Colorado: Create a ShtetLink website, Nov. 14

You've thought about creating a ShtetLinks website to memorialize your ancestral community but don't really know how to do it.

Regardless of your technological skills, you can do it!

Learn all about JewishGen ShtetLinks at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado on Sunday, November 14.

The program runs from 10am-noon at Congregation Har HaShem, Boulder.

Judy Petersen will present "What are, why use, and how to create a ShtetLinks website."

A JGSCO member, Judy wanted to do more than just keep files of family trees.

She wanted to share the information and place her family in an historical and geographical context. Collaboration with other researchers of the same area was also on her agenda.

Using ShtetLinks on JewishGen, volunteers create individual web pages for their ancestral towns.

Judy will share how she overcame her "technologically-challenged" status and how anyone can develop a site, increase their computer skills and make progress by networking with others researching the same towns.

She began researching her family after her father told about being an orphan after his parents and brother died. She contacted her paternal first cousins and this developed into a quest to find out as much about her extended family.

All she knew was that they came from Russia and her mother's family from Hungary. Today she has determined the towns of origin for all but one of her great-grandparents, constructed an extensive family tree and located living relatives in California, New York, Canada, Argentina, Israel and Denver.

Judy is also active in JewishGen's Hungarian SIG. 

In real life, she is a physical therapist and library director for Congregation Har Shalom, Fort Collins.

For more information and directions, visit the JGSCO website.

UK: Jewish family wanted for reality show

A British Jewish family is wanted for a reality TV show, according to the UK Jewish Chronicle.

The story covers the Channel Four producers' search for an "exhibitionist" Jewish family "who have room for a few more round the Friday night dinner table." The "few more" means up to 28 cameras recording every kvetch-and-kvell around the clock for the award-nominated series, "The Family."

Channel Four's call for Jewish families to apply describes the programme as "a celebration of family life that reflects the identity and diversity of contemporary Britain."

Previously spotlighted were British and Anglo-Indian families. The project team is looking in Manchester for a family with three or more teenage children for the eight-week filming session.

The cameras will record family meals, homework, marriages, school, work and religion and more.

It might take some time, say the producers, to find a suitable family willing to live in front of the intrusive cameras. No filming start date has been set.

It will be interesting information to add to the family archives!

Texas: UT Jewish studies receives $12 million

Jewish education is important. This is the second recent Jewish studies grant to a major university.

The University of Texas (Austin) will become a hub for Texas Jewish history education and programming via a multimillion-dollar challenge grant, initiated by the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation.

The university has already raised $5.8 million of the $6 million needed on their part, and will receive $6 million from the Schusterman Foundation when the final $200,000 is raised by the end of December 2010, according to the story in the Jewish Herald Voice (Houston).

The Schusterman Center for Jewish Studies was established three years ago, and offers a multidisciplinary curriculum, with nearly 30 cross-listed courses, that explores Jewish life, culture and religion. Teaching professors come from a wide variety of fields. The new matching grant will result in expanded academic and cultural offerings as well as five new professorships.

A new Jewish studies professor will be added each year for the next five years.. Three have already been named: North American Jewish Studies, Jewish Arts & Culture, Zionism Studies/Israel & the Diaspora.

The goal is also to make UT the center for scholars and students interested in the Texas Jewish experience.

According to UT Professor Robert H. Abzug:

“The Texas Jewish community has accomplished more than many others. It has this history of small-town roots, in which Jews really took a part in modernizing Texas through commerce: going from being peddlers to becoming department store owners, to bringing modern infrastructure and institutions to rural, small-town communities,” he said.

“It’s also the most intermarried community I’ve ever come across. It’s both part of the broader world of Texas and a very real and solid community of its own,” he added.

“We’re drawing this focus not simply because we’re here in Texas. Rather, it’s because the national significance of Texas Jewish history is, as of yet, unminded and unrecognized,” he said.

The center is also discussing a lecture series with the UT Business School to spotlight Texas Jewish entrepreneurs. [Tracing the Tribe hopes Bennett Greenspan of FamilyTreeDNA.com is on their list!)

The center plans to fund a Texas Jewish History professorship and raise money for a research/outreach fund to support study. Abzur wants to create a short course in Texas Jewish history that could travel to a synagogue, community or Christian church that would help answer questions.

UT and SCJS also focuses on Israel, as it hosts Israeli writers, speakers and visiting scholars, and develops programming with partner organizations and institutions, in Jewish arts and culture.

SCJS is working with Texas Performing Arts to host a four-day conference on the music, art and fate of the people of Terezín, along with photo exhibits.

Other events on the calendar:

-- April, 2011:SCJS and Rice University's new Jewish studies program will hold an event in Austin.

-- August 2011: there will be the Early Modern Workshop in Jewish History, with the participation of top Jewish scholars.

--Spring 2012: Western Hemisphere Jewish Studies conference will feature major Canadian, US and Latin American scholars.

Read the complete article at the link above. For more information on SCJS, click here.

