New York: The Tree of Life, June 12

A film - "Tree of Life" - on a Jewish Italian family will be the focus of the next Jewish Genealogy Society of New York on Sunday, June 12.

The film celebrates the passion for life, love and family that unites Jews and Italians, as Israeli-born director Hava Volterra traces her roots in Ancona, Italy.

Beginning in the ancient Adriatic city of Ancona, Volterra and her feisty 82-year old Aunt Viviana travel extensively through Italy, digging up rare historical manuscripts, interviewing an array of quirky historians, and discovering the astonishing and humorous stories of their ancestors, including the da Volterra family of bankers in Florence of the Medici; Ramhal, a Venetian rabbi and mystic involved in the Kabbalah; renowned scientist and mathematician Vito Volterra; New York City’s legendary mayor Fiorello LaGuardia; and Luigi Luzzatti, Italy’s first Jewish prime minister.

The program - a joint meeting of the JGSNY and the Primo Levi Society - begins at 2pm at the Center of Jewish History, 15 W. 16th Street, Manhattan. The Levi Society's deputy director Allesandro Cassin will facilitate the post-screening discussion of this personal family saga that illuminates the fascinating history of Italian Jewish people.

Admission: JGSNY members, free; others, $5.

Read the NJ Jewish Standard's review here, and a review in The Forward here.

London: Jews of Parma and beyond, June 1

What links Alberto Moravia to Lorenzo dei Medici's dancing-master? Or Mozart's librettist to the founder of Olivetti?

Learn about the Jews of Parma (Italy) and beyond at the Spiro Ark Centre, 25-26 Enford St., London W1, at 7.30pm on June 1. The fee is £10 + £1 Internet booking fee

Jews have lived in Italy for more than 2,000 years. Rome is Europe's oldest surviving Jewish community.

But Italy has been a united nation only since 1861. Before then it was a collection of duchies, republics, kingdoms and Papal States, each with its own unique history and character.

The history of the Jews in Italy also varied according to the area in which they lived. As boundaries and rulers changed, so did their fate.

This talk will begin with snapshots of some of the more significant Jewish communities in Italy, to illustrate their differences in origin and destiny, before focusing on Parma, in Emilia Romagna, the heart of Italy, now a dying community of barely 20 families but still home to one of the most important collections of Hebrew Manuscripts in the world.

Click the link above for more information on Spiro Ark events and to purchase tickets.

Washington DC: Jews, magic in Medici Florence, April 13

Edward Goldberg will discuss his new book, "Jews and Magic in Medici Florence" (University of Toronto Press) at the Library of Congress on Wednesday, April 13.

The free event - open to the public - begins at noon in the African and Middle Eastern Division Reading Room, Room 220, Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street SE, Washington, DC. Tickets are not required, but seating is limited. The program is sponsored by the Hebraic Section of the African and Middle Eastern Division and the European Division.

Between 1615 and 1620, Benedetto Blanis (c.1580-c.1647), a Jewish scholar and businessman in the Florentine ghetto, sent 196 letters to Don Giovanni dei Medici (1567-1621), an influential member of the ruling family.

Blanis served Don Giovanni as palace librarian—organizing and cataloging the library’s contents, acquiring books from various sources and sharing his patron’s most esoteric interests. Together they ventured into dangerous and often forbidden territory—astrology, alchemy and the Kabbalah.

Discovered nearly four centuries later by art historian Edward Goldberg during his research in the Medici Granducal Archive, Blanis’ letters provide a portrait of a man struggling to survive in a strange no-man’s land between the Jewish ghetto and the Medici court. The letters also reveal the bond between two figures who strove to explain the world through the language of magical power.

Edward Goldberg holds a Ph.D. in modern history (Oxford University, 1979) and taught in Harvard University's Department of Fine Arts (1981-87). He has published widely in the course of 30 years of archival research in Florence. In 1995, Goldberg founded the Medici Archive Project to provide worldwide public access to the historical data in the Medici Granducal Archive through a fully searchable database at www.medici.org .

Established by Grand Duke Cosimo I in 1569, the archive of the Medici Grand Dukes offers the most complete record of any princely regime in Renaissance and Baroque Europe. The 3 million letters contained in more than 6,000 volumes richly documenting more than 200 years of human history (1537-1743).

Long Island NY: Primo Levi lecture, February 12

A lecture on Primo Levi and the Holocaust in Italy, by Professor Stanislao G. Pugliese, will be hosted by the Italian Genealogical Group on Saturday, February 12.

The meeting begins at 10.30am at the Bethpage Public Library, 47 Powel Avenue, Bethpage, NY. There is no admission fee.

Distinguished Professor of Italian and Italian American Studies at Hofstra University, Pugliese is a specialist on the Italian anti-Fascist Resistance and Italian Jews. He has written numerous books.

Among his works is the edited collection of essays, "The Legacy of Primo Levi" (MacMillan):

These essays examine how Primo Levi has influenced the fields of philosophy, politics, and ethics, offering provocative comparisons with Dante, Giorgio Agamben, Franz Kafka, Emmanuel Levinas, Viktor Frankl, and Elie Wiesel. Topics include Levi's anti-fascism; the influence of Judaism on his thinking and writing; Levi's poetry and linguistics; the problem of memory and representation; the concept of the "gray zone"; and the controversy surrounding Levi's death. A unique perspective on the life and work of a writer who powerfully reminds us of what transpired in the extermination camps of Europe and what it means to be human after Auschwitz.

Visit the Italian Genealogical Group.

New York: Gastro-genealogy, eating Jewish

Hey, if we can have "geneabloggers," we can have "gastrogenealogy," right?

Love Sephardic food from Italy, Spain, Portugal, North Africa, South America and other parts, but don't want to cook it at home?

According to the New York Times, chef Nikki Cascone's new restaurant, Octavia's Porch, will offer Jewish dishes from those places and more. Named for the Via del Portico d’Ottavia, in Rome’s Jewish ghetto, he opening is planned for November at 40 Avenue B (Fourth Street).

Info in other articles and blogs indicate the theme is "global Jewish cuisine." See the Village Voice blog - Fork in the Road - for an interview with Cascone on September 16. Here's a bit of it:

What's the status of your new restaurant?

The restaurant's name is Octavia's Porch. It's named after the Roman Jewish ghetto. There's a pizza there called Porta Octavia. We really wanted a story behind our name and that was one of the first places I realized that there were Jews all over the world -- even places like Italy -- doing unbelievable food that had an influence on the cuisine in the countries they resided in. I didn't know that before then and felt pretty naive being that I had a Jewish mom and an Italian dad.

Are you working on menu items yet?

We started recipe testing this week and tasting. There's Eastern European influences, Egyptian, Ukrainian, Hungarian ... you name it. It is global Jewish cuisine. I wanted to emphasize that Jewish food is more than just deli, which really was invented here in New York City. I'm trying to do classic dishes with a modern "Nikki" twist and expose people to less traditional dishes that they may not have seen from some other parts of the world. You eat it and think, "Oh, that's Jewish?" Things like eggplant caponata that the Arabics and Jews introduced to Italians, then Italians got all the credit for it. Jewish really was the first fusion cuisine.

