Newark NJ: Jewish Chronicle searchable online

Tracing the Tribe's TALALAY family became variously TOLLIN, TALLIN, TOLL, TAYLOR and FEINSTEIN.

The TOLLIN and TALLIN families settled in Newark, New Jersey (two brothers). Another TOLLIN branch was in Springfield, Massachusetts in 1899, and in Boston a few years later. TAYLOR went to Cleveland, and four TALALAI brothers went from Mogilev to Baku to Philadelphia where they took their sister's husband's name of FEINSTEIN and have been lost since.

A new online resource is the Jewish Chronicle of Newark NJ, which can be accessed at GenealogyBank.

The records include all sorts of social events ("hatch, match and dispatch"), community events, news of immigrant associations, local and international issues and much more.

GenealogyBank is for-fee, but the free search will produce small bits of the articles, usually enough to learn if it is relevant for your purposes.

Tracing the Tribe believes that all for-fee sites should offer free searching with snippets of the results. Learning what a site offers is the first step in deciding whether or not to allocate funds for that subscription!

A quick search showed that there were more than 6,000 mentions of TOLLIN, a few of TALLIN. Many of the first variant were from long before my great-grandfather Aron Peretz Talalai arrived there in 1905, but the ones from that time are very interesting, with many relevant results. The paper was published from 1921 until 1943, covering a major portion of the time that my family lived in that city.

GenealogyBank's resources cover newspapers in many states, and Tracing the Tribe found known family mentions in Massachusetts, Pennsyvania and Delaware publications.

Intrigued by anything with a Springfield origin, I found very detailed information on Max Tollin (Mendl Talalai), the first Jewish builder in the town, who constructed the first two homes for the aging, the Kodimoh synagogue and its cemetery. His children were also seen in many results.

In Newark, we saw results for the Mohliver Benevolent Society - Mohliver referring to Mogilev, Belarus - founded by friends and cousins of my great-grandfather, Aron Peretz Talalai TOLLIN.

Not to be outdone, the TOLLIN records in Philadelphia and Delaware were also quite detailed.

Long ago, when I was attempting to track down Mogilev-origin Tollins, I thought I was on the right track with Aron Tollin. However, he told me they were really Tolchinsky. The family's petition for a name change was one of the records in the results, confirming his story.

Where else can you access this paper? The Newark Public Library also has copies, as does the Jewish Historical Society of MetroWest. There is also some information on the Jewish Chronicle ot Chronicling America: Historical American Newspapers.

For more information, click here for a recent NJ Jewish News story about the archive.

Since GenealogyBank is free to search, what are you waiting for? In fact, there is now a discounted subscription  offer available now.

New Jersey: 'MyHeritage Super Search Engine,' April 27

The Jewish Genealogical Society of North Jersey will host MyHeritage.com's chief genealogist for a sesson on the site's super search egengine on April 27.

The meeting starts at 7.30pm at the YM-YWHA of Wayne (New Jersey). The library will be open at 7pm. There is no admission fee.

MyHeritage.com's chief genealogist Daniel Horowitz will speak on "Finding relatives in one click: using the MyHeritage Genealogy Super Search Engine," an advanced tool for online genealogical research.
The site's Super Search Engine which allows users to cover effortlessly, in a single search, 1500+ genealogy databases and relevant online repositories, which cannot be searched by regular search engines like Google.

For more information and directions, click here for the JGS of North Jersey site.

New Jersey: Intro to genealogy for teens, Nov. 23

In an effort to get teens involved in genealogy, the Clifton (New Jersey) Public Library will offer a special introduction session on Tuesday, Nov. 23.

The program runs from 4-5pm at the Main Memorial Library. Coming only a few days before Thanksgiving, a traditional family-gathering holiday, it might spur the participants into asking questions of their senior relatives during the holiday weekend.

Attendees will learn how to start a search, how to create a family tree and how the library's resources can help them.

This is how it was billed:

Teens – did you ever wonder where your family came from or how they ended up where you live now? If you answered, yes, than you’ve been bitten by the genealogy bug. Your past is a twisted and winding road that can be hard to follow but don’t give up your hunt because the library is here to help.

No registration is necessary. For more information, click here.

New Jersey: Jewish Historical Society, June 17

Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey president Jerry Nathans will speak at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of New Jersey, on Thursday, June 17.

The program begins at 7pm at the YM-YWHA of Wayne.

Nathans will discuss the society's holdings, which include Yiddish books printed in Paterson to objects to cemetery ledgers, and much more. The area's Jewish history begins around 1840.

His talk will be followed by Q&A.

Fee: None.

For directions, or other information visit the JGSNJ site.

JewishGen: Worldwide burial registry updated

The JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR) database has been updated with more than 108,000 new records and some 13,000 additional photos.

There are 170 new cemeteries with updates to another 155 cemeteries in 19 countries. The database now holds more than 1.4 million records from some 2,700 cemeteries or sections in 46 countries.

View JOWBR here. New users should click here for information.

Here are some of the new additions:

-- Iasi, Romania: nearly 32,000 added; database now 65,000.

