San Francisco: 'Towers of Gold' author speaks, March 27

Have you read Frances Dinkespiel's book - Towers of Gold - about her great-great-grandfather Isaias Hellman ? Tracing the Tribe highly recommends it.

San Francisco-area residents can hear the author talk about the book at the next meeting of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society on Sunday, March 27.

Doors open at 12.30pm, and the program begins at 1pm at Congregation Beth Israel-Judea, 625 Brotherhood Way,  next to Brandeis Hillel Day School.

Dinkelspiel's lecture is entitled "Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California."

Isaias Wolf Hellman left Bavaria at age 16 and within 10 years of arriving in Gold Rush-era California founded Los Angeles' first bank. A brilliant entrepreneur and financier, he was integral to the founding of Wells Fargo Bank, the establishment of the University of Southern California, and the financing of the burgeoning oil industry. Frances Dinkelspiel (Hellman's great-great-granddaughter) will talk about Hellman's impact on early Los Angeles and his role in the development of San Francisco as a major financial center.

An award-winning journalist, Dinkelspiel's work has appeared in the New York Times, People, the San Jose Mercury News, San Francisco Magazine, and other publications. She is the co-founder of Berkeleyside.com, a new local website about Berkeley, and lives in Berkeley. Read more about her and the book here.

For more information or directions, click here.

Food: When oysters were kosher

Did you know that a 19th-century Reform Jewish kitchen cookbook offered recipes for oysters and ham salad, along with challah and latkes?

Chicago residents are in for a delicious treat when culinary historian Jane Ziegelman speaks at the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies on Sunday, December 19.

The talk - "When Oysters were Kosher," begins at 2pm; a book signing of Ziegelman's new book, 97 Orchard, follows.

Tickets (call 312-322-1733) are $18; $10 for Spertus members, and $8 for students.

A century ago, "Aunt Babette's Cook Book" (1889) provided a look at Reform Judaism then. Babette, in reality, was Chicago homemaker Bertha Kramer, a member of the city's Reform community.

Ziegelman's appearance is in conjunction with the Spertus exhibit - Uncovered & Rediscovered: Stories of Jewish Chicago - and she'll share Kramer's story.

The Spertus talk will focus on an affluent community wanting to assimilate and leave the ghetto, as evidenced by what they ate. The story also presents the Ziegelman's upbringing and she states that "So much of Jewish history can be told through its food."

Ziegelman, director of the New York Tenement Museum's culinary center, is the author of a new book, "97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement" (Harper Collins, $25.99).

The Chicago Jewish News carried a story by editor Pauline Dubkin Yearwood on the new book, which offers this word picture of an expertly prepared carp for Shabbat dinner:

When we first meet Natalie Gumpertz, in Jane Ziegelman's book “97 Orchard: An Edible History of Five Immigrant Families in One New York Tenement,” it is a Friday morning in the late 1890s, and Mrs. Gumpertz is preparing a fish for Shabbat dinner that night.

The carp “lays snugly in an oblong vessel, like a newborn in a watery cradle. From our current vantage point, it looks intact. In reality, however, the fish has been surgically disassembled and reassembled. It is the kind of culinary operation worthy of the trained professional, yet the responsible party is standing in front of us, an ordinary home cook.”

After Mrs. Gumpertz, who immigrated to New York from Prussia in 1858, slits the fish down the middle, she scrapes the flesh from the skin, chops it, stuffs it back into the carp, lays the creation on a bed of fish bones and onions, simmers it, then, when done, moves the pot to an open window to cool.

Then, “moments before sundown, start of the Jewish Sabbath, she slices her carp crosswise into ovals and lays them on a plate. The cooking broth, rich in gelatin from the fish bones, has turned to jelly. The onion skin has tinted it gold. Mrs. Gumpertz spoons that up too, dabbing it over the fish in glistening puddles. To a hungry Jew at the end of the workweek, could any sight be more beautiful?”

Who wouldn't want to go out and catch a carp after reading that?

Ziegelman, writesYearwood, "came into possession of what she describes as 'a whole wealth of family genealogy and history of this real-life woman who lived on Prairie Avenue (in Chicago) in the second half of the 19th century. She belonged to the world of Jewish society and she wrote this cookbook, and I use her as a kind of example of a lost culture.'”