Will the food be kosher?

The restaurant is Jewish by culture and not by religion. So, although we're not going to be kosher, we are not going to serve shellfish and pork.

The second part of the interview is here; learn what the chef ate at her post-Yom Kippur break-fast.

Food: Italian Jewish holiday cooking

Did you know that Italians also love gribenes (chicken or goose cracklings)? Do you know how this tradition arrived in Italy? Find the answers below.

A favorite cookbook of Tracing the Tribe is Jayne Cohen's Jewish Holiday Cooking: A Food Lover’s Classics and Improvisations (John Wiley, 2008). She also writes for Jewish Women International's "Jewish Women Magazine."

The holiday issue of the magazine is now online with really interesting articles on Italian Jewish cuisine (and recipes) and a new blog, "Beyond Brisket," written by Cohen. Tracing the Tribe has a separate post on the blog.

When the chestnuts in Piedmont ripen in time for the fall holidays, Roberta Anau serves her Rosh Hashanah guests special burricche: turnovers lush with chestnuts, onions, raisins and smoked goose.

Silvia Nacamulli’s family includes Swiss chard among the ritual foods at its Rosh Hashanah seder; growing in profusion, chard symbolizes a wish for bounty in the new year. But this is Rome, so we’re not talking about serving it simply boiled. “We prepare it in a delicious frittata,” she says, a savory combination of the cooked green leaves, sauteed onions and eggs, fried golden on both sides and served at room temperature.

Jewish-style carciofi alla guidea (artichokes) are the best known Jewish dish, originating in the Roman ghetto, with the oldest continuous Western Jewish community dating back some 2,000 years.

Read the article and learn more about Anau and her restaurant and hotel near Turin, and about Nacamulli, who teaches Italian Jewish cooking in London and organizes cooking tours to Italy.

A Jewish-origin food marks the end of the 1576 plague in Venice. A special annual feast celebrates that event. The traditional dish is pesce en saor, cold fried fish in a sweet-and-sour sauce with raisins and pine nuts. Cohen says it was developed to preserve fish for Shabbat, dousing the fish in hot vinegar with sweet sauteed onions, raisins and pine nuts.

After the 1492 Edict of Expulsion, Sicily's Jews (including many from Spain) were expelled in 1943, and many went to mainland Italy. They brought along marzipan, sweet-and-sour sauces, raisins and pine nuts. Caponata was originally a Sicilian-Jewish dish - a cold salad of fried eggplant, onions, garlic, olives and capers (and New World tomatoes).

Cohen discusses German and Central European Ashkenazi immigrants who settled north of Rome, and brought along their geese. Soon Italian-Jewish recipes incorporated goose fat and cracklings (griebenes, Yiddish; gribani, Judeo-Italian), and made salami, sausage and ham from the birds.

Anau recalls that her great-grandfather, Moise Colombo from Turin, was so fond of his gribani that “he carried them around with him wrapped in paper, like chewing gum. He would go out for a glass of wine, unwrap the paper and snack on the gribani.”

Edda Servi Machlin, whose Italian Jewish cookbooks also share space in my kitchen, describes more specialties. Learn why the Jews in her Tuscan village of Pitigliano call stuffed breast of veal chazarello (piglet).

There are recipes for risotto with pomegranate seeds, cheese and etrog peel; Jewish-style spinach, and the ricotta cheese dessert mentioned above. Yum.

Read the complete article at the link above, and for additional Italian Jewish Recipes, click here.

Jewish History: Sephardic articles - Spain, Antwerp, Sicily

The "Jewish History" quarterly journal offers several articles and a book review of interest to Sephardic researchers.

"Jewish History" (Vol. 24, Issue 2 - June 2010) offers diverse content to researchers. Find it in local public and university libraries (more likely) as it is available online only to subscribers. Read more here.

Jewish History, the sole English language publication devoted exclusively to history and the Jews, expands the horizons of historical writing on the Jews. Not only does the journal publish contributions from the field of history, but also from the intersection of history with art, literature, sociology, and anthropology.

The diverse personal and professional backgrounds of the journal's contributors represent a truly international meeting of the minds and are reflected in the journal's innovative essays. Special issues have included women and Jewish inheritance, the Jews of Latin America, and Jewish self-imaging.

In the latest quarterly issue find three articles of interest:

-- Renee Levine Melammed: "Judeo-conversas and Moriscas in sixteenth-century Spain: a study of parallels." (pp. 155 - 168)

Though interesting research has been done on Jewish women conversas in Spain, as well as on Morisco women converts, no comparison of the activities of the two groups has been made. This paper comes to fill this lacuna, examining their commitment to Judaism and Islam and ritual practices, especially as reflected in Inquisitional records. Despite basic differences, a surprising number of parallels appear in the behavior of both groups, suggesting the importance of women in preserving ties to the past and maintaining the converso mentality.

-- Timothy De Paepe: "Diego Duarte ii (1612-1691): a converso's experience in seventeenth-century Antwerp." (pp. 169 - 193):

From the early sixteenth century onward, many conversos or New Christians left Spain and Portugal and went to Antwerp. One member of the converso community in Antwerp was Diego Duarte ii (1612–1691). Diego Duarte ran a thriving jewel business and had a large commercial network. He was also a highly cultured man, who forged many friendships through his love for music and paintings. Antwerp was, however, still off-limits for Jews. This article seeks to explore Diego’s professional, religious and, in particular, his artistic background seen against the place and time in which he lived.

-- and a book review. Lucia Finotto: Shlomo Simonsohn's "The Jews in Sicily" - Volume 15: Notaries of Trapani. A Documentary History of the Jews in Italy." (pp. 213-216) (Brill, $340, 746pgs). To see more about each volume in the series, click here.

Although there is no summary, the first page of the review is on view.

The review indicates that Simonsohn provides information on Palermo notarial deeds and legal documents from Trapani, the focus of this volume. There are administrative materials and court cases involving Jews. There is an index of people and geographic locations, a glossary of Sicilian terms, a bibliography and a subject index. Here's some of the index:

The volume demonstrates classes in the community - wealthy merchant families, financial and administrative elites, religious leaders, ordinary families and artisans. It includes cases of complaints against powerful family groups in the community.

As is the case with most of Brill's publications, they are beyond the economic reach of most Sephardic family history researchers, so do check your local public (less likely) and university libraries (more likely).

The journal's editorial board includes: editor Kenneth Stow, University of Haifa, Israel; co-editor Adam Teller University of Haifa, Israel; book review editor David Starr, Hebrew College, Newton, MA; with assistant editors and an editorial board based at Hebrew University, Princeton, Smith, Michigan, TAU, UCSan Diego, Yale, Penn, Brandeis, and UWashington and elsewhere.

