Hyphen: Divided loyalties?

Tablet Magazine appears in my email every morning, and there is always something interesting to read.

Today's offering is "Hyphen Nation: A Brief History of a Short Punctuation Mark," by Sarah Imhoff, a University of Chicago PhD candidate focusing on works on gender and American Jewish history.

Today, dual-identities are common in the US: Jewish Americans, Swedish Americans, Persian Americans and everyone else. We incorporate our pride in having a specific ethnic, racial or religious identity, and incorporate our past into our American identities. This includes the languages, foods and culture of our ancestors.

Tracing the Tribe believes we are the richer for not forgetting our ancestors and our roots.

Imhoff provides history indicating that this was not always the case.

When Sonia Sotomayor suggested that she was a “wise Latina,” she sparked a controversy about the meaning of being a member of a minority community in American culture. Is having a “hyphenated identity” an asset or a liability? The question resonates far beyond the walls of the U.S. Supreme Court. ... The recent PBS series The Jewish Americans wondered, “Are we American Jews, Americans without a hyphenated identity, or simply Jewish?” Dozens of other cultural commentators refer to the state of being both American and Jewish as having a “hyphenated identity.”

Despite its unmistakable postmodern ring, the idea of a hyphenated existence first became popular in a much earlier historical era. And in contrast to its current celebratory application to ethnic and religious difference, the hyphen has not always had a positive connotation.

Imhoff provides information on the hyphen's history, in the late 19th century, as a marker and a metonym for a person with two cultures. During that mass immigration, Americans wanted the immigrants to assimilate quickly and completely, but the immigrants themselves were slow to discard their identities and values.

In 1899, The Washington Post declared, “Hyphenated Hybrids Impossible,” which, it went on to explain, meant that those with two cultures were undesirable. During the 1904 elections, some politicians and voters wished forthe day when hyphenated “factions” and “contingents” would no longer rear their ugly heads.

Hyphenated identities were common at the turn of the 20th century, but concern grew about the usage, particularly as WWI loomed.

In 1915, Theodore Roosevelt said, “There is no room in this country for hyphenated Americanism.… A hyphenated American is not an American at all.” After a 1915 speech in which Woodrow Wilson announced, “You can’t be an American if you think of yourselves in groups,” the Los Angeles Times wrote: “No vigorous American should hesitate to rebuke any busybody of the hyphenated type who opens his lips to voice any spirit but the American spirit.”

Even in the Jewish community, the feelings ran strong. In 1910, a Boston rabbi declared, “Hyphenated Americans are among my pet aversions as Americans.” If they insisted, he said, the first choice should be simply “Americans,” and the second choice “Jewish Americans.” The focus should always be on Americans.

At a New York synagogue dedication, the opposite point was made that Jews were not hyphens, but said they are American Jews, not Jewish Americans.

The hyphen, according to a Washington DC rabbi in 1915, is a political and moral contradiction, indicating a divided allegiance, and that differing cultures did not impact loyalty to America.

The term “hyphen” carried with it not only the insinuation of two incompatible cultures or sets of values, but also the idea of “dual loyalty” to two different nations.

There is much more, so read the complete article at the Tablet Magazine link above.

Paul Allen's apology: GenealogyWise.com

Early this morning, Paul Allen posted a very frank and open apology about the recent GenealogyWise.com incidents. He had attempted to post it on Terry Thornton's blog, but it was too long, so included the entire message at his own site, PaulAllen.net.

Among the issues he addressed was the censorship of Terry's comment, the gimmicky contest (which I have posted about twice), the genealogical inexperience of staff members and other topics. He wrote, "We have made more than one mistake in the 8 days since GenealogyWise debuted."

About the contest, he wrote:

The earlier mistake was creating a contest that was a marketing gimmick that had the potential to spoil the legitimate community experience of GW users. I apologize for that too.

