Northern California: Mapping madness, Oct. 18

Ron Arons will present his popular "Mapping Madness" at the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society's branch meeting on Monday, October 18, in Los Altos Hills.

The program begins at 7.30pm at Congregation Beth Am, 26790 Arastradero Road, Los Altos Hills.

Author and SFBAJGS member Ron Arons will discuss numerous historical map websites, and review online mapping facilities provided by Microsoft and Google.

He will introduce the audience to several other online mapping tools, including Microsoft’s MapCruncher, IBM’s ManyEyes, and Muckety.com

Born and raised in New York, Ron has traced his roots to England, Poland, Romania, Ukraine, Belarus, and Lithuania.

In researching his book "The Jews of Sing Sing," he took a genealogical approach, collecting a variety of original source documents. The book includes biographies of more than a dozen famous gangsters and lesser-known criminals and paints a broad canvas of Jewish criminality in New York City.

Ron's newest book is the recently released "Wanted! U.S. Criminal Records: Sources and Research Methodology."

Technorati: Blogging survey

Technorati is offering a chance for bloggers to participate in its annual State of the Cybersphere Survey.

Some interesting questions on this survey, but only one screen offers a place for the topic of the blog being referenced. There is no category for "genealogy and family history," but participants can write that phrase into the "other" box. If you do write "genealogy and family history" in that box, the phrase will come up again in some later questions.

Questions at the end could have used an "other" box, when the survey asks what topics were major in the cypersphere this year and were expected to be in the future.

In any case, if you participate and write "genealogy and family history" into the "other" box (where available), Technorati might pay attention. For that alone, geneabloggers might want to spend a few minutes taking the survey which also asks about ads, income, exposure, reasons for blogging, participation in diverse events (which could include panels, industry event, etc.).

It does ask how many blogs one authors, but answers may be very different for each. I'll try to take it again for my other blogs and see what happens. Yes, you can take the survey again for each blog you write, which gives another chance to write genealogy and family history into that "other box."

Here's the Technorati notice of the survey:

2010 State of the Blogosphere Survey – please give us 15 minutes.

Since 2004, Technorati has been tracking the Blogosphere through our State of the Blogosphere study.

The goal of the study is to create a complete snapshot of the activities and interactions that make up the Blogosphere by asking you, the bloggers, to share some information about your habits. The survey includes questions like how, when and why you blog. Is this a side business, full time job or something you do for fun?

Please feel free to send this link to other bloggers you know. And be sure to check back on Technorati.com in November for a summary of the results.

The 2010 State of the Blogosphere Survey: http://research.opinionguru.com/mrIWeb/mrIWeb.dll?I.Project=A17275

Let's see, if 1,300 geneabloggers take the survey and write in "genealogy and family history" the results might be very interesting.

Family Tree Magazine: Best state websites for 2010

Location, location, location! A new best-of list hits the newsstand and cyberspace, covering every US state from Alabama to Wyoming.

Family Tree Magazine has published its 2010 list of best US state sites for genealogy, with 75 sites and at least one from every state.

There are vital records, archives, museums, state encyclopedias, databases, historic newspapers, state libraries, memory projects, digital libraries, special collections, county clerk databases, historical societies, obituary indexes, genealogical societies, military sites, public health sites and more.

State-level government resources offer vital records, wills and probate records, court records, military records; early land records, legislative and other government records; records of orphanages, asylums, prisons and other state institutions; state censuses, and naturalization records, while non-governmental resources may include old newspapers, city directories, biographies, historical maps and photos and oral histories. 

Click the link above to access each of the sites and see what you can find.

Click to your roots from Alabama to Wyoming on these 75 stellar state-focused websites. In genealogy, as in real estate, it’s all about location, location, location. Finding where your ancestors lived is the first step in identifying records about them. Fortunately, the internet-ization of America also has swept over the nation’s state archives, historical and genealogical societies, libraries, vital-records offices and other keepers of genealogical gold. Many of the resources that once gathered dust in various statewide repositories now can be accessed without changing your own location—in front of your computer, that is.

Yizkor Book Project: September additions, updates

Thanks to many volunteers who translate, transliterate, transcribe and edit material, the Yizkor Book Project at JewishGen.org continues its growth.

During September, there were four new projects, three new entries and 29 updates to existing projects. The items are organized by country below:

(NP=new project, NE=new entry, U=update)

BELARUS
NE Soly, Belarus (Pinkas Poland)
U Gorodets, Belarus (Horodetz; history of a town, 1142-1942)
U Karelichy, Belarus (Korelitz; the life and destruction of a Jewish community)
U Slutsk, Belarus (Slutsk and vicinity memorial book)
U Stolin, Belarus (Stolin; a memorial to the Jewish communities of Stolin and vicinity)
U Svir, Belarus (There once was a town Swir; between the two world wars)

HUNGARY
NE Karcag, Hungary (Pinkas Hungary)

LITHUANIA
U Dotnuva, Lithuania (Letters from Dotnuva)
U Lithuania (Lite, vol.2)
U Lithuania (Encyclopaedia of Jewish Communities, Lithuania)
U Merkine, Lithuania (Meretch; a Jewish Town in Lithuania)
U Rokiskis, Lithuania (Yizkor book of Rakishok and environs)
U Svencionys, Lithuania (Svinzian region; memorial book of 23 Jewish communities)
U Valkininkai, Lithuania (Olkeniki in flames; a memorial book to Olkenik in the Vilna district)