New York: First Sephardic Jewish Book Fair, July 25

The first annual New York Sephardic Jewish Book Fair will include book readings, author signings, sales and tours at the Center for Jewish History, on Sunday July 25.

From noon-5.30pm - hosted by the American Sephardi Federation (ASF) - the event brings together authors and book lovers, those who write about and enjoy books relating to the culture, history, philosophy, religion, languages and experiences of Sephardic Jews, past and present.

Hundreds of Sephardic-oriented books - new, hard-to-find or rare - will be available.

Visiting authors will discuss diverse topics and personal histories, Sephardic history, philosophy, culture and religion:

12pm: Jean Naggar will read from her Egyptian memoir, "Sipping From the Nile."
12.30pm: Marc Kligman, Professor of Jewish Musicology (Hebrew Union College) will read from his award-winning book, "Maqam and Liturgy: Ritual, Music, and Aesthetics of Syrian Jews in Brooklyn."
1pm: Andrée Aelion Brooks will read from and discuss the life of the Sephardic banker and heroine, "The Woman who Defied Kings: The Life and Times of Doña Gracia Nasi."
Children's hour, 2-3pm:
1.30pm: Peninnah Schram, Professor of Speech and Drama, Stern College for Women (Yeshiva University), shares a Sephardic tale for youth, "The Hungry Clothes - And other Jewish Folktales."
2pm: Mara Cohen Ioannides, Professor of English (Missouri State University), reads a story about Sephardic and Romanoite Jews from her award-winning children's book, "A Shout in the Sunshine."
2:30pm: Jessica Jiji reads from her novel, "Sweet Dates in Basra."
3pm: Rabbi Marc D. Angel, Ph.D., founder of The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel, North America's oldest Jewish congregation. He speaks on his books, "Foundations of Sephardic Spirituality" and "Maimonides, Spinoza and Us."
4pm: Abraham Sutton reads from "The Aristocrat," a book about his father, Rabbi Hillel Menashe Sutton, a leading member of the Aleppo (Syria) and Jerusalem Sephardic communities.
4.30pm, J. Daniel Khazzoom, Professor emeritus, reads from his book, "No Way Back: The Journey of a Jew from Baghdad."
5pm: Mitchell James Kaplan reads from his book about ordinary people swept up in the Inquisition's chaos and upheaval and the Expulsion, "By Fire, By Water."

Vendors will bring out-of-print Jewish books, as well as modern and rare titles, some from the 18th-20th centuries, including antique Ladino and Hebrew volumes from Salonika, Livorno, Tunis, Venice and Jerusalem.

Rare Sephardic books from the ASF Library and Archives will be displayed and Yeshiva University Museum will offer tours of its current exhibits, including "A Journey Through Jewish Worlds: Highlights from the Braginsky Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books.' This collection includes handwritten manuscripts and printed books from Holland, Italy, Spain, Greece and India.

The free event is set for the Steinberg Great Hall at the CJH, 15 W. 16th Street.

Jewish History: Do you know......?

What happened on June 24 in Jewish history?

Do you know about the Mortara affair in Italy, a British law requiring Jewish parents to support children who had become Protestant, a second exile from France, several massacres, Italian ghettos, a Hungarian residence tax, the Red Cross, or when Jews received full Polish citizenship?

This Day in Jewish History provides a great day-by-day list of such happenings. Today's list goes back to 1298, and covers events in Austria, France, England, Jamaica, Poland, Italy, Hungary, Russia, US, Turkey and Ukraine.

These events may help explain your family's movements to various countries at certain times, and clarify family stories handed down over the generations. I always find the site fascinating!

1298: Massacre of the Jews of Ifhauben, Austria.

1322: Charles IV of France expelled all the Jews from France without the promised one year's warning. This marked the second expulsion of the Jews from France.

1509: Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon crowned King and Queen of England. There were no Jews living in England at this time. Henry’s father (Henry VII) had promised Catherine’s parents (the Spanish monarchs Ferdinand and Isabella) that Jews would never be allowed the realm of the English monarchs. Thanks to the turmoil that Henry would create when he went to shed Catherine as his Queen and royal mate, small numbers of Marranos and crypto-Jews would be living in England by the end of the century.

1692: Founding of Kingston, Jamaica. By now, Jamaica was an English colony and Jews can practice their religion as opposed to their secret observance that had been the norm during Spanish rule. There were enough Jews living in Kingston that synagogues were reportedly opened in 1744 and 1787.

1648: In Tulczyn, Poland, an agreement between the 2,000 Jews and 600 Christians to defend the town at all costs succeeded in preventing the Cossacks from capturing the town. The Cossacks persuaded the Christians that they would let them go free if they would give them the Jews. The (furious) Jews were persuaded by the Rabbi that if they took revenge on the Poles other Jews would suffer. The gates were opened and most of the Jews killed. The Cossacks then turned on the Poles and killed most of them as well. For the most part, during the entire war the Poles and the Jews were uneasy allies against the Cossacks.

1702: In Great Britain an “Act to oblige Jews to maintain and provide for their Protestant children” took effect. This act of Parliament grew out of case involving Jacob de Mendez Berta and his daughter Mary who became a Protestant. According to one source, the father refused to continue to support his daughter after she converted and her newly adopted Protestant community did not want to shoulder the burden of her support. Hence, this legislation was adopted and would stay in effect until the middle of the 19th century.

1843: The Inquisitor of Ancona, Italy decreed that Jews may not live in any municipality where there was no ghetto.

1846: In Hungary, the residence tax was officially abolished. In order to have it cancelled the Jews had to pay a one-time fee of 1,200,000 florins.

1856: In Rome, a contingent of papal carabinieri “acting at the orders of the local Inquisitor, Father Pier Gaetan Feletti, took six year old Edgardo Mortara from his parent’s apartment because church officials discovered that Edgardo had been secretly baptized by a servant girls five years ago and that he could no longer “be raised in a Jewish household.” Thus began the scandal known as the Mortara Affair.

1873: In a sermon, Reverend Henry Ward Beecher gave the first public warning of rising anti-Semitism in the U.S. Beecher was a fighter for social justice, an abolitionist and the father of Harriet Beecher Stowe.

1908: President Grover Cleveland died of heart failure. As President, Cleveland appointed Oscar Solomon Strauss envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary to Turkey in 1887. In 1897 Cleveland vetoed an immigration bill that included a literacy test. The literacy test was a thinly veiled attempt to close the doors to immigrants including the wave of Jews coming from Eastern Europe. In 1903, Cleveland, who was by now former President, was the featured speaker at the New York City rally protesting the Kishinev Pogroms.

1918: Jacob Schiff of New York City protests against the Red Cross which has discriminated against Jews from Bulgaria and Turkey, Germany and Austro-Hungary. Red Cross stated Jews from these lands, or children who have fathers who were born in these lands cannot serve in the Red Cross.