While no one questions Paul's motivation and genealogical community experience (Ancestry, MyFamily, World Vital Records, FamilyLink) - and this in itself was confusing for those of us who know his background - I for one could not understand where some strange actions (like the contest) were coming from. In the apology he wrote:

So, I have a long history in the genealogical community. So does some of our team at FamilyLink. But some of our 60 employees and contractors are very new to the genealogical space. They are gifted entrepreneurs, designers, and product managers. Some have even built online communities before.

But no community, in my experience, is anything like the genealogical community. And everyone on our team needs to learn what is unique about this community, and how to enable it, and never cross it. We aren’t off to a great start at GW, but we learn quickly.

And as everyone can see, we connect in real time via Twitter, Facebook, and blogs like this, so that we can respond immediately to concerns or complaints. We’ll add more personnel very soon so we can cover all the boards and forums, not just some of them.

And, he wrote to Terry the words I was looking for. "For this reason, our missteps in our first 8 days are very painful for all of us that sincerely want to create the best social network for genealogy. Again, I personally apologize for our deleting your comments and for launching that $800 contest."

As of yesterday, Gena Ortega is the full-time community manager for GW.

Paul again addressed the value of the genealogical community:

If the community flees from GW now because of our mistakes (and lack of a clear policy about inappropriate content), I think everyone loses. We can’t build a community site without the community–no matter how feature rich it is.

But we want to invest in building something you and others in the community will love. We’re in a unique position to do this.

In his final comments, Paul writes to Terry and, by extension, the entire genealogical community:

If you’ll accept my apology, and appreciate our sincerity, and if we (everyone at GW) will learn to respect you and all other genealogists for their opinions and the right to express them — then perhaps all of us can pull together and build something remarkable and free that will bring together the genealogists of the world (and their families) in a special way.

Time will tell, and I hope it all works out.

Summertime cool

Moment Magazine has some great articles in its July-August issue.

There are features on the Jewish rag trade ("From Ghetto to Glamour") and black rabbis ("Postracial Rabbis"), as well as numerous shorter articles, such as the Jewish attitude towards tattoos ("Ask the Rabbi") offering responses from rabbis representing the spectrum of today's Judaism (from independent through Chabad).

However, during our Silicon Valley heatwave, the one that caught my eye featured fizzy drinks and the Jewish connection.

The old joke goes like this: An elderly Jewish man falls on a New York street on a hot summer day; a doctor rushes through the gathering crowd, checks the man’s pulse, and declares, “He fainted from the heat; get him water.” The old man raises his head and moans, “Make that seltzer.” In another version, he cries for an egg cream, and in still another, he calls for a Dr. Brown’s Cel-Ray.

Here's the history of fizzy (carbonated) water common to those three drinks. It first appeared as a medicinal drink in European spas.

The name seltzer came from springs in the German village of Nieder-Selters, where the water was bottled and sold in earthenware jugs even in 1728.

A forthcoming book on its history by Barry Joseph of Givemeseltzer.com should be a good read.

The fizzy water was supposed to cure myriad diseases, from a cold to TB.

Found in natural springs, with spas frequented by the wealthy, made the bubbles into an elite drink, and limited its marketing segment.

To the rescue came an English scientist Joseph Priestly (he discovered oxygen) who wrote a 1772 paper on how to infuse water with carbon dioxide to produce "sparkling water, resembling seltzer water.”

The person who enabled its marketing was German, Johann Jacob Schweppe, who invented a machine in 1783 to create bubbly water. Nine years later he opened a London sodawasser company. He sold the company in 1799, but his name remains.

They had the method, the machine and all they needed was a bottle to hold the aerated bubbly drink. The problem was solved by siphon-inventor Englishman Charles Plinth in 1813, and French innovators made later improvements.

Jews from Eastern Europe entered the US trade by the 1880s. With no access to natural springs, New York immigrants used well water. The immigrants termed the drink "two cents plain" - a glass of plain seltzer for 2 cents.

