Food: Hamantaschen and more!

It's almost Purim! And it can't be Purim without hamantaschen!

JoyOfKosher.com offers a roundup of interesting fillings for these little triangle pastries.

Click on these for some yummy treats:

Cheating Hamantashen
Apple Pie Hamantashen
Cranberry White Chocolate Hamantashen
Gluten Free Hamantashen
Lemon Hamantashen
Date-Walnut Hamantashen
Chef Laura Hamantashen (almond and rosewater filling)
Cinnamon Dulce De Leche
Cinnamon Apple Hamantashen
Pumpkin Whole Wheat Hamantashen
Almost Like a Bakery Hamantashen with Poppyseed Filling

What's better for Purim than a Persian menu?

ChefLauraskosher.com offers a Persian menu on her blog, incuding meatballs a chicken herb stew, rice and a rosewater rice pudding.

However, while it sounds and looks delicious, it is not entirely authentic as Persians do not eat saffron rice with any khoresht (a stew), but only chelo (steamed white basmati rice with a crunchy crust). Saffron is not incorporated into the entire dish, but a small amount of the white rice is mixed with a few drops of prepared saffron liquid and then that small amount of golden rice is sprinkled over the top of the rice platter to decorate it. A form of saffron rice is used with havij polo (rice mixed with carrots and kidney beans).

Also, her rice cooking method is not authentic and does not result in separate, fluffy grains as it should.

The Persian method is to parboil the washed and soaked rice for 7-8 minutes and drain it. Place oil and turmeric in the bottom of a heavy dutch oven, pat down a layer of the rice and add the rest spatula by spatula, mounding it up. Poke a few holes in it. Cook on medium high for 10-12 minutes, lower the heat. Make sure to use a double layer of white paper towel under the tight-fitting lid to absorb the condensation and avoid soggy rice. Cook another 20-30 minutes on medium, then raise a corner (keep it slightly open) of the pot to let out the steam, and lower heat to very low. Keep it on the burner for up to 20 minutes.

This method will result in fluffy grains and and a fabulous golden crispy-crunchy layer that Persian diners fight over. Yum! My trick is to use a circle of parchment paper on the bottom of the pot, add the oil and turmeric on the paper and then add the rice. The crisp tahdik (literally, "bottom of the pot") will lift right out of the pot!

My favorite brand is Lal Qilla aged malai basmati rice, best purchased in a Persian or Indian store, where you know there is a lot of turnover. There are other good brands as well. Long-grain is used for Persian rice eaten with a meal, but short-grain (sometimes called rice for ash - a thick soup-stew) is used for desserts, like the rosewater rice pudding in the menu above.

In some Persian families, the Purim menu uses fish or vegetables (sometimes stuffed, representing Esther's hidden secret), representing the menu that she ate in the palace as she tried to keep to the Jewish dietary restrictions.

However, it doesn't matter really - it is all delicious!

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.

South Florida: Jews in Caucasus, Central Asia, Oct. 13

Learn about the Jews in the Caucasus and Central Asia with author Helene Schwartz Kenvin at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County, on Wednesday, October 13.

A family history researcher for more than 35 years, Kenvin has authored a recently published book, “Silk Road Adventures: Among the Jews of the Caucasus and Central Asia.”

Kenvin will speak about the Ashkenazi, Bukharan, Georgian and Mountain Jews who live in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union. She is the founder of an international, all-volunteer organization that has worked in these regions since 1984.

The day starts with registration at 12:30pm (registration/brick wall) and the 1pm program, at the South County Civic Center, 16700 Jog Road , Delray Beach. The Lithuanian SIG 9with Tracing the Tribe's dear friend Sylvia Nusinov) will also meet from 11.30-12.15pm.

Fee: JGSPBC members, free; others, $5.

Click here for more information on the JGS of Palm Beach County.

Rosh Hashanah: Good eating

JTA's Rosh Hashana section has three interesting food-related stories.

One is by Linda Morel and how food traditions indicates ancestry. Tracing the Tribe noted it previously here.

Edmun J. Rodman - who attended the Los Angeles 2010 IAJGS conference and wrote a story about his experience - suggests celebrating with other than apples and honey, such as a chocolate egg cream - only with Fox's U-Bet syrup, of course.

In addition to taiglach, he recommends a new twist:

What about substituting another form of cooked dough, one with which many Jews are even more familiar: crispy chow mein noodles? We already eat them at Christmas; apparently even Supreme Court nominee Elena Kagan. So why not on a Jewish holiday?

For dipping, use the bright red sweet and sour sauce, of course. Let the dipping remind you to dip into your wallet; Rosh Hashanah is an auspicious time to make someone else’s new year sweet as well.

He also suggests various forms of pomegranates, seeds and juice.

Linda Morel has a story on cholent (Ashkenazi) or hamin (Sephardic) as the ultimate comfort food prior to the Yom Kippur fast, and provides several recipes.

Tracing the Tribe disagrees with her, but to each his - or her - own. I've never eaten a cholent or a hamin that I would consider comfort food. It is generally in the "discomfort food" category.

A nice Persian Rosh Hashanah dinner - numbers of dishes go up according to the number of people to be fed and color-coordination is imperative as all the senses must be satisfied - includes chicken soup with gondi (abgusht-e-gondi), plain steamed rice (chelo), at least two stews (khoresht, with chicken or meat) to ladle over the rice, one or two different rices mixed with herbs or nuts or vegetables (polo), a baked salmon sometimes stuffed, as well as all kinds of stuffed vegetables (dolmeh), various salads, and a good-sized dessert table of fruit, Persian baklava and other yummies. Of course, honey cake is a must for us.