Kramer's cookbook (Bloch Publishing, Cincinnati) was known as the "treif" (not kosher) cookbook. It included recipes for shrimp, lobster, ham, squirrel and rabbit, as well as an all-oyster supper.

For more information on "97 Orchard," read the complete article at the link above.

The new culinary program at the Tenement Museum will present immigrant chefs (professional and home cooks), cookbook authors and many other people who will be cooking together and talking about food.

New York: HIAS photo archives, Dec. 19

A picture is worth a thousand words.

What is more precious to a family historian than the treasured photos of our families through the generations?

Valery Bazarov of HIAS will present “HIAS Photo Archives: Faces of Immigration,” at the JGS of New York's annual members-only brunch on December 19.

The event will begin with brunch at 11am, followed by the program at 12.40pm, at the Brotherhood Synagogue 28 Gramercy Park South (near 3rd Avenue), in Manhattan. Admission: JGSNY members, free; others, $5 at the door for the presentation at 12.30pm only.

In every family, such photos are treasured and relished – even more so in the family of HIAS that amounts to more than 4 million Jews who immigrated to America. Forty linear feet of the archival collection contain 22,000 images taken at the most crucial times, when ties with the past were severed and a new life was still unknown. These pictures chronicle a period that lasted more than 100 years.

Refugees from persecution, pogroms, and poverty, escapees from death and famine – they all pass before our eyes when telling the story of their suffering and hope. The first Seders on Ellis Island and Jewish children in Yokohama, the internment camps in Vichy France and displaced persons on board the military transports that brought them to safe havens, Hungarian and Cuban refugees, North African Jews and the Soviet Jewry exodus – these images will leave no hearts unmoved.

Valery will also present case studies of rescued and resettled families at different periods of immigration history.

He is the director of the HIAS Family History and Location Services, which helps immigrants of different generations find family members and friends – often in other countries – with whom they have lost contact over the years, sometimes decades. He is committed to finding and honoring the heroes, Jewish and non-Jewish, who rescued European Jews during the Holocaust.

Tracing the Tribe's good friend Valery researches HIAS history and reports on his findings as frequent lecturer at international and national Jewish genealogy conferences and societies.

For more information, click here.

New York: "Rebuilding Polish Lithuania 1919-1939," Nov. 8

Are your roots in Poland or Lithuania? Learn about a little-known period when American Jews helped rebuild Polish Lithuania, on Monday, November 8.

The program begins at 3pm, sponsored by The Podbrodz Society at YIVO, at the Center for Jewish History.

Assistant Professor of History Rebecca Kobrin (Columbia University) will speak on "Empire of Charity: American Jews and the Rebuilding of Polish Lithuania, 1919-1939."

From 1919-1939, Jewish emigres in the United States sent millions of dollars to rebuild their former homes throughout Polish Lithuania.

Kobrin's talk will focus on the role Jewish emigres and their philanthropy played in reshaping political, social and economic life in Brisk and Vilna, the two centers of Lithuanian Jewry.

The talk is free, but reservations are required.

Between 1919 and 1939, Jewish émigrés in the United States sent millions of dollars to rebuild their former homes scattered throughout Polish Lithuania. This talk focuses on the role Jewish émigrés and their philanthropy played in reshaping political, social, and economic life in Brisk and Vilna, the two historic intellectual centers of Lithuanian Jewry.

While the stated goal of Jewish émigré generosity was to relieve economic distress, it often caused a reshaping of Jews' understanding of their place in the new nation-states of Eastern Europe during this era of political and economic upheaval.

New York: Red Star Line emigrants, Oct. 17

Jewish emigrants of the Red Star Line will be the topic at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York, on Sunday, October 17.

The program begins at 2pm, at the Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street, Manhattan.

Speaker Erwin Joos Erwin Joos is the curator of Belgium’s Eugeen Van Mieghem Museum and president of the non-profit Eugeen Van Mieghem Foundation, with more than 1,000 members.

A mass emigration of Eastern European Jews took place from Antwerp to America from 1873-1934. Most arrived after the pogroms (1900-1914). The grueling steerage journey to American ports took from seven to 14 days. Some 30-40% of Jewish Americans have ancestors who sailed with the Red Star Line, one of the most important American lines.