-- Lodz, Poland: Organization of Former Residents of Lodz in
Israel has given permission to add their burial register names to both JOWBR and JRI-Poland, totalling some 70,000-75,000 records. This update offers the first 12,000 records.

--Lodz, Poland: More than 2,000 burials recorded by the IDF and the Yad LeZehava Holocaust Research Institute in three sections of the Lodz cemetery; database now has 3,400 burials.

-- Louisville, Kentucky: Herman Meyer & Son Funeral Home has compiled extensive information on burials from seven Jewish cemeteries in the city; database totals nearly 11,500 records. Additional information on Kentucky resources and headstone photos.

-- Baltimore, Maryland: Jewish Museum of Maryland and Deb Weiner for 9,900 records from the Belair Road and Berrymans Lane Baltimore Hebrew Cemeteries.

-- Maine: Harris Gleckman of Project Shammas - "Documenting Maine Jewry" - for nearly 6,500 records from 16 Maine cemeteries and sections.

-- American Jewish Archives (AJA): US and Caribbean cemetery records from The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives (AJA), Cincinnati, Ohio; more than 6,000 records from 36 cemeteries.

-- Pennsauken, New Jersey: Rabbi Gary Gans submitted 6,000 records from the Crescent Memorial Park.

-- Liepaja, Latvia: 3,600 records from the town of Liepaja,
Latvia.

-- Bathurst Lawn Memorial Park and Pardes Shalom Cemetery, Ontario: JGS of Canada-Toronto; more than 3,200 records from 122 updated and new sections of these Canadian cemeteries.

-- South Carolina Cemeteries: Jewish Historical Society of South Carolina; 2,200 burial records and 365 photos from five South Carolina cemeteries.

-- Petach Tikvah, Israel: TSegulah Cemetery; some 2,200 additional photos.

-- Sacramento, California: 2,200 records from the Home of Peace Cemetery.

-- Various US States: More than 2,100 records from 25 cemeteries in nine states, by Julian Preisler.

-- Colma, California: San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society, nearly 2,100 records from the second book of burial records from Home of
Peace Cemetery & Emanu-El Mausoleum.

-- New Jersey: Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey; more than 1,000 records from
five cemeteries.

-- Bavarian Cemeteries: JewishGen and the Bavarian State Ministry of Science, Research and Arts/Center of Bavarian History. ; nearly 700 translations from seven cemeteries, and other civil document data.

-- German Cemeteries: 650 records from 21 small German cemeteries.

-- South Africa: 450 records and 550 photos from 13 cemeteries. For more information, click here.

Many donors - individuals and societies - have submitted information. To see how you can help, visit JOWBR at JewishGen.

New Jersey: When the Holocaust strikes home, May 27

When the Holocaust strikes home, with Roger Flartey, is the topic for the next Jewish Genealogical Society of Northern New Jersey on Thursday, May 27.

The program begins at 7.30pm, at the YM-YHWA, in Wayne. The library opens at 7pm. At left, see section of a 1780 map of northern New Jersey. It looks "just a little different" these days!

Flartey, an attorney, has been interested in genealogy since the early 1980s.

While researching his maternal grandfather's family, he discovered that a number of relatives had been killed during the Holocaust in what is now Belarus. The results of his investigation were detailed in his short book, "The Holocaust Strikes Home."

A member of the Northern New Jersey JGS, he is a lifelong New Jersey resident.

Fee: No charge; all are welcome.

For more information and directions, click here.

Ancestor Approved: 10 things about my ancestors

Tracing the Tribe has received the Ancestor Approved award from Pat and Judy, the GenealogyGals.

Their blog is a joint effort.

Award recipients are supposed to report on 10 things learned about our ancestors that have surprised, humbled, or enlightened us, and then pass along the award to 10 more genealogy bloggers who are doing their ancestors proud.

1. Surprised: At the life of my maternal great-grandmother Riva BANK TALALAY - born in a shtetl outside Kovno - who was ran away to the Gypsies - so the story goes - to avoid a disliked marriage. Along the way, she learned herbal healing, midwifery, reading tarot cards and palmistry. When she did marry Aron Peretz Talalay and moved to his agricultural colony Vorotinschtina, some 12 miles southwest of Mogilev, Belarus, she was known for creating the first closet in the shtetl. In Newark, New Jersey, she was also a midwife and healer and well-known for getting her way to make living better for her family.

2. Surprised: That the generation-to-generation one-liner - "This was our name in Spain" - has been corroborated by archival research in Spain and DNA genetic testing.

3. Enlightened: Our TALALAY family's first immigrant ancestor met an English-speaker on the boat over in 1898 who advised him to change his name as no one would give a job to Mr. Tell-a-lie. Thus TOLLIN, TALLIN, TAYLOR, TOLL, TALL and - of course - those lost Philadelphia FEINSTEINs, came about.

4. Enlightened: My maternal FINK (Suchostaw, Galicia -> Ukraine) grandfather and his brothers had a large building maintenance company in New York City. Once, during a window-cleaners' strike, a worker was quoted as calling his employers, "those rats, the FINKs." According to family story, the term "rat-fink" was born.