A polo I like to make is a sweet with candied tangerine peel, shredded carrots, pistachios, with chicken baked in saffron. In fact, I save tangerine peels all year, clean all the white pith off them and finely slice them into narrow threads and dry them. When it comes time to make polo-shirin (sweet rice), I boil the threads in a sugar syrup and drain them thoroughly to mix with the rice. The sugar syrup becomes tangarine-scented in the process and is then good for using on baklava or Greek semolina cake, where a cold sweet syrup is poured over the hot pastry to be absorbed.

An all-beige table is a no-no. There should be red (tomato), green (herbs), white (rice), pink-orange (salmon), yellow (chicken soup). The more the merrier.

This year, we are invited out for Thursday and Friday dinners, so we'll keep our own Rosh Hashanah dinner very simple: abgusht-e-gondi or matzo balls (I prefer them), chelo and a khoresht, with my favorite honey cake.

We'll write about Yom Kippur - before and after the fast - next week.

Israel: Birthright brings 18 from Suriname

The smallest country in South America just sent 18 Jewish young people to participate in the Birthright Israel program.

The participants come from Parimaribo, Suriname.

The Kulanu press release indicated that they hoped it will help the young Jews of Suriname, isolated for generations, to strengthen their Jewish roots and ensure Jewish continuity in their country. The trip, envisioned for many years and finally a reality, is expected to have a profound impact on the lives of the young people and on their community.

Most of the young people are descendants of Jews who traveled to the jungles of Suriname some 380 years ago from Spain and Portugal to escape the Spanish Inquisition. Others are descended from Jewish immigrants from Holland, Germany and Poland who arrived later and joined the community. Family names, such as
Abarbanel, Beuno de Mesquita, Robles de Medina, De Costa, Duym and Fernandes, echo the history of Iberian ancestors and their proud struggle and determination to survive and flourish in a far away land.

Despite a jungle climate, economic and political upheaval over the centuries, the community has survived. It is the oldest continuing Jewish community - with some 150 people today, who speak Dutch - in the Western Hemisphere. Suriname's Jews worship at the Neve Shalom Synagogue in Parimaribo, the capital.

For more than 40 years, they had no permanent rabbi or Jewish educator until California Rabi Haim Beliak spent three months there last winter.

During their visit to Israel, the young people will visit the newly restored Zedek v’Shalom Synagogue, originally located in Suriname, which has been rebuilt in the Israel Museum. The synagogue served the Portuguese Sephardic community in Parimeribo until 1999. Today the Jewish community worships together at the Neve Shalom Synagogue.

The Birthright Israel trip for these young people is being supported through various organizations: Kulanu, Good People Fund, World Union for Progressive Judaism and the Union for Reform Judaism in North America.

In 2008, a Kulanu volunteer spent six weeks in the community, initiating a Hebrew teaching program for children ages 6-12. Since then, Kulanu board member (and Suriname coordinator) Jacob Steinberg has raised funds for diverse projects. These include fencing the historic cemetery, renovating the 150-year old mikvah, renovating the old rabbi’s house, developing a Suriname Jewish community website, and buying mezuzot for homes and community buildings.

In 2010, Kulanu helped pay for matzot and kosher wine sent from New York for the community’s Passover seder.

For more information, see Kulanu's Suriname Page and the Suriname Jewish Community website.

Tablet: Roots and Family Trees

Today's Tablet Magazine has a book column focusing on family history in diverse ways.

The featured books include:

-- The 40 moves in 20 years documented in Brooke Berman's No Place Like Home: A Memoir in 39 Apartments (Harmony, June).

-- David Kushner’s account of harsh real-estate politics detailed in the 1957 integration of Levittown: Two Families, One Tycoon, and the Fight for Civil Rights in America’s Legendary Suburb (Walker & Company, August).

-- Adam Langer’s The Thieves of Manhattan (Spiegel & Grau, July).

-- Telling Stories: Philip Guston’s Later Works (California, May), by Tablet’s poetry columnist David Kaufmann surveys the machinations New York City’s avant garde art scene of the late 1960s and 1970s.

-- The strange story of the Aleppo Codex, the oldest surviving edition of the Tanakh in book form, date to 939 CE, which Maimonides himself purportedly studied, and which lived in Syria before being smuggled to Israel in 1957, is detailed in Crown of Aleppo: The Mystery of the Oldest Hebrew Bible Codex (JPS, July), by Hayim Tawil and Bernard Schneider. One can also see the Codex on the web.

... the Aleppo Codex has from time to time been the subject of fantastic claims and suspicions of forgery; in particular, the unscrupulous Crimean Karaite scholar Abraham Kirkovich (1786-1874) tarnished the manuscript’s reputation through his spurious claim that its author was a Karaite, rather than a Masorete.

-- University of Chicago historian Fred M. Donner surveys the first century of Muslim history in Muhammad and the Believers: At the Origins of Islam (Harvard, May).

-- Tracing the Tribe has already given a shoutout to Buzzy Jackson’s Shaking the Family Tree: Blue Bloods, Black Sheep, and Other Obsessions of an Amateur Genealogist (Touchstone, July), and Tablet provided a bit more.

[It] combines memoir and upbeat how-to elements as the author investigates her own family’s story through DNA testing, a Caribbean cruise, and old fashioned library research. Her father’s relations, with roots in Alabama, regale her with far-fetched family legends, but it turns out that the Galician Jews on her mother’s side tell one another “no stories about the old days or the old country.”

-- Genetics and DNA play a part in Jennifer Rosner's If a Tree Falls: A Family’s Quest to Hear and Be Heard (Feminist, May), as she describes discovering a history of deafness in her ancestors and a demonstration of "real" family ties:

When her two great-great-aunts, both deaf, were caring for infants, “they tied strings from their wrists to their babies at bedtime. When the babies fidgeted, they would feel their tugs and wake to care for them in the night.”

