On the train

This past week in Los Angeles was simply non-stop friends and family.

While I was in LA, cousin Davina and her husband Edward welcomed baby Gabriella - it's always nice to add another leaf to a branch!

I spent most of Friday on a train heading north to San Jose. Very relaxing - I really enjoy train travel, except for the lack of Internet access.

Although my major activity on the long trip was stretching out in a sleeper car roomette and catching up on reading - and resting up from Jamboree and a hectic few days - I did meet some interesting people at lunch and dinner.

Genealogy is a great ice-breaker for four strangers at a table. Everyone is interested in their family, and everyone had questions as to where they could find more information. I think I convinced two people to do DNA testing at FamilyTreeDNA.

Friends Rosanne and Dan Leeson were waiting at the station and I managed to get some blogging done tonight, but now it's time to get some sleep.

Philly 2009: Gesher Galicia market square event

Come to the Gesher Galicia Market Square at the conference on Mondat, August 3, from 5-6.15pm.

Here's an opportunity to learn more about your town or village and get assistance with your questions with Gesher Galicia's experts. Visit the market stalls manned by the group's experts.

Explore cadastral maps, gazetteers, landowner records, business and residential directories, school records, and tabula registers; learn about house numbers projects, new indexing projects, DNA research, Viennese resources, Bad Arolsen/ITS records and how to decipher information in your own records.

Michael Karpin will also be signing copies of "Tightrope: Six Centuries of a Jewish Dynasty."

Experts on hand:

- Suzan F. Wynne - Founder, Gesher Galicia; author, "The Galitzianers: Jews of Galicia, 1772-1918;" expert on Kahal records in Galicia.

- Shelley Pollero - Past Coordinator, Gesher Galicia; general research guidance.

- Peter Zavon - Editor, The Gesher Galicia Family Finder; How to find people in the "Family Finder," plus maps of Galicia.

- John Diener - Shtetl Travel.

- Renee Steinig - Gesher Galicia Discussion Group Moderator; creative research techniques.

- Pamela Weisberger - Gesher Galicia President and Research Coordinator, Cadastral Maps and Landowner Records, (ITS) Holocaust Records, Polish Magnate family album, shetl travel.

- Gayle Schlissel Riley - Holocaust records, Tarnobrzeg Death Registry and commercial lease documents, Polish Magnate Landowner records.

- Susana Leistner Bloch - Suchostaw Region (SRRG) and Kolbuszwa (KRRG) Region Research Group Coordinator; JewishGen Shtetllink Coordinator. Are you interested in starting a new shtetllink site? Make sure to see Susana at the fair.

- Roma Baran - Methodology and research techniques, travel in Poland.

- Karen Roekard - Expert on Tabula Registers and Lviv Archives research.

- Matthew Bielawa - gazetteers, maps and general information on cadastral maps and associated texts; information on researching on-site in the Lviv Historical Archives.

- Michael Karpin - Israeli researcher and author of "Tightrope: Six Centuries of a Jewish Dynasty."

Bring copies of your records, photographs, and other genealogical materials to share and inquire about.

Sounds like a lot of fun, so make sure to visit the fair!

Philly 2009: Free Internet and more

Philly 2009 attendees staying at the Sheraton hotel will receive free Internet access in their guest rooms.

TIP: This usually means one cable connection. Hotels may want a hefty deposit for a splitter and second cable which will enable two computers to connect at the same time. Another way to go is a device that connects to the cable and makes the room wireless. We had that in Chicago - courtesy of our roommate Hilary Henkin - and three of us worked merrily away with no problems.

The Thursday night banquet includes the IAJGS Achievement Awards and entertainment by Yisrael Campbell. Additionally, there will be drawings for three four-hour research blocks donated by Jordan Auslander (US), Michael Goldstein (Israel) and Anthony Joseph (UK). Deadline for banquet sign-up is July 19.

Remember to sign up for the breakfasts, SIG lunches, workshops and tours. Some workshops are already full, at least one breakfast (Ukraine) is nearly full, so don't be disappointed.

For all conference details, go to Philly2009.org.

See you in Philly, where Tracing the Tribe will celebrate its third blogoversary!

DNA: FamilyTreeDNA July sale!