1919: In the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, France, Polish Prime Minister Ignacy Paderewski signed the Minorities Treaty that “awarded full civil, religious and political rights to all citizens of the new Poland, with the term ‘citizen’ applied broadly to all person either born or ‘habitually’ resident on Polish territory.” This meant that the Jews of Poland were guaranteed full citizenship in the newly reconstituted Poland ... opening the path to full citizenship for the Jews of Austria, Bulgaria, Hungary and Turkey.

There's much more. See the link above.

New York: Sephardic Book Fair, July 25

The first New York Sephardic Jewish Book Fair - with book readings, author signings, book sales and tours - is set for Sunday, July 25.

Hosted by the American Sephardi Federation (ASF), will be held from noon-5pm, at the Steinberg Great Hall at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th Street.

The free event, open to the public, will include authors and book lovers, those who write about and read about the culture, history, philosophy, religion, languages and experiences of the Sephardic Jews, past and present.

Hundreds of titles of Sephardic-oriented books, including many rare titles, will be available for sale by the Sephardic House bookstore, as well as by unique vendors that specialize in Sephardic Judaica.

Several visiting authors will discuss a wide range of topics including personal histories, Sephardic history, philosophy, culture and religion. The day's key author and speaker will be Dr. Marc D. Angel, founder of The Institute for Jewish Ideas and Ideals and Rabbi Emeritus of Congregation Shearith Israel, North America's oldest Jewish congregation.

The fair will also feature a display of rare Sephardic books from the ASF Library and Archives, while Yeshiva University Museum will hold tours of their current exhibit: "A Journey Through Jewish Worlds: Highlights from the Braginsky Collection of Hebrew Manuscripts and Printed Books."

The Braginsky Collection includes handwritten manuscripts and printed books from Holland, Italy, Spain, Greece and India.

There will also be hourly free door prizes for attendees.

The ASF promotes and preserves the spiritual, historical, cultural and social traditions of all Sephardic communities as an integral part of Jewish heritage.

New Resource: SCIRUS finds people!

Are there academics or scientists in your family? Would you like to know? Do you want to cast a wider family search net? Here's a new resource to help you.

SCIRUS.com is considered the most comprehensive science-specific search engine on the Internet, it searches more than 380 million science-specific Web pages. Researchers can pinpoint scientific, scholarly, technical and medical data; find the newest reports, articles, patents, journals, websites, homepages, courseware and repository information that other search engines might miss; and help scientists and researchers.

Importantly, it is also great for genealogists and family researchers looking to cast a wider net.

My search centered on our TALALAY and DARDASHTI families, and I was very pleased with the results.

There are quite a few academics and scientists in our TALALAY family, and this search engine found them. From Dr. Paul Talalay of Johns Hopkins Medical School, to Dr. Mikhail Talalai (a Russian historian who lives in Italy), Dr. Pavel Talalai (Misha's brother in Saint Petersburg, a specialist in deep-sea ice), Dr. Alexander Talalai (communications) and many others, including Dr. Boris Talalai (originally of Saint Petersburg, now Beersheva University). Paul's daughter Rachel, a film/documentary producer, even got a mention.

Results: For TALALAY, there were 9,835 hits;  for TALALAI, 58 hits (this is the Russian spelling and also for a family of Polish Catholics in New Jersey and elsewhere). There were even 261 hits for TALALLA (sometimes the Spanish spelling as LL=LY, which can also be Talalya). A search for TALALAJ (a variant Polish spelling) produced 274 hits for people in Poland, the US and elsewhere. TALLALAY produced 13 hits, seemingly with TALALAY misspelled (I knew the people referred to, such as cousin Paul).

Our DARDASHTI family is also well-represented: Cardiologists Drs. Iraj Dardashti and Omid Dardashti; musician/anthropologist Dr. Galeet Dardashti; some in Iran (although I have no way of figuring out how they might be related at this point in time); some in Germany, Sweden, Norway; Dr. Kambiz Dardashti, our Philadelphia cousin Ephi Dardashti, and more. Tracing the Tribe even got a mention on a posting on the Sephardi Studies Caucus. There were 1,055 hits, with just one for DARDASHTY (a variant rare spelling).

Areas represented cover medicine, research, patents, culture, technology, anthropology and much more. It is well worth a visit and a search, particularly if you are dealing with an uncommon name.

Tracing the Tribe is not sure if a search for COHEN will turn up useful information for a particular family. Non-family names, such as my old New York pediatrician, Isaac Newton Kugelmass - who was in his 90s when I last knew him - got six mentions.

It is so successful at locating these types of results that it was voted Best Specialty Search Engine (2001. 2002) and Best Director or Search Engine Website (2004-2007).

And, since Tracing the Tribe often brings readers more than esoteric bits of information, here's the background on how the organizers selected the name SCIRUS:

"To the Eleusinians who were warring against Erechtheus, came a man, Scirus by name, who was a seer from Dodona, and who also established at Phalerum the ancient temple of Athena Sciras. After he had fallen in the battle, the Eleusinians buried him near a winter-flowing river and the name of the region and the river is from that of the hero."

We chose the name Scirus because seers and prophets are said to judge the signs of what is to come. And science is a visionary discipline in which you are continuously working on new ideas and developments. The Scirus search engine will pro-actively support your role as a seer.

*Excerpt from "The Description of Greece" by Pausanias, translated by August A. Imholtz, Jr., CIS Executive Editor

Check it out and see if Scirus can help you. See what you can find.

Boston: Daniel Laby's Sephardic roots, April 25

Dr. Daniel Laby will share his family's Sephardic journey from 13th-century Zaragoza, Spain to the New World with members of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, on Sunday, April 25.

Read Tracing the Tribe's post about the meeting, which also features Brandeis Professor Jonathan Decter, here.

The Canton Citizen's story about Laby and his family is here.

The pediatric opthamalogist, also a professor at Harvard Medical School, also has family connections to Lerida, where Tracing the Tribe found the first document for our family.

His family's journey has covered Spain, Hebron, Salonika, North Africa, Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Dan began researching his family in high school when the earliest date he knew was his paternal grandfather's 1904 arrival in the US.

Since then, he's reached back into the 13th century. Family members worked as financiers, diplomats and doctors for the Kings of Aragon.

A few years ago, three generations of his family visited their ancestral family home in Zaragoza and other cities in Spain. He put together an excellent multimedia presentation on the family trip which he shared with JFRA Israel members.

Research on his grandfather's family, from Hebron, was furthered by a book on the history of that community. It included detailed land deeds which helped him trace back several hundred years.

“I think to really understand what your future is going to be … you have to understand where you came from and what your past history is,” Laby said.


“I think anyone could do it,” Laby said of tracing ancestry. “You just have to have curiosity and patience and determination.”

It was interesting to see Dan's quote, that he was “fortunate to have an obscure name.” This is in line with my own views. Dan says if he was looking for Cohen or Levy, it would be more difficult to find the documents for his ancestors.