See the link above for more on each book.

France: What's in a [real] name?

Following World War II, Jewish immigrants to France were encouraged to change their names. Today, they want to reclaim their original surnames.

A Los Angeles Times story detailed this interesting occurrence.

In the post-war French Civil Code, a section indicates that surnames are "immutable" and must be continued. It allows foreign-sounding names to be changed to those more "French-like," but also states it is impossible to revert [to the original].

Following the war, during the 1940s-50s, many Jews - among them many Holocaust refugees - arrived in France. Most were poor and stateless and also feared anti-Semitism in that country which had sent so many to concentration camps.

According to the story,

There was no legal obligation for them to drop their family names, but they often were encouraged to do so. Many people agreed to new French-sounding names even when the new names bore little relation to the ones they had passed down through generations: So the Rozenkopfs became the Rosents; the Frankensteins the Franiers; the Wolkowiczs the Volcots.And Benjamin Fajnzylber became Benjamin Fazel.

On the face of it, it isn't much different than what happened in America and England, as immigrants anglicized their names to make them easier to say and to spell, to better "fit in" to their new home.

The one difference is that the immigrants to France were encouraged - if not officially required -to change their names. After what many refugees had been through, it wasn't something they wanted to fight.

The story focuses on Jeremie Fazel - a descendant of Benjamin Fajnzylber of Poland - and Celine Masson - whose original name is Hassan of Tunisia.

Says Fazel:

"It doesn't feel right," he said. "It says nothing about my family or our history."

Says Masson:

"I was born a Masson, but the name means nothing," she said. "It carries no history, it says nothing about my family, my roots, where we came from."

Masson has set up an organization called La Force du Nom (The Strength of the Name) with French lawyer Nathalie Felzenszwalbe — whose family retained its name — representing more than 30 French Jews who want to change their names to reflect family origins.

Last month the organization submitted its first requests for reversions of names to the State Council, which has said it will deal with them one by one.

Athough only about 30 families have requested the name reversion, change is in the air.

"Everyone needs to know where they come from. A family's name is part of the compass in life," Fazel said.

Read the complete story at the link above.

New York City: Hebrew manuscripts, books, July 1

The Metropolitan Museum of Art will offer three lectures on the art of Hebrew manuscripts and books on Thursday, July 1.

Lectures will be held from 2-5pm, in the Sacerdote Lecture hall of the Uris Center for Education. They are free with Museum admission.

The exhibit - "A Journey Through Jewish Worlds: Highlights from the Braginsky Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books" - offers recent research in the field and is currently on view at Yeshiva University Museum.

-- "Hidden Treasure: The Intellectual Life of Medieval Ashkenazi Jews," by
Ephraim Kanarfogel, E. Billi Ivry Professor of Jewish History, Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Yeshiva University

-- "Making Hebrew Manuscripts in a Gentile World," by Evelyn M. Cohen, independent scholar, New York

-- "Hebrew Manuscripts after Gutenberg," by Emile G. L. Schrijver, Curator, Bibliotheca Rosenthaliana, Special Collections, University of Amsterdam

For more information, see the museum website.

New York: Center for Jewish History expands hours

The Center for Jewish History in Manhattan holds excellent resources and books for family history researchers.

From Sunday, June 6, access will be even better as the Lillian Goldman Reading Room and the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will be open six days a week enabling more people to use it. Sunday hours will be from 11am-4pm and all electronic resources and reference collections will be available.

The center is at 15 West 16th Street, New York City.

CJH also holds the archival and library collections of American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute and the library of YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. These resources will be available on Sundays upon request.

To request Sunday access, apply by 5pm on the prior Thursday. Click here to learn more or become a registered user. Search for the materials to request; click the "Reserve" link (left side of record item). Fill out the fields and the request will be processed. If you have a problem in regard to materials or a request, send an email or call 212-294-8301.

The CJH is also open Mondays, 9.30am-7.30pm; Tuesdays-Thursdays, 9.30am-5.30pm; and Fridays, 9.30am-1.30pm. YIVO archival collections are available Monday-Thursday, 9.30am-5pm.

For more information, click here.

Yom HaShoah: 2,000 memorials database, April 12

On April 12, Yom HaShoah - Shoah (Holocaust) Remembrance Day - commemorates Jewish communities that vanished all over Europe. It also marks the results of pogroms following the creation of Israel in Arab countries.

The Israel Genealogical Society has a database of nearly 2,000 memorials and monuments for such communities. They are in cemeteries and towns, synagogues, forests and also live in street names.

IGS invites readers to search the database and see if your ancestral towns have memorials in Israel, see photos of them and note their locations. Here's the search box:

Search parameters:

-- Select the "country" list to see all lands where Sephardim used to live. According to IGS, the project is dedicated to an Algerian Jew who perished in Auschwitz.

-- Search by town name, region name, or country; near town, country, or location of the monument in Israel.

-- Places may be listed with different spellings depending on pronunciation in native language or in Yiddish.

-- Search by "is exactly," "starts with" (three-letter minimum), "contains"(three-letter minimum).

-- Search by Hebrew name of the community.

-- If you can't find a memorial in Israel that you know is there, search by country (today) name of that location.

-- Use creative spelling.

Readers aware of memorials in Israel not found in the database are invited to send in photos and documentation so locations may be added.

UK: Portuguese Inquisition lists published

A two-volume work published in the UK will be valuable in the quest for family history information by those with Sephardic, Converso and Bnai Anousim heritage.

It is available through the Jewish Historical Society of England, which was established in 1893.

Tracing the Tribe reader Barbara Barnett sent this information as a comment to Tracing the Tribe's post, DNA: Portuguese conversos' genetic identity, but it is too important to leave as only a comment.