Many stories have been written about the emigration experience from Antwerp by such Jewish authors as Sholom Aleichem and Yuri Suhl. Some famous passengers were Irving Berlin, Golda Meir and Albert Einstein.

Antwerp artist Eugeen Van Mieghem created a collection of works of art about these emigrants. His parents' tavern was located on Montevideo Street opposite the Red Star Line warehouse.

Joos has spoken at international Jewish genealogy conferences, organized exhibits in numerous museums and has authored five major art books, including "Antwerp New York: Eugene Van Mieghem" and edited 12 albums.

Early arrivals for the program may use the Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute from 11am for networking, access to research materials and the computers.

Alien resident A-Files released for public access

According to a National Archives press release, more than 300,000 case files on US alien residents are now open to the public at the National Archives branch in Kansas City, Missouri.

While you can search for your names of interest online, you may only see the files in person or order copies. Click here to search for names in the Archival Research Catalog. Not all the hits returned are for A-Files, some are for armed forces service and other documents.

I found A-Files for TOLLIN, BANK, FINK and others of interest. The first screen after a search lists the names. Click on a name of interest and learn more about the file in general terms. Click on the "Scope & Content" tab for an A-File and learn the individual's birthdate and country of origin. For David Tollin: "This file consists of an alien case file for David Tollin. Date of birth is listed as 07/20/1898. Country is listed as Russia."

The press release indicated that these files are for those born prior to - and including - 1909.

Known as A-Files, they were transferred to the Archives from the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Service (USCIS). They are only a small portion of millions of files that will eventually be transferred and opened to public access.

“The A-files are a key to unlocking the fascinating stories of millions of people who traveled to the United States in search of opportunity, including my own grandfather” said Archivist of the United States David S. Ferriero. “They include information such as photographs, personal correspondence, birth certificates, health records, interview transcripts, visas, applications and other information on all non-naturalized alien residents, both legal and illegal. The snapshot of American life that develops from each file can, in some cases, serve as a one-stop-shopping for researchers.”

The INS - predecessor to the USCIS - began issuing Alien Registration numbers in 1940, and began creating A-files in 1944. According to the agency, the files document the famous, the infamous, the anonymous and the well-known, and are an historical and genealogical goldmine. They hold numerous relatively modern documents in one file for a rich source of biographical information.

The files are subject to the 100-year rule, meaning they can can be transferred to the NA after 100 years from the birth date of a file's subject.

The Kansas City branch will hold all A-Files except from San Francisco, Honolulu, Reno, and Guam, which will be held at the San Francisco branch. Those files are being prepared for transfer.

Unfortunately, they are not online. They may be viewed in person by appointment at Kansas City or copies of files may be ordered for a fee. Click here to learn more about requesting A-Files.

Planning a trip to KC? The branch is open Tuesday-Saturday, 8am-4pm for research.

Read the complete press release at the first link above.

Ancestry.com: Immigration Collection free through Labor Day

Ancestry.com launched a collection of more than 1,700 recorded oral histories of immigrants who arrived through Ellis Island. It's the first time the collection is available online.

In celebration, the subscription site is making its complete US Immigration Collection free through Labor Day (Monday, September 6), in the US.

"As immigrants created new lives in the U.S., the stories of their homelands and their remarkable journeys to America were often lost," said Christopher Tracy, senior vice president of global content for Ancestry.com. "We are thrilled to offer people the opportunity to hear the voices of their ancestors sharing stories of their lives."

Between 1892 and 1954, millions of immigrants arrived in America, and the National Park Service began recording the oral histories in the 1970s. The collections offers unique first-hand accounts recalling the lives they left behind, reasons for leaving and their incredible journeys to America.

Previously, the recordings were housed only at the Ellis Island Immigration Museum and could only be accessed by visitors in person on site. In addition to immigrants' stories, it also includes those from military personnel stationed on Ellis Island and former workers.

"To our family it is important that we in the U.S. know the origin of the people who came to this country, settled here and made it what it is today. It makes us very proud to know that our mother was part of this," said Yvonne Rumac, daughter of oral history participant Estelle Belford, who immigrated to the United States from Romania via Ellis Island in 1905.