Tracing the Tribe feels much the same; hunting for Talalay and Dardashti makes it much easier!

While we can trace with probability our kosher winemaker ancestor in Lerida mentioned in a document dated 1358, Dan has gone back to 1202 for his prominent family, which helped arrange the marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella, as well as funding for Columbus's trip to the Americas.

Dan and I have joked that our ancestor made the wine his ancestors drank way back when.

Using ancient property ownership maps in Zaragoza, he was able to visit the site of the ancestor's home during his trip to Spain.

His family, along with other Spanish Jews, was expelled in 1492. Family members went to North Africa, Italy, Greece and Israel. Through his research, he's met relatives and, in Israel, met the Alazar descendants, whom their ancestors had known in Spain.

“When you do this kind of family history you learn those small details, which makes it real and makes it personal, which is what is fun about it,” he said.

His documents include arrival records, passenger logs, land deeds, maps, and a 1435 ketubah (a Jewish marriage contract).

The Internet has helped, of course, and he aso worked through reams of microfilm at the National Archives, Washington DC. He also uses DNA to help,

How far back does he want to go? "To Abraham," he jokes.

Today in Jewish history: March 6

Interesting things happen every day, and to keep up with interesting Jewish history, try "This Day in Jewish History."

On this day in history:

1239: With the Edict of Valencia, Spanish King James I validated privileges of the Jews of Aragon. The Jewish courts (bet din) were authorized to try all cases except capital offenses.

1475: Birth date of famed Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. Say Michelangelo to most people and they respond, Sistine Chapel ceiling. Say his name to Jews and the response is “Moses.” “Moses” is a marble sculpture which depicts the greater Jewish leader. Originally intended for the tomb of Pope Julius II in St. Peter's Basilica it was placed in the minor church of San Pietro in Vincoli on the Esquiline in Rome after the pope's death. The statue depicts Moses with horns on his head. This is believed to be because of the mistranslation of Exodus 34:29-35 by St Jerome. Moses is actually described as having "rays of light" coming from his head, which Jerome in the Vulgate had translated as "horns." This horned Moses provided further proof that the Jews were, as the Gospel says, “the Devil’s spawn.”

1815: With the defeat of Napoleon, new restrictions were imposed on the Jews all over Europe.

1816: The Jews were expelled from the Free City of Lubeck, Germany at the instance of the local guilds. This was part of the reactionary backlash that followed the defeat of Napoleon a year earlier.

For more information, go to the Temple Judah website and open the Adult Education Tab.

"This Day...In Jewish History " is part of the Jewish History Study Group in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: "There is no claim to originality or scholarship by the 'compiler,' Mitchell A. Levin. The sources, including texts and websites are too many and too varied to provide academic citations for each entry or part thereof. "

Florida: John Martino, ItalianGen, March 7

You don't have to be Italian to be in the Italian Genealogy Group's database!

John Martino, a founder of the Italian Genealogy Group (IGG), will speak on just that topic at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County (JGSPBC) on Sunday, March 7.

The JGSPBC's annual "Lunch and Learn" is set for 11.30-3pm, at the Crown Plaza Hotel, West Palm Beach.

Now IGG vice president and Special Project Coordinator, John has received an award from the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York (JSNY), and ItalianGen also received the Malcolm Stern Award from the IAJGS for its work in developing research databases.

Tracing the Tribe remembers the excellent talk John gave at the IAJGS annual conference (New York 2006), where his society received the Stern Award.

John will discuss how his 1,200 worldwide volunteers - of all ethnicities and religions - have created a variety of databases in New York and New Jersey, and how the same can be done in Boston, Detroit , Philadelphia Chicago and elsewhere.

He'll address the many naturalization records, and county, federal, and NYC vital records now in the IGG databases that have helped many genealogists in the US and around the world, how to use these databases and how they were created. The information contained includes data for Jewish genealogists not found elsewhere.

Tracing the Tribe has found many items of value for her New York-based families in IGG's resources.

IGG was organized in 1990 and John was one of its founders. He has visited Italy twice and has traced his family back to 1572. Since he retired in 2000, he hs devoted most of his time to organizing volunteers to create databases.

He first helped the JGSNY with Kings County naturalizations, followed by Suffolk, Nassau and Bronx counties. The federal records came next, including the Southern District Naturalization and now he's working on the Eastern District.

Brian Anderson, Department of Records and Information Services commissioner, asked John to computerize the Municipal Archives' vital records. John and the IGG team have computerized New York City's death records (1891-1929) and the Groom Index (1895-1936).

Fee: members, $25; others, $30. Free valet parking. Reservations required by February 27. See the Jewish Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County website for information and reservations.

Sephardim, Crypto-Jews: Article abstracts

"The Journal of Spanish, Portuguese and Italian Crypto Jews" (JOSPIC-J) offers 10 truly fascinating articles in Volume I (Spring 2009).

Available online, in addition to the abstracts, is the entire first article and an article on three major DNA studies.

To learn more about the journal, click here. Read the entire first article - "The Secret Jews of Spain, Portugal, and Italy and Their Descendants Today: Major Issues in a Growing Field of Academic Research" - here, with an extensive bibliography.

According to author Dr. Abraham D. Lavender's detailed article:

"Crypto-Judaic Studies is a rich field of potential research, with multi-disciplinary interests, especially as it is integrated with other areas of study. For the truly curious and open-minded, the field is unlimited."

Read "Recent Research Articles: From Roth to DNA," which discusses three recent articles about the growing field of Sephardic and Crypto Jewish DNA.

For many people, the consequences of the Inquisition still live today, as we will see these consequences in this and future issues of JOSPIC-J. Sociology, history, religion, and other areas of study join together to analyze and explain these consequences. Crypto Jews lived in Spain, Portugal, and Italy, and today their descendants live in a large number of countries, providing a fascinating international flavor to this area of study.

The journal is published by the School of International and Public Affairs, within the College of Arts and Sciences, at Florida International University in Miami, Florida.

If Sephardic or Crypto Jewish studies is an interest, you will want to subscribe to this journal.

Here are the abstracts:

-- “The Secret Jews of Spain, Portugal, and Italy and Their Descendants Today: Major Issues in a Growing Field of Academic Research”
Dr. Abraham D. Lavender

The Journal of Spanish, Portuguese, and Italian Crypto Jews (JOSPIC-J) brings together in one place, for the first time in a refereed academic journal, research on the three countries whose historic Jewish communities, each predating the Inquisition for centuries, suffered directly and greatly from Inquisitions. There is no consensus on whether to use the term marranos, conversos, crypto Jews, secret Jews, hidden Jews, lost Jews, New Christians, or anusim. But, whatever the term, significant research continues in international, sociological, cultural, religious, political, historical, and other areas, and the number of books and articles is increasing. Research on crypto Jews and their descendants should be integrated more with other interdisciplinary research, a major goal of this journal.