5. Surprised: On hearing that my mother, as a teen, used to swim across Kauneonga Lake (Catskills, Sullivan County, about 10 miles from Monticello) frequently. It is a very large lake!

6. Humbled: To have found at least one lost branch of the Dardashti family, and thus fulfilling a request of my husband's eldest aunt Nane-jan - made more than 35 years ago in Teheran - to find the lost branches (descendants of relatives who became Moslem) and tell them that they had cousins who thought about them all the time.

7. Humbled: To think about the difficulties Nane-jan underwent as the first Jewish girl to go to school in Teheran in 1902. The community stopped buying from her father, a butcher, and she endured taunts and attacks on her way to school. All her sisters also went to school, with some of them becoming French teachers. It wasn't easy being a father with such advanced enlightened thinking in those days.

8. Frequently flabbergasted when thinking of our newly-connected TALALAY-KATSNELSON relatives (from Bobruisk, Belarus) in Melbourne, Australia. Their eldest daughter Nelly is a journalist and her daughter is Miliana. I'm Schelly, a journalist and our daughter is Liana. Do you also hear Twilight Zone music?

9. Surprised at how much cousin Leon in Melbourne and I resemble each other. His mother was a Talalay whose father (Gamshei) had moved (reasons still unknown) from Mogilev to Bobruisk.

10. Still shocked: My late cousin Victor Talalay (Toronto) and I both located information about the family branch in Israel at the same time, decades ago, when we separately visited Israel and found the data in the English phone book. We each dutifully copied the info and held onto the scraps of paper with name, address and phone number for decades. I finally wrote and located the granddaughter as her grandfather, who placed the entry every year, had died only a year or so prior. He had placed the info in the English phone book every year hoping that US relatives would find it and contact him. He had arrived from Berlin (after leaving Mogilev in 1902 and going to London and Germany) to Israel in 1933. Moral: Never procrastinate when it comes to following up on all clues to family history.

Since I am coming into this award late - procrastination still runs in our family - and I believe almost all bloggers have already been tagged, I am awarding this coveted prize to everyone who has not already been noted.

Sephardim: Oral history project launched

Five thousand oral histories of Sephardic Jews are sought by the end of 2015 in an ambitious project to give voice to this community, regardless of whether they immigrated or were born here.

"Sephardic America Voices: A Jewish Oral History Project,” is sponsored by the American Sephardi Federation (ASF) in New York, with the University of Miami and Hebrew University.
The New Jersey Jewish Standard carried the story.

Organizer Carlos Benaim is an ASF board member born in Tangiers, and created the project after participating in a Barcelona conference. The event featured author Helene Trigano's film with testimonies of Sephardic Jews living in France.

There was no such initiative for the US Sephardic community, said Benaim, so he decided to preserve these stories that could be lost forever.

A New Jersey resident who also serves on the ASF board, Raquel Benatar (born in Tetuan, Morocco), said the project is a unique opportunity for American Sephardim to convey their history, customs, and traditions of diverse countries of origin, reasons for immigration to the US, and to help preserve Sephardic heritage. She may help conduct some of the interviews.

ASF executive director Stanley Urman says that nobody is capturing the history of Jews who fled, emigrated, escaped, or were expelled from countries throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Gulf region, and this is an important chapter in Jewish history.

As with Steven Spielberg's Shoah interviews, this project has a time element as the elders of this community are getting older. Information needs to be recorded as soon as possible before it is lost forever.

Using New Jersey as an example, there are some 20 Sephardic congregations in various towns (Fort Lee, Teaneck, Englewood, West Orange, Highland Park, Long Branch, and Deal), but not major Sephardic communities, except in Deal, where the Syrian Jews are some 16% of the residents.

People always ask about the definition of Sephardic. There are two definitions, the narrow and the broad. The narrower one limits it to Jews (and their descendants) who come from the Iberian Peninsula and settled around the Mediterranean or Ottoman Empire after 1492. The broader definition includes those who follow Sephardic liturgy, didn't originate in Iberia, and includes Jews who come from Asia or North Africa (known as Mizrahim, "easterners").

The project includes those who are Sephardim in the broader sense.

In 2002, the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, headed by the late Gary Tobin, estimated that there are some 600,000 Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the US.

The first "pilot" phase began in August and ended in October and a handful of people were interviewed. Urman is looking for those who want to be interviewed as well as for those who wish to be trained to be interviewers. ASF has already trained, as interviewers, 16 students of the Magen David Yeshiva High School in Brooklyn.

The third and final phase of the project will run from June 2010 to December 31, 2015 and hopes to reach the target of 5,000 interviews.

According to Urman, foreign-born parents may be interviewed with American-born children. In other interviews, children will share stories about their parents and stories from their grandparents. Each subject receives a DVD copy of the interview, which may be up to two hours long. The interview will be archived at the ASF. There are plans to publish educational materials, such as books and videos at the completion of the project.

Shelomo Alfassa is coordinator and did conducted the initial interviews. There are, he said, two different questionnaires. One is for Jews from Arab countries, and one for Jews from the Balkans, Turkey and Greece.