It was great to see FamilyTreeDNA's Bennett Greenspan and Max Blankfeld at the recent Jamboree in Burbank, where the conference attendees enjoyed a special lower Y-DNA37 plus free mtDNA.

Said Bennett, that offer was the most successful in the history of the company. In addition to encouraging so many new testees to participate for Y-DNA, it also added significantly to the mtDNA database, both of which will enable even more people to find genetic matches.

The company has announced another great offer for individuals who test through a surname or other group project:

- Y-DNA37 – promotional price $119 (regularly $149)

- Y-DNA67 – promotional price $199 (regularly $238)

- mtDNAPlus – promotional price $119 (regularly $149)

The sale is only good through July, so do let people know as quickly as possible.

July is a great month for family reunions and other events, so it is a perfect time to encourage relatives to take the step forward to genetic genealogy.

FamilyTreeDNA will be speaking at many events this summer, including the Clans Gathering 2009 and the Highland Games in Scotland.

Food: Fusion of history, ethnicity

Do we eat what we are? Genealogy is as much about flavors, origins and climate as it is about names and dates.

Here's a nice bit of Jewish fusion cuisine from the Canadian Jewish News.

There are so many of us from so many different places and we've lived in other localities along the way, so it's only natural that we've picked up tastes along the way and worked them into our cuisine.

It varies enormously from country to country and within different communities, and it’s a function of Jewish dietary laws, Jewish Sabbath laws, holiday rituals and the local food and cooking customs of the many lands in which Jews have lived over the centuries.

It could be said that Jewish cookery is the world’s first example of fusion cooking.

The importance of religion in our food cannot be underestimated. For example, on Shabbat, because we are not permitted to cook or light a fire, Jews have developed the talent of using one pot to combine the best ingredients the household can buy, cooked on a very low heat before sundown and eaten for lunch on Shabbat. Stews such as cholent, hameem and adafina have become classic recipes.

In Russia, the Shabbat dish comes with kasha (buckwheat) - one of my favorites, but with pot roast, not cholent - with onions and mushrooms. A Czech version means kugel on the side; in Poland, there are potato dumplings.

The Sephardic version - adafina - comes with eggs in shells cooked in the fragrant stew.

While challah is traditional, in Sephardic or Mizrahi communities, the bread is more like pita, large or small, thick or thin, in many varieties.

Each holiday focuses on special foods or lack of them, and the diaspora's varying climates have also influenced foods.

Cold Eastern European climates mean fewer fruits and vegetables, pickled vegetables and meats and freshwater salted and smoked fish. Potatoes were a staple.

Mediterranean Sephardic climates meant a much fresher cuisine, and much more varied, using herbs, olive oil, many fruits and vegetables.

Maybe it is more than we eat what we are.

I think that we eat where we have been as our families passed through many countries, adapting and changing cuisine according to availability.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Turkey: The plight of the Doenmeh

If you've been curious about the contemporary descendants of the followers of false messiah Shabbetai Zvi, this book review will explain about today's Turkish doenmeh.

"A Scapegoat for All Seasons: The Doenmeh or Crypto-Jews of Turkey" (Isis Press, 400pgs, $45) is by Rifat Bali, and the review is by Dan Yardeni in Haaretz.

Three and a half centuries ago, a young, charismatic rabbi, Shabbetai Zvi, declared himself to be the Messiah and promised that the Jewish people would soon be redeemed and would return to Palestine, the ancestral Jewish homeland.

Masses of Jews believed in him, and the events of that epoch, which are among the most turbulent in Jewish history, culminated in tragedy: In 1668, forced by the Ottoman sultan to choose between death and conversion to Islam, Shabbetai Zvi opted for the latter.

Although most of his disciples abandoned him after his conversion, several thousand emulated their leader by outwardly accepting, though they continued to see themselves as Jews.

The historical and theological aspects of this episode in Jewish history have been extensively discussed by Jewish and non-Jewish scholars, including Gershom Scholem. However, little is known about the present-day descendants of the Sabbateans.

A distinguished scholar who writes about Ottoman Empire Jewish life, Rifat Bali covers hundreds of historical documents depicting the past and present of the Doenmeh, along with personal testimony by today's doenmeh.