The 2008 volume is Lists of the Portuguese Inquisition, transcribed and indexed by Joy L. Oakley

-- Volume I Lisbon 1540-1778
-- Volume II Evora 1542–1763, and Goa 1650–1653
From Delices de L’Espagne et du Portugal (1707) by Don Juan Alvares de Colmenar.

The Register of Inquisition lists were assembled in 1784 and entitled "A Collecção das Noticias." It was in the Library of the Dukes of Palmela and is now in the Jewish Theological Seminary Library in New York, which has kindly agreed to its publication.

The great majority of persons sentenced by the Inquisition were New Christians - descendants of the Jews of Portugal baptized in 1497, by order of Manoel I.

The book gives an unrivalled picture of the entire range of the Inquisition’s activities and is a primary source of the first importance for Jewish, Portuguese and Brazilian history and genealogy.

The lists of 16th century Autos da Fé give the numbers of persons sentenced by the Inquisition and the proportion of males and female, but only give the names of those who were burnt at the stake.

However, for the much larger number of cases in the 17th and 18th century, the name of each person is given, together with their nickname, parentage, occupation, place of origin alleged offence and sentence.

There are indices of names, nicknames, occupations and places to guide the reader.

The books - totaling 810 pages in soft-back format- include the register's original Portuguese text together with an introduction and foreword in English.

The price for both A4 size volumes is £55 or US $110, including postage.

The JHSE site contains much information for readers interested in the Jews of England throughout history, as well as information on Sephardim. Their newsletters may be downloaded (no charge) and contain information about personalities, new publications and more. For additional information on its publications, click here.

The JHSE also sponsors events in London and at other regional branches.

In London, Dr Hilary Pomeroy (Visiting Lecturer, University College London) will speak on "Sephardi History through Sephardi Ballads: Spain, Portugal, Morocco," on February 18. In London, meetings are held at St John's Wood Synagogue.

See the Events calendar for more; remember to also click on "External Events" for the activities of other historical and genealogical societies and institutions.

Some material is available to members only; annual membership is £40.00. If you'd like to take a look around, do a search for your specific interests and see if that online material is of use to you, sign-up for a 24-hour pass for £7. Click here to register.

New Blog: Jewish food - and genealogy!

Tori calls herself a shiksa (a Yiddish term, generally negative, for a non-Jewish female) married to an Israeli-born Jewish husband.

Her blog is all about Jewish food. Her most recent post is Part I of "Uncle Dov’s Memoir: Polish Ashkenazi Food and Traditions."

My friend Etti Hadar descends from a Polish family. Her maternal ancestors, the Levin family, lived in the Pinsk region of Poland (now considered Belarus) in a small town called Luninets. While researching her ancestry, Etti found a 280 page memoir written by her late uncle, Dov Shimon “Beraleh” Levin. Dov grew up in Poland in a traditional Ashkenazi Jewish family. He later served in Italy in the Jewish Infantry Brigade, and fought the Nazis during World War II. His memoir describes in great detail what Jewish life was like in Poland during the 1920’s and 30’s.

The post provides many glimpses of Eastern European Jewish life that should be very interesting for Jewish and other genealogists. Part II will cover some recipes and dishes prepared by the Levin family. Tori and her friend Etti selected a few of them and recreated a Polish Shabbat dinner. With Etti's mother, they spent a day preparing a feast.

Since meeting her husband, Tori has traveled the world learning about Jewish cuisine, and friends and family have shared their culinary knowledge, keeping traditions alive.

She's now working on a first cookbook, "The Shiksa in the Kitchen," which will include recipes gathered from international Jewish family kitchens.

I am fascinated by the traditions and history associated with Jewish cuisine. Food is a way of communicating; the energy we pass on through our cooking feeds the body as well as the soul. By recording the stories and recipes of Jewish family cooks, I hope to help preserve and cherish the past, present, and future of the Jewish people.

Visit Tori's blog and read Parts I and II about Uncle Dov's 280-page manuscript.

Everything has a Jewish genealogy hook to it, including cuisine!

Music: Jewish Sound Archives news

Housed at Florida Atlantic University (Florida), the Jewish Sound Archives has just sent out its newsletter.

Among the topics:

- Jack Saul's record collection

Jack Saul (Cleveland, Ohio) played a major role in that city's music community, but was very well known as a record collector. His collection grew until his home was crammed with recordings, filling the basement, dining room, hallways and other rooms. No one has ever tried to count them, but JSA founder/director Nathan Tinanoff estimates there are some 150,000 recordings.

At 86, Saul died May 1, with his wife Hinda, and children Marlene, Howard and Ken. Just a few months earlier, during a February visit to JSA, he told his family that the archives would be a good place for the collection's Judaica section.

About one third of Saul's collection will go to FAU libraries. Some 6,000 recordings (about 12%) is going to the JSA, and includes Jewish performers, composers, conductors and Jewish content. About 85% will be used to create a vintage 78rpm collection at the FAU Libraries and the rest will be added to the library's jazz collection.

According to Tinanoff, this is the largest single donation of Judaica records the archives has received, and is one of the finest private US collections.

Tracing the Tribe's food for thought: Do you own some sort of collection with a Judaic focus? Do you know an older relative who might have amassed a collection? What will happen to those collections? Have you or they made provisions of the disposition of those collections to archives, libraries, universities, historical societies or other locations? Do your families know of your wishes? Perhaps it's time to start thinking of what will happen to your collections?

- Recordings sought

JSA is looking for recordings featuring Marvin Hamlish, Stephen Sondheim, Burt Bacharach and Aaron Copeland. The archives wants recordings by all Jewish performers, composers and conductors for its collection. It also wants to expand its Sephardic and European record collections.