NOTE: One of Tracing the Tribe's pet peeves is that Jews from Iran are included in the first group when Iran is not an Arab country, although it is Moslem. Tracing the Tribe continually informs ASF and other news sources that this is a misnomer, and should be called Jews from Moslem countries, not Arab countries. ASF agrees, but finds that news media prefers to use the other designation, although it is wrong.

In the US, the questionnaire was designed by ASF with professors Henry Green (University of Miami Jewish Studies Department), and Margalit Bejarano (Hebrew University's Oral History Division, Hartman Institute of Contemporary Jewry).

Questions include the subjects' lives in their home countries, the need to leave when life became difficult, life in other countries prior to settlement in the US, and how they rebuilt their lives.

Although the article detailed immigration of Sephardic Jews to the US back to 1654, when 23 refugees arrived in New York from Recife, Brazil, as well as communities in such places as Newport, Rhode Island; Philadelphia; Charleston, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia; the 3,000+ Ottoman Empire Jewish immigrants (1885-1908), and 10,000 Turkish Jews after 1908; the story does not mention the huge Persian Jewish community that arrived in both New York and Los Angeles following the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s-early 1980s.

For a bit of New Jersey history, the most well-known Sephardic congregation was Etz Ahaim, founded in 1929 in New Brunswick. Earlier Sephardim showed up in even earlier according to records, such as Aaron Louzada (Bound Brook, 1698), Daniel Nuñez (Piscataway town clerk, early 1700s), and David Naar, born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (Elizabeth mayor, 1843).

Tracing the Tribe readers are invited to participate as both interviewees or interviewers. For more information, send an email to the ASF.

Read the complete story at the link above.

New Jersey: Steve Morse to speak, Nov. 12

Dr. Stephen Morse will present "A Hodgepodge of Lesser Known Genealogical Gems" at Beth El Synagogue in East Windsor, New Jersey, on Thursday, November 12.

The Beth El Jewish Genealogy Club is hosting Steve's appearance, which will begin at 7.30pm.

His popular One-Step site offers many useful utilities and tools for genealogists and family history researchers.

His talk will describe many of these offerings including problem solutions, genealogy searches, identity theft, DNA and other topics.

A Brooklyn-born San Francisco resident, Steve has received many national and international awards for his innovative work, including his utility that has made it possible to efficiently search the Ellis Island Database.

In addition to being an internationally known computer professional with an electrical engineering doctorate, he has been a genealogist since a young age, as well as a researcher, writer, teacher, inventor and developed the chip that made our modern PCs possible.

The meeting is free and open to the public. Reservations are strongly recommended; send an email.

New Jersey: Oldest family circle to meet

Do you remember family circle meetings?

Our FINK family in New York had an active one that my grandparents and parents would attend, but I only remember some life cycle events, such as bar mitzvahs and some weddings.

The family was also active in the Suchostawer Benevolent Association (Suchostaw, Galicia, now Ukraine) and some film has come down to us of their events, with my grandparents and then-teenage mother figuring prominently in the footage.

The New Jersey Jewish Standard reports on an October 18 reunion of a very special family circle group. More than 200 people from Israel, Canada, South America and all over the US will celebrate the anniversary of the United State's longest continuously functioning family circle.

In 1909, the David Kantrowitz Family Benevolent Association (DKFBA) was formed; the common ancestor of today's 500 members was Mirke Becker, born 1776 in a Russian shtetl.

Benevolent associations originally functioned as self-help groups to assist relatives with housing, jobs and loans. Such groups were formed by families as well as by immigrants from a specific town in the old country.

According to Sylvia Goldstein of Teaneck:

“The members are more than our relatives, they are our friends,” she said. “We look forward to getting together with them on a regular basis. We reconnect with family. It’s a nice thing to be close with your fourth or fifth cousins.”

Goldstein says that they have a lot of fun, a kosher Chinese dinner, speakers, musicians and entertainers. Every meeting is different and the group is alive. "We're not just a family tree."

Each month, about 40 of them meet in the tri-state area. Many don't know their exact genealogical relationship, but it is enough to know they are family.

Goldstein is active in the group because her parents were. Now her children are doing the same.

Some things have changed: Meetings are in English, not Yiddish. They meet at members' homes, not at Manhattan hotels, and most live outside of Manhattan, spanning the tri-state area, Florida, Israel and the world. Instead of card games, they go to barbecues and baseball games, have an orchestra and a website.

Although there have been changes in the way they interact, Goldstein's son, David, says the ancestors would have recognized the "spirit, love, and warmth that abound at all our gatherings."

Read the complete article at the link above.

New Jersey: Monmouth County Jewish Museum

InJersey.com is a place for everything and anything going on in the state. It's where I found out about the Jewish Heritage Museum of Monmouth County.

This post mentions one of the county's first Jewish philanthropists, its Jewish history and a program set for October.

The Jersey shore saw such rapid development in the 1800s that the museum calls the area the Jewish Newport. The story focuses on Sigmund and Bertha Eisner.

