Boston: Upcoming NEHGS programs, tours

The New England Historic Genealogical Society has several upcoming events on its calendar. Readers in Boston, or those who may be visiting, may be interested in these programs.

Events are at the NEHGS building, 99-101 Newbury Street, Boston, unless otherwise noted.

June New Visitor and Welcome Tour: Wednesday, June 1, 10-11am

Kick start your research with a 30-minute lecture and tour of the library and its holdings.

Come Home to New England: June 13-18, 9am-5pm

One of NEHGS’s most popular programs, “Come Home to New England,” is a fun-filled week of family history discovery and education. It features research, individual consultations, interesting lectures, group meal, and other activities.

Talking Back to Your Ancestors: Reweaving the Family History: June 22, 6-7pm

Dr. Barbara B. Reitt will describe what she learned in a four-year search for truths long hidden by the family and what compelled her to respond to her late father’s memoirs by researching and writing a biography of his grandmother.

Other locations:

A Tour Through Ireland and Irish History: July 5-15
Join NEHGS as it explores Irish immigrant ancestors’ native land, the rolling hills of Ireland. Discover scenery and enjoy Irish hospitality in famed hotels, restaurants and private homes. Email for more information.

Weekend Research Trip to Albany, New York: July 13-17

Join NEHGS to explore the vast resources of the New York State Archives. The weekend includes individual consultations, lectures and a group dinner.

English Research Tour: September 25-October 2

Discover the wealth of information available in London's repositories as NEHGS returns to London. Participants take part in two group dinners, consultations and guided research tours through the Society of Genealogists (SOG) and the National Archives (UK).

For more information about these events and tours, click AmericanAncestors.org for the registration form and instructions, call 1-888-296-3447, or send an e-mail.

On the air: Irish Jewish genealogy, Oct. 9-10

Stuart Rosenblatt of Dublin is the keeper of the faith. Irish Jewish genealogy faith, to be more exact.

Ireland's National Radio and Television (RTE Radio 1) notes that Rosenblatt - a Dublin resident - is the subject of "The Keeper of the Faith," to be aired at 6.05pm, Saturday, October 9, and repeated at 7pm, Sunday, October 10.

The radio documentary maps and explores Jewish Ireland with Dubliner Stuart Rosenblatt (photo left).

Listen to it now or hear the podcast here. Thanks to RTE's Sarah Blake for the links.

Enter the world of Jewish Ireland past and present with genealogist Stuart Rosenblatt as guide. Stuart is the author of the 16-volume Rosenblatt Series, the most comprehensive collection of genealogical material ever compiled on an entire Jewish community in any country.

Stuart's database contains details on over 44,000 people and their family relationships. These and other facts you'd expect, and might even find elsewhere - but Rosenblatt's work usually takes a step or two further.

Rosenblatt devotes "two weeks out of every one" to this unpaid, unacknowledged work. His daughter Sonia tells us how family life has suffered. As a businessman, Stuart is first to admit it's an expensive hobby.

He got the genealogy bug fifteen years ago with a curiosity about his mother's family, the Jacksons. We discover the Jackson family had roots in a village called Ackmene, and this tiny Lithuanian village was the one most common place of origin for Irish Jews. They did not leave and arrive in Ireland en masse when their migrations began in the 1880s - no one really knows why they arrived here but their descendants give us a few clues.

So the story of Jewish Ireland is the story of a global village called Ackmene. It's a quintessentially Irish story - where everybody knows everybody else - and there are nothing like six degrees of separation. It's the story of a fast disappearing world. Rosenblatt estimates the community, those who come to Shul (Synagogue), at no more than 380 with the majority from the older generation.

Anyone can access Stuart's work in the National Archive or National Library through the 16 printed volumes of the Rosenblatt Series, which he has donated to the nation. And the work continues with Stuart desperately looking for some missing bits of his jigsaw, such as several volumes of Alien Registration Files from the start of the 20th century and details of Jewish school children in schools records all over Ireland.

The show was produced by Clare Cronin and funded by the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland's Sound and Vision funding scheme.

Thanks to Louise Messick for this pointer.

UK: 'Finding family' workshop, Dec. 17

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain will focus on finding family in England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland, at its meeting on Thursday, December 17.

The meeting runs from 7.30-9.30pm at the JGSGB Library in London.

The session will cover information for beginners as well as those more advanced, and for confident and less-confident computer users.

To register, send an email to reserve a place. Fee: JGSGB members, free; others, £5.00.

For more information and address, click JGS of Great Britain (JGSGB).

Irish Times: Free access through Dec. 14

To celebrate 150 years of the Irish Times, the paper is offering free access to its archives through December 14.

For more information, visit the paper's site and check out the archive. Choose from text archive for stories from 1996, and the digital archive for everything from 1859 to the present.

Using the term "Jewish," more than 30,000 hits were returned, dating from 1859, when the paper began. Using the term "Jew" returned nearly 48,000 hits.

An interesting item is the date graph. If you are searching for a specific term, you can see - via a sliding bar - the number of stories on that topic in a certain year. Here's the graph using the search term "Jewish":

In March 1859, there were 151 stories with this term; in March 1904, there were 767 stories including the term.

