Nevada: Ancestry.com programs, February 19-20

Tracing the Tribe readers in the Las Vegas area will hear Crista Cowan of Ancestry.com speak on both sides of town, on Saturday-Sunday, February 19-20, sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Southern Nevada.

On Saturday at 10am, she will speak at the Paseo Verde Library, 208 S. Green Valley Parkway, Henderson, focusing on  "Getting the Most Out of your Ancestry.com Subscription."

On Sunday at 1pm, she will speak at the Sahara West Library, 9600 W. Sahara Avenue, Las Vegas., where her topic will be "Tips and Tricks to Research Online Like a Professional."

The Sunday two-hour program will detail some of the website's 30,000+ databases.  Cowan will share her go-to sources as well as some lesser-known gems sure to help you grow your family tree. The interactive program will utilize personal and audience case studies.

A drawing will be held for a free Family Tree Maker 2011 software package. Each attendee who turns in a completed evaluation form will also be eligible for a drawing for a free one-year, World Deluxe, Ancestry.com subscription. 

Cowan has been involved in family history research for more than 20 years and actively engaged in client research since 2002.  Her specialties include descendancy research, Jewish immigration and sharing family history with the genealogically challenged. She has been an Ancestry.com employee since 2004.

For more information, send an email.

On the Road: California, Nevada

Travel is wonderful and allows reconnections with old friends.

I'm glad I got in 10 days before the upcoming Jamboree conference to work out the jet lag.

My friend Hilary has been wonderful, and we did a Persian barbecue while I was there.

Then I went out to Thousand Oaks to speak on Sephardic genealogy trends and resources for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Conejo Valley. There was a very good turnout with interested people who asked questions for nearly an hour following my talk on Sephardic genealogy trends and resources.

Thank you to Jan Meisels Allen and her husband Tom who were superb hosts. It was also nice to see Hal Bookbinder and Warren and Debra Blatt and other JGSCV members.

Today, I managed a quick overnighter to Las Vegas to take care of some things and to visit with old friends Mark and Cheryl, whom we've known since we moved to the area in 1990. Tomorrow afternoon it's back to Los Angeles and on Thursday, the Burbank Airport Marriott is where I'll be until Sunday, June 13.

Hilary and I found a fantastic Chinese restaurant in Sherman Oaks, called Kung Pao Bistro. We highly recommend it, as well as a great Japanese/Asian buffet in Woodland Hills. Both were excellent. We even got good sandwiches at Brent's Deli out in Agoura and a wonderful post-talk dinner with JGSCV friends at Marcello's.

Tomorrow will be a serious blogging day so expect lots of good things to read!

Las Vegas: MOTs play poker

Tracing the Tribe is not always about genealogy, per se. It also covers the achievements of members of the tribe in various fields. Today it's poker.

A certain generation of us remember our male relatives playing cards (friendly or for money), and our female relatives playing cards or mah jong. But, as noted before, those weren't places where millions of dollars changed hands. They were decidedly small stake games.

Today, we trace the MOTs even to Las Vegas, where four (out of nine) are in the finals of a really big stakes poker tournament.

The Forward's story, by Ron Dicker, called them "Chai Rollers."

In defiance of the odds on a scale of, say, holding a royal flush, four of the nine players who will be sitting at the final table at the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas are Jewish.

The competition begins November 7, with a $8.6 million top prize.

Where did some of these top players pick up their skills?

While many Jewish studies say that Jewish summer camps are one of the best ways to transmit and preserve Jewish values, Tracing the Tribe didn't know poker was part of it, although that's where one finalist learned the ropes.

Jeff Shulman, 34, learned the basics of poker at B’nai B’rith summer camp in Neotsu, Ore. He quickly parted bunkmates and their money. “It was fairly natural for me.”

You maybe thought that extra money for your camper was going for ice cream?

And although the Talmud says that a father must teach his son to swim, I hadn't heard that the next line was "teach him to play cards for big money." Jeff's father, Barry Shulman, is also a top player and took home $1.3 million at the World Series European Championship, on October 1 in London. The tournament was halted for a day because of Yom Kippur.

Jeff studied with his father to master the high stakes game, and in 2000 he also qualified for the World Series championship table, and finished seventh. He says he's always believed he was a good money manager, and doesn't think of it as Jewish.

