Santa Coloma de Queralt and more

SephardicGen.com's Jeff Malka has informed Tracing the Tribe that 85% of databased names on his site can be searched through his Consolidated Index Search Form. This "index of indexes" directs researchers to links to databases containing the name(s) of interest. The rest of the names will soon be added to the Index.

More databases will soon be included on the site, he added.

Did you know that SephardicGen also has the databases in French? He'd like to add the descriptions of the databases and the search forms in Spanish and into Catalan. Native speaker volunteers are invited to email Jeff.

And here's yet another recently added database for the small Santa Coloma de Queralt community in Catalunya, Spain.

The names appeared in Professor Yom Tov Assis's book "The Jews of Santa Coloma de Queralt: An economic and demographic case study of a community at the end of the thirteenth century" (Hispania Judaica, v.6).

Assis is a member of the Mandel Institute of Jewish Studies at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, and head of the Hispania Judaica Research Center which is part of the Institute.

The contents are based on notarial documents over nine years, 1290-1299, found in the local archives. There are 42 surnames with given names, year and place, and the reference page in the book. It is a small database limited to only one small community detailed over a short period of time. However, if you find your family name there, the benefits may be enormous.

Check the database here.

In addition to town residents, some individuals came from Barcelona, Cervera, Guimera, Lerida and Montealbo.

One drawback is that there is no indication of what the document is referring to in the book. Is it a business record, a property sale or purchase, or anything else requiring a notarial record? If one of these records is for your possible ancestor, you will have to find a copy of the book and check the page number reference to learn more.

For Santa Coloma de Queralt, there are 36 records, and the family names include:

SAMUEL, FRANC, CRESQUES, ASTRUCH, DE CARCASSONA, DE MONTEALBO, SAPORTA, VIVES, FRANC, ZA GUIALMESSA, ABNAZOFER, AVEN ABEZ, COMPREDO, DE CERANOT, GENTO, LATORRE, IASIT, ABNAZIA, TEIXIDOR, BRUNELL, FUSTER, LLOP, TABER, SOLER, ASTRIL, NAZAR, ASIM, NETIM and AMIEL.

Researchers of Sephardic families have even more resources to look forward to, thanks to Jeff.

Queens NY: 'Tree of Life' screening, May 23

Queens residents can see the acclaimed "The Tree of Life" by Hava Volterra, closer to home as it will be screened at 10 pm, Saturday, May 23, at the Utopia Jewish Center in Flushing.

Hava Volterra tries to come to terms with her father’s death by traveling to Italy to trace the roots of her family tree. With the help of her feisty 82 year-old aunt, she travels relentlessly from city to city, digging through ancient manuscripts and interviewing a wide range of quirky scholars.

Using Monty Python-style animation along with music from Golden Globe-nominated composer Carlo Siliotto, the documentary tells the story of Jewish mystics, money lenders, scientists and politicians.

Hilarious and emotionally gripping, the film is a fresh look at history.

The Jewish Week wrote:

"the project is clearly Volterra’s way of reconciling herself to her father's death. In an age of embarrassing and unedifying frankness about family matters, her reticence is refreshing. You can read all you need to know from what is there on the screen and for that alone, “The Tree of Life” is a refreshing and fascinating change of pace."

The Village Voice wrote:

"…. in the town of Volterra that gave her family its name, she digs up a pretty interesting family tree and a truly fascinating history of Italian-Jewish life from the 15th century through the Holocaust, enhanced by interviews with historians in Italy and Israel and some nifty animation and marionette puppetry

Tickets are $10. Contact the Utopia Jewish Center in Flushing for more information.

Thanks to Hadassah Lipsius, who provided this pointer.

Film Festival at Philly 2009

Pamela Weisberger informed Tracing the Tribe about the Philly 2009 Film Festival. The schedule will soon be uploaded to the online program and we'll let you know when that happens.

There is always something to do at an international Jewish genealogy conference and Pam has organized a great line-up of films as well as many producers, writers and directors who will introduce their films and do Q&As following the screenings.

In the meantime, here's a peek at what will be screened. Remember to go to Philly 2009 for all conference details.

International:

- The Jews of India: "In Search of the Bene Israel"
- Prague: "House of Life: The Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague" with filmmaker Mark Podwal)
- Italy: "The Tree of Life" with filmmaker Hava Volterra
- Libya: "The Last Jews of Libya"
- Cuba: "Abraham & Eugenia"
- South America: "The Longing: The Forgotten Jews of South America" with filmmaker Gabriela Bohm)
- Austria: "Vienna's Lost Daughters"
- South Africa: "Lest We Forget"
- Lithuania: "The Partisans of Vilna"

New Films - Holocaust and Post-Holocaust Experience:

- "Against the Tide": narrated by Dustin Hoffman. The attitudes of President Roosevelt and his senior advisers, who used the pretext of winning the war against the Nazis to block any Jewish immigration to the U.S. and juxtaposes the events in America with heart-wrenching heroic stories of the doomed Jews of Europe and the leaders of Polish Jewry who had faith that their powerful brothers and sisters in the United States would somehow be able to save them.

- "Blessed is the Match": First documentary feature about Hannah Senesh, World War II-era poet and diarist who became a paratrooper, resistance fighter and modern-day Joan of Arc. Safe in Palestine in 1944, Senesh joined a mission to rescue Jews in her native Hungary. Shockingly, it was the only military rescue mission for Jews during the Holocaust.

- "We Were Exodus": Archival footage with contemporary interviews, recounting the voyage of Exodus, a ship that was haven and prison to thousands of Holocaust survivors. Meticulously researched and artfully composed, "We Were Exodus" invites viewers aboard one of the 20th century's most famous vessels to relive this milestone in the creation of Israel.

- "Captain László Ocskay, The Forgotten Hero": A Hungarian army officer whose heroic deeds saved the lives of hundreds of Jews in Budapest have all but been forgotten. Attending the screening to discuss it will be Miskolc native John Kovacs, who escaped deportation to Auschwitz and ended up in the Abonyi Street Jewish School featured in the film.

The Philadelphia Jewish Experience:

- "Echoes of a Ghost Minyan": A speaker will attend.
- "Philly Hoops: The SPAHS and Warriors": A speaker will attend.
- "From Philadelphia to the Front": One of the few few documentaries to explore the stories of Jewish-American World War II soldiers, focusing on six Philadelphia octogenerian veterans, their wartime experiences and a bittersweet reunion.
- "Tak for Alt": The life of Philadelphia educator and Survivor Judy Meisel, whose experiences in the Kovno ghetto and Stutthof Concentration Camp inspired a life-long campaign against racism.

Eastern Europe:

- "Horodok: A Shtetl's Story: 1920-1940" retells the vibrant life of an Eastern European Jewish village with rare 1930s archival silent movie footage with Israeli survivors' recollections.

- "Bashert": Two cousins return to their grandfathers' shtetl that they left in 1908A series of miraculous incidents lead to previously unknown family members who survived and returned to Linitz (Ilintsy, Ukraine).

- "No. 4 Street House of Our Lady": If your neighbors were being hunted down and came to your door begging for help, would you risk your life to save theirs? The remarkable, little-known, story of Polish-Catholic Francisca Halamajowa who rescued 16 Jewish neighbors while passing as a Nazi sympathizer. In Sokal (Galicia->Ukraine)more than6,000 Jews lived there pre-war; only 30 survived, half rescued by Halamajowa. Attending to discuss the film will be Lviv-based researcher Alexander Denisenko who assisted in researching the film.

- "Terpe Kind Mains, Terpe Persevere, My Child, Persevere": To discuss the film will be New Jersey-born composer Jeffrey Hamburg of Amsterdam. He returns to Ukraine to discover his ancestors' world and demonstrates how an individual search leads to a universal composition on searching, commemorating and coming home.

Humor:

- "The Beetle": The heartwarming, hilarious genealogy of an old Volkswagen owned by an Israeli. Torn between the responsibility of fatherhood and an irrational passion
for his sputtering car, Yishai track down the past owners to understand the car's rich history.

- "His Wife's Lover" (Zayn Vaybs Lubovnik): In 1931, this Yiddish film was billed as "the first Jewish musical comedy talking picture," starring popular Yiddish theater comedian Ludwig Satz in his only film. Fast-paced, song-filled comedy shot on the Lower East Side, includes role reversals and love triangles and explores gender issues.

- "My Mexican Shiva": Entertaining, wacky comedy set in a Mexico City Jewish neighborhood, focusing on the death of a man and the celebration of his life. The seven-day shiva reunites family, friends and former lovers; sidesplitting stories, conflicts and rivalries are cataloged over the mourning period.

- "The Rise and Fall of the Borscht Belt": For all of us Catskill kids who spent hotel and bungalow vacations, where Jewish-American
iconoclastic humor was born.

Back by Popular Demand:

- "Genealogy Goes to the Movies" with Jordan Auslander, who updates last year's hilarious experience recreating the excitement, drama, adventure, glamour and - yes - romance of family history research in kitschy, classic clips from popular films and TV shows.

The True Bielski Boys Experience:

- "Defiance": Hollywood feature starring Daniel Craig, about the partisans who created a thriving shtetl deep in the Western Belarus forests while conducting sabotage missions against the Nazis. Introduced by Tuvia Bielski's granddaughter Sharon Rennart.

- "The Bielski Partisans: A Granddaughter's Story": Award-winning filmmaker Sharon Rennart will also present her own program detailing her 11-year journey around the world from Brooklyn to Belarus, Israel and Lithuania. She will discuss her family's history and screen excerpts from a work-in-progress documentary, "In Our Hands: A Personal Portrait of the Bielski Partisans". Excerpts include exclusive family movies, photos and oral histories for a glimpse at the real characters behind "Defiance."

- "On Moral Grounds": The story of WWII restitutions and those who have sought justice for 50 years from insurance companies who perpetrated wrongs on survivors.

- "Saved by Deportation": Filmmaker Robert Podgursky will speak about his film which is based in 1940, a year before the Nazis began deporting Jews to death camps. Stalin orders the deportation of some 200,000 Polish Jews from Russian-occupied Eastern Poland to forced labor settlements in Central Asia. Asher and Shyfra Scharf are followed as they return to Tajikistan and Uzbekistan and are warmly welcomed by locals who recall the refugees.

Short Films:

- "The Holocaust Tourist": A whistle-stop tour from Auschwitz hot-dogs to Krakow's kitsch Judaica that asks how dark tourism is changing history.

- "Toyland (Spielzeugland)" This year's Oscar winner for best live-action short film. In 1942 Nazi Germany, a young boy's mother answers her son's question about the whereabouts of his best friend whose family has been deported. She tells him the boy has been sent to Toyland, and he sneaks off to join him.

- "OBCY" (Alien VI): New Polish short. A young Jewish man appears in a tranquil Polish village years after shameful local memories of WWII have faded. The villagers react in surprisingly diverse ways, reflecting ambivalent attitudes toward their past.

Who Do You Think You Are?

Two conference regulars will introduce episodes with which they were personally involved. "The Esther Rantzan story": Hadassah Lipsius researched Warszawa microfilms for vital record information on the well-known UK newscaster's family. "The Zoe Wanamaker Story": Gayle Riley will introduce the story of her actor relative with a plot moving from Minsk to reading a father's FBI files.

Films will be screened beginning Sunday afternoon August 2 through Friday, August 7, including during lunch and dinner breaks and with evening screenings.

Some blog glitches being worked on!

Hello, Tracing the Tribe readers!

Tracing the Tribe is experiencing some strange glitches in a few areas. We are in contact with tech support for possible incompatibilities of some widgets, and hope to make corrections soon.

Some readers are also experiencing problems when clicking on the Tracing the Tribe links on Facebook. We think we know what the cause is and we're working to fix it very soon.

Thank you to readers who notified me of these problems so that they may be addressed.

If you experience any glitches at any time, please let me know.

Google: Searching with options

One of the best things about our geneablogging community is that we are often inspired by our colleagues.

Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings post on Google Options, which followed Dick Eastman's post on the same subject, was interesting. I hadn't had time to previously check out these new features, but it seemed like a fun idea now.

Having a bit of time available, I decided to try some WonderWheel searches, anticipating searches on variations of DARDASHTI, TALALAY, TALALAI, TOLLIN and some others.

- "talalay" = 248,000, included the foam rubber Talalay process (patented by the Mogilev-Moscow-USA branch) and family members.

- "talalai" = 4,800, many from the Polish-origin group from New Jersey, works by known St. Petersburg and Moscow cousins, and other interesting results.

- "tollin" = 230,000, many people I knew, many I thought might be connected, as well as a bunch of Swedes, whom I doubt are connected. Where's a DNA testkit when you need one?

- "tallin" = 1,980,000, the majority on Tallin, Estonia, not about Talalay relatives who changed their name to Tallin, like Uncle David in Newark, New Jersey.

I went on to "schelly dardashti" "Schelly Talalay Dardashti" "tracing the tribe" and "tracing the tribe the jewish genealogy blog".

The results were a bit mind-boggling on the straight searches, and the WonderWheel and Timeline results were also interesting and quite different - with some very pleasant surprises.

The "schelly dardashti" WonderWheel produced this with 548 results:

The "schelly talalay dardashti" WonderWheel looked like this with 5,450 results:

The "Tracing the Tribe" WonderWheel showed 49,500 hits:



The "tracing the tribe" (all lowercase) WonderWheel showed 49,700 hits:

"tracing the tribe the jewish genealogy blog" produced 9,880 hits but with no spokes. I assume there were too many categories. The last WonderWheel search was for "the jewish genealogy blog" for 9,960 hits.

If you click on any spoke of the center circle, you get an additional related WonderWheel with more terms and different numbers of hits. Try it out yourself.

The Timeline option produced the least number of hits for all searches. I am as confused as Randy about this option, as I indicate many years in my blog postings. Hits for searches conducted were "schelly dardashti" 10; "schelly talalay dardashti" 88; "tracing the tribe" 22; and "tracing the tribe the jewish genealogy blog" 4.

In any case, there were some very pleasant surprises.


The first search produced a Los Angeles Daily News article (March 10, 1990) about a Persian Shabbat I organized at our synagogue, Valley Beth Shalom. Honestly, I had completely forgotten that the paper had covered it - I'm now trying to get access to the full 450+ word article (only a snippet shows), which is at NewsBank.com.

It also called up a May 6, 1998 Las Vegas Review Journal story about a program we ran at Jewish Genealogy Society of Southern Nevada-East (now dissolved), which met at Midbar Kodesh congregation in Henderson. I remembered that story, but didn't have a copy of it.

There were a slew of Jerusalem Post-related items.

Using a Timeline search for "schelly talalay dardashti," which became my nom de plume around 1999 when I began writing for the Jerusalem Post, there were 88 hits, again with many JPost stories on genealogy, food, travel and other features. The search also pulled ads and other stories on the same page as my stories.

Just for the heck of it, I searched "it's all relative" jerusalem post to see what that would bring up ("It's All Relative" was the name of my gen column). The 49 hits included some interesting items I had forgotten. How time flies when we're having fun!

Using Google Search, I typed "schelly dardashti" in the box; in the "related" box underneath, it showed 6,180 results for this search. For "schelly talalay dardashti", the "related" list showed 4,350 hits. When I hit on those names however, the numbers were rather different. Schelly Dardashti showed 550 and Schelly Talalay Dardashti showed 5,450. "Tracing the Tribe" produced 78,600 hits.

The most interesting part was finding mentions of Tracing the Tribe in places (journal and magazine articles, other genealogy blogs, etc.) that I hadn't known about. Now I have quite a few thank-you notes to write!

Bottom line: Whether you're a blogger, a family historian or merely curious, conducting searches with these options for your families of interest or yourself might turn up some valuable - or at least interesting - items.

I'm interested in learning what you've discovered about your own families!

Book: Learning how to network!

Sometimes it seems that we jumped almost overnight from ink and quill pens to electric typewriters and then to the Internet. Advances in technology and tools appear so rapidly that it helps to have a book to explain all of the possibilities.

Family history researchers must be aware of how to access the daily additions of genealogical information on the Internet, provided by myriad sources, including companies, organizations and individual researchers.

I just received "Social Networking for Family Historians" from author Drew Smith.

A digital genealogy expert, Drew has always been interested in family history. He's well-known to the genealogy community as co-host of the Genealogy Guys Podcast and also writes for Digital Genealogist magazine. He is a realtime University of South Florida academic librarian.

"Social Networking for Genealogists" (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, Maryland, 2009) isn't a big or heavy volume, yet its concise 129 pages offer the nuts and bolts of how the social information revolution can benefit all of us in our quests.

It covers, in a very easy-to-read way the building blocks of social networking. Today, these include podcasts, RSS, tags, wikis, genealogy social networks, general social networks, message boards, mailing lists, sharing photos and videos, collaborative editing, blogs, sharing personal libraries and virtual worlds. While no one knows what the next new thing will be, I'm sure Drew will write a sequel.

Each chapter begins with a definition, provides screenshots and explanations and also ends with a list of activities to get involved with that technology.

The focus is on finding specialized communities of other people who want to know about the same things we do. While we may have social networks closer to home in the physical sense, technology has provided us a way to connect with individuals who may live on the other side of the world but who are just as interested in a specific locality, subject or name as we are.

Drew reminds us that for 10 years, online social networking sites and services have seen a remarkable increase, and some have been designed exclusively for genealogists. We also use general networking sites for genealogical research (such as Facebook and Twitter, which Tracing the Tribe has previously commented on).

Each chapter in the book also provides a "getting involved" list. For the chapter on RSS (syndication), activities include:

- Set up an account at a free aggregator website, such as Google Reader.

- Subscribe to one or more web feeds by visiting one of the social networking sites.