Arizona: Historic Jewish time capsule opened

The Jewish History Museum in Tucson, Arizona, opened its century-old time capsule.

The Arizona Jewish Post covered the event that attracted hundreds of people.

The capsule was placed under the building's cornerstone - then the Stone Avenue Temple - when it was built in 1910. It was the first home of Temple Emanu-El.

It was removed and opened by US Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (photo right. Credit: Marilyn Friedman/Jewish History Museum). Her father, Spencer Giffords, became a bar mitzvah in the synagogue.

The small metal box contained coins, a Masonic medal, old documents and newspapers from June 1910, including the Tucson Citizen and Arizona Daily Star, announcing that a bill for Arizona statehood (admitted February 1912) had been passed.

Speaking to the crowd before the box was chiseled out from beneath the cornerstone, Giffords noted that not only were Jews present in Arizona prior to statehood, they were involved in business, politics, education and “caring for the community.” Along with many of the other speakers, she remarked on the diversity of the Tucson community, noting particularly the participation of the Grand Lodge of Arizona Free and Accepted Masons — whose forebears had helped lay the cornerstone — in the day’s ceremonies.

Giffords wondered what Tucson would be like 100 years in the future.

When built, the structure cost less than $5,000, but more than $600,000 was spent to protect and preserve it. The building was effectively abandoned in 1999, prior to restoration efforts.
A new time capsule included histories of the Jewish community, and three congregations which began life in that building, a history of Southern Arizona's Holocaust Survivors, 2010 coins, copies of the Arizona Jewish Post and Arizona Daily Star, a flag of Israel, a US 48-star flag carried in the city on Arizona Statehood Day in 1912, and a copy of the day's events.

The cornerstone was rededicated by the Masons, who poured “the corn of nourishment, the wine of refreshment and the oil of joy” into the cavity.

For more information, click here.

France: What's in a Jewish name?

Anne Morddel writes the French Genealogy Blog. She covers French Jewish genealogy in this post, "French Jewish Genealogy - Pick a Name - Le Décret de Bayonne."

The Revolution brought full citizenship to Jewish French on the 27th of September, 1791. Napoleon did not retract it (as he retracted the abolition of slavery) but he did issue an edict that has proved invaluable for genealogists (given above in the Bulletin des lois). With the Décret de Bayonne, issued on the 20th of July, 1808, he ordered that all Jewish people in France or immigrating permanently to France who did not have a fixed and hereditary surname be required to choose one.

These registres d'options de noms 1808 became a de facto census of the Jewish people of France (to be followed in some places by a real census a year later). The numbers are interesting. According to a list in the Archives nationales (code F19 11010) there were 46,054 Jewish people in France who chose permanent names. The majority were in the departments of  Bas-Rhin, Haut-Rhin (with some very legible examples for the city of Mulhouse), and Moselle. In each, the head of a family, usually the husband and father, gives for each family member his or her name, date and place of birth, and the surname and forenames chosen. The registrations have the appearance and structure of any other acte d'état civil in 1808. ...

To read the complete post - and to see the original decree (in French) - click here.

Thank you, Anne.

Global Day of Jewish Learning, Nov. 7

Did you know that the Global Day of Jewish Learning is Sunday, November 7?

The day honors the achievement of Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz's five-decades project of translating the Talmud and encouraging people to join together for study.

It brings together Jewish communities around the world in a historic celebration.

Find out more here about Rabbi Steinsaltz, the day, and click here for more than 250 events as well as online opportunities.

Columbia University: $4 million for Jewish Studies

New Yorkers interested in all aspects of Jewish studies will have something new to access for information.

The Columbia University Libraries have received a gift of $4 million to establish the Norman E. Alexander Library for Jewish Studies. It will fund endowments for a Jewish Studies librarian, the General Jewish Studies Collection and Special Collections in Judaica.

Michelle Chesner is the new Librarian for Jewish Studies is Michelle Chesner. Previously she was at the University of Pennsylvania as an archivist and Judaica Public Services Librarian at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Her research interests include 15th century Jewish history and early Hebrew books.

Special collections at the Jewish Studies library include 29 Hebrew incunabula, more than 30016th-century printed books, and nearly 1,500 Hebrew manuscripts, plus extensive archival collections related to Jewish life and culture, and Jewish individuals in all fields of study and work.

Key components were acquired in 1947 (the Oko-Gebhardt Spinoza Collection, nearly 4,000 books by and about the Dutch Jewish philosopher) and in 2009 (the papers of Yosef Yerushalmi, Columbia faculty member and scholar of Jewish history). New endowment funds will be used initially to catalog the Hebrew manuscripts, the second largest such collection in North America.

Jewish Studies collections at Columbia offer more than 100,000 monograph volumes, 1,000 current and historical periodical titles, about 60,000 Hebrew and Yiddish titles and large holdings of Jewish scholarly works in Western and Slavic languages. It also subscribes to relevant electronic titles, ebooks and databases. It is the only New York City repository for the Visual History Archive of the Shoah Foundation.

Read more here about Norman E. Alexander and the endowments. Learn more about the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services here.

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.