The first permanent Jewish communities in Monmouth County were established by German-Jewish immigrants arriving in the mid-1800's. By the end of the Civil War, sizable numbers of these businessmen and their families were well established in and around Keyport, Red Bank, Long Branch and Freehold. Synonymous with this development was the career of Sigmund Eisner, who was born in Bohemia in 1859.

The Eisner family eventually bequeathed their family home (photo at right) to the town of Red Bank to be used as a public library.

At the time when nearby Long Branch was America's premiere resort, Sigmund and Bertha Eisner joined the wealthy vacationing German-Jewish elite who made up the in-crowd of the "Jewish Newport on the Jersey Shore" as early supporters of the city's first synagogue.

The museum will present a program highlighting Eisner's career in"The Jewish Newport on the Jersey Shore," at 7pm, Thursday, October 8, at the Red Bank Public Library, 84 Front St., Red Bank, NJ.

New Jersey: Newark's Jewish community

Does Newark, New Jersey figure in your family's history? At one point in history, the city had 53 synagogues; today, only a few remain.

My TALALAY/TOLLIN branch settled in Newark, when my great-grandfather Aaron Peretz Talalay (changed to Tollin) arrived from Vorotinschtina, Mogilev, Belarus. Already living in Newark for quite some time was Aaron's maternal aunt Dora YASIN/JASSEN and her husband, Meyer KONVISER. Zayde and his family were joined by his brother David and his family a few years later. Several families formed the Mogilev Benevolent Society.

If your family's like mine, the NewarkUSA blog, authored by L Craig Schoonmaker, will provide some color. He has included 19 photos of places, documents and more in this post.

The story covers Ahavas Sholom (the state's oldest continually operating synagogue, which celebrated its 100th anniversary in 2006) and the Jewish Museum of New Jersey, which are located at 145 Broadway in Newark's North Ward, which opened in December 2007.

The post offers links to other stories that may be of interest, such as an exhibit on the Weequahic community.

Most of the story is a 2008 interview with museum president Max Herman.

The author cites a Google Books Limited Preview of The Enduring Community: the Jews of Newark and MetroWest by William B. Helmreich (1998), for more information.

Why a Jewish museum for New Jersey? Jews have lived in New Jersey for more than two centuries, and today it is home to almost a half-million Jews, the fourth largest community after New York, California and Florida. They live in all of the state's 21 counties.

The interview covers the founding of Ahavas Shalom with founders Ada and Leopold Jacobson looking for a place to hold the bris (Jewish ritual circumcision) for their first son. They couldn't find a place, held the event in their apartment and later founded the congregation, raising the funds to construct the building in 1922 or 1923.

The Aron Kodesh (the Ark that holds the Torah scrolls) dates from the 1870s and is the oldest in New Jersey. It was brought over from from Rodeph Shalom in New York City. Herman recounts that the ark was huge, a mahogany structure much larger than present, with a spire adding another 10 feet in height and longer on each side. The extra pieces went into constructing the bima, the platform where rabbi and cantor conduct services.

Although the museum had been told the Ark was donated, said Herman, Hadassah Bachman, 90, recently came to the museum and said her father, grocer Hyman Bachman, was the congregation's president and that he and Leopold Jacobson had brought the ark to Newark. Jacobson was a cabinetmaker and the grocer had a truck. They took apart the Ark, brought it over and reassembled it.

By the late 1980s, the then-Orthodox congregation's membership had decreased and it was in trouble, having trouble gathering a minyan to hold services. A scandal of sorts was hinted at by Herman but a prominent Newark attorney Ben Arens saved the synagogue from being sold. During a clean-up visit, a man named Eric Freedman was involved and Arens "strong-armed" him into becoming president, a post he continues to hold. It is a Conservative congregation today.

It seats about 110 and Herman said they get a full-house during the High Holy Days, but a normal Shabbat is 15 or 20. Most congregants are from the suburbs and have a nostalgic connection to the place. Herman notes that most come from Livingston, West Orange, South Orange, Montclair and the Caldwells - all in Essex County. Some people are evening moving back to the city.

The congregation includes Jews who have gravitated to Newark from Brazil, Ukraine and Sudan. Herman mentions they have several African-American members.

One in particular is Yehuda Ben-Levi, who traces his origins to Sudan, and then to South Carolina thru slavery, and it's an interesting story. A lot of the folks that come here have kind of interesting histories or genealogies about how they got to this place. But the doors are always open.

The Newark City Council gave the congregation a certificate of commendation when the synagogue was rededicated after renovations. The New Jersey Historic Trust helped the project with a $126,000 grant.

Referenced in Schoonmaker's post is another NJJN article (2007) which quotes Max Herman, and covers the museum's opening exhibit, demonstrating the range of New Jersey Jewish life, from Paterson's silk workers, Vineland's farmers and south Jersey's communes, such as Roosevelt.

Read Schoonmaker's complete post at the link above.

South Jersey's Jewish genealogists spotlighted

I first met Rabbi Gary Gans back at the Boston IAJGS conference a very long time ago.

He's the First Rabbi of Rabbit World, over at the International Jewish Graveyard Rabbit blog (in fact, I've got to get some of his new posts up there!). His congregation, Beth Tikvah in Marlton, is the meeting place of the South Jersey affiliate of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia, and he's also active in DNA genetic genealogy.