- Read items of interest from the feeds you've subscribed to.

- Organize your feeds into categories.

Tagging sometimes confuses beginners, but think of it like labeling a shelf of spice jars. Spices can be alphabetically classified by name, by spice color or through a personal system. For example, I put the spices used most frequently up front, the most easily accessible in my kitchen.

In tagging Tracing the Tribe posts, I look for the big picture. I don't tag, for example, the name of a specific Jewish cemetery or the specific city it is in as those tag lists will quickly become unwieldy. Instead, I use the big picture tag of "Jewish cemetery," but also add tags for the state or country. A reader looking for a Jewish cemetery in Germany, would search for "Jewish cemetery Germany" and see what posts come up under those terms.

Drew offers definitions for the tagging chapter:

- tag (noun): A word or short phrase used to identify or describe some item of information (such as a textual entry, photograph, or video) in order to make to easier to find later.

- tag (verb): To assign one or more tags to an item of information.

- folksonomy (noun): An informal classification system resulting from a large number of people applying tags of their own choosing to items in a repository of information.

Folksonomy? That was new to me. Drew's experience as a librarian gives him a unique insight to classification issues. Information is only as good as our ability to access it quickly and easily, which means the classification system must make obvious sense to the majority of people who use it.

Tagging also reflects the new information added to our knowledge, and how it is serious business as performed by passionate, interested and experienced researchers and genealogists.

Of course, he includes a chapter on blogs, where he details blogging and social networking, blogging and personal research; blogging, news, personal opinion; finding blogs of interest, creating and maintaining your own blog(s), and getting involved with blogging.

His activity list for getting involved includes:

- find and read one or more genealogy blogs of interest, using the Genealogy Blog Finder.

- Subscribe to one or more blogs, using a feed aggregator.

- Comment on a blog posting that you have enjoyed, disagree with, or can provide an answer to.

- Create your own blog about genealogy using Blogger.

- Tag your blog postings so that others can find them more easily.

- Maintain a blogroll on your blog to help others find interesting blogs that you enjoy.

- Allow others to comment about your blog postings.

I was also interested in Drew's chapter on virtual worlds (Second Life), as I haven't had time to read too much about it. I still don't think I'm ready for it, but who knows what will happen later on?

While the book is more targeted to newcomers faced with so much new technology and likely overwhelmed, more experienced researchers will also better understand the concepts and tools detailed by Drew.

Knowledge is our business, so we are always learning.

Philly 2009: Israeli genealogists to present

Israeli genealogists are among the presenters at the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (August 2-7; Philadelphia).

-Shalom Bronstein, "Yad Vashem as a Genealogical Resource." Member, Israel Jewish Genealogical Society (IGS); deputy director, Jacobi Center, International Institute of Jewish Genealogy (IIJG).

- Rose Feldman, "Creating a Database of Medical Professionals in Mandate Palestine." Member / webmaster, IGS.

- Horia Haim Ghiuzeli, "Stories from the Black Forest." Director, Internet and Databases Department, Beth Hatefutsoth.

- Michael Goldstein, "Finding Family in Israel." President, IGS; professional researcher.

- Daniel Horowitz, management seminar speaker ("Engage Children in Learning by Teaching Family History"), computer workshops on genealogy programs and search engines. Member / webmaster, Jewish Family Research Association (JFRA Israel) and Horowitz Family Association. Database and translation manager, MyHeritage.com.

- Michael Karpin, "Six Centuries of a Galician Jewish Dynasty." Israeli TV/radio news reporter / anchor for more than three decades.

- Rose Lerer Cohen, "The Children's Tracing Archive at the International Tracing Service." Editor, IGS journal Sharsheret Hadorot; author, The Holocaust in Lithuania.

There is more information for each speaker and his or her program(s) at the conference website.

The 2009 conference is co-sponsored by the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Philadelphia and the IAJGS, with some 75 member societies worldwide.

For all conference details, click here.

Philly 2009: Yiddish, preservation, food sessions added

Two workshops and a Yiddish session have been added to the Friday morning line-up at the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (Sunday-Friday, August 2-7, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

To see the new additions, click the Philly 2009 website for the program and all conference details.

Tours and the Film Festival schedule will soon be added. Tracing the Tribe will let you know when those are available.

The session with Rabbi Ilene Schneider - "Yiddish: A Fun Look at the Language of our Ancestors" - is sure to be great. She's the author of the recently published "Talk Dirty Yiddish: Beyond Drek." I recently received a copy of her very funny book and will review it in Tracing the Tribe.

The new Friday hand's-on workshops (added fee) are:

- "Preserving Documents and Photographs," a workshop with preservation services director Laura Hortz Stanton and preservation services officer Kim Andrews, of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts. Friday, August 7, from 8.15-10.15am, $10.

- "Tasting World Jewish Cuisines: Turkish, Syrian, and Ashkenazi-Italkeni Recipes." with cookbook authors Sheilah Kaufman and Aliza Green. Friday, August 7, 10.30-12.30am $20.

Trying to figure out which sessions to attend during this very busy week?

Download the updated Conference Program. Go to the program page, and click "HERE" near the top of the page for the PDF format. There is an alternative program which illustrates a session time and its related subject or track. Rooms are not yet added.

If you have already registered and want to add sessions, click here. Remember to sign up for the SIG luncheons, which fill to capacity very quickly. Also check out the computer workshops. Don't be disappointed!

If you have not yet registered, go to the conference site and look on the left sidebar for "Registration."

Waxing nostalgic about inspiration

Today we wax nostalgic about the event or person who inspired us to start our genealogy research, as challenged by Genea-Musings' Randy Seaver.

Like everyone else of thinking age back in the late 1970s, I had seen "Roots" and thought it was a fascinating story, but I didn't know anything about genealogy. I had not yet caught the bug as did the early pioneers, such as Dan Rottenberg and Arthur Kurzweil, whose books later proved inspiring.

I had always heard the story about our Talalay name - "This was our name when we left Spain." One sentence. One idea. Everyone laughed about it, no one believed this could be the origin of our strange and rare name. How could Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe be Sephardim from Spain?

This despite the fact that in New York, my mother with her dark hair and eyes, olive skin, was always being spoken to by strangers in Italian, Spanish, Greek. The story was told that when my father brought the Brooklyn girl home to meet his Orthodox parents in the Bronx, they asked him (in Yiddish) why he was bringing this non-Jewish girl to them.

I filed all of this away in a small corner of my mind, much more interested in needlework, cooking, reading, etc. Until 1989.

Until our daughter was a year away from her bat mitzvah ceremony. She came home from a Hebrew school class with a fateful homework assignment that would change my life forever - a sheet of paper with a few questions. Write your name and Hebrew name, your parents' names and Hebrew names, your grandparents' names and Hebrew names, your great-grandparents' names and Hebrew names (if you know them).

That weekend we attended a big Dardashti family event in Los Angeles for a multitude of relatives - hundreds of them. We worked the room and came home with stacks of cocktail napkins scribbled with information. She wrote blue and pink labels, organized family branches, and everything was glued on four large poster boards. We had hundreds of family names and branches going back to about 1820 - as a result of talking to our family's "walking encyclopedias." Needless to say, she got an A!

Our daughter then said to me, "Now we have to do your family!"

Easier said than done. Whereas Los Angeles was crawling with Dardashti relatives eager to share their knowledge, I wasn't even sure where in White Russia (as my grandmother said) we came from. I remembered "Molyah," and it took a long time to discover that was Mogilev. Some tried to tell me I was looking for Mogilev Podulsk, but my grandmother talked about the Dnieper River her mother had described. Mogilev Podulsk is nowhere near that river which does, however, run right through through "our" Mogilev.

We spent time together at the Santa Monica Family History Library and saw my great-grandmother's New York passenger arrival manifest, evidencing for the first time the family name and a location. A Happy Dance moment, if there ever was one.

I knew Newark, New Jersey was where they settled, but who else from the family was there? Digging around among the few relatives, we heard "well, there was Uncle David, but I don't know if he was really an uncle," (he was my great-grandfather Aron Peretz' brother) or "There was Mariyasha who had several husbands," (she was their sister) or "Ask about the Jassen cousins" (I did - cousin Charlie's father, William Zev, was the brother of Aron Peretz and David Aryeh's mother, Kreine Mushe). Little by little, information accumulated.

As her bat mitzvah approached, our daughter had to begin working on her talk. Her parasha was Chukat, detailing rules and regulations about the red heifer. She wasn't thrilled with that topic and received the go-ahead to speak about family history and her project. And so she did to a congregation of more than 1,000 on Shabbat morning. I don't know if anyone else was inspired to start a project after that, but it was interesting and a departure from the norm.

My obsession with family history has continued until now, expanding to archival records in Minsk, Belarus and Lerida, Spain; finding lost Talalay and misplaced Dardashti; a fascination with Sephardic genealogy and resources; a connection with DNA and genetics; and locating other Eastern European Ashkenazim who are really Sephardim.

Above all, there continues an abiding fascination with Jewish history and how my ancestors - all of our ancestors, including yours - were impacted by historical events throughout history. For us, it meant the Babylonian Exile which resettled my husband's ancestors in Isfahan, Iran. The 1391 riots across Spain and the Inquisition. A trek into Eastern Europe. Major waves of New World immigration followed by the Holocaust. Our own contemporary expeditions from New York to Iran, back to the US and to Israel. Talk about the wandering Jews!

So, the person that truly inspired me was our daughter who said so long ago, "Now we have to do your family!" and the event was her bat mitzvah.

Most of my professional life since then has hinged on family history. Writing "It's All Relative" for the Jerusalem Post. Continuing research on both sides of the family since 1990. Being asked by JTA.org to start "Tracing the Tribe - The Jewish Genealogy Blog." Teaching genealogy online and co-founding GenClass.com. Speaking at conferences and to groups to encourage each person to get started in recording his or her unique family history.

Amazing what one sentence can do!

Vermont: Jewish genealogy at the library, May 19

Readers in Brattleboro, Vermont can attend a Jewish genealogy presentation at the Brooks Memorial Library on Tuesday, May 19.

The program begins at 5.30pm, when genealogist Norma Cavey presents her research on family and ancestral town community history. She'll describe research and interview techniques she has used to solve family riddles and myths, as well as privacy issues encountered in family history research.

Cavey has been curious about her own family history since earliest childhood. Five of her great grandparents immigrated to New York City. Recently, she traced one great grandmother's family back to 1790 in Pruzhany, Belarus. Cavey has had some success tracing 5 of her great-grandparents' families. Cavey will discuss research and interview techniques, difficulties, the Internet, and the importance of reading and using Jewish genealogy books available at the Brooks library. There will be an introduction to her next presentation: "Russian Empire Jews Acquire Family Names."

For 50 years, Cavey's work has included ethnic and immigration history, community studies and social policy. She was the first Environmental and Ethnic Community Planner for the National Park Service, Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty. A former college professor and senior administrative planner, she has conducted European research.

For more details, see the library site.

SephardicGen: 'Jews of Valencia,' index

A recently added database of SephardicGen.com is an index to a comprehensive study of the Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia from the 1391 massacres to the 1492 Expulsion.

The book by historian J. Hinojosa Montalvo - The Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia (Hispania Judaica, v.9), was published in 1994 by Magnes Press of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The author has published many articles and books on the pre-Expulsion Jewish communities. This book is based on more than 880 documents found in various archives and published in the book for the first time.

There are 180 different surnames from 16 localities. Fields include surnames, given names, year and place, and added notes. About 10% of the names relate to women.

The geographic localities included are: Aspe, Bejis, Borriol, Castellon, Elche, Hoya de Bunol, Jativa, Jerica, Liria, Morvedre, Orhihuela, Paterna, Segore, Valencia, Villareal, and Zaragoza.

Access the database here.

I could not bring up the geographic localities from that pull-down menu, but all the names appeared using an alphabetical search of the first letter of the name. I have notified Jeff Malka of SephardicGen of the problem, and I am sure it will be addressed soon.

For the letter A, there were 60 surnames including:

ABAGI, ABARIM, ABAYU, ABBU, ABDOLAZIZ, ABEGAN, ABENAMIL, ABENAZARA, AENCABAL, ABENCABORA, ABENDURO, ABENFERRIZ, AENGAMIL, ABENGAMIN, ABENHABIT, ABENLAMBUT, ABENMARUEC, ABENMUCA, ABENPELX, ABENRESCH, ABENRIAMIN, AENZAYDON, ABNAJUP, ABNAYUB, ABULAIG, ABUISACH, ADDAIX, ADDAX, ADDOR, ADZANI,ADZONI, ALAGRIAN, ALAQUO, ALATEFFI, ALFANGI, ALLUHAYEG, ALMALE, ALOLAIG, ALPEGNRI, ANDAIX, ARDIT, ARDUTELL, ARRAMI, ARRONDI, ARROT, ASCIPO, ASCO, ASRILLA, ASEYO, ASTORI, ATRONAY, ATZONI, AYMAR, AZDRILLA, AZERON, AZIZ, AZONI, AZTORI.

Women's given names included: Jamila, Astruga, Perla, Graciana and Flor.

Men's names included: Jucef, Abram, Salamo, Mosse, Vidal, Estruch, Jacob, Abraham, Gento, Nacan, Icach, Aim, Samuel, Moca (Moshe), Azmel, Davit, Mahiz, Jafuda, Abraffim, Gabriel, Astruc, Maymo, etc.

Letter T offered these surnames: TAMEFA, TARFON, THIFALLA, TORREGANO, TRIGO; given names were Yucef, Salamo, Samuel, Abram, Cenin and Gento.

Remember to read the FAQ for tips.

Los Angeles: Boyle Heights' Jewish roots

The Boyle Heights area of Los Angeles was once a vibrant Jewish neighborhood, perhaps the largest Jewish community outside of New York, according to a Los Angeles Times story.

The Fiesta Shalom event, at the Breed Street Shul, honored the area's Jewish and Latino bonds and Israel's 61st anniversary. The story is here.

On a sunny Sunday when men with 10-gallon vaquero hats mingled with men wearing yarmulkes, Sonny Estrada, his wife Susan Miller and their 9-year-old daughter Eliana stepped into the aging synagogue in Boyle Heights as unwitting symbols.

The Mexican-American-Jewish family was celebrating the 61st anniversary of Israel's independence outside the Breed Street Shul -- while also honoring Jewish and Latino bonds in a part of town that once was home to the largest Jewish community outside New York.

As a teenager, Estrada used to accompany his gardener father to tend the yards of West Los Angeles homes that often belonged to Jewish families. When Estrada and Miller married 19 years ago, they exchanged vows in English, Hebrew and Spanish. About eight years ago, Estrada converted to Judaism.

Though they had never stepped foot in the Breed Street synagogue, it seemed only natural that they should come to Sunday's celebration.

Miller, 51, cried when she entered the old shul, whose ornate and colorful stained glass windows were pocked with holes. The altar and cracked wooden floors were dusty.

"To think, people were married here, they were mitzvahed here," Miller said. "It's a treasure that needs to be restored."

Jewish Historical Society of Southern California president Stephen Sass said one goal of Fiesta Shalom was to raise awareness of the need for restoration. To learn more about the Breed Street Shul Project, click here.

The last services in the synagogue were held in 1996. The goal is to reopen the site as a neighborhood cultural and social service center. Some $5 million is needed for repairs.

Through World War II, Boyle Heights was the center of the LA Jewish community. Streets were lined with kosher delis, bakeries and Jewish businesses on what was Brooklyn Avenue (now Cesar Chavez Avenue). The area's Jewish residents began moving to West Los Angeles and the Valley in the 1950s.

Lucy Delgado, an 85-year-old Mexican American who has lived in Boyle Heights since birth, said she had friends of many cultures when she was growing up in the neighborhood that is now almost entirely Latino. She recalled a rabbi inviting her into the Breed Street Shul, and marveling at the chandeliers. Like many people who streamed through the synagogue Sunday, Delgado was saddened by its current state.

So was Brenda Mandelbaum, 68, whose father, Mendel Friedman, had once been a rabbi and president of the shul. She had not stepped into the structure since about 1951, when she last lived in Boyle Heights."I was a little surprised to see the way it is," she said as she walked out of the synagogue. "It's a shame, because it was beautiful."

Read the complete story at the link above.

The Internet: Lost in Translation

Does the Web speak your language? Volunteers around the world are trying to help it do just that.

The New York Times' Prototype column, by Leslie Berlin, just carried a story on volunteer and machine translation projects.

In the early years of the Web, nearly all of its content appeared in English. But that is changing quickly. Today, articles on Wikipedia are available in more than 200 languages, for example.

And about 36 percent of the seven million blogs running on WordPress, a free software platform, are in languages other than English, according to the founder Matt Mullenweg.
Leonard Chien, a translator, volunteers his skills at the Global Voices site. Such changes create a challenge, says Ethan Zuckerman, a research fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard.

“We are all experiencing a smaller Internet than we should be,” he said. “In the user-created Web, we’ve created a weird dynamic where there is more out there every day — some of it important — but each person can individually read less of it because it’s in multiple languages.”

Translations serves are both automated and human and help to translate what Zuckerman calls the "polyglot" Internet. Machine translation is now free at Google Translate (and other sites) which offers 41 languages. Enter a block of text and the machine-translation appears immediately.

A neat feature is that Google Translate can translate a search term and then hunt for it on foreign-language sites. Hits will appear in both the target language and translated back into the original. I used this feature to search for a "lost" TALALAY - an astro-physicist at a university in the far-off Urals in Russia, and found not only him, but his son.

Machine translations may help with basic texts but non-Romance languages and complex subjects may be too difficult. Today, volunteers are providing a free, human touch.