POLAND
NP Frampol, Poland (Frampol book)
NE Przemysl, Ukraine (Pinkas Poland)
U Bedzin, Poland (A Memorial to the Jewish Community of Bedzin)
U Czestochowa, Poland (The Jews of Czestochowa)
U Dabrowa Gornicza, Poland (Book of Jewish community of Dabrowa Gornicza and its destruction)
U Debica, Poland (The Book of Dembitz)
U Grajewo, Poland (Grayewo Memorial Book)
U Jewish Music in Poland between the World Wars
U Kaluszyn, Poland (The Memorial Book of Kaluszyn)
U Katowice, Poland (Katowice: Rise and Decline of the Jewish community; Memorial Book)
U Kutno, Poland (Kutno and Surroundings Book)
U Ostrow-Mazowiecka, Poland (Memorial Book of Ostrow-Mazowiecka)
U Sanok, Poland (Memorial Book of Sanok and Vicinity)
U Serock, Poland (The Book of Serock)
U Siedlce, Poland (On the ruins of my home; the destruction of Siedlce)
U Tykocin, Poland (Memorial book of Tiktin)
U Zelechow, Poland (Memorial Book of the Community of Zelechow) [Polish]

ROMANIA
U Halmeu, Romania (In memory of the communities of Halmin-Turcz and vicinity)

UKRAINE
N Bol'shoy Zhelutsk, Ukraine (Memorial Book of the Community of Zoludzk)
NP Khust, Ukraine (The Jewish community in Chust and its surrounding villages)
NP Novoseltsy, Ukraine (Nova Sulita)
U Rivne, Ukraine (Rowno; a memorial to the Jewish community of Rowno, Wolyn)

Find all new additions and updates here.

Washington DC: JGSGW celebrates 30th anniversary, Oct. 17

The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington (DC)  will celebrate its 30th anniversary on Sunday, October 17.

Russian and Central European specialist researcher Boris Feldblyum (a JGSGW member) will present "Archival Research: Challenges and Strategies for Success."

He will share some tips and tricks he uses when researching for private clients. Learn how to get the most for your effort.

Doors open at 1pm, with the program at 1.30pm, at Har Shalom, 11510 Falls Road, Potomac, Maryland.

The event includes hors d'oeuvres, snacks and punch, door prizes.

Fee: JGSGW members, free; others, $5. For more information and directions, click the JGSGW website here.

The JGSGW is the host of the 31st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (14-19 August 2011) at the Grand Hyatt in Washington DC. Click here for all conference information.

San Francisco: Safari in Poland, Oct. 17

Experience a safari in Poland - a data safari - with researcher Robinn Magid at the next meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society on Sunday, October 17.

Doors open at 12.30pm (program at 1pm) at the Oakland Regional Family History Center, 4766 Lincoln Avenue Oakland, CA 94602

Magid will present "Data Safari in Poland: Discovering the More Elusive Tracks of Our Ancestors."

In May 2010 Robinn returned to Lublin, Warsaw and Krakow with the intention of finding history, documentation,and imagery remaining “in the field” relating to the Lublin-area towns where her family lived in 18th-century Poland.

Her “data safari” goals included exploring the surviving Holocaust documentation beyond vital records to track individuals who “disappeared” in the war.

Magid's talk is a summary of her trip to discover if the envelope of available genealogical data can be pushed into the 18th century at one end, and through the Holocaust at the other end.

Along with a colorful presentation of “what she found on safari,” Robinn will focus on resources she found to before her trip, and how to maximize the probability of finding answers to vital questions while hunting for little-used information in the archives.

A long-time SFBAJGS member, she is also a JRI-Poland board member and a compulsive genealogist since her retirement from management consulting with an international CPA firm in 1991. She holds a BA (UCLA) in economics

In 2001, she realized her childhood dream of visiting Poland and “walking a mile in her grandmother’s moccasins.” Her research includes tracing Jews in Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Lithuania, and Galicia.

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.

Food: 2,000 years of Jewish cooking in France

Where do our family's foods come from? And where exactly is that?

Head's-up on a new cookbook by famed author Joan Nathan covering 2,000 years of Jewish cooking in France.

"Quiches, Kugels, and Couscous: My Search for Jewish Cooking in France" ($40, Knopf) should be out in November 2010.

According to Publishers Weekly:

This well-researched, fascinating cookbook encapsulates 2,000 years of Jewish history in France. Nathan, the James Beard Award–winning doyenne of Jewish cooking (Jewish Cooking in America), applies her culinary detective skills to sniffing out the Jewish influence on French cuisine, and vice versa.


Her rich subject matter yields both vast diversity and unexpected commonalities. Friday night Sabbath dinners alone can range from the Alsatian pot-au-feu to Moroccan adafina (meat stew with chickpeas and rice). The Germanic Alsatian specialties like potato kugel will be familiar to many Jewish Americans, while the North African dishes like brik with tuna and cilantro and m'soki (a Passover spring vegetable ragout originating in Tunisia) reflect Sephardic customs.


Nathan also explores cross-cultural concoctions such as Provençal brassados (a precursor to the bagel), brandade potato latkes, and a Bordeaux haroset by way of Portugal, all of which embody both the complicated migratory paths and acculturation of the Jewish people.


This being France, though, there are lovely renditions of native dishes, too--chestnut cream gâteau, braised endive, cassoulet. Nathan's multi­layered, narrative approach makes this treasury of tempting flavors an entertaining and compelling read.

There are more reviews at Nathan's site, such as this one.

Sounds like an excellent read, regadless of where your family hails from, so look for it at your favorite bookstore. It's on my wish list.