In 1900, there were at least 73 soda fountains in a one-third square mile area. The first flavors added to the plain fizz were chocolate and lemon. Supposedly, Schweppe was the first, in 1798, to mix in wine, spirits or milk.

Legend says chocolate and milk were added in Brooklyn and Louis Aster invented the egg cream in 1890. Sold in five candy stores, thousands waited in line for hours to get one.

Where did "egg" come in (there's no egg in the drink)? Some say it was a corruption of echt (genuine, Yiddish).

Although there's disagreement about the recipe, who invented it and other details, all mavens of the drink know that only one chocolate syrup is good enough, Fox's U-Bet. Some say it first appeared in 1904.

Comedian Mel Brooks described its curative powers in a 1975 Playboy interview. When one of his childhood friends was hurt playing ball, he would scream, “Get the mercurochrome. Put a Band-aid on…Bring an egg cream.” The interviewer asked, “An egg cream has healing properties?” “An egg cream can do anything,” replied Brooks, who elaborated later, “Psychologically, it is the opposite of circumcision. It pleasurably reaffirms your Jewishness.”

Read about the heavy clear or blue seltzer bottles that were made in Yugoslavia, according to the article. I have heard from those who were in the business that they came from Czechoslovakia and Poland. In any case, today they are collectibles.

Supermarkets are filled with aisles of club soda, mineral water and imported sparkling water, all considerably more expensive than a glass for 2 cents.

Read the complete article at the link above for more on Dr. Brown's Cel-Ray, which appeared in 1869 as a tonic for children. Other popular Dr. Brown flavors are cream (one of my favorites) and black cherry.

Changing the rules: GenealogyWise

GenealogyWise.com has changed the rules on its "contest," and may do so again, according to this early morning message from the company.

The rules are somewhat better and not focused on the goal of "grabbing" (quantification) as many members and posting as much as possible. The objective has changed to something more quality-oriented, which puts the responsibility on the page writer and poster for their own work, and not for their "organizing" ability.

Why the change? It seems the geneablogger community and others felt much the same way I did in my previous post. The feedback was not good and GenealogyWise responded quickly.

I am still wondering if the company will now decide to set up an advisory council of geneabloggers and other individuals who will ask the right questions before such events are announced, and thus avoid these type of incidents that come under my favorite category of "Yes, we can do such-and-such, but should we?"

It appears that something like that is in the works, as the contest will be judged by 10 members of the GenealogyWise community.

The new rules still offer $100 for each winner, but the categories are newly described as these:

Due to community feedback, the rules of the contest have been modified so that content contributed by members is more meaningful and of a higher quality:

- for the member with the highest quality blog posts.

- for the member with the highest quality videos shared.

- for the member with the highest quality forum posts.

- for the member with the highest quality photos uploaded (including descriptions).

- for the member with the highest quality surname group.

- for the member with the highest quality society group (historical or genealogical society).

- for the member with the highest quality other group (not surname or society group).

- for the member who has been the most helpful person to new members.

The message indicated that the corporate goal of the contest is to help members of this new social network get to know each other, and to encourage members to add valuable, relevant content to this new site. That's a good thing.

I was delighted to see this sentence: "GenealogyWise may disqualify any members who are 'gaming' the system, such as adding irrelevant or low-quality content." That's also good to know.

Somewhat disturbing, however, is the statement that "GenealogyWise reserves the ability to change the rules (again) if necessary."

I don't know about you, but I believe future events need to be thought out much more carefully. A game that keeps changing the rules mid-stream is just as annoying as one which isn't well-thought out before it is announced the first time.

Personally, I think this is opening another can of worms.

A better way would have been to just call this off for now, sit down, discuss ramifications and consequences and work out the final rules beforehand. Then announce it again when the proper groundwork has been set.

While both previous and new rules messages indicate contacting Debbie Anne Jackson for questions, the only email given is a general mail@.

Let's see what tomorrow's messages brings.