Leonard Chien, a student and professional translator and interpreter living in Taiwan, charges $100 an hour as an interpreter. But two to three hours a day, he volunteers his translation skills to Global Voices, a citizen journalist site founded by Mr. Zuckerman and Rebecca MacKinnon. There, Mr. Chien translates posts from around the world into Chinese.

Mr. Chien is co-director of the Global Voices translation project, called Lingua, which uses volunteers to translate Global Voices posts into 15 languages. He receives a small monthly stipend for his work as a director, he says, but he is happy to donate his time as a translator.

“I am always excited to see new stories are up,” he says. “I want to tell my readers, but in different languages.”

Last month, 104 people volunteered as Lingua translators. Other global volunteers participate in the “Google in Your Language” program, helping it translate features into 120 languages.

Why do these people volunteer? Genealogists are well aware of how volunteers have changed the face of our favorite hobby, as so many dedicated individuals around the world provide their expertise to help others who are linguistically-challenged.

A Damascus-based Arabic-English translator volunteers 15-20 hours a week. It also brings him exposure and experience and he enjoys the "challenge of translating between two very linguistically and culturally different languages.”

A Möhnesee, Germany graphic designer says he has spent 62 hours translating conference talks into German and is "inspired by the content itself.

Read abut the TED conference in the story. The event began the video-translation project expecting to use professional translators, even though the site had received unsolicited translations from fans of some talks.

“We thought professional translation was the only way to ensure high-quality work,” explains June Cohen, executive producer of TED Media. The shift to volunteer translators came last fall, after Ms. Cohen and her colleagues — the roughly 20 full-time employees speak 14 languages among them, she says — read
several volunteers’ translations and were impressed.

“The volunteers are deeply committed to making the best translation, and they don’t care how long it takes them,” she explains. “There is a passion there that you don’t get from hired guns.”

It is also cheaper. A professional translation company, says Cohen, would charge $500,000 for the work volunteers have already done or that's in progress.

As far as quality control, some services require a review by a second translator and have translators sign their work.

Is there a middle ground between machines and humans?

A company called Meedan.net is trying to do just that. At the site, where English and Arabic speakers discuss the Middle East, postings automatically appear in the other language (translated by machine and tweaked by humans).

Read the complete article at the link above.

SephardicGen: 30 medieval ketubot, an index

SephardicGen.com has now posted a database of 104 surnames from 30 medieval ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts) originating in 14 communities in medieval Hispanic kingdoms, from the book by the late Professor Jose Luis Lacave.

See the index here.

An expert in Semitic philology and the history of the Jews in Christian Spain. Lacave gathered 30 ketubot (Jewish marriage contracts) from 14 communities in various medieval Hispanic kingdoms.

He examined the historical and legal aspects of the documents and includes in his research a study of each one and a detailed comparison between them. The book includes illustrations of the ketubot in full color.

The index includes given names, year, locality and occasional annotations. The 14 communities are Barcelona, Bellpuig, Borja, Cervera, Ciudad de Malljorca, Jaca, Manresa, Milagro, Montbui, Segura de Leon, Torrelobaton (Vallodolid), Tudela and Valencia.

Here are the nine names for Barcelona and example of what the index shows for each:

ABEN BASA, Astruga, 1386, "Barcelona 1, p.31"
CABRIT, Moshe b.Yehuda, 1386, "Barcelona 1, p.31" (Note: royal surgeon; 1392: converted called Gabriel BONI)
CAP, Abraham, 1261, "Barcelona 5, p.34"
CARCASONI, Astruga b. Reuven, 1390, "Barcelona 2, p.32"
CORAYE, Blanca, 1343, "Barcelona 4, p.34"
DALELL, Yzhak b. Yehuda, 1343, "Barcelona 4, p.34"
LECIMI, Astruga, 1383, "Barcelona 1, p.31"
SHALTIEL HEN, Yehuda, 13th century, "Barcelona 6, p.36"
SULLAM, Samuel, 1390, "Barcelona 2, p.32"

There are 25 names (and additional names for the individual) for the city of Tudela:

ABASI (Abenabez), DE ABLITAS, ALBORGE, ALCASTIEL, ALPARGA, AYNCON (Ainzon), AZAFAR, BEN CIDA (Vencida), BEN MENIR (EvenMenir), BENDEUT (Ben Daud), BENJAMIL (Ben Jamil, Ben Gamel), BENZOAR (Benzohar, Evenzohar), CAMIZ, COCOLEQ (Cocola), EFLAH, FALAQUERA, FARACH, GABAY, GALAF (EvenGalaf), GORMEZANO, GRISA (De La Grisa), HANONI, NAZIR (Annazir, Abennazir), DE LA RABICA, and SARSHALOM.

There are 11 names from Valencia:

ABEN ISAMAILAT, AGOL, ALHUYAT, AYUB, CABALMALE, COHEN BAHBATI, COHIL MORCAT, HAPAROS, TANNIRA and UMRACH.

There are 11 names from Ciudad de Mallorca:

ADDA, ALATZARACH, AL-AZRAQ, ALMAGUILI, BEN ADDE, DAYEN, MALEQUI, DELS PILAS, SALADI and SES PORTES.

Always read the FAQ for each database on SephardicGen, which provides tips for searching and more about the index or the original work from which the index was taken.

More is coming up on additional SephardicGen databases.

SephardicGen: 'Jews of Aragon' indexed

SephardicGen.com has posted the index to a book on the Jews of Aragon. Readers with Sephardic backgrounds or oral history of Sephardic origins should take a look at this index of 3,800 documents providing 1,070 surnames found in 88 localities.

Access the index here.

Archivist and paleographer Jean Régné (1883-1954) published several historical works. His book on the Aragonnese Jews is based on registers and documents found in the Crown of Aragon Archives (Barcelona).

His book - History of the Jews in Aragon: regesta and documents, 1213-1327 - is in the Hispania Judaica series, volume 1. Posthumously edited and annotated by Prof. Yom Tov Assis, and published by Magnes Press of the Hebrew University, in 1978.

Fields include surname, given name, year of document, geographical location and document number, with occasional notes (such as "widow" or that a mentioned town is in Algeria).

What can readers find in this database?

For Barcelona, 84 surnames are listed, including:

ABENAMIES, ABENMUCA, ABENXAR, ABNUBA, ADRET, ALBALA, ALBANET, ALCOF, ALGEYNI, ALMUZUINO, AMIEL, ASTRUCH, AVENCAOGA, AVINFA, BELLCAIRE, BISBE, BONDAVIN, BONSENIOR, BULAIX, CAP, CARAVIDA, CAROYAL, CASTELLAN, CLARAMUNT,
CORAYEF, CRATER, CRESCHES, DARAY, DARGOT, DE LA TORRE, DE PALAFOLLS, DE PORTA, DE REGAL, DE TOLOSA, DE TOLRRANO, DEFORN, DESFORN, DEZ CASTLARS, ESCANDARAM, FAQUIN, FERRER, FUSEL, FUSSELL, GAYET, GENAHA, GRACIANI, GRACIAS, GRACION,GRAMER, GRANER, GUERRA, JACOB, JAFFIA, LEPEL, LEVI, LLOP, MACANA, MALAQUI, MALET / MALLET, MANGANER, MAYMON, OBRADOR, PEBRET, PERFET, REVAYA, ROSELL/ROSSELL, ROVEN, RUBIN, SABARTA, SACHAR, SALAMO, SALTEL / SALTELL, SAPORTA,SOLLAM, TAHUEL, THOROS GRACIAN, VIVES AND XAHON.

Lerida figures in our family's background, so I next checked for Lerida, and found 92 names, although none like our Talalay. However, I did find some interesting names indicating that Jews in Lerida came from other places, as illustrated in such surnames as DE BELAGUER, DE GERONA, DE LIMOX, DE LIMOZ, DE TUDELA.

Most of the localities have only a few names, but those with the largest number of records include:

Barcelona (84), Besalu (17), Calatayud (99), Cervera (13), Daroca (21),Egea (12), Girona (37), Huesca (62), Jaca (16), Hativa (19), Lerida (92),Mallorca (20), Monzon (14), Murviedro (11), Tarazona (11), Taragona (15),Teruel (28), Tortosa (22), Valencia (163), Villafranca del Pinades (13) and Zaragoza (149).

Check out the database. A good method to see the surnames is to enter only the first letter of the alphabet and go on from there. Choose "starts with."

Again, thanks to SephardicGen.com for making this available.

New York Times: DNA Shoah Project

The DNA Shoah Project, which uses DNA to track Holocaust survivors, made it to the New York Times today.

For years, Allen Rosenberg, a real estate developer from Hewlett Bay Park, has had a nagging thought: What if a first or second cousin survived the Holocaust and he didn’t know it?

Maybe my cousin was placed in a displaced person’s camp on the other side of Germany or in Poland,” said Mr. Rosenberg, who is 45.

As far as he knows, Mr. Rosenberg said, his father, who went into a hospital in Hamburg, Germany, with tuberculosis right after World War II and died in 1988, was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust. Still, he said, “there is that slim chance.”

Until recently, Mr. Rosenberg could do no more than wonder. Then he learned of the DNA Shoah Project, which seeks to reunite families torn apart by the Holocaust. Shoah is the Hebrew word for Holocaust.

The nonprofit project is asking survivors, their children and grandchildren to provide a DNA sample to help build a genetic database of Jewish Holocaust survivors and their immediate descendants. The database may eventually be made available to European forensic experts attempting to identify remains of Holocaust victims.

According to the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, founded in 1951 to negotiate Holocaust reparations, more than 500,000 Jewish Holocaust survivors are believed to be alive.

Project co-founder Syd Mandelbaum of Long Island is looking for any trace of his grandfather Shlomo Barber; age 42 in 1942, he disappeared as a slave laborer in Germany. Mandelbaum's other three grandparents were murdered at Auschwitz.

Since the project began three years ago, some 1,000 DNA samples have been collected, but that 10,000 samples are needed for the database to be "statistically significant," and start producing hits.

Samples are collected using two cotton brushes to scrape the inside of a participant’s cheeks for 30 seconds. Request kits at DNAShoah.org or call (866) 897-1150.

Mandelbaum is a scientist with genetic and DNA research background who headed the American team using DNA sequencing in the 1990s disproving Anna Anderson's claim of being the youngest daughter of Czar Nicholas II of Russia.

After sets of nearly three dozen remains of what may have been Holocaust victims were found in Germany in 2005, Mr. Mandelbaum said, he learned that no DNA database of Holocaust victims existed. With the help of Michael Hammer, the head of a genetics analysis lab at the University of Arizona, the DNA Shoah
Project was born.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Book: Lost Synagogues of Brooklyn

Calling all Brooklynites! Avotaynu's Gary Mokotoff has announced a new book - "Lost Synagogues of Brooklyn," by Ellen Levitt, a lifelong Brooklyn resident.

As a former resident myself, it was interesting to peruse the list of synagogues and addresses and find myself getting a little nostalgic.

Some 91 synagogues are photographed and written about in detail in the pages of this book.

Jewish life in Brownsville, East New York, Flatbush-East Flatbush, Bedford-Stuyvesant, and other nearby areas of Brooklyn through the 1950s was a lively, rich, and varied environment. During the next few decades it dissipated greatly. As Jews moved to other areas, they left
behind their synagogues.

Avotaynu's latest book, "The Lost Synagogues of Brooklyn," is a photographic essay of these ex-shuls; it tells what happened to them and how they appear today. Many became churches whose facades still have Jewish symbols.

The book offers photographs, interviews and analyses on these 91 structures. Some have been preserved, others are in disrepair. Included are the memories of former members of those congregations, as well as of the church members who own the buildings today.

Some of the photos in a Brooklyn Historical Society exhibit (November 2006-February 2007), and Levitt lectured on the topic. The exhibit and lecture were the impetus for this book.

For more information, click here to see the table of contents, a sample page and a list of the synagogues pictured.

India: Fighting to save Cochin's synagogue

Local state government authorities in Cochin, India have taken steps to block the future demolition of a centuries-old synagogue in the southern India city. This was in response to rumors of the possible sale of the building to a developer.

Jerusalem Post writer Michael Freund, who is visiting in Cochin, wrote this story.

The Thekkumbhagom synagogue, located on Jews Street in the Ernakulam area of Cochin, was built in 1580 and later renovated in 1939. Along with other local synagogues, it served Cochin's 3,000 Jews until most moved to Israel after the establishment of the state. Fewer than 35 Jews now remain in Cochin.

The synagogue is currently owned by the Association of Kerala Jews, and in recent years, the structure has fallen into disuse.

In recent weeks, according to former Cochini Jews living in Israel, the synagogue was put up for sale and negotiations were conducted with an Indian developer who wanted to buy the property and tear down the building.

The Association of Kerala Jews president Isaac Joshua denied the synagogue was for sale. He said the association plans to turn it over to the local archeological department to assure that it will remain protected and maintained.

A petition with dozens of signatures of former Cochini Jews now living in Israel was sent to the Kerala government's home minister, asking authorities to safeguard synagogues and Jewish cemeteries.

Kerala's secretary of tourism Dr. Venu V. Ias said he instructed the superintending archeologist to ensure the building was not demolished." He added that the structure was on the government list of "heritage buildings" which meant local authorities would have to grant permission to demolish it.

Read the complete article at the link above.

SephardicGen: Jewish Surnames from 'Sefarad'

SephardicGen.com has added several new databases of Jewish names extracted from various publications.

Tracing the Tribe believes it is important to detail each new database individually to provide the best information and how each can help researchers.

Jewish Surnames from the Periodical Sefarad 1941-2007

In 1941, the Arias B. Montano Institute in Madrid began publishing Sefarad, a biannual academic journal. At first dedicate to research on Spanish Jews up to the 1492 Expulsion, its focus was expanded several years ago. Currently, it covers Hebrew studies and Mediterranean Jews.

Researchers working in the Crown of Aragon archives, regional Notarial Archives and other locations wrote articles on these primary resources. The writers often included the lists of names in the documents they studies, such as the names of inhabitants or property owners. These lists document Jewish surnames in use in medieval Spain, and is evidence of Sephardic roots.

Sephardic researchers must understand that not all the archives in Spain have been studied, and that some are only now becoming computerized, such as the archive in Lerida/Llerida which received its first computer only about two years ago, around the time of my visit.

As more researchers work with more archives, additional lists will be produced. As an excellent example, a current project in the Cervera Archives by dedicated genealogist Maria Jose Surribas of Barcelona will add much to what we know today.

This SephardicGen index covers Sefarad articles from 1941-2007. Fields include surname, given name, place and year of occurence and article in which it appeared. There are more than 2,000 surnames.

As most family history researchers and geenalogists are aware, names were not yet fixed in the medieval era, and there are numerous variants; compound names are found as one word or as two words, and patronymic names seem to have disappeared. Researchers should be aware that geographic place surnames are rare - these became popular as an identifier after a family or individual left their town or city, often after a move to a different city or as a result of the 1492 Expulsion.

I always search for Talalay or Tal* (wildcard) in the hope of finding an elusive ancestor of this very rare name.

Using the "begins with" TAL, three names popped up:

Talaguera, Salamon; Huesca 1440, in a 1947 article, "La aljama judaica de Huesca" (The Huesca Jewish community).

Talaya, Salomon; Morella 1370, in a 1964 article, "La juderia de Morella (siglos XIII-XIV)" (The Morella Jewish community, 13th-14th centuries).

Talelma, Ifahim; Huesca 1440, in the same 1947 article noted above.

We may have hit on a possible connection in Salomon Talaya (we had previously found a record of his brother), and are investigating. Talaya is a variant we have seen before. Depending on time frame and location, the name can be spelled Talalla, as double-L=Y.

A search for names beginning with "O" produced 16 entries (some duplicate names): OBEIX, OCANA/OCANYA, ODRERO, OEB, OFFICIAL, OLBALAFIO, OLMEDANO, ORABUENA, OREJA, ORELLA, OMAN, ORUM, OSTIELLO. Locations include Zaragoza, Valdeiglesias (Madrid), Illuesca (Aragon), Zamora, Viana, Buitrago del Loyoza, Tudela, Sos del Rey Catolico, Valencia, Valmazeda and Huesca. Articles mentioning these names and places ranged from 1947-1996.

Tips to remember: B and V are often interchanged. X is pronounced SH. A final C may be SH.

You can also search by town. I searched for Lerida, but there were no hits. That is the town that we believe some of our ancestors came from according to a document dated 1353. A few towns from which I expected hits in general seemed to have a search glitch and my browser read "error on page" appearing on my browser.

Towns with the largest number of names: Huesca (152), Barcelona (159), Zaragoza (253), Valencia (203), Tudela (100), Tarazona (64). There are other towns with as few as one name, and others with five or ten.

Many names beginning with A use the Hebrew (aben, abe, abi) or Arabic (al, abu) prefixes meaning "son of."

Names (just a few samples from the Huesca list):

ABADIAS, ABAGALEO, ABARY, ABEMELCH, ABEN ARDUT, ABEN
BARUCH, ABEN LATERNI, ABEN SAPRIT, ABENABES, ABENBITALS, ABENLONGUO, ABINGASON, ABUAXECH, ABURABBE, ADDIDA, ALBAGDI, ALBAGLI, ALBACLI, ALBERGI, ALCATALAY, ALCUCUMBRIEL, BARRA, BIBAS, BIBAX, BIUAG, BONOY, CABANA / CABANYAS, CADOC, CARNARON, CAVATIERRE, CAZES, DE CASTELLANO, DE LAS INFANTAS, DE MENDOZA, EL NIETO, ELPEN, ERICA, EXUEN, FANOCA, FARFE, FARFI, FARSI, FRAD, GABBAY, GASSO, GASTON, GOMNECO, GUATOIRE, GUGUF, HATEN, HAYENO, LATRONER, LEUI FARIZANO, LO NIETO, LONJERO, LUENGO, MAGALLON, MANGUAS, MOTAMINYO, MUCANUNO, NACAN, NATAN, NATRONES, OSTIELLO, PAPUZ, PARELLO, PASTOR, PSAOR, RAENAS, SAMAREL, SEFARDI, SURI, TALAGUERA, TALELMAN, TERNERES, TOBI, XALON, XUEN.