So with all these interconnections, Tracing the Tribe was happy to see this story in Jewish Voices, published by the Southern New Jersey Jewish Federation, which covered several South Jersey Jewish genealogists.

For Rabbi Gary Gans of Marlton's Cong. Beth Tikvah, the best week of the year is when the international conference on Jewish genealogy takes place.

"This is one of the most creative weeks, when fellow genealogy addicts end up in the same place. It brings about a great new energy level," said Gans, whose synagogue is the meeting site for the Jewish Genealogical Society's South Jersey affiliate group. The rabbi, a tombstone maven, presided over two well attended workshops on the history of grave markers, focusing on how to decipher Hebrew inscriptions and use them to gain clues valuable in family research.

At the conference, Gans also discovered more contacts and resources to aid his own research. He has already found his great-grandmother's Lithuanian postal bank account in rubles, and noted that with the fall of the Iron Curtain and archives from Eastern Europe resurfacing, there has never been a better time for budding genealogists.

The story noted that conference co-chair David Mink who lived in Cherry Hill (where the paper is published) for more than 30 years before moving to Philly. The area proved important at the conference:

"South Jersey's Jewish agricultural communities are a story that isn't told too often, but this was an opportunity to tell that story," he said. Workshops and panel discussions about the Jewish agricultural colonies were followed by a mid-week bus tour of key sites.

The story covered other researchers from the area, such as David Brill, whose great-great-grandparents settled in the Carmel colony in the early 1880s but later moved to Philadelphia.

"A lot of the Philadelphia Jewish community find they have connections to these Jewish colonies," Brill said. He ran one of the workshops that gave the conference a unique local flavor, and helped lead the bus tour, which stopped at the one-room, circa 1890 Garton Road Shul in Rosenhayn, and visited the Alliance, Carmel and Woodbine colonies.

Ruth Bogutz, also of Cherry Hill, is president of the Tri-County Jewish Historical Society, and the story mentioned Rosenhayn, Jewish community buildings in Camden, Springville and Mount Laurel. Her conference session attracted area residents as well as those who had moved away.

"The dedication of the generations that came before me was quite amazing," said Bogutz, who plans to make a film about the Jewish communities of Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties.

Mount Laurel resident Steve Schecter, who created the excellent 200-page Philadelphia and New Jersey resource guide for the conference (which he's planning to turn into a book or larger CD), was mentioned as well. He became interested when his mother talked about the old days in South Philadelphia.

"She'd refer to folks as 'boat relatives,' meaning they came over (from Europe) on the same boat. After my mother died and I did more research, I learned that they did come over and band together, but frequently they were related through marriage or were distant cousins," Schecter said.

Read the complete article at the link above.

New Jersey: A Sephardic center

With the corruption scandal focused on the Sephardic community in New Jersey, the New York Times featured a story explaining how the state became a magnet for Jews,and specifically, the Sephardic (and Syrian) community.

According to the story

A century ago, Deal, a seaside resort carved from New Jersey farmland, was known as a playground for tycoons and magnates like Isidor Straus and Benjamin Guggenheim and celebrities who visited, including Mark Twain. At lavish “summer cottages,” garden parties raised money for the favorite charities of residents, predominantly Irish Catholics and Ashkenazic Jews who summered there.

By the 1940s, some of the shine had worn off, and the fabulously rich were replaced by the merely wealthy. In the late 1960s, Sephardic Jews who lived in Brooklyn and spent summers in nearby Bradley Beach began buying land in Deal; by 1973, more than 100 families had bought property in the town. By the mid-1990s, thousands of Sephardic Jews were flocking to the town during the summers, and today, local historians estimate, they make up 80 percent of the population.

The influx has led to tensions among the Syrians and the general community in Deal and environs.

The town - with some 1,000 residents - is much larger during the summer, and its streets are lined with kosher delis and Syrian grocers as well as other community essentials for the Orthodox who live there or visit.

This is all relatively new, as 35 years ago, only a pioneering group left Brooklyn for the "frontier," and quickly set up organizations and businesses.

Dr. Richard G. Fernicola, a physician and local historian, said the first Sephardic Jew in the area might well have been Benjamin N. Cardozo, the Supreme Court justice, who had a house in neighboring Allenhurst in the 1930s. The first Syrian Jewish family in Deal arrived in 1939, moving into a home that the singer Enrico Caruso had once regularly visited, said Jim Foley, the town’s historian.

The older generation still speaks Arabic and the Sephardic summer scene is focused on the large houses and properties.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Book: Atlantic City's Jewish community

We are fortunate to have inspired individuals among us who are passionate about the Jewish history of the places they grew up, where several generations of their families lived, and who now record those memories and that history for all of us.

Thank you to Rabbi Gary Gans of New Jersey who provided the link to this story.

If Atlantic City, New Jersey is a location of interest, there's a new book on its Jewish community.

"A Dream, A Journey, A Community: A Nostalgic Look at Jewish Businesses in and Around Atlantic City" was authored by Leo B. Schoffer, who grew up on a chicken farm owned by his survivor parents.