The US Immigration Collections includes more than 170 million records: passenger manifests from 1820-1960, including those who came through Ellis Island; more than 7 million citizenship and naturalization records; border crossings, passport applications and additional material.

New material added to the collection:

-- Nearly 2 million new U.S. naturalization record indexes have been added from 11 states (Alaska, California, Connecticut, Hawaii, Louisiana, Maine, Montana, New York, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Washington state).

-- Nearly 2 million records were added for ship crew members who arrived in the port of Boston, bringing the Boston Passenger and Crew Lists (1820-1943) to more than 3.8 million.

The US Immigration Collection will be open to all through Labor Day, but the Oral History Collection will remain permanently free.

Learn more here.

Israel: Important new database projects

At the recent IAJGS conference in Los Angeles, the 2010 Stern Grant was awarded to the Israel Genealogical Society.

The grant will make possible the database of name changes as published, beginning in 1949, in the Yalkut Hapirsumim of the Israeli Government.

As data is extracted from each volume, it will be added to a database - open to public access - on the IGS website, and will provide help to those facing brick walls in Israeli research.

In another development, the IGS has launched the online beta site for the "19th Century Montefiore Censuses of the Jewish Population of Eretz Israel, Alexandria, Beirut and Sidon (Saida)."

It is particularly useful for those researching Sephardic families as records are difficult to find. A search for "Iran" produced 34 families. In contrast, a search for "Belarus" received 527 hits, with 40 listing Mogilev and 31 listing Mahilyow (current spelling) as place of birth. Some names seem familiar from my TALALAI research and I will check the names of wives and children in my own records. Perhaps some of my own "missing links" might be in this database!

According to the Montefiore Endowment:

The Montefiore Endowment commissioned the Israel Genealogical Society to transliterate the censuses into modern Hebrew and English scripts and to translate them.

Details include personal and family information, occupations and countries of origin. Less than 1% of the Jewish inhabitants at the time refused to participate on religious grounds, so the censuses are quite detailed. Other residents may not have been included for other reasons, such as personal or political. Read more about these censuses here at IGS.

The manuscripts are the property of the Montefiore Endowment and are in London,. Researchers may view them by appointment. Details are recorded in Hebrew in diverse scripts, many are very difficult to read, there is no index, and tracking of individuals is difficult.

The methodology of the project included:

-- Scanning the original manuscript pages and converting old but still usable microfiche images to PDF format
-- Transcribing the data into spreadsheets
-- Proof-reading and correcting
-- Pasting the different sections into a single spreadsheet for each census
-- Translating and/or transliterating the original Hebrew into the English/Latin alphabet
-- Final proof-reading
-- Converting the spreadsheet into a searchable database.

Since 2008, the IGS and its dedicated volunteers have been working on transcribing the censuses into a modern Hebrew font, to transliterate names and details into English

For the first time, the documents are now in the process of being made available in Hebrew and English with a dual-language search engine to help track individuals and families. Extended families are linked, and there are links to the digitized page.

The project includes five censuses of Eretz Israel (including Beirut and Sidon) and one of Alexandria. Currently, the 1839, 1840 (Alexandria) and 1855 are now online here

The 1849 census will be available in a few months.

Southern California: Red Line Jewish Immigrants, Aug. 1

The Red Star Line brought 2.7 million immigrants - half were likely Jewish - from Eastern Europe, via Antwerp, to US ports from 1873-1934.

Artist Eugeen Van Mieghem of Antwerp is probably the only European artist who captured the lives of the Jewish immigrants. His parents had a tavern in front of the Red Star Line warehouse, providing a front row seat.

Eugeen Van Mieghem Museum (Antwerp) curator Erwin Joos will speak at the Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV) on Sunday, August 1.

The program will run from 1.30-3.30pm at Temple Adat Elohim, 2420 E. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks.

Joos' topic is "One Foot in America: Eugeen Van Mieghem (1875-1930) and the Jewish Emigrants of the Red Star Line."

The largest number of Jewish immigrants came following programs (1900-1914). Joos will also address Jewish writers who described their travel experiences on one of the most important shipping lines.

Joos is also president of the non-profit Eugeen Van Mieghem Foundation, which has more than 1,100 members. He has spoken some 100 times in Dutch, English and French, in Antwerp, Amsterdam, Paris, New York and Philadelphia; has written five art books, 12 albums, and organized 15 exhibits.