-- “The Crypto Jews of Spain and Portugal”
Dr. David M. Gitlitz

Prior to the riots of 1391, Spain's Jewish community was the largest in Europe. By 1491, following expulsions and conversions, Spain had the largest single community of former Jews in the post-biblical history of Judaism. Depending on the definition of Jewishness applied, these conversos were arrayed along a continuous spectrum ranging from fully Jewish to fully Christian. This article analyzes four groups on this spectrum—Christians, Jews, seekers of truth, and skeptical dropouts. Brief attention is also given to Portugal which originally had less violence and less forced conversions than Spain, but which also developed a more tenacious crypto-Judaism which led to the establishment of an Inquisition in 1539.

-- “The Barajas Women, Madrid 1634"
Dr. David M. Gitlitz

For the past quarter century, the author has immersed himself in Inquisition trial testimony in the archives of Spain and Mexico. The historical documents are difficult to read, but are worth extensive research, revealing fascinating and inspiring lives of unfortunate conversos. The following, based on these historical documents but with the addition of fictional narration, describes the lives of one representative family, Beatriz Álvarez and her daughter of the same name, known in 1630s Madrid as Las Barajas. It is an excerpt from a forthcoming book with the working title The Lost Minyan.

-- “The Jews of Sicily and Calabria: The Italian Anusim that Nobody Knows”
Rabbi Barbara Aiello

Rabbi Barbara Aiello is the first woman rabbi and first non-orthodox rabbi in Italy, where she has served a progressive synagogue in Milan. She is currently rabbi of Ner Tamid del Sud, the first active synagogue in Calabria in 500 years. Rabbi Aiello has written extensively about her crypto-Jewish background and her efforts to uncover the hidden Jewish traditions of Calabrian Jews that date back to Inquisition times. Her work in the deep south of Italy and Sicily includes directing the Italian Jewish Cultural Center of Calabria (IjCCC), an organization dedicated to the anusim of southern Italy to help them discover and embrace their Jewish roots.

-- “Crypto Judaism in New Mexico and the American Southwest”
Dr. Seth D. Kunin

Crypto Judaism in New Mexico is a highly complex phenomenon, both respecting history and modern ethnography. This paper outlines many of the significant aspects of both of these areas. It presents the historical arguments relating to the movement of conversos and descendents of conversos into New Mexico, and the aspects of the settlement of the colony that may have shaped aspects of crypto-Jewish culture as manifested in New Mexico today. The paper also touches on some of the ethnographic research relating to modern crypto Judaism, examining the forms of identity and the cultural elements out of which those fluid identities are formed. Given the significance of arguments about authenticity in relation to this community, the paper examines Neulander’s arguments in light of both empirical and ethnographic data. It suggests that when tested on that basis Neulander’s work cannot be seen as academically credible. The uniting theme of the paper is the need to eschew simple explanation in the light of a historically and ethnographically complex community.

-- “The Sephardic Legacy in the Spanish Caribbean: Crypto-Jewish Settlement in Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica”
Dr. Stanley M. Hordes

The Latin American and Iberian Institute of the University of New Mexico has initiated a research project to document the history of crypto-Jewish settlement on the Spanish Caribbean islands of the Greater Antilles, comprising Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and pre-British Jamaica. Based on archival research in Europe and the Americas, as well as ethnographic analysis, this study will examine the role played by the descendants of Iberian conversos in the economic, religious and cultural life of an area of Spanish America that was situated on the major trans-Atlantic shipping lanes, yet administratively remote from centers of Inquisitorial persecution. The data derived from these investigations will be of great value not only in helping to understand the socio-cultural fabric of a vital part of the Caribbean, but also in bringing to light the activities of the earliest Jewish communities in the Americas.

-- “The Jewish and Crypto-Jewish Participation in the Age of Discovery”
Dr. Barry L. Stiefel

The following article is on the Jewish and crypto-Jewish participation in the age of discovery, from the fifteenth through seventeenth centuries. Though relatively small in number compared to their Catholic and Protestant counterparts, the Jews and Crypto Jews played a pivotal role in Europe, Africa, Asia, and the Americas as financiers, scientists, and explorers. Not only did they contribute to the prosperity of the empires that they lived under (even when the respective monarch did not show the same kindness to those of Jewish extraction), but also to the perpetuation of crypto-Jewish and Sephardic Jewish life and culture wherever they ventured.

-- “Jews, Catholics, and Converts: Reassessing the Resilience of Convivencia in Fifteenth Century Plasencia, Spain”
Dr. Robert L. Martinez

A systematic reappraisal of fifteenth century Jewish and Christian convivencia, or coexistence, is long overdue because within it resides a hidden history of cooperation among Old Christians, conversos, and Jews. Utilizing a historiographical lens to evaluate interfaith relations in several Castilian and Aragonese communities, one finds a broader range of communal outcomes than is traditionally acknowledged. New findings pertaining to the cohesive collaboration and intertwined relations of Jews, conversos, and Old Christians in the Extremaduran city of Plasencia refute the long-held assumption that Jews and Christians were routinely segregated from one another and corrects the misguided belief that the converso Santa María family persecuted former co-religionists. This study reveals the previously unknown strategic partnership of the converso Santa María and Old Christian Carvajal family in Plasencia and it’s role in maintaining medieval norms of interreligious cooperation.

-- “Catholic, Jewish, and Crypto Jewish in the 1600s: The Geographic and Spiritual Peregrinations of Pacheco de Leon in Spain, Italy, and Mexico”
Dr. Matthew Warshawsky

Due to his knowledge of Judaism and his influence among Judaizers in Mexico City, Juan Pacheco de León (Salomón Machorro) was a prize catch among conversos arrested in 1642 for crypto-Jewish heresy. Yet his name is less well known than those of more famous crypto Jews in Latin America, including Luis de Carvajal the Younger, Tomás Treviño de Sobremonte, and Francisco Maldonado de Silva. This essay rescues Juan de León from such relative anonymity by exploring the interrelated questions of why the Inquisition prosecuted him so painstakingly, what his case teaches us about crypto Judaism in colonial Mexico and the ordeal its practitioners suffered at the hands of the Inquisition, and why he did not achieve fame more proportional to the gravity of his trial. In order to answer these questions, it examines how León differed from other Inquisitorial victims due to his biography, knowledge of Judaism, and personality.

-- “Cecil Roth’s Disrupted Love Affair With the Secret Jews of Italy: Standing on the Shoulders of Giants”
Dr. Abraham D. Lavender

Cecil Roth’s 1932 book A History of the Marranos popularized the term “marrano,” and increased knowledge about the secret Jews of Portugal and Spain, and also discussed secret Jews in Europe and the Americas. But, the secret Jews of southern Italy were mostly neglected. Roth corrected this omission in 1946 in The History of the Jews of Italy, discussing the secret Jews in Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples, and Sardinia. Cecil Roth and his wife, Irene, who was also his constant research companion for forty-two years, expressed strong emotional attractions for Italy and had planned to retire there before their plans were disrupted by World War II and the Holocaust.

