Miami: Steve Morse, Feb. 7

Super Bowl Sunday is even more special when genealogy superstar Steve Morse comes to town. He'll be in Miami, at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Miami, on Sunday, February 7.

Spend the morning with "super" Steve and JGS members, who will also be celebrating the group's 21st anniversary. The morning program starts at 10am at the Greater Miami Jewish Federation, 4200 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami.

Steve is the award-winning creator of the One Step Genealogy Website. He's received many genealogy awards for his innovative contributions and has informed international audiences with his talks.

South Floridians who may have missed him at previous IAJGS conferences or those snowbirds or anyone visiting the area should come along. On this trip, Steve will only appear at the Miami JGS.

He will give two very interesting talks.

-- "Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching: Alternative to the Soundex with Fewer False Hits." This new system was developed by Steve and Alexander Beider.

Searching for names in large databases containing spelling variations has always been a problem. One solution, known as soundex, is to encode each name into a number such that names that sound alike will encode to the same number. The search would then be based on finding matching numbers, which results in finding all names that sound like the target name.

Soundex is based on the surname spelling, with no regard to how the name might be pronounced in a particular language and has been a problem. The phonetic encoding described in Steve's lecture incorporates rules for determining the language based on the spelling of the name, along with pronunciation rules for the common languages. This has the advantage of eliminating matches that might appear to "sound alike" under the pure spelling criteria of soundex but are phonetically quite unrelated.

-- "From DNA to Genetic Genealogy: Everything You Might Want to Know, But Were Afraid to Ask."

The study of genetics that started with Gregor Mendel's pea experiments in 1865 has now entered the genealogy field with Megan Smolenyak's coining of the term "genetealogy" in 2000. To understand the genealogical aspects requires an understanding of some of the basic concepts.This talk introduces genes, chromosomes and DNA, and goes on to show how DNA is inherited. That knowledge of inheritance can be used for finding relatives you didn't know you had, learning about your very distant ancestors, the routes they traveled, and
determining if you are a Kohen (descendant of Jewish high priests).

Tracing the Tribe heard Steve present this one at a past Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree conference. It explains things very well from a non-scientists' point of view. It's a great introduction to understanding DNA genetic genealogy. Hopefully, it will encourage and inspire more people to get involved with FamilyTreeDNA.com testing and projects!

Come along and celebrate the JGS of Greater Miami's milestone anniversary. There is no fee and special refreshments will be saved.

For directions and more information, such as secure parking, click on the JGSGM website.

Philly 2009: Sephardic Internet resources

As promised, here's a report on a Philly 2009 session with Jeff Malka on Sephardic internet resources.

Jeff is the author of the award-winning "Sephardic Genealogy: Discovering Your Sephardic Ancestors and Their World" (Avotaynu 2002; and the just-published expanded second edition, 2009).

For Tracing the Tribe readers looking for resources for their Sephardic quest, here's a run-down on the program. Many of which are resources are linked to Jeff's own growing site, SephardicGen.com:

SephardicGen.com:

- Consolidated searchable index of Sephardic names - Consolidated Name Index – has some 73,000 names, will have more than 120,000.
- SephardicGen searchable databases
- Gazeteer of Sephardic Countries
- Sephardic Family Pages
- Sephardic Names

- Alain Farhi's LesFleurs de L'Orient contains the genealogy of Sephardic families from the Ottoman Empire and Middle East, with some 96,000 individuals in the current database.

Said Jeff: The user guide is extremely interesting. Alain began with his own family and added in marriage links to others. Some problems are that material is user-donated, some is not well documented. "As with any genealogy site, take it with a grain of salt." He discussed the Iraqi Dangoor family, descended from the exhilarch (King of the Jews) when he was exiled to Babylon, as well as the ancient Malka family.

- Foundation for the Advancement of Sephardic Studies and Culture (FASSC)

This site focuses on the eastern Mediterranean, rabbis of various communities, some linked to databases, etc.

- Sephardim.com, with an extensive index of family names and heraldry.

Although originally culture and cuisine, it now contains very useful information, a name database indexed from valuable books, Sephardic recipes, coats of arms and heraldry (many Sephardic Jewish families had coats of arms), a general guide of how to research, an active discussion group with more than 2,300 people worldwide, and DNA information.

- Etsi

- Hamburg Portuguese Cemetery

- EIRI-Eretz Israel Records Indexing

- Akevoth - Dutch Jewish Genealogical Database

- Inventory of the Portuguese-Jewish Community of Amsterdam Archives

- Istanbul Rabbinate Jewish Records (Marriage and Burial)

- JewishGen's Sephardic SIG

Jeff paid a nice compliment to Tracing the Tribe, naming it as a major source for keeping up to date on what’s happening in the field. Thanks, Jeff.

As far as Jeff's own SephardicGen.com site is concerned, he calls it "confusing" (in a good sense) because there's so much material. Categories include Sephardic history, Sephardic genealogy, websites by country and topic, Sephardic gazetter and a world atlas.

There are some 50 searchable databases. Jeff’s purpose in organizing his site was to help people, raise awareness and become interested. He considers it to be a one-stop site.

There's also a new phonetic soundex. The older Daitch-Mokotoff was organized to help with Ashkenazi and Eastern Europen names. The newer Beider-Morse system is more useful for Sephardic names.

If you are just starting out to research your Sephardic family, consider beginning at SephardicGen.com