Shulman lives in Las Vegas. The other three MOT finalists are Steven Begleiter, 47, (Chappaqua, N.Y.), Eric Buchman (Valley Stream, N.Y.) and Kevin Schaffel (Coral Springs, Fla.), are the latest to reach the top level of a game with a large number of Jewish participants. These top nine players are what's left of 6,500 people from 115 countries who entered the competition months ago.

“We simply can’t explain this statistic,” World Series of Poker Commissioner Jeffrey Pollack and tournament director Jack Effel said through a spokesman. Bo Bernhard, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas’s director of gaming research, also was stumped, and said he could offer “zero explanation.”

Other MOTs who have won big recently are Hollywood agent Jamie Gold, who took home $12 million at the 2006 World Series Main Event. Player of the year for 2006 Michael Mizrachi won almost $7 million.

How are other MOTs involved? World Series titleholder David Sklansky has written poker theory books. Brother-and-sister duo World Series event winners, Howard Lederer and Annie Duke still play at a top level. Read about the Babe Ruth of high-stakes poker Stu Ungar in the complete article.

The story quotes Tel Aviv University sociologist Giora Rahav:

“I’d say that there is reason to believe that Jews have a higher rate of participation in gambling than their neighbors. As for making money by gambling, the only thing I can think of is that the [Jewish] tradition of well-controlled drinking applies here as well. If they are well controlled, they lose less.”

A woman eliminated early on, Martha Frankel, noticed the preponderance of MOTs:

“You look around that room at the World Series of Poker,” she said. “If somebody started speaking in Yiddish, half of us would have looked up.”

Read about Frankel's life and her book in the complete article.

Begleiter got involved in middle school, but made a commitment in the suburbs, playing in a basement poker league with his friends, who are also benefiting from his participation. Read about his profit-sharing arrangement with his friends in the article.

Rounding out the story, Begleiter pointed out that no matter each player's nationality or religion, the main point was luck. Mazal is a good thing!

“We all had our share of good fortune in getting here,” he said. “The Red Sea definitely parted for me a couple of times.”

Read the complete article at the link above.

Nevada: Jewish history of the Silver State

Northern Nevada's Jewish history covers ranchers, silver miners, Eastern Europeans, Syrians, merchants, politicians, gamblers, lawyers, mobsters and more. Today, the state is home to a Jewish community of more than 100,000 Jews, according to an article about John Marschall's book "Jews in Nevada: A History."

Iranian Jews are highlighted as well, as Marschall relates how David Farahi and his family became successful in the casino industry, remain observant Jews and help to build Northern Nevada's Jewish community.

Some interesting facts:

--Albert Michelson, the son of a Virginia City merchant, was the first American to receive the Nobel Prize in physics (1907).

--Copper-riveted jeans were invented by Jacob Davis, a Jewish tailor on Reno's Virginia Street.

--The first native female attorney was Felice Cohn from Carson City.

--The state's first permanent synagogue was Reno's Temple Emanu-El in 1921.

--Reno's Hotel El Cortez was built by Abe Zetooney (from Damascus, Syria) and taken over by the Bulasky brothers (from Russia).

--Before synagogues were organized, Northern California rabbis traveled to Nevada for weddings and High Holiday services.

When John Marschall walked through Reno Hebrew Cemetery almost 30 years ago and looked at the names on the headstones, he saw a rich Jewish history that needed to be told.

Marschall, a professor emeritus of history at the University of Nevada, Reno, told that history in "Jews in Nevada: A History," a book recently released by the University of Nevada Press.

Jews were among the immigrants who swarmed what was then part of Utah territory around 1860 with the discovery of silver on the Comstock. The book traces Jews settling in towns along the paths of the Central Pacific and Union Pacific railroads and ends highlighting the burgeoning population and development, especially in Las Vegas.

Three Jewish men served in the first (1864) state legislature: Reform Rabbi Herman Bien, Storey County; Pony Express rider, rancher and musician, Henry Epstein, Carson Valley; and Austin merchant Meyer Rosenblatt.

A former Roman Catholic priest, Marschall says that writing the book became a mitzvah (good deed). Thirty years ago, when he was doing a bibliographical study, he saw nothing had been written about Nevada's Jews.

There's more here.