-- “Recent Research Articles: From Roth to DNA”

Many historical research resources have been used to study crypto Jews. But, especially since the 1990s, DNA research also has been able to add more information to crypto-Judaic studies. DNA research frequently cannot provide definitive answers about a specific individual’s possible secret Jewish ancestry, but it can provide insightful information about history. There are many articles on Sephardic DNA, but this brief report describes three recent reach projects about crypto-Jewish DNA, including the research project from Iberia which documents that about 20% of all Hispanic males (mostly Christian today) whose ancestors came from Spain or Portugal have a Jewish genetic ancestry.

Learn more about the journal and subscriptions. Single issues are $10 (+$4 p&h), while annual subscriptions for individuals are only $10 (+$4 p&h). International subscriptions are $6 for postage and handling.

Tel Aviv: Italian Jewish conference, Jan. 3-5

The Italia Judaica Jubilee Conference starts today (Sunday, January 3) and runs through Tuesday, January 5 in Tel Aviv. If you had family living in Italy, some of these topics may be of interest to you and your research.

The opening session begins at 5.30pm today in the Cymbalista Jewish Heritage Center, while Monday and Tuesday sessions are in the Gilman Building. All lectures will be in English.

Sunday, January 3
5.30-7.30pm - Session I
Chair: Dr. Simha Goldin

Prof. Ehud Gazit, Vice-President for Research and Development, Tel Aviv University Prof. Shlomo Simonsohn, Prof. Moises OrfaliMons.

-- Hebrew Books in the Libraries in Italy in the 17th-century (Professor Pier Francesco Fumagalli, Biblioteca Ambrosiana)

Monday, January 4
10am-12:15pm - Session II: Economy
Chair: Moises Orfali, Bar-Ilan University

-- International Trade and Italian Jews at the Turn of the Middle Ages (Shlomo Simonsohn, Tel Aviv University)

-- The Jews and the Trade in Wheat, Oil and Wine in Apulia, 15th-16th-centuries (Cesare Colafemmina, University of Bari)

1:45-4:45 -Session III: Sources and Archives
Chair: Manuela Consonni, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

-- The Publication Project of Corpus Epitaphiorum Hebraicorum Italiae (CEHI): A Precious Archive on Stone and a Treasure of Jewish Poetry (Mauro Perani, University of Bologna)

-- The Conservation of History: The Archives of the Jewish Communities in the Veneto (Ariel Viterbo, National Library of Israel)

-- The Material Context of Hebrew Manuscripts as a Source of Information Regarding Jewish-Christian Contacts in 15th-Century Florence (Nurit Pasternak, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

-- Rhymes to Sing and Rhymes to Hang: Some Remarks on a Lampoon in Yiddish byElye Bokher (Venice 1514) (Claudia Rosenzweig, Bar-Ilan University)

-- The Types of Community Minute Books: Some Preliminary Conclusions (Yaakov Andrea Lattes, Bar-Ilan University)

5-7:30pm - Session IV: Jewish Literature in Italy
Chair: Marina Arbib, Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya

-- The Escape from Vasto: Complaints of a 15th Century Italian Rabbi (Dvora Bregman, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)

-- Re-creating Creation in Early Italian Yoẓerot: A School of Poetry in the Making (Yehoshua Granat, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

-- Azariah de' Rossi and the Amaziah Tombstone: The Past in Medieval and Humanist Jewish Thought (David Malkiel, Bar-Ilan University)

-- Italy: The "Breadbasket" of Hebrew Manuscripts (Benjamin Richler, National Library of Israel)

-- Dante's Role in the Formation of a National Identity Among Jews in Italy (Asher Salah, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design

Tuesday, January 5
9am-12 noon: Session V: Jewish Art
Chair: Simona Cohen, Tel Aviv University

-- Jewish Book Collection and Patronage in Renaissance Italy (Andreina Contessa, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

-- Salom Italia and Maniera Italiana (Emily Bilski, Adi Foundation, Jerusalem/Jewish Museum, Munich; Sharon Assaf, Jerusalem)

-- The Order of Circumcision of Salomone Leone: Chronicle of a Ceremony in 17th-century Italy (Gioia Perugia Sztulman, Israel Museum, Jerusalem)

-- A Shrine within a Shrine: A Unique Depiction of the Motifs Symbolizing the Future Temple in Jerusalem on the Torah Ark of the Trino Vercellese Synagogue, Italy, Mid-18th Century (Nitza Behroozi-Baroz, Eretz Israel Museum, Tel Aviv)

-- Changing Directions: The Synagogues in Piedmont, Before and After 1848 (Ariella Amar, Center for Jewish Art, Hebrew University)

1:45-3:45pm - Session VI: Intellectual Figures
Chair: David Katz, Tel Aviv University

-- About the Use of Hebrew in the Medieval Southern Italian Jewish Renaissance (Peter Sh. Lehnardt, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)

-- Figures of Freedom in Don Isaac Avravanel's Italian Works (Cedric Cohen Skalli, Tel Aviv University)

-- From Sicily to Rome: The Cultural Route of Michele Zumat, Physician and Rabbi in the 16th Century (Angela Scandaliato, AISG)

-- Joseph ha-Cohen's Negative Attitude Toward R. Meir Katzenelenbogen of Padua (Abraham David, National Library of Israel)

-- R. Azriel Diena: Halakhist at the Crossroads (Jeffrey Woolf, Bar-Ilan University)

4-6.30pm - Session VII: Mobility and Presence of Jews in Italy
Chair: Benjamin Arbel, Tel Aviv University

-- The Mobility of Italian Jews between the Middle Ages and Renaissance (Michele Luzzati, University of Pisa)

-- The Angevines of Naples and their Jews (Joseph Shatzmiller, Duke University)

-- Jewish Presence in Sicily as Reflected in Medieval Sicilian Historiography (Nadia Zeldes, Hebrew University of Jerusalem)

-- Towards Jewish Emancipation in the Grand-Duchy of Tuscany: The Case of Pitigliano through the Emblematic Figure of David Consiglio (Davide Mano, Tel Aviv University)

6.30pm Concluding Remarks

Bulgaria: Jewish surname dictionary online.

Bulgaria's Jewish community is a fascinating one and a new database on SephardicGen.com will help researchers of this mostly Sephardi community.

If your families of interest lived in Bulgaria at one time, search the Dictionary of Jewish Bulgarian Surnames at Jeff Malka's site, which offers extensive resources for Sephardi genealogists looking for information on family that lived in many countries.

With nearly 800 surnames - most found all over the Balkans - the details include the surname, its variants, its etymology (and original language), meaning and a reference to historical background in medieval Spain.

The notes on name origin are fascinating and offer a different perspective. Even if your family doesn't come from Bulgaria, the notes will help when looking at any list of Jewish Sephardi surnames.