Book: Sephardic Jews, 15th-16th centuries

With northern New Mexico's large population of Conversos, it seems a good place for Dolores Sloan, 79, to speak about her new book, "The Sephardic Jews of Spain and Portugal: Survival of an Imperiled Culture in the 15th and 16th Centuries."

Sloan will be on hand for a book signing from 5-6pm, Friday, July 15, at Garcia Street Books, Santa Fe.

The story was in the Santa Fe New Mexican.

It's all because of her mother.

Dolores "Dolly" Sloan, 79, became a writer when she was an 8-year-old living in the Bronx.

"I wrote a play for my second-grade class — it was a thrilling experience," Sloan recalled.

It was around that same time Sloan's mother gave her a book about a little Spanish dancer and told her there was a possibility that her family had come from Spain.

Unbeknownst to Sloan at the time, her mother's gift was to become the genesis of her newly published book.

Sloan arrived in NM in 1991 after visiting a friend who lived there, and worked as a counseling services coordinator and state consultant as a director of the Literary Arts Program for its Arts Division.

"That was an incredible experience," Sloan said. "We went to under-served communities around the state like the Mescalero Apache Reservation, the Navajo Nation in Shiprock and communities in Deming, Hobbs, Carlsbad, Mora and other parts of the state. These people didn't have access to professional writers, so we set up writing workshops where published authors from New Mexico could help them develop their own writing skills."

She also worked for the NM Department of Health and then as a peer counseling coordinator at a high school.

Around this time, in the mid-90s, her mother's early words about a family connection to Spain began to resonate. Sloan met New Mexicans with Sephardic Jewish roots and she also traveled to Spain.

"I went to libraries and bookstores to see if I could find information on this subject, and discovered that there weren't any books of this type for the general reader," she recalled. "That's when I decided that I needed to do the research and author my own book. I wrote the preface to the book on a napkin while I was attending the Border Book Festival in Las Cruces."

It took her 10 years: seven in research and three finding a publisher. She calls it a very enriching experience and describes holding 16th-century documents in her hands.

I can relate to that as I have held actual documents dated 1204 and 1353 in my own hands when visiting Spanish archives.

A single mother of three, she was born in New York City and raised in the Bronx. Her journalism and political science degree is from Syracuse University with master's degrees in political science and psychology. Currently, she teaches speech, writing and a course on Jewish women's history at St. Mary's College (Los Angeles).

Each summer she returns to New Mexico to keep up with friends at PEN New Mexico, an affiliate of the largest international professional association of writers, editors and translators.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Wise Guys: GenealogyWise.com

The geneablogger community went through Facebook fantasy, followed by Twitter twisting.

This past week has been a whirlwind of wise guys (and gals) setting up shop at GenealogyWise.com.

If you haven't heard about Genealogy Wise, it is likely because your cave in the hills is still waiting for an Internet connection.

To tell the truth, I've also been caught up in this.

When Facebook entered the geneablogger spotlight, my learning curve was steep and it took time to decide to join. When Twitter was next, I thought less about it and acted more quickly. When GenealogyWise was announced, I joined immediately and setup three groups, Tracing the Tribe on GenealogyWise, Jewish Genealogy and Sephardic Genealogy. I'm still learning how to use it to its potential and finding some stumbling blocks (topic for another post).

Today, when I announced our new Tracing the Tribe logo, the news went out nearly simultaneously on the blog and on my GW groups.

When I joined GW, there were only a few hundred members. Today, there are more than 5,000. Groups have also increased rapidly, with many people adding several.

Today, the site announced a contest of sorts offering financial incentives (read prizes) for a host of categories, such as the group with the largest number of members and such.

Personally, I'm not happy with this event and think it smacks negatively of running an annoying numbers game for profit (of the individuals attempting to win). I'm not thrilled as it means my inbox is now filled with invitations to become members of groups I'm not interested in, and to be "friends" of people I don't know. Much of this contact is "fishing" and thus false, in my opinion.

