London: Food of the Jews of Babylon, April 3

The Jews of Babylon have a culinary tradition dating back more than 2,000 years, but it is a home-based cuisine rarely found in restaurants.

The Spiro Ark Centre, 25-26 Enford St., London, W1, will host Linda Dangoor, of a well-known Iraqi Jewish family in the UK, on Sunday, April 3, at 7.30pm.

The cost is £12 + £1 Internet booking fee. Click here to book now.

The cuisine, much like Persian food, is well-flavored, aromatic, but rarely spicy or hot.

The event marks Dangoor's new cookbook - "Flavours of Babylon" - and she will talk with Sami Zubaida about Babylonian Jewish food and its significance as a language and badge of identity.

Attendees will also get a chance to sample some foods.

Dangoor has been working in the design field for more than three decades as a designer, painter and ceramicist. The cookbook is her first book.

Zubaida is Emeritus Professor of Politics and Sociology at Birkbeck College, University of London. He has published several books on the religion, culture and politics of the Middle East; and is co-editor of "A Taste of Thyme: the Culinary Cultures of the Middle East." The event will include a book sale by both authors.

Seating is limited; advance reservations are recommended.

Call for Papers: Jews in Asia, Asian Jews in the US

There's a call for papers and panelists covering Jews in Asia and Asian Jews in the United States at the upcoming joint conference of the Association of Asian Studies/International Convention of Asia Scholars, set for Honolulu, March 31-April 3, 2011.

A two-hour panel has been scheduled for the topics. At least one additional presenter or discussant is needed, in addition to a panel chair.

Currently, papers have been received on: Baghdadi Jews in Malaya, Singapore and and Hong Kong during the Japanese Occupation; Indian Jews in the United States; and Luso-Sephardic Jews and their descendants in Goa.

Those interested in participating, submitting papers or obtaining additional information, should contact Dr. Joan Roland.

Tracing the Tribe reminds those interested that the 31st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (Washington, DC; August 2011) is also an appropriate venue for talks on such little-known Jewish communities. The Call for Papers for DC 2011 is coming up.

Iraq: Jewish archive's return sought

Iraq wants its Jewish archive returned. What should be done? And who owns the materials?

A Washington Post story, by Glenn Kessler, quotes well-known Jewish genealogist and former Defense Department official Harold Rhode was in Baghdad when the archive was found in a basement "floating in three feet of sewage water" in the Mukhabarat, the secret police headquarters, as a result of bombed pipes.

"They represent part of our history and part of our identity. There was a Jewish community in Iraq for 2,500 years," said Samir Sumaidaie, the Iraqi ambassador to the United States. "It is time for our property to be repatriated."


A high-level Iraqi delegation, led by Deputy Culture Minister Taher al-Humoud, met Thursday with senior State Department officials to press for the return of the artifacts.


But others, including many involved in saving the materials, say that they belong to the Jews who fled, or their descendants -- many of whom live in Israel.

The Jewish archive contained Torah scrolls, Haggadas, marriage records, university applications, financial documents - the records of a community taken by the secret police from Jewish homes as the community fled the country under pressure and persecution. Many went to Israel or the US, while thousands also went to Teheran, until Iran's revolution again forced them to move.

What should be done with these materials?

The soaked documents, some 3,500 tagged items, were taken out of the country with a vague promise of return after restoration. Today, they are stabilized (although with mold) in a Maryland office building, and the Iraqi government wants them back.

"I don't see any reason for it to go back to Iraq, because if it is the patrimony of the Jewish community of Iraq, then wherever they are it's theirs," Harold Rhode, a former Defense Department official, told the Jerusalem Post last month. "When they left, they would have taken it with them had they been able to take it with them. You don't abandon Torahs."

The State Department doesn't dispute Iraq's claim. NARA takes no position on who owns them, but says the items need much more preservation work, and spent less than $1 million on stabilizing the materials.

The agency's staff members recently completed an item-by-item assessment and are in the final stages of estimating the cost of a full preservation, including digitizing images of the pages. An NARA estimate in 2003 pegged the cost at $1.5 million to $3 million.

Sumaidaie said he thinks the items are stable enough so that no "further damage or decay can take place" and that Iraq can handle additional restoration.

Rhode, in Iraq at the time, received help from Iraqi exile leader Ahmed Chalabi, who provided equipment. At first, the material was placed to dry in the sun, but when Rhode learned that freezing kills mold, they were placed in a refrigerator truck. When Natan Sharansky and Vice President Cheney got involved, things moved quickly.