I will be detailing several more of the new databases in the next few days. Remember to use the full extent of the search engine, using as little as one letter, or partial names. Creative spelling is the rule when dealing with medieval era omnastics.

Thank you, SephardicGen, for these resources.

California: Thinking ahead to 2010

Southern California will be doing the genealogy bunny hop in 2010, so mark your calendars for these two summer events next year.

The 41st Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree 2010 will take place June 11-13 in Burbank, followed just a few weeks later by the 30th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, July 11-16 in Los Angeles.

The Jamboree 2010 committee is pushing ahead on all fronts and has just put out its Call for Papers for next year. Paula Hinkel, Lou Myers and their crew of dedicated volunteers are getting organized.

Next year's Jamboree is expected to draw more than 1,200 participants, speakers and exhibitors to one of the largest and most popular genealogical events in the US.

A wide variety of presentations will be considered, including websites and electronic information sources, migration paths, use of records and repositories, research methodology, skill building, cultural and ethnic research, writing, publishing, family history, computers and technology, society management, genetics and DNA research, source records, immigration and naturalization records, digital and brick-and-mortar record repositories, and professional topics.

The 2010 geographic focus will be on North America – Canada, Mexico, and across the US's regions.

Original topic submissions are strongly encouraged:
- Priority is given to presentations not given within the past two years.
- Proposals for panels, workshops and other ground-breaking presentations will be considered.
- Preference will be give to sponsored presentations and digital presentations are strongly encouraged.
- Time slots are are 60 minutes including a 10-minute Q&A.
- Panel discussions are 90 or 120 minutes.
- Speakers may submit any number of proposals.
- Advanced, intermediate and beginner level sessions may be proposed.

For more information, click here.

Television: Another gen show in development

Variety.com reported on a reality show that will follow the stories of people desperate to find a long-lost friend or relative.

In development at ABC, it could be considered a genealogy show. Read more of the story.

"Find My Family" - a Dutch show now a big hit down under in Australia - follows the stories of people desperate to find a long-lost friend or relative.

Cameras roll as the show's participants reveal what happened to their relationship -- and are there when the people are reunited.

"It's big emotions, and we don't even have to give out a free house or a million bucks," he said.

It's good-for-the-soul TV, showing people who are missing a piece of their life and bringing them back to the brother they never knew they had or the mother they're been looking for."

Co-hosts Tim Green and Lisa Joyner have their own personal histories, according to the story. Both were adopted and eventually found their birth parents.

See the link above for more.

Suriname: Shake a family tree

"Shake a family tree and a Jew falls out," is how Surinamese author Cynthia McLeod describes Suriname. She traces her heritage to Jewish ancestors.

“Every Surinamese has Jewish blood,” she tells Adam Rovner in his travel story in The Forward, describing his visit to Suriname.

McLeod explained that Jewish plantation owners kept slave mistresses with whom they had children. “There is a responsibility to acknowledge this history of slavery,” she continued. “American Jews don’t want to speak of this, but [Jews] did [have slaves] in Suriname; we can prove that.” Still, she added approvingly, “Other colonists came to get rich, while Jews came to make Suriname their home.”

Rovner is an assistant professor of English and Jewish literature at the University of Denver, and translations editor of Zeek: A Jewish Journal of Thought and Culture.

The multicultural aspect of Suriname comes out as the author describes his visits to Shoarma Tel Aviv restaurant owned by a Hindustani, and an 18th-century synagogue with sand-covered floors.

The size of Georgia, but less populous than Atlanta, this former Dutch colony sits along the Caribbean coast of South America. The country is mostly covered by rainforest. It is green, empty and hot. Hot like sitting in a car with the windows rolled up on a humid summer’s day. Until the rains come. Then, an afternoon in Suriname feels like sitting in a car on a summer’s day with the windows down while going through a carwash.

Paramaribo - called Parbo - is the capital and became a major port from sugar cane. It was so promising that - in 1667 - it was traded by the Dutch to the British for New Amsterdam.

In the mid-1600s, Portuguese Jews fleeing the Inquisition arrived via Holland and Brazil.

The Dutch granted the Sephardim an autonomous settlement, 35 miles upriver from Parbo, called Jodensavanne (Jewish Savannah), rich in sugar cane plantations and slaves. By the early 19th-century, following a few economic crises and slave revolts, the settlers moved to the city.

The political influence of its Jewish community was so great that Suriname (Dutch Guiana) was once considered a potential destination for Jewish colonization. Today, less than 200 Jews live in the country, but they once had a major impact.

The beautifully preserved Neve Shalom synagogue sits in the town center, next to the largest mosque in the Caribbean. Afro-Creole women wear Stars of David. Traditional Surinamese Jewish dishes — like pom, a kind of cassava root mashed with chicken, once eaten by plantation owners on Passover — have since become a national treat. Even Hebrew has found its way into Sranan Tongo, the local language, by way of former slaves. The word treefu — from treyf — still refers to taboo foods and behaviors. The legacy of Jodensavanne’s first settlers persists if you know where to look.

Rovner describes his journey to the the Jodensavanne cemetery, finding flat rectangular stones as in many Sephardic cemeteries and the foundations of one of the Americas' earliest synagogues, Beracha ve Shalom. He also locates the Jewish cemetery of Cassipora, where he and his friends hack their way in and out with a machete and a handheld GPS.

I make out two matching prism-shaped tombstones that jut from the undergrowth. Lianas obscure some gravestones, and gnarled roots crack others in half. The stones are wet, some covered in a layer of leaves and loamy earth. We pick our way among the graves until the GPS goes dark: The canopy is too thick to catch the satellite signals.

In Parbo at Neve Shalom's Friday nights service, Rovner meets Jewish community vice president Lily Duym, who claims descent from Isaac Abravanel.

The crowd of 30 or so congregants is white and black and brown, dreadlocked and balding, but everyone chants the prayers, singing out Hebrew verses to the empty balcony and roof beams overhead. As we file out and exchange Sabbath greetings, we leave behind our footprints on the sandy floor — traces of a presence more easily obscured than those left hundreds of years ago by the Jews now resting beneath the jungle in Jodensavanne.

Read the complete story here.

Washington DC: Annie's Ghosts, May 26

Does your family have a secret? Would you spend years trying to unravel the mystery of an unknown relative?

Steve Luxenberg did, and his quest resulted in "Annie's Ghosts: A Journey Into a Family Secret."

“The secrets emerged, without warning or provocation, on an ordinary April afternoon in 1995. Secrets, I've discovered, have a way of working themselves free of their keepers.”

For more on the author - Washington Post senior editor - and his book, click here.

The 6th & I Historic Synagogue's genealogy series continues at 7pm Tuesday, May 26 when Bob Woodward and Steve Luxenberg discuss the process and implications of applying investigative journalism to family history.

In his book, Luxenberg reveals the substantial challenges and rewards of holding a microscope to the relationships we hold most dear.

The event includes a book signing. For tickets ($8 in advance, $10 at the event, or one free ticket with the purchase of the book, $25), click here.

My mother was an only child. That’s what she told everyone, sometimes within minutes of meeting them. When I heard that my mother had been hiding the existence of a sister, I was bewildered. A sister? I was certain that she had no siblings, just as I knew that her name was Beth, that she had no middle name, and that she had raised her children to, above all, tell the truth.

Part memoir, part detective story, part history, Annie’s Ghosts revolves around three main characters (my mom, her sister and me as narrator/detective/son), several important secondary ones (my grandparents, my father and several relatives whom I found in the course of reporting on the book), as well as Eloise, the vast county mental hospital where my secret aunt was confined—despite her initial protestations—all of her adult life.

This program should offer great appeal to family historians and genealogists in the DC area.

ISFHWE: Writing awards announced

Winners of the International Society of Family History Writers and Editors (ISFHWE) 2009 Excellence-in-Writing Competition were announced at a banquet Wednesday, May 13, at the NGS Conference.

The winners are:

Category I: Newspaper Columns

1st: Stefani Evans
"Woman's suspicious death remains a mystery"
Home News, Henderson, Nevada
January 4-10, 2008

2nd: Julie Miller, CGSM
"Postcards from heaven"
Broomfield Enterprise, Broomfield, Colorado
September 7, 2008

3rd: James Beidler
"Google searches bring interesting, and different, results"
Lebanon Daily News, Lebanon, Pennsylvania
August 25, 2008

Category II: Published Articles

1st: Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak
"The Man (or Woman) Who Would Be King"
Ancestry Magazine, September/October 2008

2nd: J.H. Fonkert, CGSM
"In Search of Early Dutch Settlers in Minnesota"
Minnesota Genealogist, Spring 2008

3rd: Schelly Talalay Dardashti
"When oral history meets genetics"
The Jerusalem Post, March 28, 2008 (print/online)

Category III: Original Research Story

1st: Phyllis Matthews Ziller
"Finding Facts to Support a Family Tradition"

2nd: Linda Coffin
"Great-Uncle Andrew: The Murderer in the Family Closet"

3rd: Pamela Lyons Brinegar, CGSM
"The Search of Isaac Murphy's Parents"

Category IV: Want-to-Be Writer/Columnist

1st: Linda McMeniman
"A Brooklyn of my Mind"

2nd: Carolyn Miller
"If the Shue/Schue Fits: Identifying the father of Brinton Hiram Miller (1906-1980) of Adams County, Pennsylvania"

Congratulations to all the winners!

It was a very nice birthday present for me, although I couldn't be there in person! In the 2008 competition, Megan and I were also honored in the same category.

For more information on the ISFHWE, click here.

Poland: Archivist receives Sendler Award

The Taube Foundation for Jewish Life and Culture (San Francisco, California) has given its annual award to Polish archivist Jan Jagielski who has spent his life trying to preserve Jewish monuments in Poland.

Chief archivist at Warsaw's Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute (JHI) in Warsaw, Jagielski was the first to begin to document and ultimately preserve Jewish monuments in Poland. He has co-authored numerous guidebooks about Warsaw’s Jewish pre-war Jewish history and leads the JHI conservation program.

Excerpts from the press release:

The award is granted to a non-Jewish Pole who has worked to preserve Jewish heritage in Poland, in memory of the late Irena Sendler, a “Righteous Gentile” who courageously saved over 2,500 children from the Warsaw Ghetto during World War II. The award was announced on the first anniversary of Sendler’s passing and will be presented at the Jewish Culture Festival in Krakow on July 1, 2009.

Jagielski, chief archivist at the newly renamed Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, was the first to initiate in the pre-1989 Communist era a project to document and ultimately preserve what remained of Jewish monuments in Poland. A non-Jewish Pole by origin, a chemical engineer by profession, his only motivation was his pain at seeing a part of his country's heritage go to ruin and oblivion. Acting alone and only in his personal capacity at first, he photographed neglected cemeteries and ruined synagogues and started to collect documentation on their former appearance and importance.

Since the fall of Communism in 1989, Jagielski has co-produced, with the City of Warsaw, excellent guidebooks to Warsaw's prewar Jewish history. Today, he leads a new major conservation program at Warsaw’s Jewish Historical Institute. Jan Jagielski remains one of Poland's top authorities on Jewish monuments and is a role model for all those who work to salvage and redeem the glory of Poland's Jewish legacy.

Tad Taube, Honorary Consul for the Republic of Poland and chairman of the Taube Foundation: “Jan Jagielski understands the importance of preserving Jewish history in Poland against the backdrop of today’s vibrant Jewish renaissance."

Since the fall of communism in 1989, Poland's Jewish community has come back to life. Synagogues and cemeteries are being built, and many Poles are connecting with previously unknown Jewish roots.

For more information, email.

Lithuania: Mazheik researchers need help

Tracing the Tribe received an email from Raymond Ravinsky, the contact person and co-webmaster for the Mazheik (Mazeikiai) Memorial Website.

There are two photographs on the Mazheik website and the group is trying to identify the individuals in them. View them here and perhaps you may be able to help them name the people. Here is one photo:


For more information on the northwest Lithuanian shtetl, click here. The town is known as Mazheik or Mozheik (Yiddish) and Mazeikiai (Lithuanian). Its inhabitants were murdered in August 1941. It is located on the Venta River, about 10 Km from the border with Latvia and is at the junction of the Libau (Liepaja)-Romny and Riga-Oriol train lines. See maps and much more information at the memorial site (link above).

Founded by the Duke of Zemaiciai Mazeika, it was a small village populated by farmers until the mid-19th century, when it grew with the 1868 construction of the Libau-Romny rail line and the 1872-4 construction of the Mazeikiai-Riga line. Jews began living there in the 1870s.

During the first world war in 1915, the town's Jews - along with most of the Jews who lived in Lithuania and Courland - were exiled to Russia and Ukraine. The town was set on fire and destroyed.

The Soviets invaded Lithuania in 1940. Some 1,000 Jews lived in Mazeikiai prior to the Germans arriving in June 25, 1941. Mass killings of the men took place on August 3, 1941, and of the women on August 9, 1941.

Along with the murdered Jews of Mazeikiai were some 3,000 others from the towns (Lithuanian/Yiddish names) of Sede (Siad), Vietshniai (Veckshna), Tirksliai (Tirkshla), Zidikai (Shidik), Pikeliai (Pikeln), Klykoliai (Klilul) and others.

The website is dedicated to presenting to the world everything known about Jewish life in the town before it was destroyed. Its purpose is to find out more, to explore hidden and forgotten records, and to encourage those with links to Old Mazheik to come forward.

Any one with information, comments, photographs, or stories to share is invited and encouraged to contribute to the site. Contact Raymond Ravinsky here.

Long Island: You don't have to be Italian, May 31

"You don't have to be Italian ... to use the Italian Genealogical Group's databases" will be presented by IGG founder John Martino at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Long Island on Sunday, May 31.

The meeting begins at 2pm, at the Mid-Island Y JCC in Plainview, New York. JGSLI experts will be on hand from 1.30pm to answer questions.

Martino will explain the many naturalization records, county, Federal and New York City vital records on the IGG website. Currently there are more than 12 million records on the site, founded in 1990, which has helped researchers from around the world, regardless of their ethnic origins.

Personally, I have found naturalization records and marriage records for my own research. The databases are easy to navigate and hold valuable information for any researcher whose family settled in New York.

Since John's retirement in 2000 he has devoted a majority of his time to organizing volunteers to create these databases. Many volunteers are members of the Jewish genealogy societies of New York and of Long Island. I remember well his excellent presentation at the 2006 New York conference.

He'll explain how to use them and how the databases were created with an army of volunteers.

He first helped the Jewish Genealogy Society of New York with the Kings County Naturalizations. From there he did the Suffolk and Nassau County Naturalization. He then computerized the Bronx County Naturalizations and went on to the Federal records and computerized the Southern District Naturalization and is currently working on the Eastern District Naturalization.

John's team also computerized the New York City death records 1891-1929 and the Groom Index 1895-1936.

Admission is free. For more information, directions and future JGSLI programs, click here.

Check the Italian Genealogical Group for information on your family.

Grants Available: Jewish genealogy research

Grants of up to $10,000 are available for original research in Jewish genealogy.

The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy has issued a call for research proposals for projects to be conducted during the 2009-2010 academic year. Proposals must be submitted by August 15; results will be announced September 15.

Criteria include the extent to which proposed projects broaden the horizons of Jewish genealogical research and/or create innovative tools or technologies to assist Jewish genealogists and family historians in their work.

These may be in the categories of pure genealogical research or interdisciplinary research, or may seek to provide Jewish genealogists and family historians with innovative tools and technologies to advance their work.

Click here for 2008's proposal guidelines, which include history, Rabbinics, onomastics, interdisciplinary (Jewish genealogy and sociology, migration studies, genetics, demography, statistics), computer science/technologies, and sources.

Proposals will be judged for academic excellence by the Academic Committee and must meet rigorous standards for substance, originality and importance.

For information, click the IIJGS website. Look in the left sidebar for PROJECTS -> Upcoming projects -> Call for Projects (2009). Follow instructions carefully; proposals not submitted according to the rules will not be accepted.

Look at the current list of funded projects to get a better idea of the grant program's scope.

Philly 2009: Young genealogists' price break!

It's about time.

A new registration option for the Philly 2009 conference (August 2-7, Philadelphia) is now offered for individuals under age 21: Register for the entire conference for only $50. This is a great way to involve children and grandchildren on a personal level. Additionally, it will provide encouragement for college students to get involved.

While other genealogy groups have been attempting to cultivate the younger generations of genealogists, the Jewish genealogy organization has ignored this demographic until now.

Genealogy is not only for those who are retired - it is an endeavor for everyone who understands how learning about our past helps us in the present and prepares us for the future. For Jewish genealogists specifically, it also provides an opportunity to reconstruct families and ancestral shtetls destroyed by the Holocaust and to recreate the links in our ancient chain of history.

An organization whose demographic creeps upward requires this infusion of young people with their inspiration, technological skills and creative problem solving. This is where the Jewish genealogy movement will draw its active members in the future. Who knows where genealogy's next "star" will come from?

Click on the Philly 2009 website for all conference details, including registration, hotel, online program, workshops, special lunches and more.

Personally, I wish still another option for those under 30 would have been added at a higher cost but still far below the full cost. The under-30s will be the fastest growing demographic in the near future.