- JSA Home Page

The archives' home page allows visitors to access more than 7,000 songs by more than 40 performers and performance groups.

Cick PERFORMERS tab for collections by specific performers.
Click RECORD LABELS tab for collections by recording label producers.
Click COLLECTIONS tab for a drop-down list of specific genres, ranging from Cantorial to Yiddish, and available recordings within the genre or language.

Happy listening!

Waxing nostalgic about inspiration

Today we wax nostalgic about the event or person who inspired us to start our genealogy research, as challenged by Genea-Musings' Randy Seaver.

Like everyone else of thinking age back in the late 1970s, I had seen "Roots" and thought it was a fascinating story, but I didn't know anything about genealogy. I had not yet caught the bug as did the early pioneers, such as Dan Rottenberg and Arthur Kurzweil, whose books later proved inspiring.

I had always heard the story about our Talalay name - "This was our name when we left Spain." One sentence. One idea. Everyone laughed about it, no one believed this could be the origin of our strange and rare name. How could Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe be Sephardim from Spain?

This despite the fact that in New York, my mother with her dark hair and eyes, olive skin, was always being spoken to by strangers in Italian, Spanish, Greek. The story was told that when my father brought the Brooklyn girl home to meet his Orthodox parents in the Bronx, they asked him (in Yiddish) why he was bringing this non-Jewish girl to them.

I filed all of this away in a small corner of my mind, much more interested in needlework, cooking, reading, etc. Until 1989.

Until our daughter was a year away from her bat mitzvah ceremony. She came home from a Hebrew school class with a fateful homework assignment that would change my life forever - a sheet of paper with a few questions. Write your name and Hebrew name, your parents' names and Hebrew names, your grandparents' names and Hebrew names, your great-grandparents' names and Hebrew names (if you know them).

That weekend we attended a big Dardashti family event in Los Angeles for a multitude of relatives - hundreds of them. We worked the room and came home with stacks of cocktail napkins scribbled with information. She wrote blue and pink labels, organized family branches, and everything was glued on four large poster boards. We had hundreds of family names and branches going back to about 1820 - as a result of talking to our family's "walking encyclopedias." Needless to say, she got an A!

Our daughter then said to me, "Now we have to do your family!"

Easier said than done. Whereas Los Angeles was crawling with Dardashti relatives eager to share their knowledge, I wasn't even sure where in White Russia (as my grandmother said) we came from. I remembered "Molyah," and it took a long time to discover that was Mogilev. Some tried to tell me I was looking for Mogilev Podulsk, but my grandmother talked about the Dnieper River her mother had described. Mogilev Podulsk is nowhere near that river which does, however, run right through through "our" Mogilev.

We spent time together at the Santa Monica Family History Library and saw my great-grandmother's New York passenger arrival manifest, evidencing for the first time the family name and a location. A Happy Dance moment, if there ever was one.

I knew Newark, New Jersey was where they settled, but who else from the family was there? Digging around among the few relatives, we heard "well, there was Uncle David, but I don't know if he was really an uncle," (he was my great-grandfather Aron Peretz' brother) or "There was Mariyasha who had several husbands," (she was their sister) or "Ask about the Jassen cousins" (I did - cousin Charlie's father, William Zev, was the brother of Aron Peretz and David Aryeh's mother, Kreine Mushe). Little by little, information accumulated.

As her bat mitzvah approached, our daughter had to begin working on her talk. Her parasha was Chukat, detailing rules and regulations about the red heifer. She wasn't thrilled with that topic and received the go-ahead to speak about family history and her project. And so she did to a congregation of more than 1,000 on Shabbat morning. I don't know if anyone else was inspired to start a project after that, but it was interesting and a departure from the norm.

My obsession with family history has continued until now, expanding to archival records in Minsk, Belarus and Lerida, Spain; finding lost Talalay and misplaced Dardashti; a fascination with Sephardic genealogy and resources; a connection with DNA and genetics; and locating other Eastern European Ashkenazim who are really Sephardim.

Above all, there continues an abiding fascination with Jewish history and how my ancestors - all of our ancestors, including yours - were impacted by historical events throughout history. For us, it meant the Babylonian Exile which resettled my husband's ancestors in Isfahan, Iran. The 1391 riots across Spain and the Inquisition. A trek into Eastern Europe. Major waves of New World immigration followed by the Holocaust. Our own contemporary expeditions from New York to Iran, back to the US and to Israel. Talk about the wandering Jews!

So, the person that truly inspired me was our daughter who said so long ago, "Now we have to do your family!" and the event was her bat mitzvah.

Most of my professional life since then has hinged on family history. Writing "It's All Relative" for the Jerusalem Post. Continuing research on both sides of the family since 1990. Being asked by JTA.org to start "Tracing the Tribe - The Jewish Genealogy Blog." Teaching genealogy online and co-founding GenClass.com. Speaking at conferences and to groups to encourage each person to get started in recording his or her unique family history.

Amazing what one sentence can do!

Passover memories: NYC, Teheran, LA

The season is upon us - only one day left until Passover-Pesach-Pessah-Pesaj (choose your favorite spelling!) begins. Among Conversos in the US and elsewhere, the holiday is known as Santo Moises, and families gather to tell the story of Moses behind closed doors and covered windows.

Pesach is the ultimate Jewish family immigration story as generations gather around the world to tell the story of the Exodus. We are commanded to imagine that each of us today were on that journey, so it is only natural that we also think of all the journeys our unique families have undertaken throughout history. It's the perfect time to share these stories of family history with the younger generations - make it your tradition!

In America and in Israel, preparing for Passover is a relative snap - except for the cleaning. Everything is available - just sitting there on supermarket shelves.