He will be speaking at several Jewish genealogical societies on this tour, so look out for notices and try to attend his talk.

The book and DVD -"One Foot in America, Eugeen Van Mieghem (1875-1930) and the Jewish Emigrants of the Red Star Line" - will be available for $20 each.

For more information, visit the JGSCV or contact president Jan Meisels Allen.

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.

Belarus: Gomel project news

Are you researching Belarus? Is Gomel one of your towns of interest?

Tracing the Tribe has an ancillary interest in Gomel as well. Although Mogilev and environs seems to be the focus of our research, Joseph Talalay of Vorotinschtina married Sophie Brusterman of Gomel. They moved to Moscow, Berlin, London and eventually the US.

Forming a rough triangle, Gomel was in the south, with Bobruisk to the northwest and Mogilev to the north. People from one often went to another for marriage or business. We had Mogilev relatives who went to live in Bobruisk over the years. If you are researching any of these three cities, check available records for the other two - you might find a few surprises!

If you are also interested in the town, read this update from Paul Zoglin of the Gomel (Belarus) project.

The group has been working on translating the first set of Gomel records (marriage records 1888-1905). The work resumed a few weeks ago, he writes, but it is slow going because the records are hard to read.

Paul hopes he may have something before the JGSLA 2010 conference, but it might be later. He will be attending JGSLA 2010, and adds that 10 other group members people will also be present.

A conference get-together may take place for the Gomel research group at 9.30pm Sunday, July 11. All Gomel researchers attending the conference should contact Paul for more information - he's very interested in meeting with them during the conference.

He is also working on the old Jewish neighborhoods in Gomel, and has been investigating the passenger manifests of immigrants from Gomel and recording their street addresses, if and when they appear.

Paul asks Gomel researchers to share with him any additional addresses - if known - of their families. He'll be visiting Gomel in July and plans to take photos of the buildings. Although, he says, "not much remains in Gomel from before the revolution" it is possible some of the old buildings survived.

If Gomel is one of your towns, contact Paul to see how you can help the project move forward and to participate.

Kentucky: From Daniel Boone to the Shapiras

Keeping with today's Southern theme, here's a glimpse of Jewish life in Louisville, Kentucky.

The story in the Jewish Exponent covers whiskey, the Kentucky Derby and MOTs.

The small community numbers about 8,500 and features the oldest and largest congregation in the state - Congregation Adath Israel Brith Sholom (AKA The Temple), chartered in 1843, as the sixth Reform congregation in the US.

Established in 1843 as K.K. Adas Israel, The Temple was a founding member of Reform Judaism's Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now Union for Reform Judaism) and an early proponent of Reform in American Jewish life. When Reform Judaism began in 1873, the congregation was the second largest congregation in the movement. Brith Sholom was founded by the next group of newcomers who did not want Orthodox rites but who wanted services in their native German (Adath Israel's services were in English). Eventually the two merged.

The Temple's archives are extensive and hold historic materials "chronicling the significant people, places and events of the past century and a half, since the establishment of our congregation by charter in January 1843." Items include Temple artifacts, books, records dating to the early days of both congregations and more than 80 oral histories. A personal video history project is currently underway.

Here are some additional tidbits:

-- Daniel Boone was hired by the Virginia company of Cohen and Isaacs to check out their lands in Kentucky. The Gratz family of Philadelphia set up Ohio River trading posts and joined the founders of Lexington.

-- Distiller and philanthropist Isaac Wolfe Bernheim modeled the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest after his German childhood home.

-- Louisville was the birthplace of late Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis.

The article also has information on the area's American Bourbon and Whiskey Trail, particularly Heaven Hill Distillery, reopened following Prohibition by Shapira family members.

1934 -- Heaven Hill Distilleries, Inc., originally known as "Old Heavenhill Springs" distillery, is founded by a group of Bardstown-area investors and the five Shapira brothers, David, Ed, Gary, George and Mose. ...

According to the distillery's communications director and Temple congregation member Larry Kass, its current status as a beverage industry leader is due to second-generation owners Max and Harry Shapira.