A sampling of stories from 1859-1901 included meetings of societies to convert Jews, what the Passover holiday signifies, start of Rosh Hashana, Disraeli, statistics of Jews in various countries, persecution of Jews in Russia, a new Dublin synagogue, a meeting of anti-Semites in France, the situation of starving Jews in Palestine, riots in Poland, marriages, ads for kosher butchers, immigration of Russian Jews to Africa, funerals, fires in Amsterdam, legal announcements, Zionist Congress opening, and many stories on the 1904 pogroms across Russia.

The search terms are highlighted, making the references easy to find.

On Tuesday, June 28, 1859, this notice appeared on page 4:

On August 9, 1859, on page 4, under Police Intelligence, this was the lead in a story:


And in a story on Italian statistics on May 7, 1859, these interesting figures appear:

This useful resource can offer genealogists much information as to local and international events, family information and much more. You can capture an article as above as a JPG, print it or save as a PDF.

Do take advantage of free access during December.

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.

Ireland: Jewish culture festival, Oct. 18-19

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ireland: Searching Jews in Belfast

Looking for Irish Jewish ancestors? Here's an interesting article that may provide some answers.

The first article in Familia: Ulster Genealogical Review is 15 pages, with footnotes, and titled "Researching Belfast Jewish Families, c. 1850-c. 1930" by Pamela McIlveen and William Roulston.

Some mentioned surnames are JAFFE, HERZOG, ATTIAS, BENSELUM, BENGGIO, PARIENTE; family origins include Prague, Mecklenburg and Gibraltar.

The Belfast community's founder - in 1809 - was Daniel Joseph Jaffe, born in Mecklenburg.

The article offers resource suggestions to help find more information.

Thanks to Ann Rabinowitz for this clue - it is a fascinating read, even if you aren't searching Belfast or the Jaffe family.

One family's journey: Riga, Dublin and Ohio

The Forward has a story about an Irish Jewish family - "A Diary Found, And a World Recovered" - by Sean Martin, associate curator of Jewish history at Western Reserve historical Society in Cleveland, Ohio.

The lilt of a Yiddish-Irish brogue is not heard often in northeastern Ohio. But thanks to the efforts of Eudice Landy Gilman, we can now connect Jewish Cleveland to the Emerald Isle.

Gilman, 91 — who remembers sitting on the porch of her family’s cottage in Chippewa Lake, Ohio, and listening to her grandmother’s stories about life in Ireland — recently resurrected an artifact from her family’s past, bringing those stories to a much wider audience. Gilman’s grandfather, Hyam (Hyman) Singer, a cantor who left Riga in 1888 and immigrated to Dublin, and then to Chicago in 1901, left behind a journal of writings in Yiddish and Hebrew. The poetry records his memories from Eastern Europe and his transition to life in Ireland. Gilman, a published writer herself, received the journal in the 1960s from her sister after their mother’s death, and she promised to find a translator.

The search was a long one. Local rabbis and scholars declined the challenge of translating the densely written Yiddish text. In a remarkable feat of genealogical tenacity, Gilman turned to family members for assistance and was referred to Pollack-Mniewski Research & Translation, co-run by Forward Association archivist Chana Pollack. Now self-published as “I Will Sing You a Verse,” the journal bears witness to Singer’s experiences as an immigrant Jew and serves as an educational tool for future generations encountering the challenges of immigration.

Gilman's grandfather wrote about tradition and modernity, sufferings of the Jews, and relatives’ weddings.

The Singer family was a part of the immigration that developed the Jewish community in Ireland from the 1880s to the early 1900s. Family lore describes life for the Singer family in Dublin as “one grand spree.” In Dublin, the family located itself in the heart of the Irish-Jewish community, across the street from the Walworth Road Synagogue, today the Irish Jewish Museum. Singer may have served as cantor for the Walworth Road Synagogue. A family photo of Singer in top hat and tails suggests the high style to which the family aspired.

A replica of the journal - the original is too fragile to exhibit - will be on display at the Maltz Museum of Jewish Heritage in Beachwood, Ohio.

Read the complete article and see photographs here.

Ireland: Jewish records

According to a release on FamilySearch.org, more than 1,000 names of Jews from Ireland have been added to the Knowles Collection database, which contains information for more than 15,000 Jews from the British Isles.

Jews from Ireland Added to Knowles Collection
14 March 2008

SALT LAKE CITY, UTAH—Just in time for St. Patrick's Day, FamilySearch has added over 1,000 names of Jews from Ireland to its growing Knowles Collection genealogy database. The Knowles Collection contains information for over 15,000 of Jews from the British Isles. Building on the work of the late Isobel Mordy, the collection links individuals into family groups with more names added continuously. The collection is freely available as a file that can be viewed and edited through most genealogy software programs. Genealogy software is also available as a free download.

Those wishing to donate information to the Knowles Collection may contact Todd Knowles at knowleswt@familysearch.org.

The collection and other helpful resources are available for free online on the Jewish Family History Resources page at FamilySearch.org.

FamilySearch is a nonprofit organization that maintains the world's largest repository of genealogical resources. Patrons may access resources online at FamilySearch.org or through the Family History Library in Salt Lake City, Utah, and over 4,500 family history centers in 70 countries. FamilySearch is a trademark of Intellectual Reserve, Inc. and is registered in the United States of America and other countries.