In Southern Nevada, the major supermarkets had huge displays - the first major display was in the early '90s, when one very popular item (in addition to the Passover marshmallows which I froze in quantity) was spicy jalapeno gefilte fish! The first year, cartons of the stuff walked out the door. I had never seen it before. There were masses of traditional holiday treats, like chocolate-covered marshmallow twists (best eaten frozen and a personal favorite when I can find them).

However, during our years in Teheran, it wasn't so easy. There were no easy packaged convenience foods. However, it didn't matter much as Persian cuisine is a seasonal cuisine and doesn't use many packaged ingredients. Almost everything is fresh-bought, chopped, cooked: herbs, sauces, stews, etc.

Each year, my mother-in-law would have her huge copper cooking pots (in various sizes like this one at left) re-tinned on the inside before Pesach ensuring properly kosher cooking utensils. She would take them to the mesgar (the coppersmith - mes is copper - who also did the tinning). The bottom is wider so that there is a good crispy crust of tahdig in the bottom and the rice is piled inside to steam in a cone shape.

Preparations required purchasing huge sacks of rice and, although it always had to be cleaned of little pebbles and chaff, the cleaning for the Passover rice was much more stringent. It was poured onto huge round metal trays or tightly woven round mats. We spent hours sifting through the grains and removing anything that wasn't rice!

Also, huge quantities of nuts and dried fruits appeared in the kitchen - I soon learned why. There were bags of large pistachios, sweet almonds, hazelnuts, pumpkin seeds. My mother-in-law washed the nuts, salted and dried them and then roasted them at home to make sure they would be kosher. Bowls of various nuts are staples on the coffee tables of Persian homes all year round, and we also needed to make a lot of badam sukhte - caramelized almonds - a Passover treat.

Raised Ashkenazi in Brooklyn - my family's charoset (supposed to symbolize mud bricks and mortar used by our people when they were slaves in Egypt) was the wimpy traditional Eastern European sort using only red wine, walnuts, apples, cinnamon and sugar. A small bowl of it was made and used only for the ceremony.

Imagine my surprise during my first Teheran Pesach when I saw huge bowls of the Persian version - called halegh - incorporating as many as 20 types of nuts, dates, golden seedless raisins, fresh and dried fruits (banana, apple, pear, apricot and more), pomegranate paste, vinegar, sweet wine and many spices (cinnamon, clove, pepper). We ate it at the two seder dinners and all week long, spreading it on matzoh, as a filling for Passover cakes or just by the spoon as a snack. In New York, we had tuna sandwiches on matzo; in Teheran, it was halegh. Once you try halegh, you'll never go back.

The first year in Teheran was hard for me, as one doesn't easily forget lifelong traditions of matzo balls (unheard of in Teheran), gefilte fish, chopped liver, brisket or Passover cakes and pastries (also unheard of, except for meringue cookies). There were no Passover candies, no Passover dairy products. Occasionally, someone would make a flat cake that tasted like sawdust. What was popular however was marzipan, molded and painted to look like different fruits. That was almost an art form - some women were very talented at designing these.

My adventures included trying to bake holiday cakes without anything as simple as a set of measuring spoons and cups - the family didn't really bake, why would they need those? I fashioned a set myself out of various utensils - so many of these spoons was a tablespoon, so many of those were a cup, I decided. Our own things had not yet arrived and I'm sure everyone thought the American daughter-in-law was more than meshuganah (crazy, Yiddish). I missed my grandmother's ingberlach (carrot, ginger and honey candy), and tried to make it on a rainy, damp day (big mistake). Hint: If you are now nostalgic for this old-fashioned treat, wait for a dry sunny day.

I ground matzo in a blender for matzo meal and ground it still finer for cake meal. I figured out how to bake in strange utensils at Celsius. I made matzo balls uneaten except my husband - everyone laughed at them. Why eat strange fluffy matzo balls when there were delicious firm, peppery gondi (chickpea flour, cardamom, onion and ground meat formed into balls and simmered in chicken soup). There was no gefilte fish or horseradish.

When my husband first came to America, he mistakenly heard the words gefilte fish as "filthy fish," and to this day that's what he calls it. Of course, he says, if you put enough chrein (fresh ground eye-watering horseradish) on anything, it will be palatable - and also clear your sinuses.

When our things finally arrived in Teheran, I was prepared with cookbooks, proper utensils and an American (Farenheit scale) oven, and started my own tradition of making holiday cakes for the family - including brownies, Italian mocha cake, macaroons. Cake was essential if you didn't want to eat matzo all the time.

Continued in Part 2......

Food: More south-of-the-border Passover fusion

Gefilte fish in Veracruz sauce (peppers, olives, capers)? Gribenes with a side of guacamole? Stews served with salsa?

It's all in Joan Nathan's great article in the New York Times about cooking Passover favorites with a Mexican twist by Mexico City native Patricia Jinich.

Jinich teaches regional cooking at Washington DC's Mexican Cultural Institute, and recently showed a large group of women at the Lubavitch Center how to cook for Passover.

Jinich grew up in Mexico, one of 40,000 to 50,000 Jews, most of them descendants of Eastern European immigrants.

(The first Jews came to Mexico from Spain during the Inquisition. “To this day,” Ms. Jinich said, “there are women in regions of Mexico who light candles on Friday night in secret.”)

Her father’s parents escaped from pogroms in Poland at the turn of the 20th century, moving to Mexico City’s Polanco neighborhood, named for the Polish Jews who had settled there. Her mother’s parents fled Austria and Slovenia in the 1930s.

They, and their food, blended in.

Passover and holiday cooking were a mix of European and Mexican when Ms. Jinich was growing up: chicken soup with matzo balls, mushrooms and jalapeños; meat stews with salsa on the side; Austrian tortes made with Mexican vanilla and chocolate; and a Passover flourless chocolate pecan torte, served with berries sweetened with shaved piloncillo, raw Mexican brown sugar, and flavored with lime juice.