Eventually, and with the approval of the remnants of the Iraqi Ministry of Culture, the materials were taken to Texas, freeze-dried and transferred to Maryland for preservation and restoration. According to the State Department, when the Coalition Provisional Authority transferred sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004, it gave the Ministry of Culture the right to demand the documents' return.

A former senior Pentagon official, during George W. Bush's term, Dov. S. Zakheim is opposed to returning the items.

Sumaidaie said Iraq would consider individual claims for the documents but that giving them to descendants is "not for us a matter for dispute or discussion." He also said that the documents would be made available in Iraq to researchers.

If NARA completes preservation and digitization of the items, that means copies of these precious records would be available to Iraqi Jews and their descendants outside of Iraq.

What do you think?
-- Return them now although restoration is incomplete?
-- Complete the restoration, digitize, keep copies and return them?
-- Not return the materials?
-- Make sure Jewish Iraqis and their descendants receive their records?

Read the complete story at the link above.

New York: Defining Sephardic identity, Jan. 14

A kick-off event exploring identity in New York's Sephardic communities will take place at the Next Generation Culture Café of the American Sephardi Foundation (ASF) in January.

"Defining Sephardic: A Roundtable Discussion on Sephardic Identity" begins at 6.30pm, Thursday, January 14.

Moderated by filmmaker and Be-chol Lashon's New York director Lacey Schwartz, the participants will be:

-- Zena Babayov: New York University master's (communications) student and active member of the Bukharan community in Forest Hills, Queens.

-- Mijal Bitton: Yeshiva University/Stern College junior from Argentina and an active member of the Sephardic Community of Great Neck, Long Island.

-- Sion Setton: Manhattan's Safra Synagogue director of youth programming, with Iraqi, Syrian and Egyptian heritage.

-- Matieu Furster: Software engineer with both Moroccan Sephardi and Russian Ashkenazi heritage.

Admission is free. Light refreshments served. Email reservations or call 212-294-8301 x8356.

This is the first event of a year-long program funded by the Edmond J. Safra Philanthropic Foundation. ASF also received assistance from the Consulate General of Spain in New York.

For more information, click on the ASF site and see future events.

Israel: 'Preserving memory' seminar, Dec. 1

Registration is now open for the Fifth National Seminar, this year under the joint auspices of the Israel Genealogical Society (IGS) and the Jewish Family Research Association (JFRA). The theme is "Preserving Memory: Family and Community."

The full-day event, from 8.30am registration to the 6pm conclusion, takes place Tuesday, December 1, at Bet Hatefutsoth, on the Tel Aviv University campus.

Readers who have not been to the museum recently will appreciate the beautiful renovation and new wing, permitting all lectures to be on the main level, along with an Aroma Coffee Bar branch (with wi-fi).

Searching for family roots and origins often leads to the discovery of ancestry in an historical perspective, thus revealing multilevel and layered cultural traditions of the community.

This year's event will focus on methods of preserving the memory of vanished communities in Poland, Galicia, Bukovina, Iraq, Yemen, the FSU, and other locations, even as the cultural and spiritual values of these communities remain alive.

Included topics:

- Writing and publishing Yizkor and Memorial Books.
- Preservation and restoration of historic cemeteries.
- Virtual digital reconstruction of town and communities.
- Preservation of customs, artifacts, crafts and cuisine.
- DNA and genetic research (Kohanim, Leviim, rabbinical lines)

Two simultaneous tracks (English and Hebrew) will follow the (1) opening comments and awards, (2) an introduction to the museum's databases by database department director Haim Ghiuzeli, and (3) Dr. Lea Haber Gedalia's presentation, "Reconstruction of Collective Memory: To tell about our Czernowitz (Bukowina).

The English track features:

- Prof. Daniel Wagner - Genealogical Database Merging: A tool for the reconstitution of vanished Jewish communities.

- Dr. Ida Selvan-Schwarcz - Yizker Bikher (Yizkor Books) as preservers of family and community history.

- Dr. Isaac Solomon - The Bene Israel Community of India.

- Rose Feldman - Building a virtual site for a place that no longer exists.

- Tova Waks - The Rejowiec Congregation in Israel: Memory of the home town.

- Dr. Racheli Kriesberg - Genealogical mapping of the Wiesenthal family: Skala (Galicia, 19th century. (Kriesberg is the granddaughter of the late Nazi hunter Simon Wiesenthal.

The Hebrew track features:

- Dr. Victor Hayoun - The genealogical reconstruction of the Nabeul, Tunisia Jewish community.

- Orly Shtettiner - Siedlce (Poland) - An extinct community becomes a target for yearning.