The minute such a "contest" - even with the relatively nominal amount of $100 for each category - is announced, the vultures come out of the woodwork. Yes, I know, vultures don't live in woodwork, but you know what I mean.

This is an example of what I call the ethical dilemma of "yes, we can do this - but should we?" Many geneabloggers can think of past incidents by other companies that also fit that classification.

Someone thought up this "great idea," but didn't think it through as to what would happen in the great rush to win $100 in each of the following categories, between now and 1pm MST August 6:

- for the member with the most confirmed friends in GenealogyWise. (How are they going to "confirm" them? It's a snap these days to set up hundreds of emails/identities and have these phantoms join a group and become "friends.")

- to the owner of the group with the most members. (See above comment)

- to the owner of the surname group with the most members.

- to the creator of the genealogy-related video on GenealogyWise that has been viewed the most times. (Yep, and the phantoms can also view the video.)

- to the member who has uploaded the most historical photos.

- to the person who adds the most genealogy-related videos.

- to the person who has the most popular blog entry (most page views). (Is there a theme song for the Phantoms' Parade?)

- to the most active member in the forums. (Some people do have other lives!)

At some newspapers (where I worked in the past) there were signs in the typesetting room: "Don't annoy the typesetters." Sites such as Genealogy Wise might consider a similar sign, "Don't annoy the geneabloggers."

I believe the site has great potential, but strange contests aimed at "grabbing" friends and members detracts from the positive appeal Genealogy Wise had for me - until today.

Introducing Tracing the Tribe's logo

Tracing the Tribe is tickled pink, blue and green to introduce our new logo.

It was designed by my geneablogger colleague footnoteMaven. Her creation illustrates exactly what Tracing the [Jewish] Tribe focuses on: helping readers learn how to add leaves to all their branches and trees.

As a firm believer in simple logos, footnoteMaven's idea is exactly that. Any logo that takes 15 minutes to explain is not a good graphic.

Read footnoteMaven's blog here.

A color scheme change will eventually take place at Tracing the Tribe to accommodate the new graphic.

Thank you, footnoteMaven, for this major mitzvah (good deed, Hebrew)!

Washington DC: Lincoln's Jewish advisor

Tablet Magazine is new on the scene and has been producing some excellent articles n diverse Jewish topics.

This article covers an exhibit, running through December, on Washington during the Civil War.

Among issues discussed, there's a section on President Lincoln's podiatrist/Jewish advisor:

“Lincoln is probably the first president to really have personal associations with Jews,” said Gary Zola, executive director of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives.

Lincoln’s closest Jewish contact was Isachar Zacharie—one of the president’s more unlikely aides. Zacharie first appeared in Lincoln’s life as his foot doctor, and soon became an unofficial adviser. The New York World wrote in 1864 that Zacharie “enjoyed Mr. Lincoln’s confidence, perhaps more than any other private individual [and was] perhaps the most favored family visitor to the White House.”

The capital was a sleepy town prior to the mid-19th century. Once the Civil War began, things began hopping and MOTs had many opportunities.

The exhibit - Jewish Life in Mr. Lincoln's City - was organized by the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington. It focuses on 19th-century Jewish life and the Civil War.

During the war years, the city’s Jewish population grew tenfold: from 200 to nearly 2,000. Seventh Street, now the heart of the city’s Chinatown, became a center of Jewish activity. The district was home to six kosher restaurants. (Washington today has only two.)

Without a major industry in town, like the rag trade in New York, most Jewish businesses were mom-and-pop operations. “This neighborhood was never like the Lower East Side,” said David McKenzie, curatorial associate at the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington. “Jews were a significant minority within this neighborhood.”

The exhibit, timed for Lincoln's birth bicentennial, spotlights his relationship with the new Jewish community.

View the exhibit at the Washington Hebrew Congregation through July 20, and then at Beth El in Alexandria, Virginia, through December.

Read the complete article at the link above.