Yum!

She comes from a cooking family: sister Alisa Romano is a pastry chef near Miami; sister Karen Drijanski is a Vancouver caterer; while sister Sharon Drijanski in Miami has written vegetarian cookbooks.

Recipes include chicken with apricot, tamarind and chipotle sauce, spinach salad with mushrooms and hibiscus flower vinaigrette, Nana Jose's chocolate pecan cake (garnished with brown piloncillo sugar, strawberries, blackberries, lime juice and whipped cream if desired).

There's even a recipe for caramelized almonds, which is what Persian Jews call badam sukhte (burned almonds), also made by the Syrian Jewish community. Reminds me that I have to add it to my to-do list. I make it every year.

Jinich's recipe calls for maple syrup or brown sugar; we just use white sugar, but the maple syrup sounds great!

Food: Mexican flavors Passover

Four years ago, New York City chef Julian Medina of the contemporary Mexican bistro, Toloache, began adding Mexican-flavored Passover fare to his menu, drawing on Sephardic and Ashkenazi traditions and spicing them up.

In the early years, 10 people came to eat. Now 100 people order food for Passover. He also prepares his own creative take on fare for Rosh Hashanah and Chanukah.

This JTA story focuses on Medina and his delicious food. It might even turn into a DNA genetic genealogy story if Medina tests with FamilyTreeDNA.com, as his wife suspects Medina's family has Converso roots. The name is among documented Jewish Sephardic names.

Why would a chef from Mexico City who had dazzled clients at Maya and Pampano, two of Manhattan’s best Mexican restaurants, turn to Jewish cuisine for inspiration?

Although Medina was born a Catholic, he converted to Judaism. Six years ago, when he was dating the Jewish woman who would become his wife, he started spending holidays with her family. It sparked a curiosity about her religion that continued to grow the more he learned about Jewish rituals.

From the beginning he was intrigued by each holiday’s traditional fare as he tasted the foods his future mother-in-law prepared. It wasn’t long before he started seasoning Jewish recipes with the flavors of his youth.

Medina explored Jewish cooking, both Sephardi and Ashkenazi.

“This is what chefs do when exposed to cuisines that excite them -- they conduct research to develop new recipes,” he says. “Food is never static. It changes every day.”

Many of Medina's recipes benefit from these cuisines.

See the link for the recipes for some delicious new ideas: matzah ball soup with cilantro, jalapeno and lime juice, brisket con chipotle pepper, matzah tortillas, matzah tostada Yucatan-style (with achiote smoked sea bass salad and horseradish-jalapeno salsa), roast halibut with cauliflower "latke" and hibiscus chipotle glaze. One recipe not provided is matzah pudding with roasted bananas. I guess you'll have to drop into Toloache to learn about that one. If you do, please send me the recipe!

Medina's wife says she suspects the family has Jewish roots. Many Conversos (those forced to convert to Catholicism during the Inquisition) were among early settlers in Mexico.

The origin of their name is Hebrew and Arabic. Several Jewish families in Spain have carried the surname Medina. In the Spanish province of Cadiz, in the city Medina-Sidonia, it was customary among Sephardim to be named for the city of origin.

Of course, Sephardic genealogists know that many Sephardic surnames reflect geographic locations, not just that of Medina-Sidonia. Pere Bonnin's book, Sangre Judia, lists CADIS (Mallorca, 1391), CADIZ (Jerez, 1266), and MEDINA (Avila, 1409). There is also a MEDINA with a J1 haplogroup (carried by some 28% of Sephardic Jews) in the New Mexico Project at FamilyTreeDNA.com.

Medina might want to consider taking a Y-DNA test.

In any case, the recipes seem delicious.

Food: A taste of heritage

In Jerusalem, they lined up for a taste of Grandma's cooking on Sunday at the first Festival of the Jerusalem Pot.

Trying to get a precise recipe from one of Jerusalem's elderly cooks is impossible - they have neither specific quantities nor cooking times.

"It's simple," says Rachel Guate, who was preparing a couscous and a black-eyed pea dish, delicacies from her native Tripoli that are much more complex than this description would imply.

The cooking process will have to remain a mystery. When asked, Guate listed only some of the ingredients: white beans, mangold leaves "ground really well and fried," stuffed intestines, some sort of beef patties that were cooked for hours, made from "beef fat, eggs, semolina, garlic and spices," and couscous.

The festival attracted thousands of hungry residents into the city's Mahane Yehuda market, reported Haaretz.

Some of the most famous home cooks were paired with famous chefs from local restaurants who helped the grandmothers make large quantities of traditional ethnic delights from many communities.

The enormous pots of food sat on improvised tables, while several road shows
offered additional entertainment. Unlike every other food festival that has been
held in recent years, this one offered a rare combination of roots, groove and
even Hassidic robes.

Chefs Keren Kadosh and Tallie Friedman, who organized the festival, visited each of the grandmothers in their own homes, eventually tasting food from 50-60 grandmothers. The event featured dishes from Morocco, Italy, Iran, Poland, Ashkenazi, Jerusalem, Kurdistan and Tripoli (Libya).

Nu? So where's the cookbook? I'd buy one if it were available.

Ashkenazi, Sephardi: Essential Jewish genealogy books

The 56th Edition of the Carnival of Genealogy challenged us to choose 10 essential books for our personal genealogical research.

Tracing the Tribe is tweaking the challenge a bit to reflect both its readership and my personal interests in both Ashkenazi and Sephardi genealogy.

-Jewish communities considered Ashkenazi include individuals whose ancestors generally spoke Yiddish and lived in Eastern Europe, although they may actually have emigrated from Western Europe and the Mediterranean and vice versa. Ashkenazim are found around the world today.

