Television: Friday night at the Goodmans

It's not quite "Who Do You Think You Are" but "Friday Night Dinner" may strike some familiar chords with Tracing the Tribe's readers.

The new UK series will premiere on BBC America tonight (Saturday, July 30).

Read an interview on Collider.com with actor Simon Bird and creator/producer Robert Popper as they describe their own childhoods and the differences between American and UK Jewish families.

According to the interview, there's a creepy neighbor, a grandmother in a bikini, embarassing parents and more.

Here's one bit offered by Bird who plays one of the two brothers who get together with their family every Shabbat evening.

"I don’t think Robert is out to specifically write a Jewish sitcom. I think he wanted to write a sitcom about his family, and his family just happens to be Jewish, but they’re quite relaxed Jews. Some of the Jewish customs don’t really come into it, just because they’re not a big deal for Robert’s family. But, I’m a massive fan of Seinfeld and Curb Your Enthusiasm. I don’t know if they’re over-the-top, though. On Seinfeld, Judaism didn’t really come up much. It does more in Curb, only for the occasional storyline, here and there. In America, you’ve had decades of humor being fused with Jewish humor. In England, we just don’t have that. Our humor is not infused with Jewish humor. It’s completely different. So, whenever I see Jewish people depicted, they’ve always been done in either an over-the-top way, or a sentimental way. This family is Jewish, and they meet on Friday night. Their candles are lit, but they’re not going to do the whole thing. The way they talk is modern British. It’s second generation and third generation Jewish people. Jewish people will recognize they’re Jewish, but non-Jewish people might not. They might, if they know some Jewish people, but it’s not an issue. If you get it, you get it. If you don’t, you just enjoy it.

Read the rest of the interview at the link above.
There's another short review 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.

Library of Congress: Szyk Haggadah program, April 4

In the mid-1930s, Polish-Jewish artist Arthur Szyk created a haggadah in the style of medieval illuminated manuscripts.

The Szyk Haggadah will be displayed on Monday, April 4, at a Library of Congress program marking the Abrams publication of a new facsimile edition, with translation and commentary by Rabbi Byron L. Sherwin and Irvin Ungar.

The original Haggadah is housed in the LOC's Rare Book and Special Collections Division.

Ungar's talk - "Arthur Szyk and His Passover Haggadah: A Library of Congress Treasure" - will take place at noon, Monday, April 4, in the African and Middle Eastern Division Reading Room, Room 220, Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street SE., Washington, DC. The talk is free and open to the public. Tickets are not required, but seating is limited.

Arthur Szyk (1894–1951) was an acclaimed artist, activist, illuminator and political illustrator. During World War II, his anti-Nazi caricatures were widely published in the United States, most memorably as covers for news magazines such as Time and Collier’s. For almost a decade, Szyk labored to create an elaborately illustrated haggadah that attacked the Nazis, but he could not find anyone willing to take the risk to publish his version of the Passover story. Szyk retold the ancient narrative as if it were an event unfolding in his own time, imagining the Hebrews as Eastern European Jews in need of a modern Exodus to the Land of Israel. His masterpiece was finally published in England in 1940, stripped of its anti-Nazi iconography.

Born of Jewish parents in Lodz, Poland, his early training was in Paris and Cracow. He served as artistic director of the Department of Propaganda for the Polish army regiment quartered in Lodz, 1919-1920. In 1921, he moved to Paris and lived and worked there for 10 years. In 1934, Szyk traveled to the US for exhibitions of his work, such as a Library of Congress exhibit of 38 miniatures commemorating George Washington and the Revolutionary period. In late 1940, after living for some years in the UK, he immigrated to the US.

In 2000, the Library of Congress celebrated the acquisition of several important original works by Szyk with an exhibition in the Swann Gallery titled "Arthur Szyk: Artist for Freedom." The display, which can be viewed online at www.loc.gov/rr/print/swann/szyk, featured 17 representative works, from caricatures of Axis leaders to masterpieces of illumination such as the Szyk Haggadah.

A former pulpit rabbi, Ungar is CEO of antiquarian booksellers Historicana, founded in 1987. He has led the interest in Szyk; curated major museum shows, written and edited several books, and lectured internationally on the artist.