- Hanna Kochavi - The silver spoon: Commemorating family through objects.

- Rachel Silko - The story of the Sasson families in Iraq and Israel.

- Dr. Ruth Marcus - Once upon a time, there was a shtetl called Lunna.

- Sara Weiss-Slep - Duesetos (Dosiat, Lithuania) Jewish community will be forever remembered.

Also simultaneous with the English and Hebrew tracks will be workshops, not yet publicly detailed, although Tracing the Tribe knows that Daniel Horowitz (of MyHeritage.com) will be participating.

The seminar ends with a joint Hebrew presentation by Avraham Sfadia,"From Aram Tsoba to Diaspora: Assimilation of Tradition, Identity and Heritage," and seminar concluding remarks.

Click here for the speakers' bios and abstracts. The Hebrew track bios and abstracts are not available in English, but readers may use Google Translate for a reasonable, if rough, translation into English or other languages.

The English registration form is here. Until November 15, registration is NIS 60 for members of IGS and JFRA, NIS 100 for others. Prices go up November 16 to NIS 80 and NIS 120.

Tracing the Tribe encourages readers in Israel, or those who plan to be visiting at that time, to register for the seminar. Seating capacity is limited for some events, so quick registration is suggested.

New York: 'Bagdad to Bombay,' April 29

Author Pearl Sofaer ("Baghdad to Bombay: In the Kitchens of My Cousins") will share the stories and recipes of her family, at 6.30pm, Wednesday, April 29, at the Center for Jewish History (CJH).

A colorful culinary journey – a testimony to keeping a culture alive!

Pearl Sofaer - author, painter, sculptor, singer - was born and grew up in Bombay. Her large family originated in Baghdad and Kirkuk, Iraq, before migrating to Burma and India during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. After the partition of India in 1947, most of her family moved to the four corners of the globe.

Their rich and diverse cultural heritage is reflected in their kitchens, which they generously opened to their cousin, who has woven the threads of a diverse family into a rich tapestry of cuisine.

For early arrivals to the event, there is a 5.45pm tour of the new exhibit of Yeshiva University Museum - "From Malabar and Beyond: The Jews of India" - a glimpse into the rich culture of Indian Jews through photographs and artifacts of ritual and daily life.

The event is free for American Sephardi Federation members; others, $5.

Founded in 1973, the American Sephardi Federation with Sephardic House promotes and preserves the spiritual, historical, cultural and social traditions of all Sephardic communities to assure their place as an integral part of Jewish heritage with its Sephardic Library & Archives, an exhibition gallery, educational and cultural public programs, The Sephardi Report, the International Sephardic Film Festival, and a scholarship fund for Sephardic scholars.

The CJH is at 15 W. 16th Street, New York City.

India: The Koder family of Cochin

Kochi (formerly Cochin) in southern India's Kerala region has a surprise for tourists, according to this story. Grand mansions built during the colonial period - when Portuguese and Dutch traders ruled Fort Cochin - are being converted ito tourist homes.

The Iraqi Jewish Koder family built Koder House in 1905 [Note: the date is different in some sources], although the family came to India in the early 1800s, during a wave of Baghdadi immigration. Today it is owned by Vicky Raj, who wants locals and the tourists to know about the house's heritage.

The three-story heritage boutique hotel is opposite the beach at Fort Kochi. Until recently, it belonged to the Koders, the most illustrious Cochin Jewish family. Their home had hosted presidents, prime ministers, viceroys, ambassadors and prominent dignitaries, and their Friday night "open house" dinners were legend.

It was built by merchant Samuel Koder, who constructed it across three floors - one for each of his sons. However, business took the sons far away, until only Satu Koder and his wife Gladys remained. Their daughter Queenie still lives in Jews Street and sold the house to the present owners. Her husband, Sammy Hallegua, is the warden of the Jewish Synagogue, as was her father (for 40 years).

According to the story, the Portuguese design home is believed to have been structured and gabled in Europe, then shipped to Cochin. Its windows are said to be made of Belgian-imported glass.

The Koders emigrated to Cochin from Iraq a few centuries ago. Samuel Koder ran the Cochin Electric Company which was eventually sold to the government.
Also, the Koders had a huge chain of department stores across Kerala, which too, were sold. The stores stocked everything from molasses to pins and flourished. The Koders could be relied on to stock luxury goods such as alcoholic beverages from the UK, fine clothes, and chandeliers from Europe. The owners, of course were like mini royalty.