At every conference, I am asked by several of our younger genealogists as to why the conference doesn't offer price breaks for the under-30s and for college students. Each year, I say that the group just doesn't understand. So it was good to see this breakthrough, but one for the under-30s would also be advisable. The under-30s may be young parents with less disposable income or suffering through unemployment as are so many. Their choice is simply not to come to a conference.

I think we are missing out on the opportunity to inspire younger generations and bring new blood into the international Jewish genealogy field, but this is a welcome start.

If you have already registered for the conference, this is a reminder to sign up early for the special SIG lunches (some great speakers for these very popular and usually sold-out events), for the computer workshops and other events.

Bulgaria: Let your fingers do the walking!

Let your fingers do the walking - in Bulgaria in 1919!

The 1919 Directory of the Kingdom of Bulgaria was a commercial directory, like today's Yellow Pages, arranged alphabetically by geographic locations and then by professions and occupations.

Jewish names from the directory have been indexed, and are now available in a searchable database at SephardicGen.com. There are some 1,350 names in 22 localities. If your ancestors lived in Bulgaria, it is a good place to search.

SephardicGen indicates that this directory was published in German in the city of Leipzig. This seems to be the reason why a name may have somewhat different spellings. The Bulgarian names were subjected to German language spelling conventions. So use creative spelling to find names of interest.

Examples given in the database introduction are Maschijach instead of Mashiah or Aladschem instead of Aladjem, etc. Additionally, the Bulgarian surname suffix -ov (son of) is spelled -off or -ow.

I always try new databases with COHEN using "exact" - no hits resulted. Remembering the German-language aspect of this directory, I then searched for KOHEN using "sounds like." This resulted in a list of 39 KOEN, including a KOENOWA and KOHEN. Searching for KOHEN "exact" produced a list of 10 hits.

In 1920, there were some 16,000 Jews; in the country, but only 1,331 in 22 locations were listed in the directory. This was a business directory, so many occupations were not listed (teachers, employees, peddlers, workers, etc.) are not listed.

The breakdown - number of Jewish individuals in each category - looks like this: Academic (62). Agriculture (7), Building trades (17), Finances (135), Industry (129), Manual (129) and Trade (872).

Each category includes further breakdowns:

- Academic professions: Attorneys, architects, dentists, pharmacists, physicians etc.

- Agriculture: Beekeeping, farm owners, rice growing and silkworm breeding.

- Building: Only entrepreneurs.

- Manual professions: Bakers, milliners, saddlers, shoemaker, tailors, etc.

- Industry and manufacture: Chemical products, iron, food, clothing, paper, furniture, etc.

- Finances: Banking, money changers, etc.

- Trade: All products and goods.

Think about businesses today and you'll see why one person's name may be found under different occupations. It is perfectly understandable.

Importers may have worked in several unrelated product lines, acting as wholesalers or retailers. Family members may have been active in different fields, but worked together to combine resources, perhaps sharing an office, warehouse and/or retail space.

The index fields are surnames, given names, occupations (translated from German), scanned image page, original directory page, and the address (if provided). While those in the big city of Sofia generally indicate street addresses, smaller provincial locations do not.

If your family was in Bulgaria around this time, you might find important details.

NewspaperARCHIVE: Free trial

Who doesn't like free?

Here's a great way to try NewspaperARCHIVE.com with a free membership offer.

As a journalist, I know newspapers can be central to our family history research. We may find an article detailing an ancestor's life or one providing an eye-witness account of a specific historical event. Each page is a window to the past, allowing us to understand how our ancestors lived.

Sign up with a valid email address for a free membership. No credit card information is required and the whole process takes only about 30 seconds. Free members can view newspaper pages and utilize helpful features including:

- A filing cabinet to save newspaper pages
- A page to host and add comments to favorite newspaper pages
- Search alert tools
- Tips and tricks to search effectively through the archives.

There is a caveat, of course, free members can view only three newspaper pages each day. If you find information valuable for your personal quest, upgrade to a monthly or annual membership to find more details.

The site believes this will be an important change, marking the beginning of a new, more socially-integrated site. NewspaperArchive.com is also looking for feedback and comments from users. I hope that Tracing the Tribe readers will assist them in improving the experience for everyone.

The free membership means readers can read through more than 1,000 unique articles covering 1759-2009, all 50 US states and some additional countries - currently more than 95 million pages from 3,000 publications.

There's also a daily newsletter bridging historic and contemporary events.

For more information on the free membership, click here.

Twitter & Facebook: Getting fast answers

Randy Seaver's weekly Best of the Genea-Blogs feature at Genea-Musings is a great idea. While most genea-bloggers read hundreds of blog postings plus distill huge numbers of news resources, Randy's weekly listing helps by providing some really interesting posts.

Tracing the Tribe sometimes finds its way onto Randy's list, which is always very nice. (Thank you, Randy!).

In his latest listing, Randy pointed to Dan Lawyer's Taking Genealogy to the Common Person where Dan wrote about using Twitter and Facebook to get fast answers to a genealogy question.

This past Wednesday I was thinking about how much I’d like to find the death certificate for a particular ancestor when the thought struck me, “I’m sure someone out there knows the answer to this question.” The question for me was, how do I find the death certificate for Warren Dodge, who died about 1888 in Barton County, Kansas?

Well I decided to try a little experiment. What if I could throw that question out to a large audience. Would they respond? Would they answer my question? Here’s what happened.

Dan posed his question on Twitter, which automatically also put the tweet on Facebook. This was on May 6, at 11:47am.

The first response came in six minutes (T=Twitter, FB=Facebook) at 11:53amT, 12:04pmT, 12:14pmFB, 12:31pmFB, 12:51pmFB and 4:14pmT.

Wrote Dan,

All responses were accurate and helpful. As a result of the information provided I went to the Barton County genealogical society website and discovered that the county did not have death certificates that early and the state (as my online experts indicated) did not keep death certificates until 1911. I did not waste any more time looking for a death certificate but rather changed my focus to probate records. I called the Barton County records office and asked if they had a probate record for Warren Dodge who died there in the 1880s. Without even putting me on hold, she looked it up confirmed they had it and is sending me a copy of the whole file. Wow! That was a terrific experience.

A great experiment, Dan - thanks for sharing it. Look at Dan's post to see how he worked in the answers from the two sites.

And thank you, Randy, for this special pointer.

Los Angeles: The global Jewish diaspora, May 18

Is your family Ashkenazi but with a Sephardic oral history? Does this confuse you? This program may help to explain why your family has a dual personality and will also address other aspects of the Jewish global diaspora.

Join Dr. Yitzhak Kerem at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles for "Jews of the Diaspora: A Global Perspective."

The program begins at 7.30pm, Monday, May 18, at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles.

Kerem will address:

- Sephardi origins in Western Europe, Balkan research, non-Ashkenazi Jewish cultures and Israeli resources.

- Sephardi Iberian expulsees in the Rhine region who drifted eastward into Central Europe, Poland, Ukraine, Russia, and the Baltics.

- The prolific Sephardic communities of Salonika, Sarajevo, and Izmir.

- The crypto-Jewish experience.

- The tragic fate of the Sephardim and eastern Jews in the Holocaust in the Balkans, France, Italy, North Africa, Iraq, and Japanese prison camps in the Far East.

Kerem is currently a visiting professor of Sephardic studies at American Jewish University (formerly the University of Judaism) of Los Angeles. He is a Sephardic Jewry history professor at Hebrew University.

He has been editor of the Sefarad e-newsletter since 1991, a former radio moderator of Diaspora Jewry, section editor for the Encyclopedia of the Holocaust and the New Encyclopedia Judaica, as well as co-author of the Guidebook for Sephardic and Oriental Genealogical Sources in Israel.

Admission: JGSLA members, free; others, $5. The society's traveling library will be available from 7pm.

For more details, see the JGSLA website.

India: Hebrew calligraphy

Tracing the Tribe recently received a note from Thoufeek Zakriya, 20, a hospitality management student who lives in Cochin, India, which is famous for its ancient Jewish community.

Thoufeek creates beautiful Hebrew calligraphy illustrated in his blog My Calligraphy.

What is even more interesting is that he is an Indian Muslim, whose calligraphy skills include Hebrew, Arabic, Aramaic, Syrian, Samaritan and English.

Take a look at Thoufeek's blog and see some of his work in the slide show link, as well as the postings. In the slide show is an image of the foundation stone of the synagogue in Kochangadi. Built in 1344, it is the oldest synagogue in Cochin.

Through Thoufeek's blog, I was reminded of photographer Jono David who photographs Jewish sites around the world. His amazing catalog of images is at the Jewish Photo Library.

Jono's project is called HaChayim HaYehudim Jewish Photo Library. Its important mission:

To contribute to the preservation of Jewish communities of the world by documenting them photographically. Each photograph gives vision to community life today while safeguarding memories for tomorrow.

Tracing the Tribe will do a separate post on Jono David's work.

Book: Last Jews of Kerala

Tracing the Tribe seems to be on a bit of an India kick today. This fascinating book on the Jews of Kerala was reviewed in the Bangkok Post by Anuraj Manibhandu.

While many readers know that India is home to Jews of Baghdadi origin, as well as the Bene Israel and the Cochin communities, this book points up some inter-community problems that the wider Jewish world may not be familiar with - specifically problems between the white ( the Bagdadi community) and black (the Cochini) Jewish communities in the region.

British-Indian journalist Edna Fernandes traces their history, and the quarrels of "blacks" and "whites," and sees this as a reason for the diminishing of this particular branch of the Jewish diaspora.

The communities also quarrel over who arrived first in India, who shared common ancestry with Jewish leaders of the subcontinent and whose religious purity was higher.

Fernandes says that these were survival tactics for a minority group in India, which places great importance on purity, social hierarchy, political and economic privilege.

She first found the Jews of Cochin on a 2002 visit and went back again in 2006 to see how the two sides lived. She interviewed people in India and in Israel, consulted archives and diaries. The reviewer writes that "she has produced a book that brings alive the predicament of a diaspora weighed down by tradition and prejudice."

In the book, she relates the history, culture and beliefs of two groups that were separated although they lived only about 40 minutes away from each other. The pardesi (foreign, or white, generally the Bagdadi community) Jews arrived later than the Malabar (black) Jews, but used the Hindu caste system as a model for privilege.

Fernandes goes back to King Solomon to tell the story in the context of the bigger history of the Jewish diaspora, noting the trade of exotic goods between Israel and India, adventures of explorers such as Vasco da Gama and the Cochin Jews' survival during colonial days.

She notes Joseph Rabban, whom both groups claim as an ancestor, as well as Abraham Barak Salem, known as the "Jewish Gandhi," the first black Jew to become a lawyer and who won some rights for his people. Read about the "mixed" marriage between a (white) Koder bride and a (black) Salem bridegroom in 1950 and what transpired after the wedding in Bombay, when they returned to Kerala.

Today, writes Fernandez, there are fewer than 50 Jews in Kerala; only 12 are white. A particularly poignant quote is from K.J. Joy, of the Paradesi Synagogue, "Imagine: To be old, to be the last of your kind, to know your time has come."

Read the complete review here of Last Jews of Kerala, by Edna Fernandes (Penguin Books India, 2009, 250pp).

Jewish life: Images around the world

If you are fascinated by Jewish life around the world in all its aspects, visit the Jewish Photo Library.com.

British-American Jono David, 33, is a freelance photographer and writer based in Osaka, Japan.

He specializes in documenting Jewish communities in photos and words, inspired by his experiences in more than 120 countries and territories. His photographs and articles have appeared in many newspapers, magazines and books. For five articles about his travels in various places, click here.

Known as Jono David Feldman back in Silver Spring, Maryland, he goes by Jono David today. His American father and English mother moved to Maryland when he was 2.

Educated at the University of Maryland (English Literature) and University College London -University of London (Master's in English), he went to Japan in 1994 where he teaches English at several universities. He spends about five months a year travelling and has even visited Syria and Libya.

According to a March 2009 article in the Washington Jewish Week, David says:

"I travel to experience, to learn, to have adventure," he says. "But my reasons for specific trips have varied and matured over the years and are now utterly dictated by my Jewish photo interests and projects."

"There is so much Jewish history, culture, and life in corners of the world such as these that even many Jews are unaware of," he writes. "so I am drawn to these areas to give them a higher profile.

"I am also interested in communities in peril, such as those in India, Indonesia, South America, and Central Asia."

He's just returned from India where he shot some 4,500 images and has posted many of them to his site.

He has a YouTube video titled "HaChayim Hayehudim Jewish Photo Library."

View the geographical collections here.

Some 18,000 images reside at his Jewish Photo Library. These include 80 countries on six continents, 250 synagogues, 135 cemeteries, Holocaust memorials, Jewish museums, Judaica, people and more. He sells calendars of his work, and also offers two videos (Cuba Judia and A Jewish World), also on YouTube.

The newest additions number 4,500 with 3,347 now on the website. They are organized into 67 photo galleries, images of 32 synagogues, 19 cemeteries and 16 miscellaneous galleries taken in more than 20 locations in India.

Enjoy your virtual trip around the Jewish world.

Another search engine: WolframAlpha's on the way

Here comes WolframAlpha. Yes, I know. A strange name. I keep calling it WolfmanAlpha, but it is named after its creator Stephen Wolfram.

The new search engine, not yet open for public access, claims to answer a broad range of queries and everyone is waiting for it. Read all about it in Miguel Helft's story in the NY Times technology section here.

“I am not keen on the hype,” said Mr. Wolfram, a well-known scientist and entrepreneur and the founder of Wolfram Research, a company in Champaign, Ill., that has been quietly developing WolframAlpha.

Mr. Wolfram’s service does not search through Web pages, and it will not help with movie times or camera shopping. Instead it computes the answers to queries using enormous collections of data the company has amassed. It can quickly spit out facts like the average body mass index of a 40-year-old male, whether the Eiffel Tower is taller than Seattle’s Space Needle, and whether it is high tide in Miami right now.

WolframAlpha, which is expected to be available to the public at wolframalpha.com in the next week, is not a finished product. It is an early working version of a project that has been years in the making and will continue to evolve over years, if not decades. As such, there is much it cannot answer now.

Wolfram, according to the story, was a child prodigy who published his first paper on particle physics at 15, and is known for creating Mathematica, a math-formula software - way beyond the comprehension of Tracing the Tribe.

Helft writes that "the goal of creating a computer system that can answer questions has been a tantalizing but elusive pursuit for many computer scientists for more than four decades. Some veterans of the field say Mr. Wolfram may have come as close as anyone yet."

The story quotes several tech information people.

Google and Yahoo work by finding information that already exists online, locating Web pages that include key words and ranking them.

WolframAlpha doesn't gather data from the Web. Its knowledge base is made up of data gathered, verified and organized by about 100 employees at Wolfram Research over several years.

I wonder which employee was in charge of the genealogy category, or if it was deemed important enough to include.

Helft provided some samples on how it works:

When a user types in a query, WolframAlpha tries to determine the relevant area of knowledge and find the answers, often by performing calculations on its data. If you type “LDL 120,” it will return a graph showing the distribution of cholesterol levels among the United States population, and display the percentage of people above and below that figure. If you type “LDL 120 male 33,” it will adjust the results to focus on that gender and age group.

In response to “how far is the Moon from Earth,” WolframAlpha will calculate the exact distance based on an algorithm that computes the ever-changing distance between the two bodies. The engine that computes answers is largely built on Mathematica.

I'm waiting for the site to go public to test it on our favorite topic.

However, the reporter says that there are many queries it can't answer, "either because it does not understand the question or because it does not have the requisite data."

Wouldn't you love to have the job "teaching" the new search engine about genealogy?

Where do I sign up?

Amsterdam Sephardim: Where did they go?

If you are searching for Sephardic Jewish ancestors, check out Dr. Jeff Malka's frequently updated SephardicGen.com.

Jeff is a pioneer expert Sephardic researcher, and his book, "Sephardic Genealogy," is a must-read for those thinking about beginning a project or who need more information to make progress.

From 1759-1813, nearly 450 poor Sephardic families were provided with funds (tzedekah, Hebrew for charity) to leave Amsterdam for other parts. They promised not to return to the city for 15 years.

Tracing the Tribe has previously written here and here about additional Sephardic records available elsewhere. For more Sephardic posts that may help your quest, use the blog's Google-powered search.

Concerning this list:

This alphabetic list was found in the Sephardic Jewish Registers PA334-978/979 "Registros dos Despachos" (Registers of Dispatched Persons), Amsterdam Municipality Archives. The list covers the period 1759-1813 with all the names of the poor Sephardic Jews who were granted Sedaca (charity) - an amount in Dutch florins- against the promise to leave Amsterdam and not to return within the next 15 years.

The index was prepared by Vibeke Sealtiel Olsen.

Destinations listed (and number of families): Altona (2), Barbados (2), Bayonne (9), Beograd (1), Bordeaux (18), Copenhagen (1), Curacao (71), Cuyden (1), Da Isla (1), Den Haag (1), Emden (3), Frisia (1), Gibraltar (3), Hamburg (31), Isla Demarara(1), Istanbul (3), Izmir (1), Jamaica (16), Livorno (12), London (58), Mantua (1), Marseille (1), Mogador (2), New York (2), Paris(3), Philadelphia (1), Rotterdam (1), St. Eustatius (19), Trieste (2), Tunis (1), Venice (2) and Vienna (1).

Countries listed: America, Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Guyana, Israel (Palestine), Italy, Jamaica, Morocco, Netherlands Antilles, Serbia, Suriname, Tunisia, Turkey, UK, US and the West Indies. See important note below on searching for countries.