The book describes the status and history of the Sabbateans in contemporary Turkish society.

"Doenmeh" translates as "convert" in a pejorative sense. They refer to themselves, however as ma'aminim (believers, Hebrew). They are the Turkish version of Crypto-Jews, who willingly converted to Islam but also see themselves as Jews.

The present generation may well be the last one to retain the fragmented memories of the living members of this sect. A Doenmeh friend of mine told me his father had informed him that his father's mother used to go to the beach every Friday to recite a prayer in Ladino. My friend's father remembered only
the phrase "Esperano a-te" (I will wait for you [O Messiah]).

Bali covers their attempts to assimilate into Turkish society, and younger members who are trying to return to the Jewish people.

Both are motivated by increasing anti-Semitism in Turkey, and lessening of Kemal Ataturk prestige. While not proven, evidence supports the theory.

Bali also refers to various conspiracy theories that seem to blame Jews for Turkey's problems, and discusses the Doenmeh preventing Turkey from aligning with Hitler. As rulers of Turkey, the Doenmeh knew that it wouldn't be good if Nazis entered the country.

By 1720, the ma'aminim were divided into three subsects: Karkash, Yakubi and Kapandji.

Most of today's Doenmeh are descendants of 20,000 Doenmeh residents of Salonica who were exiled to Turkey in the 1920s as part of a population exchange between Greece and Turkey. Their exile came in the wake of a ruling of that city's rabbis, who refused to recognize them as Jews, something that would have allowed them to remain in Greece as a minority. The historical irony of that decision is that it actually saved their lives; nearly every member of the Jewish community of Salonica was ultimately annihilated in Auschwitz or Majdanek.

The review goes on to include a moving letter written by a Doenmeh friend of Yardeni, describing the plight of the Sabbeteans today.

Read the complete review at the link above,

Footnote.com: Gannett newspapers

Footenote.com is partnering with the largest US newspaper publisher, Gannett Company, which publishes 84 daily papers, including USA Today.

They will be able to digitize their vast archives for the first time by working with Footnote, whose members will be able to access valuable historical newspapers never seen before on the Internet.

In celebration of the 40th anniversary of the Moon Landing and Woodstock, Footnote kicked off the new partnership by digitizing the newspapers covering those events.

Recently launched are the first runs of Florida Today and the Poughkeepsie Journal (NY). Footnote will continue to digitize the full run of those newspapers - Poughkeepsie Journal goes back to 1785.

For more, see the Moon Landing (http://moonlanding.historybeat.com/) and Woodstock (http://woodstock.historybeat.com/) pages today.

Stay tuned for more exciting news from Footnote.

Book: Bucovina Jewish cemeteries

A diplomat has published a book on Jewish cemeteries in Bucovina, Romania and Ukraine, a region shared by the two countries since World War II.

A Swiss Embassy counsellor in Bucharest, Simon Geissbuhler's book is titled "Jewish Cemeteries in Bucovina." It is a traveller's guide to 15 Jewish cemeteries - nine in Romania and six in Ukraine.

The Swiss diplomat said the idea of 'religious tourism' the Romanian tourism minister spoke of is a good one and, as such, the Jewish cemeteries in Bucovina should not be overlooked. He stressed that when one visits the monasteries in Bucovina, nearby one can see the Jewish cemeteries, which he believes are part of the Romanian cultural heritage.

Aurel Vainer, Romanian Jewish Communities Federation president, said the book provides information on the art and economic status of Jews who lived in the area.

'This work is a combination of a tourist guide and an art album and I'm speaking of the fact that the text written by Simon Geissbuhler is in the form of a traveller's journal, but the images in the album make one think the work is an art album', said Adrian Manafu, Noi Media Print publishing house editor.

He believes the Jewish cemeteries are genuine works of art. Bucovina is an old Romanian territory shared by Ukraine and Romania after World War Two.

Towns covered are Campulung Moldovenesc, Vama, Gura Humorului, Solca, Arbore, Radauti, Moldovita, Siret, Mihaileni, Storojinet, Vijnita, Banilov, Vascauti, Novoselnita and Herta.

The book is in Romanian, English, French, German and Ukrainian.

For more, click here.