The congregation decided to dedicate the 2010 annual fundraiser to Max Shapira, but he wasn't interested in the spotlight, so the family and local rabbis expanded the theme into a week-long celebration of the role local Jewish immigrants played in the spirits industry and regional growth.

The event is titled "The Chosen Spirit Archival Exhibition and Tribute."

Kass worked with Rabbis Joe Rooks-Rapport and Gaylia R. Rooks to research archiva materials to demonstrate the family's legacy. from the archives to demonstrate the Shapira family legacy.

Learn about early American Jewish history by clicking the websites for Heaven Hill and for the congregation.

Library of Congress: Indian, Israeli book talk, March 31

"Being Indian, Being Israeli: Migration, Ethnicity and Gender in the Jewish Homeland" is the title of a book talk by Maina Chawla Singh on Wednesday, March 31.

The event begins at noon in the Asian Reading Room Foyer in the Jefferson Building.

In contemporary Israel, the bulk of Indian Jews live in Israeli periphery, where they were settled by the state from the 1950s to early 1970s.

For the first time, this book presents a deeply researched analysis of three Jewish communities from India, studying them holistically as Indian-Israelis with shared histories of migration, acculturation and identity in the Jewish Homeland.

Based on fieldwork and ethnographic research conducted 2005-2008 among Indian Jews across Israel, the book reflects the authors deep engagement and familiarity with Israeli society and the complexities of ethnicity and class that underlie the cleavages within Israeli Jewish society.

Maina Chawla Singh is Associate Professor, University of Delhi. From 2005-2008, she researched and lectured at Bar Ilan, Haifa and Tel Aviv universities. In 2008, she was Scholar-in-Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute and, in 2009, was a Fellow at Schusterman Center for Israel Studies, Brandeis University. Currently, she is Scholar-in-Residence at American University, Washington DC.

The talk is sponsored by the LOC's Asian Division, the Asian Division Friends Society and the Embassy of India.

For more information, send an email.

Brazil: Jewish immigrants to be honored

Brazil has set March 18 as a day to honor the country's Jewish immigrants, according to JTA.

The country is home to some 120,000 Jews, the largest Latin American Jewish community after Argentina.

The day will be known as Jewish Immigration Day.

On December 17, Brazil's vice-president Jose Alencar signed the bill and celebrated Chanukah with the local Jewish community in Brasilia. Rabbis, Jewish officials and diplomats attended the event.

The date is significant as it is the re-inauguration date - in 2002 - of the oldest synagogue in the Americas, Kahal Zur Israel in Recife. Founded in 1636, it was built during Dutch rule. When the Portuguese took over, the Jews left for the Caribbean islands while others found their way to New Amsterdam.

The bill was introduced by Jewish congressman Marcelo Itagiba, who said it wasn't easy to find a date reflecting the contribution made by the Jewish community to Brazil.

Florida: Palm Beach County education program, Nov. 19

Naturalization and how to obtain documents is the topic at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County on Thursday, November 19.

The venue is the South County Civic Center in Delray Beach, and the day begins at 11.30am with Galicia and Hungary SIG sessions, a 12.30pm Brick Wall session, and a 1pm business meeting, followed by JewishGen education vice president Phyllis Kramer's presentation.

FEE: Non-member guests--$5 (guest fee may be applied toward membership dues)

Kramer will demonstrate how to find and use naturalization records for family research. She teaches a quarterly JewishGen online genealogy course and frequently lectures at International genealogy conferences.

She also runs the monthly meeting Brick Wall Q&A sessions. Kramer taught a beginner’s genealogy course at last winter's JGSPBCI Mini Conference, and will again speak at this year's Mini-Conference set for December 9 at the JCC in Boca Raton.

Submit Brick Wall session questions in advance; click here for information on special interest groups. For program information, contact Tracing the Tribe's good friends Sylvia Nusinov or Marilyn Newman.

Fee: Members, free; others, $5 (which may be applied towards membership).

Books: Immigrants and émigrés

Tablet Magazine hit another home run again today, with Josh Lambert's column - On the Bookshelf - focusing on immigrants and emigres.

In his coverage of peripatetic Jewish families, he mentioned a slew of good books.