Out of those memories, and a desire to capture this particular slice of Atlantic City's distinctively demarcated ethnic history while the people who created it and remember it best are still alive, Schoffer created his new book.

Schoffer's family bought Sam's Poultry Farm in 1950, and he drove around with his father - Sam the Egg Man - making deliveries at the back doors of Jewish businesses all over the island.

The Jews lived mostly in the inlet section, eventually moved to Margate, "and established hundreds of shops, on the Boardwalk and on the Avenues, opened hotels and motels, sold kosher food from deli counters, and even raised chickens on farms just outside town."

The book is a coffee-table-size collection of photographs and essays documenting businesses from the turn of the century to the 1970s, when the businesses faded into memory - only 18 survive today. The $54 book, published by ComteQ Publishing of Margate, is available online. Proceeds benefit Jewish day schools.

A local historian, Allen Pergament called the book "a legacy."

"When Leo first came to me, he was looking for pictures, and his interest was for the kids to have something, for them to realize their legacy. From a booklet, it became this beautiful book. When you look at it, you see there's so much to it. It's not just history, it's family, religious concepts, neighborhoods. It's all the things that are real and sensitive and warm that help to establish any community."

Among the businesses mentioned: Mayer's Jewel Shop, Lischin Bros. Meat, Kligerman's Dairy, Winn's Italian Market, the St. Charles (kosher) Hotel, Shore Theater, Club Harlem, Gottlieb's Millinery, Atlantic City Leather Co., Gerber's & Lanes, Schultz Clothing, and Sam Slotoroff Clothing.

The story mentions a recent get-together of several hundred people:

There were the original store owners in their 80s, second and third generations of families married to one another at an amusing rate, and the current generation, who in many cases wanted nothing to do with the family business, and dutifully became the doctors, lawyers, and teachers that their merchant parents dreamed of.

Read the complete story here.

New Jersey: Jewish Roots in Paterson

Paterson and Northern New Jersey attracted many of our ancestors from Poland and other Eastern European countries. Many immigrants from Lodz and from Bialystock worked in the silk mills, raised their families and built their lives there.

Roni Seibel Liebowitz, one of several prominent genealogists originally from Paterson, sent Tracing the Tribe information about the Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey. Mark Halpern, program chair of the Philly 2009 conference, is a Bialystoker descendant who lived in Paterson as a young boy.

Tracing the Tribe first called attention to Jerry Nathans and his memorabilia collection focused on Paterson in this May 2007 post, which describes some of the holdings:

Jerry Nathans is the last guardian of Paterson, New Jersey's Jewish past. President of the JHSNJ, he's spent three decades collecting artifacts and information about the city 's (and environs) history.

Although the society was once a thriving group of 70 and sponsored lectures, exhibits and other events, Nathans is now alone as the caretaker of 150 years packed into 300 boxes. ...

Tracing the Tribe later reported on Roni and Mark's plans for Paterson descendants at the upcoming Philly 2009 conference in Philadelphia.

JGSNJ president Jerry Nathans, 81, is the keeper of a vast collection of artifacts, photographs, documents, paintings, and memorabilia collected over the past 20 years.

In its prime, the society sponsored exhibits, presentations, and other programs about the area's Jewish life. It collected oral histories and photographs, and published newsletters and the history of Paterson.

The YM-YHWA in Wayne, New Jersey was the society's original home until it ran out of space. Material was packed in 300 boxes and stored in diverse locations. Until recently, the boxes were at William Paterson University and inaccessible to the public. Researchers and individuals could no longer donate family treasures and no one could access documents.

Nathans kept working to follow every lead to find an appropriate home for the archive. When Roni met with him in November 2008, he was still looking for a home for the material. Finally, in late March 2009, an agreement was reached with the Barnert Medical Arts Complex in Paterson.

This month, Jerry began moving all the boxes to the new facility. Volunteers are now unpacking and cataloging 100 years of history, and the Jewish Standard covered the story.

The Philly 2009 conference will also feature a Paterson Birds-of-a-feather meeting at the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, August 2-7, in Philadelphia.

For more information, email the JHSNNJ.

Museum of Family History: New in February

Where in the world is Steve Lasky, creator of the Museum of Family History and what has he done now?

He was in Florida and he's always busy improving his cyberspace Museum of Family History.

Steve reminds visitors that he now offers a Google-powered search engine on the site's home page or on a separate Search page. Check the site map page.

- Jewish Philadelphia now has its fourth entry - reading Jack Segal’s story about growing up in Philly in the early-mid1900s.

- Thomas Jefferson High School Database has new information from the January and June 1931 yearbooks. In the next month or so, Steve plans to add data from the 1933-34 and 1938-40 books. Volunteers needed: Steve needs some help with simple database entry for the senior photos. The sooner he gets some help, the sooner the database will be updated.

- Just for Latvia researchers, Steve will be placing online excerpts from the English translation of “Chorbn Lettland: The Destruction of the Jews of Lettland.” This important work was written soon after the war, in 1947, and recently translated to English.