-Jewish communities considered Sephardic in the broadest sense of the word, including Jewish communities whose roots are not in Eastern Europe - although individuals, families and communities did migrate there - but rather in Iberia and places beyond (immigration from Iberia from 1391 and after the 1492 Expulsion to many Mediterranean countries, Amsterdam, the Caribbean and elsewhere), as well as those communities called Mizrahi - the Jewish communities of the Middle East and Asia, such as Iraq, Syria, Iran, India, Afghanistan and others. Sephardim are also found around the world today.

These books - and many others in each category - are always near my desk. The rules for this challenge indicated only 10 should be mentioned. Tracing the Tribe readers are invited to post additional books in both categories.

10 Essential Ashkenazi Research Books

1. Where Once We Walked: Revised Edition: Gary Mokotoff, Sallyann Amdur Sack with Alexander Sharon. It identifies more than 23,500 towns where Jews lived before the Holocaust. Includes 17,500 alternate names, soundex index and "nearby town" index.

2. A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian
Empire: Alexander Beider. 74,000 surnames from the Czarist Empire including etymologies and where names appeared, origins and evolution of Jewish surnames in Eastern Europe. (Two vols.)

3. Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names: Alexander Beider. A huge, detailed resource providing the origin and evolution of 15,000 given names.

4. Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland: Alexander Beider. Award-winning compilation of 32,000 surnames.

5. Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia: Alexander Beider. Identifies 35,000 surnames from the region.

6. Jewish Personal Names: Shmuel Gorr. Roots of more than 1,200 Jewish given names showing Yiddish/Hebrew variants with English transliteration.

7. Surnames: Lars Menk. More than 13,000 surnames from pre-World War I Germany.

8. Russian-Jewish Given Names: Their Origins and Variants: Boris Feldblyum. Comprehensive collection of Jewish given names from czarist Russia.

9. Encyclopedia of Jewish Life: ed. Shmuel Spector. 6,500 towns in Europe where Jews lived before the Holocaust.

10. Sourcebook for Jewish Genealogies and Family Histories: David Zubatsky, Irwin Berent. Reference to family trees with more than 10,000 Jewish surnames.

10 Essential Sephardi Research Books
(Languages include Spanish/Catalan/French, with documents in Latin and Hebrew in original and in translation. The bibliographies provide many more resources. Sephardic research requires different resources and languages.)

1. Sangre Judia: Pere Bonnin. Thousands of Jewish names taken from pre-Inquisition, Inquisition courts and other documents, with year of document and city.

2. Sephardic Genealogy: Dr. Jeffrey S. Malka. Award-winning and pioneering comprehensive guide to Sephardic research.

3. Dictionary of Sephardic Surnames (2nd ed.): Guilherme Faiguenboim, et al. 17,000 surnames from more than 24 countries where Sephardim lived.

4. Per A Una Historia de la Girona Jueva (2 vols): ed., David Romano. History of the Jews of Girona, with archival documents, encyclopedia articles, photographs, bibliography.

5. La Catalunya Jueva: Maps, photographs, history, documents; excellent bibliography.

6. Els Jueus de Valls (The Jews of Valls): Gabriel Secall i Guell. History, archival documents, names, bibliography. The same author compiled a book on the Jews of Tarragona.

7. Perpignan: L'histoire des Juifs dans la ville (XII-XX siecles): Perpignan Archives Histoire (Perpignan Historical Archives). Jewish History, archival documents, names, bibliography.

8. La Via Judia en Sefarad: Ministry of Culture. History, archival documents, names, photographs, bibliography.

9. El Libro Verde de Aragon: ed., Monique Combescure Thiry, Miguel Angel Motis Dolader. History, Conversos and the Inquisition in Aragon, genealogical charts; three editions of the Green Book compared, bibliography.

10. Secrecy and Deceit: The Religion of the Crypto-Jews: David M. Gitlitz. Religious customs of Iberian Jews who converted by force to Catholicism, 14th-15th centuries. Details crypto-Jewish culture in Spain, Portugal, the Americas. Records include Inquisition documents, history, rabbinical rulings, eyewitness accounts and more.

As with my Ashkenazi book list, I could have added many more books collected in the US, in Barcelona (Catalunya, Spain) and Perpignan, France. Additional topics include Sephardim in the Caribbean, Turkey, food customs, and much more.

Canada: Montreal cemetery data online

Elizabeth LaPointe, in her Genealogy Canada blog, reported that among Jewish records at WorldVitalRecords are 23,000 records from Montreal Jewish cemeteries:

In Montreal, the Back River Cemetery (1876-1934), Berri Street entrance; Back River Cemetery (1901-1934), South Denis entrance; Shearit Israel - Spanish and Portuguese Jews (1825-1999); and a portion of Baron De Hirsch Cemetery on Rue de Savane have been transcribed.

The records are from Avraham Laber's Jewish Data, which has partnered with WorldVitalRecords to release more than 500,000 (previously posted on Tracing the Tribe) records of many types from the US, Canada, Germany and Israel.

Search by last name and discover first name, civil year of record, the record's location, and a photo of the gravestone.

Laber - Jewish Data's president- said:

"Our goal is to provide a home for Jewish records in order to help people study Jewish history and genealogy. Here we have thousands of hours of research already done for people, and it only takes them a few seconds to access the records. If they would search for the same records on their own, it would cost them much more money and time."

In 1989, Elizabeth - then a newspaper reporter - began writing about Canadian genealogy. She became hooked as she went through some previous family research and was putting her notes together.

According to her first posting, she's been on the Web for 14 years with various genalogical interests but, in 2004, started GenealogyCanada.com to focus on Canadian genealogy, history, heritage news and to fill that niche.