Search with only the first letter of a name, unless you know the exact spelling; that's the simplest method. For example, enter "A," check "begins with," receive a list of all names beginning with A.

Unfortunately, only 10 at a time are shown and you'll have to keep hitting "next 10" to see the rest. I found that mildly annoying and wished for a way to choose how many names to display for each search. But the benefits of this database far outweigh the slight annoyance with having to click on succeeding screens.

Mathilde Tagger of Jerusalem wrote the introduction to the database at the link above. It includes the history of Jewish surnames in the former Ottoman Empire, information on various alphabets and spelling curiosities, in addition to a large bibliography for more information.

She writes that these surnames have been detailed in only three publications, which Tagger analyzes. They include Asher Moissi's booklet on Greek Jewish names, Baruch Pinto's Sephardic Onomasticon (mostly on Turkish Jews), and Isaac Moskona's 1967 article.

Moskona's list of 509 surnames was based on three sources (1895-1967), but gave meanings for fewer than half. Current research covers 798 surnames, and additional ones were found in the passports of Bulgarian Jews when they immigrated to Israel (1948-49). The passports are on microfilm in the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (Jerusalem).

Where do Bulgarian Jewish surnames come from?

Take a look at this chronology of immigration into Bulgaria:

2nd century BCE: Romaniote Jews are recorded arriving after the destruction of the Second Temple. Their names are Hebrew or Greek.

1376: Hungarian Jews, without surnames, are expelled; some reach Bulgaria. They receive mostly Turkish nicknames.

1394: Some Jews are expelled from France and reach Bulgaria via the Danube River. Their names reflect places from where they came. (NOTE: Some may have been Jewish refugees from the 1391 riots across Spain who fled by going north into southern France.)

1470: Bavarian Jews are expelled by King Ludwig X, many settle in Bulgarian localities along the Danube and in Sofia, the capital. Few have surnames and receive mostly Turkish nicknames.

1492: Expelled Sephardim from Spain find safety in the Ottoman Empire and reach Bulgaria after 1494, settling in towns where Jews already lived. They soon became the majority and leaders of the community. Spanish Jewish surnames had Hebrew, Arabic, Spanish and Portuguese origins.

1493: Expelled Sicilian Jews reach the Ottoman Empire with Spanish and Italian names. (NOTE: Many Sicilian Jews are originally from Catalunya in Spain, who come to the Catalan-speaking island after the 1492 Expulsion. They thought they would be safe in Sicily, and they were - but only for one year and were expelled again in 1493. Most cross the Straits of Messina into Calabria.

1566-1574: Jewish immigrants from Calabria (southern Italy) arrived; many are descendants of Spanish Sephardim who went to Sicily following the 1492 Expulsion. They had Italian and Hebrew surnames.

Over the next 200 years: all Jews regardless of their origin (including the descendants of the Hungarian and German Jews) meld into the Sephardi community, with Ladino as their common language.

Late 19th-early 20th century: Ashkenazi Jews arrived from Ukraine, Romania and Russia, but the SephardicGen Bulgarian dictionary only includes Sephardi surnames.

Bulgaria was part of the Ottoman Empire 1378-1878, so Turkish was a major influence on the Jewish community.

The introduction includes the quirky transliteration rules of Cyrillic, concerning the non-existent H (which became G in Russia and KH in Bulgaria), as well as letters with the sounds of SH, J, K

New York: Jews of Piedmont, Italy, Dec. 8

The Primo Levi Center and Yeshiva University Museum will present a talk and screening on "Piedmont: Unfolding Borders" on Tuesday, December 8

The program - which includes film, family history and books - begins at 5.30pm at the Yeshiva University Museum (YUM).

YUM has also published a 2008 book,"Ebrei Piemontesi: The Jews of Piedmont" (see below).

When, 150 years ago, Italy became a unified country, the region of Piemonte was its center and the catalyst of its early development.

As the oldest minority in Europe, Italian Jews held a high stake in a process that sanctioned their emancipation, and they actively participated in shaping the new national life.

This evening of film, family history, and books will introduce the public to a fascinating landscape of culture, intellectual vision, and social mobility.

Ebrei Piemontesi: The Jews of Piedmont

The first major settlement of Jews in the Piedmont region of Northern Italy began in the 14th century, when émigrés from France settled in the territories of the Duchy of Savoy on the Italian side of the Alps.

This volume, published in conjunction with the 1996 Yeshiva University Museum exhibition, presents nine essays by well-known scholars and specialists, providing an overview of the community history, along with articles on synagogue architecture, manuscript decoration, local Jewish cuisine (with recipes) and a translation from the memoirs of a 20th century rabbi.

The book features color images of selected artifacts from the Museum exhibition (paintings, manuscripts, prints, ceremonial silver and textiles), and photos of Piedmontese synagogues.

The 128-page softcover book includes a total of 43 color and B&W plates, and a map. The price is $16 for YUM members. Click here to download an order form.

Admission: students, free; general admission, $10; members, $5.

DNA and the death of Venice

The population of Venice, Italy is dwindling, and is now below 60,000. A mock funeral for the city was also the impetus for a DNA project on the origins of Venetian families.

One reason is the high cost of living in the city, and tourism is also taking the blame as food and housing costs rise and people move to the mainland. The number of residents has dropped by 66% since the 1950s.

Some residents say that a house in Venice costs twice as much as a similar one elsewhere.

A recent event highlighted the situation with a mock funeral. Activists claim Venice is a ghost town, populated only by tourists, although the city calls the its death premature.

A city demographer said the low number ignores 120,000 people on Murano and Lido Beach islands, while admitting the population had decreased in the central historic section of Venice.

On a brighter note, which should add to DNA databases, the event was used to collect DNA samples from Venetians to discover more about the origins of central and western European populations. Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Massachusetts) scientists hope to take some 5,000 DNA swabs to learn more about the Venetians' origins.

Several sources covered the story, including BBC and AFP.

Southern California: Jewish treasures, Nov. 8

Genealogical details turn up in many places, and Jewish family history is often revealed in books and documents from medieval times.

The Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV) will host antiquities collector Rabbi Shimon Paskow at its meeting on Sunday, November 8, at Temple Adat Elohim, Thousand Oaks.

The meeting begins at 1.30pm.

Paskow is Temple Etz Chaim's rabbi emeritus and has spent a lifetime looking for Jewish history in books and manuscripts.

He will show some of his Jewish treasures, including:

-- A Hebrew Haggadah printed in Venezia (Venice), Italy with a page of “approval from the Inquisitor” (from the Inquisition era).

-- A Sephardic Hebrew siddur (prayer book) with a page in Portuguese. This includes the names of the people who produced the book, which are as genealogically interesting as the book itself.

-- A scroll with a child’s prayer for its parents.

Paskow was ordained by the HUC-JIR New York. He has served as a US Army chaplain and is a Colonel Army Reserves Ret.

He joined Temple Etz Chaim in 1969 and is now Rabbi Emeritus.

For more information, send an email.