- Read the first excerpt from this book re Simon Dubnow, Jewish historian, writer and activist.

- The Screening Room now offers a film clip of "The Tree of Life." A Los Angeles woman comes to terms with her father's death by traveling to Italy, where he was born, to trace the family tree. Her 82-year-old aunt (her father's sister) helps and she travels from city to city, searching ancient manuscripts and interviewing many quirky scholars to piece together the puzzle and fascinating story of her Italian Jewish ancestors. At the link above, click on number 18 and turn on your speakers.

- New Jersey's Riverside Cemetery now has a searchable database; click on "Genealogy Search."

- The Jewish Museum of Maryland has five PDF files available for download with the cemetery burial listings for Baltimore, Maryland.

For questions or to volunteer to assist with yearbook entries, contact Steve.

New Jersey: Climbing Jewish family trees, Jan. 9-11

New Jersey genealogists will have a great opportunity to hear Jewish genealogy pioneer Arthur Kurzweil over the weekend of January 9-11, at the Marlboro Jewish Center.

The Scholar in Residence Weekend is themed "From Generation to Generation: How to Trace Your Jewish Genealogy and Family History."

Kurzweil, known to many as America's foremost expert in Jewish genealogical research, will speak on "How and Why Jews of All Ages Can Successfully Climb Their Jewish Family Trees," and other special activities will take place during the weekend.

Call the Marlboro Jewish Center at 732-536-2300 for more details.

Museum of Family History: New material

Museum of Family History founder Steve Lasky's visit to the 12th annual International Association of Yiddish Clubs conference (La Jolla, California) where he recorded more than 12 lectures, the first lecture is available here: "Growing Up in Czernowitz," by Dr. Julius Scherzer.

Two new video previews - "Return to Ozarow: Mending a Broken Link," and "L'affaire Grynszpan" (this one in French) - are here.

Steve has added a new section - "Yiddish Vinkl Bookstore" - where visitors will be able to both read and hear works by famous authors. Currently, there are two short poems, written and spoken in Yiddish, by Peretz Miransky, a member of the Yung Vilne literary group. See them here. On the same page, read about a Yiddish theatre book by Joel Schechter and a 1940s book of poems by Selma Meerbaum-Eisinger of Czernowitz.

The final chapters of the Maurice Schwartz biography - "Once a Kingdom" - is now available here.

View a grounds map for Washington Cemetery (Monmouth Junction, New Jersey) and Dalton Cemetery (Scranton, Pennsylvania). Map page links can be seen under Cemetery Project on the Site Map page.

A new project will memorialize the Jews of Szczekociny, Poland. Steve reports that he already has information on cemetery restorations in Losice and Wachock, Poland, the reopening of Warsaw's B'nai B'rith Lodge, the Lodz Ghetto Liquidation 60th anniversary commemoration, and the future Vilnius Jewish library of Vilnius.

Whenever you check out the museum's site, look at Recent Updates and 2008 Updates for information as Steve adds it online. Those links are found on the Site Map page.

Philly 2009: Lodz, Bialystok and Paterson, New Jersey

The 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy
will be held 2-7 August 2009, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The website will soon be active.

Tracing the Tribe will inform its readers about Philly 2009

as information is made available.

Here's an announcement that will be of interest to those with roots in Lodz, Bialystok or Paterson, New Jersey.

Roni Seibel Liebowitz is coordinator of the Lodz Area Research Group (LARG) discussion group and website. She is in close contact with many families and descendants of people who came from Lodz and the surrounding area.

Lodz was a textile city and many people who emigrated to the US from there, settled in another textile city - Paterson, New Jersey - once known as Silk City. The other large group of immigrants to the city came from Bialystok.

Bialystok discussion group coordinator Mark Halpern (who is also the Philly 2009 program chair) lived in Paterson as a young boy, while Roni lived there until she was 12 and then moved to nearby Fair Lawn.

Genealogy is full of coincidences. Mark and Roni both became involved in family history research at the same time (1997-98), and often talked about future generations who will look for their Paterson roots.

The two former Paterson residents are already making plans for the Philly 2009 event.

They've decided to ask how many researchers would be interested in attending a Birds-of-a- Feather (BOF) meeting for the Paterson area, which also includes Passaic, Kearny and other nearby towns.

Unfamiliar with the term? BOFs are informal meetings of researchers with interest in a specific locality, region or topic. Often, BOFs become more formally organized Special Interest Groups (SIGs) on JewishGen.

Mark and Roni have already contacted the president of the Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey and other individuals active in similar organizations focused on Jewish Paterson's history. If there is interest, they would also be invited to attend.

Mark, as conference program chair, is rather busy now (an understatement!) , so responses to this announcement should go to Roni. If you are interested in Paterson, email her with the following information:

1. Your interest in a Paterson group
2. Name of your family from Paterson or nearby town
3. Any memorabilia you may have from Paterson.
4. Plans (even tentative) to attend the conference

Depending upon reader responses, a Paterson and area Birds-of-a-Feather meeting will be scheduled at the conference. If there is significant interest, they will consider creating a Paterson ShtetLink website on JewishGen.