Jewish scholar and ethicist Sherwin has authored or edited 28 books and more than 150 articles and monographs. An Szyk authority, he has served on the Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies faculty since 1970.

"The Szyk Haggadah" (128 pages, 48 color illustrations) is available from Abrams and nationwide bookstores and online ($40, hardcover; $16.95, paperback). Copies signed by Ungar will be sold at the April 4 event.

See an LOC online exhibit of some of Szyk's works here.

New York: 30 Jewish marriage contracts exhibit, opens March 11

The Jewish Museum will open the exhibit "The Art of Matrimony: 30 Splendid Marriage Contracts from the Jewish Theological Seminary Library," on Friday, March 11 to run through June 26.

The library of The Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City holds one of the best collections of ketubot - Jewish marriage certificates. Thirty of the finest will be featured in the exhibit, which dates from a 12th century piece to later examples.

Jewish family history researchers can discover much information on these documents (ketubah, plural ketubot), which exist for all communities around the world, and provide family details on the families, communities and customs

The JTS ketubah collection numbers more than 600 works of every type. The majority are from Italy, with others from Afghanistan, Egypt, India, Iraq, Iran/Persia, Morocco, Syria and Turkey. Other examples represent Croatia, France, Greece, Israel, the Netherlands, Ukraine, and the United States. They represent the diversity of Jewish communities throughout history, with information on the couples, marriage customs and artistic styles.

Before a wedding, families negotiate a marriage contract (ketubah), which includes the husband's duties to his wife and monies due her in case of a divorce or her death.
Some examples:

• The earliest in the exhibit is a rare 12th century Egyptian fragment.
• 1764 earliest known decorated ketubah from Baghdad, drawn on paper from Augsburg, Germany, and indicating Jewish commercial ties.
• 1885 Damascus contract shows vivid colors and lush floral imagery echoing the blessing bestowed on a couple as they stand under the bridal canopy: “Grant perfect joy to these loving companions, just as You made your creations joyful in the Garden of Eden.”
• 1749 Venetian ketubah features the 12 Zodiac signs and an intricate love knot borrowed from Italian folk culture. The wording says that the bride and groom “agree to conduct their mutual life with love and affection, without hiding or concealing anything from each other; furthermore, they will control their possessions equally.“

Although hand-decorated ketubot began to go out of fashion in the late-19th century, there was a revival in the 1960s along with a new interest in Jewish identity. Examples include:

• A 1999 Archie Granot muti-layeredpapercut.
• 1961 ketubah by artist Ben Shahn, showing his fascination with Hebrew calligraphy.

Two related JTS faculty lectures are scheduled:

• Monday, March 14: Dr. David Kraemer, Abbell Librarian and Professor of Talmud and Rabbincs at the JTS, will discuss the history of Jewish marriage contracts.
• Monday, March 21: Exhibition curator Sharon Liberman Mintz will speak about the art of the decorated marriage contract.

The Jewish Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today's collection numbers some 26,000 objects, including paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects and broadcast media.

Museum hours: Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday: 11am-5:45pm; Thursday, 11am-8pm; and Friday, 11am-4pm. Admission: Adults, $12; seniors, $10; students, $7.50; no charge for Jewish Museum members and children under 12. Admission is free on Saturdays.

For information on The Jewish Museum, click here  For program and ticket information, click here.

The Museum is at 1109 Fifth Avenue (at 92nd Street), Manhattan.

A site of interest: Jewish Ideas Daily

Jewish family history links to all aspects of culture. We may well find clues in articles on many sites offering interesting articles.

Tracing the Tribe frequently enjoys stories on Moment and Tablet, and calls its readers' attention to those relevant articles.

Another good site is Jewish Ideas Daily.

What is it?

This is their "About Us" page:

Jewish Ideas Daily aims to be the premier aggregator and originator of Jewish ideas on the web. Each day, an original feature piece focuses on an issue of contemporary interest and enduring relevance. In Today's Picks, we draw on sources ranging from daily opinion pages to weekly and monthly magazines, academic journals, books, blogs, think-tanks, universities, and online learning sites. Many of our postings are up-to-the-minute; others are classics from the near or distant past. In brief, we hope to offer a one-stop source of the best that has been and is being thought and said by or about Jews.