As Samuel Koder was the honorary consul to the Netherlands, the Dutch ambassadors visited the house often. He also began the Freemasons’ organization in Cochin.
In its heyday under the Koders, the house was known for its famous Friday Open houses. This was a big event on the Cochin social calendar. Though informal, anticipation of the event would build up in mid-week itself. It became a focal point of the Raj literati, glitterati and any one who wished to meet the Koders or know about Indian Jewish lifestyle. Visitors could be as many as 45, or just a handful - among them ambassadors, celebrities or heads of state! Conversation and food was the order of the day.

The New York Times travel section carried a story on Kerala and mentioned Koder House here.

In fact, most of Fort Cochin's new hotels have stories. The all-suite Koder House on the waterfront, is the former residence of one of the city's most prominent Jewish families. ...

To explore the other historic district, Mattancheri, take a 10-minute autorickshaw to Jew Town. At the synagogue, built in 1568, leave your shoes at the door, not for religious reasons, but to protect the 200-year-old, handpainted Chinese floor tiles. The youngest of the 13-member congregation, a 34-year-old woman, took the 2-rupee admission and answered questions (“No, we don't have a rabbi”).

Read the complete stories at the links above.

JTA: Newsbriefs of note

JTA's breaking news briefs often contain items of interest to those interested in family history and Jewish history. Here are some recent briefs:

Iraqi Jewish books made it to Israel

Some 300 rare and valuable Jewish books from Iraq have ended up in Israel.

The books, from a collection of books confiscated by Saddam Hussein's secret police, include a 1487 commentary on Job and a volume of biblical prophets printed in Venice in 1617, according to Ha’aretz.

The Iraqi secret police confiscated and stored a large number of Jewish books. Many were damaged in the beginning of the 2003 U.S.-led war in Iraq during the bombing of Iraqi government buildings. After the war, many of the books were sent to Washington's Library of Congress and some made their way to private dealers, who bought them from thieves.

One such dealer, Mordechai Ben-Porat, who was born in Iraq, began by sending an emissary to Baghdad who shipped the books to Israel directly. Eventually, U.S. authorities discovered his activities and barred further shipments. Ben-Porat then smuggled in the remaining books. ...

Jim Joseph Foundation gives $5 million to NYU

The Jim Joseph Foundation will give some $5 million to New York University to support graduate studies in Jewish education.

Starting in 2009, the foundation will give full scholarships to eight students in NYU's dual Ph.D program in education and Jewish studies, which was founded in 2001, according to a news release on NYU's Web site. The foundation also will award 16 full scholarships to students in a new dual Masters degree program in education and Jewish studies. The recipients of the scholarships will be known as Jim Joseph Foundation Fellows.

The $4.96 million, six-year grant will also help pay for administration and adjunct faculty at the NYU Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development, and the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies.

"The Jim Joseph Foundation believes ardently in the importance of Jewish educators and their critical role in ensuring a vibrant Jewish future," Chip Edelsberg, the executive director of the Jim Joseph foundation, said in the release. "We are confident this significant investment in NYU supporting these degree programs will produce future Jewish educational leaders.

Wouldn't it be great if the foundation would fund targeted education programs for Jewish genealogy and family history?

Train work disturbs Greek Jewish cemetery

Work on a new underground train line could disturb what remains of a historic Greek Jewish cemetery.

The excavation in Salonika could move graves and human remains, the AFP news agency reported. Excavation near the Aristotelio University library, built on the cemetery site during an expansion in the 1960s, already has dug up gravestones.

The issue became public last week when U.S. special envoy for Holocaust issues, Ambassador J. Christian Kennedy visited Greece to attend a conference on the matter, and the Greek Jewish community raised the issue.

The cemetery dates back to 1492 when Spain expelled its Jews and 20,000 of them found refuge in the small Greek town of Salonika which then had 2,000 inhabitants. It was one of Europe's largest, with more than 300,000 graves, when it was destroyed by the Nazis in 1942.

Salonika, which now has a Jewish population of 6,000 among its nearly 364,000 residents, was home to about 50,000 Sephardim before the Holocaust. Most were killed by the Nazis.

Lone Tajik synagogue razed

Tajikistan's lone synagogue was demolished.

The 19th century Dushanbe shul was razed last weekend to make way for a park, the Tajiki Jewish community reported.

The government has promised to allocate land for a new synagogue, though details on the plan are sketchy.

"It's painful to lose something very dear, something that cannot be valued in money terms," said a rabbi, Mikhail Abdurakhmanov, in an interview with Reuters. "At the moment the existence of Tajikistan's only Jewish community is under threat."

The community, which numbers some 350 people, is descended from Persian-speaking Bukharan Jews who have lived in Central Asia for centuries. Many Tajiki Jews left for Israel after Tajikistan won independence from Soviet rule.