You can search by surname, first name, city or country. Searching by country, I found one anomaly. clicking "America" brought the record of Aron LOPES COLACO to America in 1784, via Bordeaux, France.

Clicking "USA" returned three records: Abraham b. Ely AZUBY to 1783 Philadelphia, Sara (nee SASO) COHEN DA SILVA (widow of Ebiatar) to 1759 New York, and Joseph LEVY FLORES, also to 1759 New York via London.

Clicking "Israel" - a misnomer as the country did not exist in the year of the record 1759 - shows Isaac LOPES GONSALES and his wife.

Clicking "UK" brings 59 records. The first 10 are for the families of Aron b. Isay ACOHEN (HACOHEN) 1770 with wife and three children, Aron b. David ALVARES 1802 with wife and two children, Semuel AZOUGE 1766 with wife and six children, Imanuel b. Jacob AZULAY 1765 with wife, Moseh AZULAY 1776, Abraham b. Isaac BARUH 1789 (grandson of Zeharia), Rachel BERNAL 1790 widow of Abraham, Eliau BUZAGLO 1789 with two children, Sara b. Ishac CARTZO 1764 and Isaac COHEN DE AZEDO 1789.

In 1766, Semuel Azouge with his wife and six children received only FL40, while in 1770, Aron ACOHEN, his wife and three children received FL200. Individuals such as widow Bernal received only FL25 in 1770, while other single travelers received from 40-60FL.

Other families to London: CORTISOS, DA COSTA DE ANDRADE, DASILVA SOLIS, DECANEZES, DE LA PENHA, DE LEON, DELGADO, DE LIMA, DE LIMA A BELMONTE, DELMONTE, DE PALACIOS, DE TORES, DIAS SANTILHANA, FERRO, GARCIA, ISRAEL, JESSURUN, JESURUN AL;VARES, LEDESMA, LEVY MENASE, LOPES MELHADO, MASSAHOEL DE CHAVES, MASSIAS BLAAUW, MENDES, MENDES ALVARAS, MENDES CHUMASERO, MENDES QUIROS, MONTEZINOS, MUNIA, NUNES DA COSTA, NUNES DE ANDRADE, NUNES FERO, NUNES PEREIRA, PEREYRA, PIZA, RAMOS,R0DRIGES MENDES, RODRIQUES GARSIA, ROMANEL, SAQUY, TALANO.

The record may include other details as to how and where they traveled to their destination, how much money they received, whether they went with spouses and how many children, if a woman was a widow (and her husband's name), father's name, names of spouses, even grandparents' names in some cases, etc.

Not everyone went far from Amsterdam, some went to other cities in the Netherlands. In 1787, Simon b. Jacob De Leon and his wife, went to Den Haag (The Hague), and was given FL25 to do so. In 1763, Jacob b. Ishac LOPES went to Frisia (possibly Friesland?), and, in 1808, Ishac ALVARES VEGA went to Rotterdam with his wife and two children.

Search anomalies: If you click Netherlands Antilles as a country, there are no hits (because it did not exist when the records were produced). If you click Curacao in the city list with Netherlands Antilles in the country list, there are no hits. If you click Curacao in the city list, with a blank for the country, the database returns 71 results.

Thus, it is better to click the city list as some countries did not exist at the time these people left Amsterdam. If no hits result on one set of parameters, change them.

UPDATE NOTE: On May 15, I received an email from Dr. Jeff Malka of SephardicGen: "I took advantage of your testing and fixed the problems you noticed with the Netherlands Antilles and Israel. I had missed them!"

This database is an excellent source of Sephardic names with many genealogical details.

NewspaperARCHIVE: In the news

A favorite online news repository for newspapers is NewspaperARCHIVE.com.

I'm now researching a posting focusing on one branch of our family and what I learned over the decades using that family's archived hometown paper. Information included business announcements, photographs, advertisements, obituaries, marriage announcements, synagogue related-activities and even social notes indicating where the family vacationed. These resources also enabled me to connect other branches in nearby states that I had wondered about but couldn't prove. Stay tuned for this posting.

Alexa.com has just ranked the site as the second most visited genealogy database website in the world. It also ranked it at number three for all genealogy services and at number nine for all genealogy websites.

Based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, online marketing manager Dave Stoddard is quoted in the press release:

"Alexa rankings have confirmed our goal, which is to firmly establish ourselves as an invaluable resource for family historians, whether dedicated researchers or weekend hobbyists," said Dave Stoddard, Online Marketing Manager. "We provide a huge number of unique newspaper pages, but compliment that with a powerful search tool and plenty of great unique articles designed to help our users get the most out of NewspaperARCHIVE."

New features and upgrades were recently launched, including a series of blogs and a better search engine. More improvements are on the way.

NewspaperARCHIVE.com was launched in 1999 by Heritage Microfilm. It is the largest historical newspaper database online, covering 1759 to the present, 3,000 newspaper titles and 762 cities. Users can search fully keyword and date.

Philly 2009: 36 hours in the city

Tracing the Tribe knows its readers will be coming to Philly for the conference, and so does the New York Times, which just published a neat article on places to visit in the city of brotherly love.

Have you registered for the Conference yet? Click here for all details.

The paper's series of "36 Hours In ...." provides interesting highlights for visitors who don't have a lot of spare time. Obviously, you don't have to cram all of these into one 36-hour block. If you're arriving early or staying after the conference, you might want to consider visiting some of the recommendations.

The list, organized for a weekend jaunt - from Friday afternoon through Sunday - includes Independence Hall, City Hall with a great observation tower, restaurants (Chinese-Peruvian Chifa, Israeli Zahav, breakfast at Sabrina's Cafe), an arty bowling alley (North Bowl), an outdoor art center (Magic Garden), the Ninth Street Italian Market (don't forget the pizza!), the science-related Franklin Institute, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and a bike ride in the park.

Check out the story for more links and descriptions.

Museum of Family History: New for May

Steve Lasky of the virtual Museum of Family History has sent along news of content and features added in May.

- Website Redesign

"This past month I introduced a nice redesign of the Museum website. It’s nice to have a change in design after four plus years, so I hope you enjoy it. I think it’s more attractive and allows for easier access to major exhibitions." All redesigned pages feature a Google-powered search engine at the top, to help search the site more efficiently. There is also an index for all audio and video clips with links to the pages.

- Perspectives e-newsletter

Those who have contributed material to the Museum will receive the e-newsletter, Perspectives. It will include advance previews of exhibits and more. Sign up here.

- Philly 2009

During Steve's program at the upcoming conference, he will - for the first time - display and provide details about three new interactive floor maps to provide another way of accessing the material on the site.

- Exhibits

The Jews of Latvia/Churbn Lettland: The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia: The full English translation (minus a few missing pages) is now online. Simply click on the word “here” on that page. Many of the exhibition’s URLs have changed; use the links on the new Table of Contents page to find the sections desired. The book includes mention of transports of Jews from Kovno and Vilna.

Synagogues of Europe: Photographs of two dozen synagogues that once stood in Austria - most in Vienna - are here. More synagogue photos will be added from more European countries.

Yiddish Theatre Placards: More New York City Yiddish productions starring Berta Kalich (as "Hamlet"), Boris Thomashefsky, Jacob P. Adler et al. have been added.

World Holocaust Memorials: United States, Pennsylvania, Philadelphia: Monument to the Six Million Jewish Martyrs.

Questions? Want more information? Have material to contribute? Email Steve.

Television: More genealogy-related shows?

Genea-blogger colleague Bill West chimed in on the scheduling delay in the US-version of "Who Do You Think You Are?" and provided ideas for additional genealogy-related shows.

Here are Bill's ideas, followed by mine. Anyone else have gen-related program ideas?

Bill's ideas:

1. "I'm a Genealogist, Get Me Out of Here? - The adventures of five researchers stranded in the Library of Congress. [Note from Schelly: But would we really want to leave? This takes it from the reality genre to the fantasy. Don't we all want to be locked into a library? Or is it just me?]

2. "Genealogy Medium" - Examines the genealogy of the ghosts that Alison DuBois talks with.

3. "Last Gedcom Standing" - Teams of genealogists examine family trees looking for errors.

I'm adding these:

4. "Lost" - Drop teams of genealogists (without language skills) in an unknown international location and ask them to find the family history of a certain family from that location within a set time frame. The first team to complete the task wins either a lot of cash or subscriptions to all the paid-access databases!

And for kids:

5. "Where in the World is Waldo's Family?" - Kids find clues to family history in this animated show.

Okay, time for your ideas!

New York: Crossing the river, May 17

The Jewish Genealogical Society of New York is the mother of all Jewish genealogical societies. Literally. It was the very first such society.

Tracing the Tribe's readers living in New York know about the JGSNY and may already be members. Readers living elsewhere and who travel to the city, may want to time their visits to coincide with the group's monthly meetings at the Center for Jewish History (CJH), 15 W. 16th Street.

The next meeting is set for 2pm Sunday, May 17. The speaker is author Dr. Shalom Eilati, whose story begins in the Kovno Ghetto and continues through his arrival in Palestine. He will discuss his book -"Crossing the River" - which is both a personal memoir and valuable historical resource.

Set against backdrop of Lithuania 's occupation - first by the Red Army, next by the Germans, and then again by the Russians - it is a story reflected through the prism of a sharp-eyed young child, Shalom Eilati.

His story starts in the occupied Kovno Ghetto and ends with his flight across the Soviet border, through Poland and Germany and finally, his arrival in Palestine .

The adult survivor, while recalling the terrorized child that he was and how he then perceived the adult world, also takes stock of his present life.

Throughout the memoir, Eilati attempts to reconcile his present life as a husband, father, scientist, and writer, with the images, feelings, and thoughts from the past that have left an indelible mark on his life and that continue to haunt him.

Born in 1933 in Kovno (Kauna), Lithuania, Eilati's parents were Israel Kaplan (teacher, historian and author) and Leah Greenstein ( a nurse and poet).

In 1941, he and his family were imprisoned in theGerman-created ghetto. At his mother's initiative, he escaped from the ghetto alone in 1944 and reached Palestine in 1946. His father also survived. With a PhD in citrus cultivation, he taught at Hebrew University was among the founders of Israel 's Environmental Protection Service, and coordinating editor of the quarterly journal Cathedra, on the history and settlement of Israel. He lives in Jerusalem, and is married with three children and five grandchildren.

Read about his return trip to Kovno - "Back to the River" - here. There will also be a booksigning following his presentation.

Judy Steiglitz of the American Red Cross in Greater in New York will be available before and after the meeting to answer questions about Yad Vashem's Names Recovery Project. Do you or someone else need help filling out Pages of Testimony for loved ones or for those who perished? Bring your questions.

For more details, go to the JGSNY website. CJH's Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will be open from 12:30-1:45pm for networking with other researchers, access to research materials and computers.

Moment Magazine: Heritage Guide

In honor of Jewish American Heritage Month - celebrated in May - find a Jewish American Heritage Guide in this month's issue of Moment. This will be an annual feature.

We invite you to use it as a starting point for your journeys and discover the dynamic Jewish cultural organizations that exist, sometimes in the least expected places.

According to the Guide's intro, the average American knows more about the Jews who left Egypt 3,000 years ago than about the Jews who came to America over the past 355 years. When American history textbooks mention Jews, it’s often in connection with the Holocaust.

However, Jews have been part of American life since their New Amsterdam arrival in 1654. This date gets pushed back earlier when one considers the arrival of the Sephardic conversos in the late 1500s and early 1600s into what is now the Southwestern US.

The archives, historical societies, museums and more listed in the Guide have taken the lead in preserving and informing that story.

Jews have extended the boundaries of American pluralism, serving as a model for other religious minorities and expanding the definition of American religious liberty so that they and others would be included as equals. Jewish American history offers us the opportunity to explore how Jews have flourished in a free and pluralistic society where church and state are separated and religion is entirely voluntary.

The Guide includes:

California
Judah L. Magnes Museum: Jewish cultural life and history. Archives of the Western Jewish History Center, documenting Jewish influence in the American West.

Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum of Tolerance: Pioneering work in tolerance training. Exhibits highlight consequences of extreme intolerance - including the Holocaust.

Skirball Cultural Center: In a building designed by Moshe Safdie, the museum explores connections between 4,000 years of Jewish heritage and American democratic ideals.

Colorado
Mizel Museum: Interactive cross-cultural programming. Exhibits beyond Judaism beyond Judaism explore rituals of African-American, Latino, Muslim, Native-American and Asian-Pacific cultures.

Florida
Jewish Museum of Florida: A Jewish presence more than 250 years old. Highlights Jewish Floridians in all aspects of life during their presence.

Illinois
Spertus Museum: Cross-cultural influences in Jewish Art, library, Institute of Jewish Studies.

Mississippi
Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life/Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience: Jews settled in the South in the late-17th century. Two sites in Utica and Natchez (site is an 1843 synagogue now a Jewish history center).

New York
Museum of Jewish Heritage: Stories of lost lives and communities in the Shoah and the story of survivors.

Tenement Museum: A time capsule of Lower East Side immigrant life.

Oklahoma
Sherwin Miller Museum of Jewish Art: Jewish history from the Early Bronze Age to Jewish Oklahoma. Collection includes a cross-stitched Ten Commandments created in 1771 by Canadian Jewish pioneer Elizabeth Judah, 8.

Pennsylvania
National Museum of American Jewish History: Chronicles US Jewish history, artifacts. New building to open 2010.

Washington, DC
Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington/SmallJewish Museum: Photo archive, oral histories, walking tours, programs and more.

Toronto, Canada
Beth Tzedec Reuben & Helene Dennis Museum: International collection of Jewish historian and Encyclopedia Judaica editor Cecil Roth, with more than 1,000 ceremonial objects.

St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands
Weibel Museum/St. Thomas Synagogue: Built 1796 by Sephardic Jews - one of the New World’s oldest synagogues.

Cyberspace
Jewish Women’s Archive: Online interactive multimedia “Museum of the Jewish Woman,” with an oral history project, film, blog.

See the links for more information.

San Francisco: Our great-grandparents' world, May 17

Learn about the world of our Eastern European Jewish ancestors with Ken Blady, at the next meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society.

The program starts at 1pm, Sunday, May 17, at the Jewish Community High School, 1835 Ellis Street in San Francisco. There is free parking.

"The World of Our Great-Grandparents: A History of the Jews of Eastern Europe from Earliest Times to 1900" will portray Jewish life in Eastern Europe, specifically Greater Poland (including Lithuania and Ukraine), from the earliest history to the waves of mass migration to the New World beginning in the late 19th century.

Over the past thousand years Eastern Europe has been both a harbor of refuge and a scene of horror for Jews. Here Jewish culture rose to some of its greatest glories; here Jewish society suffered some of its greatest tragedies.

This will encompass historic and geographic background, everyday surroundings, family life and education, social and economic life, and religious activity.

Ken Blady is a Jewish educator, speaker, author and Yiddish translator

Born in Paris, France, he grew up in Chassidic Brooklyn and attended yeshiva and rabbinical seminary. Blady has been a San Francisco Bay area resident since 1972 and holds a BA in History (UC Berkeley) and an MA in Clinical Counseling (CalState Hayward). Blady is a lecturer at the American Jewish University (formerly University of Judaism) in Los Angeles.

For more details and directions, click here.

JRI-Poland: Pruchnik, Wyszogrod records added

Jewish Records Indexing-Poland always updates its databases in the months leading to the annual international conference on Jewish genealogy.

This year, the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy is set for August 2-7, in Philadelphia (click here for program, registration and all details).

Two more record groups - for Pruchnik and Wyszogrod - have just been added to JRI-Poland, according to the organization's executive director Stan Diamond of Montreal.

Such projects cannot be completed without the generous support of many researchers around the world who have made it possible to disseminate this priceless information and preserve it for future generations of descendants.

Pruchnik

Indices are available to all surviving pre-1905 birth and pre-1904 marriage and death records of this town. In 2005, registers were transferred from the Pruchnik Civil Records Office to the Prezemsyl branch of the Polish State Archives.

Indexed records include 4,300 birth, marriage/banns and death entries over 70 years, 1,100 different surnames (and variations), covering Births (1834-1905), Marriages (1885-1903, including Banns)' and Deaths (1835-1903).

Entries include names of both parents, mother's maiden name, age at marriage and death, and town in which individuals lived at the time or previously.

As is the case with many records, there are references to more than 250 other nearby towns and villages, which may provide additional clues to researchers who follow the "cast a wider net" theory of Jewish genealogy. Always look at surrounding villages and towns for information.

Towns and villages with more than 10 references in this collection are the following:

Blazow 10, Bystrowice 18, Chorzow 43, Cieszanow 10, Czelatyce 79, Czudolowice 10 , Czudowice 20, Dubiecko 18, Dukla 9, Dynow 22, Grodzisko 11, Hawlowice 30, Jaroslaw 38, Jodlowka 154, Kanczuga 27, Kosienice 10, Kramarzowka 98, Krzywcza 11, Oleszyce 21, Przemysl 23, Przeworsk 12, Raczyna 152, Radymno 10, Rokietnica 233, Rozborz 176, Rozniatow 13, Rozwienica 22, Rudolowice 31, Rzeplin 37, Sieniawa 16, Siennow 10, Swiebodna 46, Tuliglowy 57, Tyniowice 38, Wegierka 111, Wieckowice 44, and Wola Wegierska 30.

Do you have questions about the Pruchnik project or the records? Email Pruchnik Town Leader David Fielker.

Wyszogrod

Funding has been completed for 1886-1905 vital records (birth, marriage and death) which are now online.

There are 4,400 records in this group from the Plock branch of the Polish State Archives, and are searchable now online at JRI-Poland.