Several good original stories and links to those in other media sources can be found on the homepage.

You might want to sign up for their daily email alert.

Washington DC: Cultural continuity challenges, January 23

The challenges of cultural continuity with speaker Dr. Miriam Isaacs is the program for the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington, on Sunday, January 23.

The meeting begins at 1.30pm, at Congregation Beth El, in Bethesda, Maryland. Admission: JGSGW members and first-timers, free; others, $5.

A well-known expert on Yiddish culture, Isaacs will address how cultures can be transmitted and the factors leading to cultural disruption.

She will draw on the traditional notion of the Golden Chain, di goldene keit(Yiddish), the chain that links generations.

Isaacs will provide examples of stories, beliefs and ideas kept across generations and how they are adapted and re-adapted to different locations and situations. The examples will be drawn from folklore, literature and contemporary culture and also include how traditional themes are found in Holocaust studies.

Although many of our ancestors spoke Yiddish, few of us today understand how that language has impacted our culture over the generations.

Isaacs teaches at the University of Maryland.

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.

Israel: 'One Family, Many Faces Festival,' Day 1

When Tracing the Tribe arrived at Beit Hatfutsot at 8.30am, nothing much was happening. In  less than an hour, nearly all of the 50 MyHeritage.com computers were in use by people of all ages, including many children.

Tracing the Tribe is sharing a table with Rose Feldman and Garri Regev of the Israel Genealogical Society (photo below right) and we also are displaying the 2010 IAJGS International Jewish Genealogy Month poster.

Many people are stopping by and asking about genealogy, how to get started, what to do, even questions on DNA genetic genealogy.

It appears to be a great day for MyHeritage. In just the first five hours, neary 400 trees were added.

It's a good day to be in the air-conditioned lobby of the museum, as it's humid and hot outdoors today.

People who've said hello: Harvey Krueger stopped by to say hello before the Beit Hatfutsot international board of directors meeting, and Assia Reuven and Haim Ghiuzeli of the museum.

Judging from the people in the lobby, it seems more and more people are coming in - which is a good thing.

We're all looking forward to tomorrow's second day!

Latvia: Riga Ghetto Museum opens, Sept. 21

The Riga (Latvia) Ghetto Museum opens September 21.

More than 70 000 local Jews and nearly 20 000 Jews deported from Western Europe were executed in Latvia in the World War II. The Museum is located in the historical part of the city near the borders of former ghetto.

The opening of the first exhibit includes the names of more than 70 000 Latvian Jews who faced the Holocaust, with stones from the streets of Riga Ghetto. A photo exhibit includes anti-Semitism propaganda, Holocaust in Latvia, the Resistance and the Righteous Among the Nations.

Jewish history in Latvia dates back some 450 years, and a section of the exhibit documents this history.

According to director Rabbi Menachem Barkahan:

Riga Ghetto Museum is not just a museum. I do hope that it will become the significant memento of the dreadful events that occurred in the history of Latvia and should never ever be repeated again. The Museum is becoming a center of culture and education, a source of tolerance and mutual respect.

Earlier this month - on September 1 - a new Jewish calendar was released and dedicated to the history of Jewish development during Latvia's First Republic.

There is also a database with the names of Jewish children who perished during the Holocaust in Latvia.

Click here for more information about the Jewish Culture Festival 5771 in Riga, with a video and photos.

For more information about the community organization Shamir in Riga, send an email.

Europe: 2010 Day of Jewish Culture, Sept. 5

Each year, the European Day of Jewish Culture offers activities and events in many countries.

While the official day is September 5, events are scheduled for other days as well and there is a calendar on the home page of JewishHeritage.org, which offers links to this year's participating countries.

Countries scheduling events this year: Belgium, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Croatia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom.

“Art and Judaism” - this year's theme - explores a wide field of topics:

- Media: paintings, sculptures, decorative arts, literature, music, films, theatre

- People: painters, sculptors, writers, actors, composers and performers, directors

- Period: ancient, medieval, modern, contemporary

- Collectors: patrons of art, collections, museums

- Religious: applied art, artifacts, Judaica, everyday life,

Click here for an interactive map. Click the country of interest and a PDF will come up (in English as well as that country's own language), arranged by city and event, with detailed information.