In Jacob’s Cane: A Jewish Family’s Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore (Basic, October) Elisa New tells the story of how her family "wheeled and dealed" its way through their connections in Lithuania, London, Baltimore and beyond.

[She] offers a reminder that the Jewish immigrant experience has been as various as the immigrants have been numerous, and that not all the Jews who arrived in America viewed it as a destination. “We imagine every immigrant a transplant from the rutted shtetl,” she writes, “his background pious, his experience thin, his hopes fastened on the new land to which he makes his way.”

Historian Walter Lacquer left Breslau as a teen in 1938, and lived in Palestine, London, and the US, which he covered in Thursday’s Child Has Far to Go: A Memoir of the Journeying Years (1993). His new book, Best of Times, Worst of Times: Memoirs of a Political Education (Brandeis, November), explores his encounters with Nazism, Marxism, Zionism, and the Cold War.

Kati Marton's Enemies of the People: A Family’s Escape to America (Simon and Schuster, October) covers recently opened Hungarian archives to tell her parents' story and emigration to the US in 1957.

[Her] parents were Hungarian children of privilege who became prominent international journalists thanks to their English fluency and ran afoul of the Communist secret police in the 1950s. Marton’s mother’s alleged crime? “Discussing the price of eggs (and meat) with the Americans.”

Lambert also mentions Marton's previous book, The Great Escape: Nine Jews Who Fled Hitler and Changed the World.

Tracing the Tribe thoroughly enjoyed (and highly recommends) Frances Dinkelspiel’s Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California (St. Martin’s, December, paperback), in which she describes her great-great-grandfather's role in developing the state's major industries.

[Her] great-great-grandfather never countenanced going anywhere but California when he left Bavaria in 1859, at the age of 16: he had relatives with a dry goods store in a tiny town called Los Angeles, and he aimed to join them.

German immigrant Walter Roth, in Avengers and Defenders: Glimpses of Chicago’s Jewish Past (Academy Chicago, September), views the records of Chicago’s past to uncover colorful Jewish characters who wielded extraordinary influence in his collection of historical anecdotes.

[It] introduces machers who innovated in advertising, mail order, radio, and the stockyards, as well as a number of influential Chicagoan scientists and jurists.

Journalist Miriam Pawel's The Union of Their Dreams: Power, Hope, and Struggle in Cesar Chavez’s Farm Worker Movement (Bloomsbury, October), reveals that although a number of Jews established the movement with Chavez, he turned against them in the late 1970s.

Lambert lists two novels: Jonathan Lethem's Chronic City (Doubleday, October), and Paul Auster's Invisible (Holt, November). One centers on New York's Upper East Side and the other on the Upper West Side.

The round up ends with The Enigma of Isaac Babel: Biography, History, Context (Stanford, November) edited by Gregory Friedin. Babel was sent to prison in 1939 and shot a few years later by Stalin's NKVD.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Massachusetts: Portuguese American Archives

A new archive located at the University of Massachusetts-Dartmouth may provide information for those of Portuguese Sephardic ancestry.

The location of the Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese American Archives is important as it is located between the cities of New Bedford and Fall River, at the center of a region with one of the largest Portuguese-origin immigrant communities.

Indeed, there is evidence that numbers of Portuguese immigrants were of Sephardic converso heritage, although this is not addressed in the archival material read by Tracing the Tribe. See "The Sephardic Connection" below.

Read more about the collection here.

Endowed in 2005 and named for Affonso Ferreira-Ferreira Mendes, a well-known radio personality and producer in Taunton, the archives has been actively collecting, since 1996, records of social, cultural, educational and religious organizations and personal and family papers of the Portuguese community in the United States.

There are 19 collections: Manuscripts documenting local and national Portuguese American families and organizations, photos on a wide range of topics, an oral history collection of 87 interviews(see the surnames), more than 150 boxes of original newspapers from the U.S. Portuguese press, and personal papers collections of local politicians, educators, authors and businessmen. There is information on the Azores and Cape Verde.

In 2007, the Archives received an endowment from Edmund Dinis to establish the Edmund Dinis Portuguese American Political, Legal and Public Service Collection. Later the same year the Government of the Autonomous Region of the Azores pledged significant funds to support the archives and share digital resources.

The Archives also seeks additional family papers, business or organizational records to be a part of the permanent history of the Portuguese community in the U.S. See the announcement above for more information on contributing material to the Archives.