JRI-Poland has also indexed the Wyszogrod Books of Residents, with more than 5,500 entries, including individuals born as early as 1806. Fundraising is still going on for this part of the project. To learn how to contribute, for information or for extracted surname lists from the records, send an email.

Take the time to look over the many resources of JRI-Poland.

Records are added all the time, so remember to check the database frequently. What was missing a few months ago, you may find today.

LOC: Dancing in the Streets

Music is everywhere as the Library of Congress's Music Division has acquired the archives of the largest performing rights organization - the American Society of Composers, Authors and Publisher Foundation (ASCAP). ASCAP is the non-profit arm of the group representing some 275,000 creators.

In these archives find much of note for many lyricists, song writers, composers and entertainers of Jewish ancestry.

The ASCAP Collection has been established to preserve the history and to create a repository for video and audio materials, photos, scores, documents and artifacts relevant to the rich history of the institution of ASCAP and ASCAP members as contributors to American culture.

The gift of these materials reunites much of it with many of the special collections given to the Music Division over the years by individual ASCAP members, including Victor Herbert, Leonard Bernstein, Irving Caesar, George and Ira Gershwin, Vernon Duke and Aaron Copland.

"Our shared interest is preserving the product of creativity, talent and craft, as well as the history and biography of its creators," said Susan H. Vita, chief of the Music Division. "The ASCAP archives also preserve a history of innovation—literally, the business of show and music, and the visionary and entrepreneurial spirit that characterizes so much of America’s history."

Materials include music manuscripts, printed music, lyrics (published and unpublished), scrapbooks, correspondence and other personal, business, legal and financial documents, scrapbooks, and film, video and sound recordings.

The Music Division has already received the complete archives of such individuals as ASCAP founding member Irving Caesar - who wrote such songs as "Swanee," "Tea For Two," and "Just A Gigolo" - and Harold Adamson, lyricist of "Around the World in 80 Days," "I Couldn’t Sleep a Wink Last Night," "An Affair to Remember" and the "I Love Lucy" theme.

Would you like to access parts of the archive? Submit a request to the Music Division through Ask-A-Librarian at www.loc.gov/rr/askalib/ask-perform.html. Make requests for materials in advance of in-person visits to the Performing Arts Reading Room, as ASCAP materials are currently stored offsite.

The LOC's music holdings include manuscripts, scores, sound recordings, books, libretti, music-related periodicals and microforms, copyright deposits and musical instruments, along with manuscripts of American masters and ASCAP members John Philip Sousa, Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin and Morton Gould.

The Alan Lomax collection of field recordings of American roots music, Woody Guthrie’s original recordings and manuscripts, and one-of-a-kind recordings of bluesman Robert Johnson from the 1930s are also among the Library’s musical treasures. Many collections are available at www.loc.gov/performingarts/encyclopedia/.

Take a look around the Music Division for even more resources - particularly if you have musicians and composers sitting on branches of your tree.

Chocolate: A sweet Jewish tale

Moment Magazine's new issue has a sweet Jewish tale about chocolate.

While I love bittersweet dark chocolate, it has been on my trips to Barcelona that I found a great chocolate shop offering all sorts of chocolate flavors, including chile!

Our dear friends in that city end every dinner with the bringing out of the "Box of Chocolate," filled with bars of many kinds. What could be better? A great meal, wonderful friends AND chocolate!

But the Jewish role in chocolate started a long time ago, as detailed in the Moment article.

Convinced he would encounter Jewish traders on his 1492 journey, Christopher Columbus brought along a Jew as a Hebrew interpreter. Although he met no Jews in the New World, he did find oddly shaped “almonds” that were highly valued by the natives—cacao beans.

It was conquistador Hernán Cortés who carried the art of making the Aztecs’ xocolatl, or “bitter water,” to Spain. Considered a sacred drink associated with fertility, chocolate was served cold and flavored with chilies. The Aztec emperor Montezuma was said to have downed many a golden goblet of the drink each day, especially before visiting his wives.

The Spanish nobility swooned over the aphrodisiac and revitalizing qualities of chocolate, but disliked its bitterness. To appease European taste buds, it was loaded with sugar and later blended with hot milk. A delectable drink for the wealthy was born.

The story meshes with the forced conversion to Catholicism and expulsion of the Jews of Spain and Portugal.

“When the Jews left, they took with them knowledge of how to make chocolate and a sense of its value,” says Celia Shapiro, co-author of "Chocolate: History, Culture, and Heritage."

“Jewish traders introduced chocolate to France,” adds Joan Nathan, author of the upcoming "In Search of the Food of the Jews of France." One center of Jewish chocolate-making was Bayonne, where, as the legend goes, Jewish settlers managed to convince church authorities that chocolate was “kosher” for Lent.

The Spanish and Portuguese refugees also settled in the Netherlands. The Dutch West India Company (with its Jewish investors) wanted to encourage the Diaspora’s international trade, and Jewish merchants settled all over the New World.

Success was not universally met with joy and resulted in French discriminatory laws and the export of the Inquisition to the colonies. Jews fled from Spanish and Portuguese colonies to Dutch territory.

Aaron Lopez, an influential merchant and cacao trader, was the first Jew to be naturalized in British Massachusetts. A fervent supporter of the American Revolution, Lopez lamented the fact that Jews, struggling with provision shortages during the upheaval while attempting to keep kosher, were “forced to subsist on chocolate and coffee.”

The story continues with European "chocolate houses," the creation of the Sacher Torte by a teenage Viennese Jewish apprentice chef, powdered chocolate, the mass-produced chocolate bar, opening of Israel's Elite candy company by a Latvian immigrant, the rise of Barton's (which Tracing the Tribe covered previously) and its chocolate almond kisses, kosher chocolates from non-Jewish companies (Godiva, Ghiradelli) and chocolate matzoh.

It lists such Jewish American chocolatiers as Robert Steinberg of Scharffen Berger, truffle queen Alice Medrich, Charles Chocolates; and Israel's Max Brenner and his now international chain.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Phone Books: One ringy dingy in Berlin

When the transporter is invented and we decide to visit 1930 Berlin, we can call Albert Einstein at Berlin 2807 - or my cousin, Dr. Josef Talalay, at Oberbaum 7617.

Ancestry's new collection of 20th century German phone books with more than 35 million names covers Berlin, Hamburg , Munich , Frankfurt am Main and Leipzig from 1915-1981.

This resource is valuable as we will be able to trace our Jewish families and other Members of the Tribe's movements around Germany, before World War I and up to World War II - needless to say that most of our numbers will be missing from the books later on, until augmented by increasing numbers of Soviet Jews who resettled there much later.

As I flipped through the pages and read all the names that I knew were obviously Jewish, I felt a great sense of foreboding and wanted to shout at them to leave as soon as possible, as I knew what was coming.

I found our cousin Dr. Josef Talalay in the 1932 Berlin book (the family, originally from Mogilev, had lived in Moscow before going to Berlin. They left for London in 1933):

However, the search wasn't easy. Talalay did not come up in any search. Instead, I had to manually flip through the images of the Berlin book to get to the proper alphabetical page.

I never found a long-time Berlin branch that I knew had a tobacco shop and had left for then-Palestine in 1930. There's always the possibility that they didn't have a phone.

I typed in Talalay, Talalai and even Talalaj. Not one hit resulted. For some reason, it kept coming up with Taffel (not as a surname, but within a listing).

Once I found the listing manually, I wondered what would happen if I entered his first and surnames in the search box. This time, that one listing did come up (but only that one and not the others below). It appears to be some sort of a glitch.

I next tried searching with wildcards. Talal* and Talala* returned zero possibilities. Using Tala* at least brought me to the correct pages in the various books and produced a long list of possiblities but only a few real listings. In 1929 Berlin, I found him again:

And again in 1930, when it appears the phone number exchange had changed:

He was there once more in 1931, with the Oberbaum number as the only one. And the first image I found was the family's last in Berlin before moving to London.

You might have the same experience, so remember to search the books manually and also use wildcards, which will at least save some time going from frame to frame.

The paper books are at the German National Library and were digitized and made available online.

Few countries in the 20th century have experienced the scale of social and economic change that Germany has, as many Germans moved around the country and the world before and after the two world wars,” said Josh Hanna, senior vice president of Ancestry.com International. “These directories will play a vital role for those with German heritage trying to trace their family to a particular place and time.”

Combining phone book data with such documents as passenger lists and censuses can help trace your ancestors' movements around the world.

The link is German Phone Directories, 1915-1981 to see the images if you have an Ancestry subscription. It will also be available on a 14-day free trial, and many libraries also provide access to the site.

Belarus: Mogilev synagogue returned

Is your family from Mogilev, Belarus? Here's some breaking news for researchers whose ancestors came from the city and environs.

Following six years of meetings, the Mogilev, Belarus Jewish community has finally received back one of its synagogues. There were some 40 synagogues in the city at one point.

This photo has not been identified as that of the synagogue in question, but has appeared in very early encyclopedia articles on Mogilev.

The synagogue being returned is on Bolshaya Grazhdanskaya - in the Shkolische District - in a picturesque area of Mogilev and was used as a synagogue and community center before the Soviet era. Later used as a water-pumping station, it overlooks the bank of the Dniepr River, which runs through the city.

Known as the "cold synagogue," it dates back to the late 17th-early 18th century and is located near where the city center ends and the large Podnikolye Park begins, on the river bank. It is close to the historical quarter and a large bridge near the synagogue connected the city's two sections.

The story appeared on the website of the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS.

Jewish community chair Eli (Oleg) Genilis with the support of Mogilev City Council head Victor Shorikov and others, spent six years on the project. Once the City Council ruled in favor of the project, the council approached the office of Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, and the transfer was approved.

The community plans to reconstruct the historic synagogue which will again be used as a synagogue and Jewish community center.

Only three buildings previously owned by the community in the Jewish neighborhood remain; the synagogue was the best preserved of the three.

The Jewish community of Mogilev is now launching an appeal to raise funds to finance this important and historic project. Click here to learn more. Donations may be made in the memory of a deceased family member or friend, or in honor of someone who inspired you.

The FJC is a non-profit, tax-exempt, 501(c)3 organization.

For more on Mogilev and the Jewish community visit the JewishGen page here.

For two additional photos of Mogilev synagogues (not named), click here.

See postcards of Mogilev, including synagogues, at Boris Feldblyum's site here.

Russia: St. Petersburg Jewish Cemetery online

Does St. Petersburg (Russia) figure in your family history? If so, family historians and Jewish genealogists will soon be able to find their ancestors buried in the Preobrazhenskiy Jewish Cemetery, with the help of a new website, Jekl.ru

According to the website of the Federation of Jewish Communities of the CIS, the city's Jewish community is completing a massive internet project so that visitors will be able to find their ancestors' graves.

Unfortunately, as far as I can determine, the website is only in Russian. It would be of even more use to genealogists if there were an English version. Of course, even if you don't know Russian, you can still search for your family - once the site goes live.

Go to Steve.Morse.org and use his English-to-Russian translation tool. Type in the name you are looking for, get the Cyrillic version, copy and paste the name to the search box on the cemetery site. I type in TALALAI and retrieve these variations: талалаи, тэлалаи, талэлаи, тэлэлаи, талалэи, тэлалэи, талэлэи, тэлэлэи. I can then check each one at the cemetery site.

When and if you receive results, go to Steve's Russian-to-English translation tool, copy-and-paste in the text and get some idea of what you are looking for in English characters.

“The Jewish Community Center regularly hosts visitors eager to determine where their ancestors are buried," said Moishe Treskunov, the coordinator of this project. “They are mainly former residents of S. Petersburg and those whose great-grandparents came from our city. They are interested in their family history or wish to honor their ancestors by visiting their graves.” He further explained that the S. Petersburg community also receives many calls from individuals looking for their ancestors’ burial places from other countries, including Israel and the U.S.A.

The Jekl.ru website project developed to make it possible to find graves at the cemetery, and provides extensive search capabilities. The project involved organizational and archival work, photographing and cataloging all graves in the cemetery.

Treskunov said other features will be added, such as requesting care for a relative's grave or restoring a stone. Because of time and distance, not all descendants have an opportunity to visit their family's graves.

“To put people’s conscience at ease, they will be able to have their relative’s grave cared for and the gravestones restored,” said Mr. Treskunov. “Project staff will regularly send the client photos of the grave via e-mail, so that he can see its condition with his own two eyes.”

The city's Jewish community was one of the first members of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia. The project received funding from businessman Mikhail Khidekel of St. Petersburg.

Washington, DC: Litvak Legacy, Spinoza, May 17

Learn about the Litvak legacy at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington on Sunday, May 17.


Dr. Mark Ozer will discuss his new book, "The Litvak Legacy," beginning at 11am at B'nai Israel in Rockville, Maryland. Copies will be available for purchase along with a book-signing.

His thesis is that there is a distinctive Litvak cultural heritage that can be traced through the maintenance of that culture through the several generations and the significant impact it has had on the countries in which the immigrants settled. You will get a better understanding of these roots as he discusses his deeply researched findings published in The Litvak Legacy.

Advance registration is required; no charge for JGSGW members.

The workshop and Dr. Ozer's book is of great interest - - not only to the Litvaks among us but to all of us who are interested in learning more about the cultures our forebears created before they emigrated to the United States and how our inherited culture has affected the lives we lead every day.

A retired professor of neurology, Ozer is a descendant of Litvaks and a native of Boston who studied modern European history as a Harvard undergraduate. He practiced and taught medicine in Washington, DC, for many years.

Ozer has written and lectured extensively on the history of cities, and decided to write the book after visiting the Ponar forest, site of the murder of tens of thousands of Lithuanian Jews by the Nazis. The book is the result of extensive research and analysis since his visit.

JGSGW president Jeff Miller and program chair Harris Weinstein will moderate the discussion. If you have questions for the speaker, email them in advance.

At 1.30pm, Professor Daniel Schwartz will speak on "The First Secular Jew? Spinoza and the History of an Image."

Schwartz is assistant professor of modern Jewish history in the Judaic Studies Program of George Washington University. An expert on Spinoza, the famous and heretical 17th-century Jewish philosopher, he has a book in preparation under the same title (to be published by Princeton University Press).

His Columbia University PhD thesis was titled "The Spinoza Image in Jewish Culture," a study of the shifting perception of Spinoza in the modern Jewish mind. Schwartz received two master's degrees from Columbia in addition to his doctorate, and received his undergraduate degree from Princeton University.

Fee: JGSGW members, free; others, $5. For more details on the morning workshop and afternoon lecture, see the JGSGW website.

President's mother baptized posthumously

According to the guidelines of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, members are only supposed to enter their own relatives for posthumous baptism and other rites. Additionally, members must obtain permission from living relatives to enter non-members.

However, it is the ethical and moral responsibility of each church member to do that. Quality control on the church's part (e.g. presenting proof of documentation for the purported family relationship) is not part of the process.

If this proof had been a requirement, we would not be seeing Jewish individuals and Holocaust victims still being subjected to this disrespectful rite. Additionally, if such a documentation process would have been required, we would not be seeing Holocaust victims removed from the International Genealogical Index and then later added again. It is easy to see who Holocaust victims are as the place of death is often the name of a well-known death camp, such as Auschwitz.

According to researcher Helen Radkey of Salt Lake City, the posthumous baptism of President Barak Obama's mother - Stanley Ann Dunham who died in 1995 - was performed on June 4, 2008 in the Provo, Utah temple. The "endowment" rite was also performed on June 11 in the same location. Radkey found the record while researching in the Family History Library in SLC. A tireless researcher, she has discovered thousands of Holocaust victims' records in the IGI for whom posthumous baptism was performed in contradiction of past agreements with Holocaust survivor organizations.

Was a request for permission to perform this rite on his mother received by then-candidate Obama while he was campaigning back in June?

According to the story, neither the church (except for general comments on the continuing practice) nor the White House has commented officially on this. The SLC Tribune story did not address the guidelines that Mormons are supposed to follow before entering an individual's name for such rites.

The story is here, although it has now been picked up nationwide.

Tracing the Tribe believes that these posthumous rites are both offensive and disrespectful to the deceased - and to his or her living relatives - as it indicates that the deceased's practiced religious beliefs (while alive) and life choices (while alive) were inferior to those of the LDS church. The deceased - through an involuntary LDS posthumous rite to which he or she has not agreed - is being provided an opportunity to supposedly rectify "errors" in judgement he or she made while alive. This is insulting.

Kim Farah, an LDS Church spokeswoman, confirmed in a story for USA Today that Dunham's posthumous proxy baptism did take place. She added that these are outside of LDS policy, which requires that the person registering a proxy baptism for someone who has died can only do it for a relative.

Is Judaism inferior to the LDS church? No. Are Buddhism, Confucionism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Russian Orthodoxy, Roman Catholicism, other Christian denominations or Islam inferior to the LDS church? Millions of people say no, but their deceased are still subjected to involuntary rites in the hope that - in the afterlife - all these people will see the "errors" of their ways. It is insulting.

Genealogically, it is also confusing. Most genealogists know that the IGI is a database of those on whom Mormon rites have been performed. If my Jewish ancestors are in there, it is because they have been posthumously baptised by proxy and may have had additional rites performed on them as well. If my future descendants do not know what the IGI is, and see my name there, they will think that I have been baptised a Mormon. Thus, my IGI "record" will be fraudulent as I will not have changed my mind as to my beliefs, traditions, heritage, history and religion.

Do read some of the comments (hundreds at last count). One writer suggested creating a "Do Not Baptize" List, similar to the telemarketing "Do Not Call" list.

When the news broke about the posthumous baptism of famed Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal and there was a very strong negative reaction to this - Wiesenthal's record was removed from the IGI. Tracing the Tribe is sure that this is also the next step for the President's mother's baptism record. I wouldn't be surprised if it is already gone from the public database - but one cannot unring a bell in regard to private LDS records of such rites.