You can subscribe at JTA.org to receive the daily briefs.

Iraq: Lost and found

It's never too late.

This Ynetnews story covers Hannah Menashe who was 21 when she was kidnapped from her Baghdad family before they immigrated to Israel. Now 76, she is finally making aliyah and rejoining her family.

Fifty-five years after she was abducted from her family's home in Baghdad by her Muslim neighbor and forced to renounce her Judaism, Hannah Menashe managed to flee Iraq and find her way to one of Israel’s European embassies. Her long, exhausting journey is finally coming to an end these days, as she will soon be reunited with he family in Israel, who thought her murdered all these years.

Hannah’s fascinating story begins in the 1950s, when her Baghdad-native family – parents and seven siblings – decided to immigrate to Israel. Hannah, already married to a Jewish Iraqi, was also planning to make aliyah, when fate struck: A Muslim neighbor, who was aware of the family’s plans to immigrate, kidnapped the striking Hannah to keep her by his side. Her siblings only have a vague recollection of that horrible day. They went looking for Hannah, they say, but the earth had swallowed her.

Decades passed, the siblings made aliyah and the family expanded, all the while keeping their bitter secret to themselves. Shortly after arriving in Israel, Hannah’s mother died at 37, her heart broken by losing her child.

However, six months ago, the family received a surprising phone call from Ravit Topol of the Ministry of Interior who wanted to confirm a story.

Hannah's husband died a year ago and she escaped Baghdad, reached Europe and located an Israeli embassy.

“I am Jewish, I want to go to Israel,” she said in fluent Arabic and with great excitement. The embassy found it hard to believe her story; but when she named her relatives in Israel, the embassy officials realized the truly incredible nature of the story unfolding before their very eyes and quickly contacted the Ministry of Interior’s population administration.

Read more here.

Montreal: A Baghdad Jewish family's history on film

Montreal filmmaker Joe Balass's unusual Mother's Day gift for his mother - a memoir of his Jewish family's history in Iraq - was featured in the Montreal Gazette.

These are times Valentine Balass would sooner forget, but it does provide her son with some fascinating, if not harrowing, insights into a previously dark chapter in his family's history.

Balass's documentary Baghdad Twist, opening Mother's Day at the NFB Cinema, will also be quite an eye-opener for others in the dark about life in one of the world's most troubled regions. Using vintage Super 8 footage and faded stills from the mid-1960s, Balass has his mother, off-camera, recount a hair-raising odyssey that brought their family to Montreal from Baghdad.

Making life much more dicey for the Balass clan in Baghdad was the fact they were Jewish. She recalls that the Jewish community of Iraq had been thriving up until the creation of the state of Israel in 1948. But what was once a community of 180,000 had dwindled down to 10,000 to 12,000 by the early 1950s, due in large part to a climate of accusations implying Iraq's Jews were traitors and, as a result, fear of arrest and worse among the Jews.

In the 1960s, the family tried to maintain "a sense of normalcy," depicted in wedding reception footage where guests are doing the twist. Following the 1967 Six Day War, Iraq's Jews were targeted with arrests, spying charges and public hangings.

Balass's dad was detained three times for no specific reason, but after he was let out on bail following the last arrest, Valentine was taking no chances. She took charge and made plans to bolt Baghdad quickly with her husband, three kids and other family members.

Leaving everything in their Baghdad home intact, so as not to arouse any suspicion, this group of 12 fled, at enormous risk, to the Kurdish north of Iraq. From there, they slipped into Iran, then made their way to Israel before ending up in Montreal in 1970 - with pretty much only the clothes on their backs.

The filmmaker was only 4 when they left Baghdad and has few recollections of Iraq.

"I was unaware of what my mother went through and all the pressure she was under," Balass says. "The whole transition she had undergone from a housewife and mother who was being taken care of to someone who had to take control of a situation and take care of a huge extended family in trying to escape Iraq.

"Those were particularly frightening times in Iraq. Saddam Hussein was just starting to make a name for himself then. It was an atmosphere of absolute terror for Jewish families. Our journey was dangerous enough, but if we had been caught ... ."

Read more here.

Montreal readers can see "Baghdad Twist" from Sunday through Tuesday May 11-May 13 at 7pm (English version) and at 8.30pm (French subtitles), at the NFB Cinema, 1564 St. Denis St. The English version will also be shown Wednesday and Thursday (May 14-15) at 7pm at CinemaSpace, Segal Centre, 5170 Côte Ste. Catherine Rd.