The Archives is also sponsoring events through December [Note the PDF takes a long time to load], and topics include: Portuguese Ethnic Media: Quest for Survival; Community, Culture and the Makings of Identity: Portuguese-Americans Along the Eastern Seaboard; Recording Oral Histories Workshop; Finding Your Ancestors Workshop on Portuguese genealogy presented by genealogists Cheri Mello and George Pacheco; Our Lady of the Artichokes and other Portuguese-American Stories; Organizing and Preserving Your Family History Workshop; and others.

There are several additional links: PAA Collection guides, Diário de Notícias, Newspaper Digitization Project The Archives has the only complete run (1919-1973) of the Portuguese newspaper Diário de Notícias. Available on microfilm for many years, it is now available free at this link. If you are searching for your Portuguese link, check out the weddings, births, deaths and social gatherings, passenger ship information and ads and photographs; PAA Photographic exhibit.

The Sephardic Connection

Many Portuguese of Sephardic Jewish ancestry came to Massachusetts and Rhode Island. Anecdotal events include families privately visiting synagogues to be married Jewishly before public church weddings. In Providence, Rhode Island, in particular, Portuguese sweet bread looking and tasting exactly like very good challah is found in many bakeries.

The Jewish history in the Azores and Cape Verde is another piece of the puzzle, as was the tragedy of Sau Tome island. When many Spanish Jews escaped to Portugal in 1492, they thought they would be safe. However, in 1497, Portugal began clamoring for them to convert or leave. Because few converted, the plan to force them to convert included removing their children by force and sending them to the inhospitable island of Sau Tome, where many died in the first few years.

It is possible that those of Portuguese converso background may find information on their own families in this collection. The surnames listed on the 87 oral history interviews are found in many Sephardic name sites and books.

World Jewish Studies: Holocaust topics

The conference also covered sociology, immigration, issues of color, the Holocaust and its aftermath, including displaced persons in Italy.

Tracing the Tribe recommends viewing these topics and seeing which reflect what you would like to know more about or that may have personal implications to your own research

Geographically, the list covers Japan, Italy, France, US, India, the Vatican, and Greece.

(E=English, H=Hebrew)

Jews, Color, Race:
Gary Phillip Zola (E) “Bone of Our Bone and Flesh of Our Flesh”: The Judaization of Abraham Lincoln
Gil Ribak (E) “The Jew Usually Left Those Crimes to Esau”: Immigrant Jewish Responses to Accusations of Jewish Criminality in New York City, 1908–1912
Shlomi Deloia (E) Race, Whiteness, and the Jewish American Immigration Novel of the 1920s
Efraim Sicher (E) The “Jew’s Passage to India”: Race, Color, and Hybridity in Desai and Rushdie
Shmuel Trigano (E) Towards a Sociology of Judaism
Inbal Ester Cicurel (H) Karaites in Israel: A Religious Community in Changes

Attitude Towards the Jews in the Axis States:
Tommaso Dell’era (E) The Catholic Church, Racism and Anti-Semitism (1934–1939): New Documentation from the Vatican Archives
Maria Costanza-Caredio (E) The Italian Racial Laws
Simona Salustri (E) The Reinstatement of Jewish Teachers in Italian Universities
Chizuko Takao (E) Japan Faces its Jews

Studies in Holocaust Research:
Miriam Gillis-Carlebach (H) A Look at the Suffering and Resourcefulness of Holocaust-Surviving Children as Expressed in Their Own Testimonies
Hava Eshkoli (H) The Plan of Resettlement of Jewish Refugees in Alaska during the Holocaust
Yitzchak Kerem (H) Reevaluation of Rescue in Thessaloniki

Jewish Displaced Persons in Italy after the Holocaust:
Cinzia Villani(E) The Arrival and Early Stay of Jewish DPs in Italy: The South Tyrol-Milan Route
Arturo Marzano (E) Between Florence and Rome: The Presence of Jewish DPs in Central Italy
Elena Mazzini (E) The Representation of Jewish DP’s in the Italian Press and in Memoir Writing

Tracing the Tribe hopes that this series will inspire, raise awareness and encourage readers to explore their own history as well as Jewish history in general.