One comment to the USA Today story even quoted me (from some time ago) - that was a surprise:

Proxy baptisms were the focus of fierce controversy in the last decade of the twentieth century. Under intense public pressure, the LDS Church signed an agreement in 1995 with major Jewish organizations saying the Church would stop doing ordinances for deceased Jews without the written permission of all their living descendants. The LDS Church reportedly subsequently purged its own records of proxy baptisms and endowments of over 380,000 Holocaust victims. This is little comfort to many Jews whose relatives’ “fraudulent” records will reflect that they were Mormons.

“The only thing that a family researcher will see—or know, unless they’re conversant with the issue—is that their great-grandfather was a Mormon, when we all know the person lived and died as a Jew,” said Schelly Talalay Dardashti, genealogy columnist for the Jerusalem Post.

Another writer, ex-Mormon Martin Wishnatsky, was even more bitter: “The only solace I have in knowing that the Russian Communists obliterated my ancestors’ graves in Lemburg, Poland, is that no hungry Mormon name-robber, looking for records of dead persons to feed the ghoulish endowment factories, will ever be able to uncover any trace of them.”

Unfortunately, there seems to be no way to stop the disrespectful practice of posthumous baptism.

Poland: Many new records on JRI-Poland

If you are looking for your Jewish family history in Poland, your best bet is to access the amazing searchable online resources of Jewish Records Indexing-Poland.

These resources have grown over the years to a database currently with 3.5 million unique Jewish Polish records, thanks to the inspiration of founder and executive director Stan Diamond of Montreal, and a very dedicated group of volunteers.

Using JRI-Poland's database, I've been able to reconstruct the major portion of my maternal grandfather's FINK family of Suchostaw and Skalat, discover multiple marriages in the lives of certain couples, related birth records in other towns and additional (previously unknown) branches in still other locations.

Do search JRI-Poland for your names of interest. Remember that many families had branches in other countries. Your German, Russian or Belarus family may have easily had a branch that settled in Poland at some point in history, or vice versa! It always pays to check JRI-Poland.

Additionally, remember to think "Creative Spelling." Names spelled in the original Polish will look very different from their anglicized versions. Search using the Daitch-Mokotoff Phonetic Soundex system.

The annual conference always includes numerous programs on Poland, Galicia and the general area, as well as JRI-Poland's always-sold-out popular luncheon. See the online program and all conference details for the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, August 2-7, in Philadelphia.

According to Diamond and shtetl co-op coordinator Hadassah Lipsius (New York), many new records have been added to JRI-Poland:

- 55,000 new entries for 36 towns. Many of these towns are appearing for the first time, while others have been updated with information from later years. The new records are from the Shtetl Co-ops (indexed by JRI-Poland volunteers from LDS microfilms), from Polish State Archives (projects fully funded and accessible via the database) and other projects by the Czestochowa-Radomsko Area Research Group (CRARG). Search parameters include surname AND town, or surname AND region, or search by geographic coordinates.

-More than 100 towns are not yet represented online as projects have not yet been completely funded to recover indexing costs. To check your town's status, click "Your Town" on the site. For more information, contact the town leader, if one is listed, or the archive coordinator, or send an email.

- New LDS data is from Bydgoszcz, Firlej, Gora Kalwaria and Zarnow. Data was added and updated for Bychawa, Golub Drobzyn, Krotoszyn, Nowogrod, Plonsk, Pruchnik and Warszawa. Nearly 18,000 new LDS indices are now available on the database.

- Warsaw data added. Three additional Warszawa LDS films are now accessible on the databas, including: 4,435 new Warszawa indices. This encompasses District I - Birth, Marriages and Deaths, 1860; District III - Birth, Marriages and Deaths, 1860; District IV - Births 1860, 1862, Marriages 1860, 1862 and Deaths 1860; District VI - Marriages 1862-1864.

- Researchers are encouraged to make a donation to support their towns' indexing and placement on the database; click here for details. JRI-Poland is a 501(c)(3)independent non-profit tax-exempt organization under IRS code (US).

- JRI-Poland's database is hosted on JewishGen.

Happy hunting!

Feeling stressed? Maybe this will help

Forbes.com just put out the list of the top 10 happiest countries to live in.

According to a British Medical Journal 2005, research in several countries indicated that although individuals typically get richer during their lifetimes, they don't get happier. What brings joy is family, social and community networks.

Tracing the Tribe hopes that includes genealogy communities!

Here's the list:

1- Denmark
2- Finland
3- Netherlands
4- Sweden
5- Ireland
6- Canada
7- Switzerland
8- New Zealand
9- Norway
10- Belgium

Data was used from last year's Gallup World Poll conducted in 140 countries, which asked respondents whether they had experienced six different forms of positive or negative feelings within the last day.

Sample questions: Did you enjoy something you did yesterday? Were you proud of something you did yesteday? Did you learn something yesterday? Were you treated with respect yesterday? No more than 1,000 people, age 15 or older, were surveyed in each country. and the poll was scored from 1-100. The average score was 62.4.

Genealogists would likely answer these questions positively!

Overall economic health was a strong factor. Although the global economic crisis has been felt in every nation, those scoring highest in this poll had some of the highest GDPs per capita in the world.

However, wealth wasn't the highest indicator. Although Norway ranked highest in GDP per capita, it ranked ninth in the list, despite a GDP per capita of nearly $100,000. New Zealand's GDP per capita was only a little more than $30,000, yet ranked eighth.

Another important factor is work-life balance. Scandinavian countries work 37 hours per week or less. Low-scoring China has a 47-hour workweek and a GDP per capita of only $3,600.

Low unemployment contributes to happiness. The OECD resercher says "not having a job makes one substantially less satisfied." Top-ranked Denmark has an unemployment rate of only 2%; the Netherlands, 4.5%; the US, 9% - which didn't make the top 10.

Read the complete article here.

Florida: Ask the Mavens, May 17

Florida is a particularly active state for Jewish genealogists. Year-round resident populations are swelled by snowbirds from other states. Groups include societies in Miami, Broward County, Palm Beach County, Greater Orlando, Jacksonville and also in Tampa Bay.

Tracing the Tribe readers in the Tampa Bay area will have an opportunity to attend a genealogy problem solving session presented by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Tampa Bay at 2pm, Sunday, May 17, in Clearwater.

A panel of experienced resident genealogists will assist those who have come up against a dead end and don't know what to do next. Learn from others' brick walls and the panel's suggested solutions.

Experts include Dr. Emil Isaacson, Clint Elbow and Bill Israel.

With 26 years' experience in Jewish genealogy, Dr. Isaacson has researched his ancestral roots seven generations to the late 1700s in Europe, and has offered several programs for the society. Elbow, a business systems analyst in healthcare information technology, has been researching his roots for seven years focusing on patronymic roots in Germany. Israel, an IAJGS director, has been researching for more than 28 years, tracing nine generations back more than 200 years and documenting more than 1,600 related individuals.

Planning to attend and ask a question? Email the problem to "ask the mavens" before the meeting and your problem will receive the panel's priority; see the JGSTB website for more information.

The JGSTB's library and research resources are available to all attendees; members may borrow materials. Researchers of all skill levels, from beginners to experienced are welcome. For information, click here.

JTS Digital Library: View the ketubot collection

Reader Bob Rubin Mayo asks about the international ketubot (Jewish wedding contracts) collection at the Jewish Theological Seminary Library.

He wants to know if they have been translated into English, are indexed, or how one would search for a family member's ketubot?

The answers to the first two questions are yes and yes, and the answer to the third is below.

Tracing the Tribe previously posted about the JTS Digital Library when it launched in February 2008.

Access the International Ketubot Collection here. It contains 441 Jewish marriage certificates, imaged, translated and indexed.

The certificates come from many Italian cities, Jerusalem, New York, Dubrovnik, Philadelphia, Turkey, Corfu, North Africa, India, London, Syria, Germany, Netherlands, a large Persian collection, Bukhara, Algeria, other US locations, Salonika, Egypt, France, Morocco, Czechoslovakia, Gibraltar, Poland, Trieste, Yemen, Latvia, Prague, Iraq, Romania, Austria, Galicia, Russia and other locations.

Scroll down to "Ketubah Collection" and click. In the drop-down menu, choose the ketubot collection in the top box, and then write a family name in the bottom search box. Added note: Since most ketubot do not list family surnames, searching for the given name of bride or groom may bring back more relevant results. And since Jewish naming patterns consist of repeating the given Hebrew names of past generations, there may be considerable links down to contemporary generations.

Here is the information on a ketubah from Venice, pictured above, dated 5451 Sivan 9 or June 6, 1691.

There are numerous fields, including description of the artistic decorations and the names in Hebrew and English translation of bride and groom, languages, style of script, etc.

The two columns of text are separated by a spiral column and surrounded by a wide border of large flowers and clusters of grapes. A large panel above the text contains a framed depiction of Jerusalem. Winged angels at top blow trumpets, from which hang banners bearing the two families' coats of arms.

There are various fields with information about each ketubah, including groom, bride and witnesses.

In this case, the groom is Isaac, son of Samuel Salom (=Shalom); the bride is Rachel Pinso, daughter of Abraham, son of Israel. The two witnesses are Isaac Pesah, son of Menahem b. Elijah, and Moses Magioro, son of Daniel.

This is a wonderful collection both from the decorative viewpoint as well as a Jewish genealogical resource. Take a look at the collection and view the diverse styles illustrated.

Do check out the other digital collections at the link above; you might find even more information on your families of interest.

New Mexico: Jewish Historical Society

Who were New Mexico's first Jewish residents? Where did they come from? How did they get there? Why did they come?

Whether they were Sephardic Jews avoiding the Inquisition in the 1600s and 1700s, or German Jews seeking their fortune as merchants in the mid-1800s or Eastern European Jews fleeing pogroms in the late 1800s, New Mexico has a fascinating heritage to explore.

The Land of Enchantment - as the state is often described - has benefited from the talents of Jewish transplants in all walks of life: Pioneers, farmers, ranchers, merchants, military, teachers, professors, scientists, lawyers, doctors, bankers, artists, writers, musicians and retirees.

The New Mexico Jewish Historical Society (NMJHS) was founded 24 years ago to promote greater understanding and knowledge of New Mexico’s Jewish history.

It will honor two individuals at its annual meeting at 2pm, Sunday, May 17, at Congregation Beit Tikva in Santa Fe.

Keynote speaker for the meeting will be noted historian and author Henry J. Tobias. NMJHS members and the public are invited to attend the free program.

The Dr. Allan and Leona Hurst Award recognizes a person, persons, or organization that has contributed to New Mexico Jewish history, culture and community for a substantial period of time.

Recipients this year are Dorothy Corner Amsden and Lance Bell.

A 34-year Los Alamos resident, Amsden has served on the organization's board as vice president, genealogy chair and editor of the NMJHS quarterly newsletter, Legacy. She is a retired technical editor and writer.

Santa Fe native Lance Bell, scion of the Bell family merchants in downtown Santa Fe, is a past president of the society. His tireless energy and love of New Mexico history lead him to promote its activities in spite of a demanding job.

Professor of history emeritus (University of Oklahoma) Henry J. Tobias will speak on the history of Jews in New Mexico and sign his new book "Jews in New Mexico Since World War II" (UNM Press).

An Albuquerque resident, Tobias will discuss changes in the Jewish community, its growth, institutions and the role of Jews in New Mexico life. His new book is a sequel to "A History of the Jews in New Mexico."

Amsden is stepping down as genealogy chair after three years, and the new genealogy chair is Steve Gitomer.

Following a 35-year academic career at the University of Pennsylvania and the Los Alamos National Laboratory, he retired in 2005: "Steve has lectured and written about genealogy subjects for more than 25 years and his genealogical travels throughout the world with his wife Joyce are likely to be recounted in an article or two in future issues of Legacy."

All issues of the NMJHS Legacy journal are online at the society's site. The March 2009 edition's calendar indicated these genealogy-oriented activities:

- April 26, Montefiore Cemetery cleanup (Las Vegas).

- May 3, Genealogy workshop at the Taos Jewish Center.

- May 17, Award program; speaker Henry Tobias (described above)

- In July (date to be announced), Professor Seth D. Kunin, anthropologist at the UK's University of Durham, will speak on his book, "Juggling Identities: Identity and Authenticity." Prof. Kunin works closely with the Society of Crypto-Judaic Studies, and with Professor Stanley M. Hordes.

For more information and upcoming events, click here.

Galicia: Cadastral Map Project to begin new phase

Gesher Galicia president Pamela Weisberger announced that the group's Cadastral Map and Landowner Records Project will begin its third phase at the Lviv Archive in June.

More than 60 Galician towns have been inventoried so far. View those towns - in addition to those for which the group has received records or maps - at the new searchable database here. To learn more about the project, click here.

These Galician towns are primarily in today's Ukraine (some are in Poland near the border).

If your town has not yet been included and you are interested in participating in the new phase, email Pamela for more information.

Indexing and cataloging of maps and records are ongoing. Eventually, everything will be available to all researchers or on ShtetLink pages.

JewishGen: ShtetLinks pages added

Have you thought about creating a memorial to your ancestral villages and the Jewish communities that once lived there? It is a way to preserve valuable resources for future descendants.

Consider creating a webpage for your ancestral community at ShtetLinks on JewishGen and join many researchers who have already done just that. Look at the pages below for ideas and possibilities.

Consider creating a ShtetLink for your ancestral community.

New pages (N) and updated pages (U) include:

Belarus:
- (U) Kamenka
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Kamenka/kamenka.html

Hungary:
- (N) Bodrogkeresztur (Keresztur) http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Bodrogkeresztur/Welcome.html

Lithuania:
- (N) Aukstoji Panemune (Panemon, Poniemon Frentzela)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Aukstoji_Panemune/

- (U) Mazheik (Mazeikiai)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/mazeikiai/introduction.html

Moldova:
- (N) Oliscani (Olishkan)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Oliscani/index.html

Poland:
- (N) Dabrowa Tarnowska (Dombrowa)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/dabrowa_tarnowska/

- (U) Pilzno
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Pilzno/Pilzno.html

Romania:
- (N) Valea lui Mihai (Ermihalyfalva)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Valea_lui_Mihai/

Ukraine:
- (N) Mizhhirya (Okormezo , Volovo)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Mizhhirya/

- (N) Voynilov (Wojnilow)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Voynilov/Voynilov.html

- (U) Krasilov (Krasyliv)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Krasilov/index.html

If you'd like to create a page for your ancestral shtetl or adopt an existing orphan page, email ShtetLinks vice president Susana Leistner Bloch and ShtetLinks technical coordinator Barbara Ellman.

US-version Who Do You Think You Are? No date set yet

Some genealogy bloggers have again jumped the gun with the expected debut of the anxiously-awaited US-version television show, "Who Do You Think You Are?"

Although an NBC press release earlier this month listed the show as an alternate series for the fall lineup, no firm date has been set. Lots of things can happen between now and then.

While Tracing the Tribe feels it would be a great show to kick off the fall season, others make the decisions!

Perhaps NBC wants to hype it more before setting a date? Perhaps they really don't know how many people in the US are interested in family history?

On the other hand, they may be working on a companion website and guide for beginners to have the package ready when the series begins? This would be along the lines of the UK-version's show-related information.

Tracing the Tribe hopes the network and the production company are in the process of getting this package ready in time for the show's debut, as it should result in a big jump in family history newcomers seeking information from all sources.

The network knows that family historians and genealogists are waiting for concrete news.

As soon as a firm date is announced, Tracing the Tribe will let you know.

Ohio: Educating teens, Toledo Jewish history

Jewish history is the story of Jewish communities and the changes they have experienced over time. Downtown neighborhoods gave way to suburban migration over the years.

Jewish teens recently learned about Toledo's Jewish history, according to this ToledoBlade.com story. Jewish Sunday School teacher Veronica Burgert says there's never been a better time than today to teach local Jewish teenagers about their religious and cultural heritage.

"Jewish Toledo isn't getting any bigger. It's very important to keep the history alive and to hear all the stories."

Two Jewish seniors recently led a group of 15 teenagers on a bus tour of to visit historic Jewish sites. Previously, they had heard Jewish seniors speak about growing up there in the 1930s-40s.

As part of the focus on community history, the United Jewish Council of Greater Toledo also commissioned the publication of a new book, "A History of the Toledo Jewish Community 1895-2006: A Rich Tapestry of Historical Information."

The book, written by local historian David Noel, was printed in newspaper format and will be soon published in book form.

Efforts to remember historic Jewish Toledo come during a period of shrinking population. A 1973 survey found that there were 7,250 Jews in the Toledo area; in 2000 that number had dropped to 5,461.

Today, said pollster Stan Odesky, 71, who led a bus tour, said the number of area Jewish residents is closer to 4,000.

The Jewish population's decline has been attributed to an aging population, low fertility rates, a drop in Jewish immigrants, and an increasing number of Jews who marry out - their children have little or no connection to Judaism.

The bus tour started from The Temple-Congregation Shomer Emunim, at the center of the current community. The Reform congregation shares a campus with the Jewish Community Center, the United Jewish Council of Greater Toledo and Conservative congregation B'nai Israel.

Built in 1914, B'nai Israel's original structure featured 700 seats on the main floor and a 300-seat balcony (for women originally). In 1924, an annex was built for the Hebrew school, with second floor weddings and third floor dances.

Today, it is home to the True Church of God of the Apostolic Faith, and many Jewish symbols are still evident: a Star of David in the 50-foot high interior dome, original stained glass windows with Hebrew writing and Jewish symbols (menorahs and Torahs).

In th