New York: Balkan Jewish life exhibit, March 31

"Images of a Lost World: Pictures & Stories of Balkan Sephardic Life" will open at 6.30pm Thursday, March 31, at the Center for Jewish History, New York City.

Originally commissioned by the Foreign Ministry of Spain, it is funded by the Spanish Embassy (Washington, DC) and Casa Sefarad/Israel (Madrid), with the generous support of the Consulate General of Spain in New York. It is co-presented with YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

It is based on family stories and pictures pulled from Centropa's archive of more than 200 interviews conducted in Turkey, Greece, Macedonia, Serbia, Bulgaria and Croatia. The pictures and stories take us back into the world of Balkan Sephardic Jewry in its last decades, and through these personal stories of going to school, falling in love and recalling family holidays, Jewish history comes to life.

A program follows, moderated by Edward Serotta, Director of Centropa.

Tickets: $12 General Admission/$8 ASF/YIVO members. Advance registration requested.

Ancestry.com: Immigration Collection free through Labor Day

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

New material added to the collection:

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

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

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

Learn more here.

Catskills Bungalow Heritage Museum

While many people joyfully remember their Catskill summers as some of the happiest moments in their lives, there is no physical, visual place to share those memories.

Many Catskill summer kids remember this sign (left). We may have been oblivious to lots of things, but that sign was good to see each year.

Some determined individuals want to change that and create The Catskills Bungalow Heritage Museum.

Phil Brown of the Catskills Institute (which archives information about the region), informed me about this new project

A meeting about the project - whose purpose is the preservation of the heritage and history of bungalow colonies in the Catskills - is set for 11am, Sunday, June 13, at the Mountaindale Firehouse, Mountaindale, New York.

All interested individuals are invited to attend and discuss:

-- Physical acquisition and restoration of at least three original period bungalows.
-- Presentation of furniture, objects, photographs and ephemera from era.
-- Preservation of the history of tenants and tourists of the bungalow colonies
-- Collection of oral histories of former owners and service businesses for the bungalow colonies.

The organizers are Allen Frishman, Evadne Giannini and Raymon Elozua.

We are interested in your ideas and thoughts about such a museum. And we seek support from the local community to develop an initial action plan. We ask if possible to put your thoughts in writing so that the committee will be able to review your recommendations at a later date. We look forward to seeing you there.

Since the 1970s, the bungalow colonies have suffered a severe decline as our nation's wealth and lifestyles have changed. Many colonies were abandoned, demolished or sold for development. In an encouraging sign, a number have survived and thrive today as religious groups seek the same benefits for their members. All in all, a miniscule few remain open for rent to the general public.

The organizers' hope is that the Catskills Bungalow Heritage Museum will become a destination point for families and children who once vacationed in these colonies, creating tourism that will contribute to the economic re-vitalization of Sullivan County.

If you are interested and wish to be kept informed about the project, or wish to share ideas or contacts, email the organizers (above).

Los Angeles: Persians record "Our Legacy"

There's another revolution in the Iranian Jewish community in Los Angeles - and hopefully in other pockets of the same diaspora.

I've been connected with this community for many decades, both in Teheran and Los Angeles. Normally, people do not focus on life in the old days, particularly if there were difficult times.

The community tends to focus on good times, positive achievements and the future. Only rarely do individuals talk about their past experiences that were less than positive, and even fewer speak about these experiences in public arenas.

Thus, this project, spearheaded by the 30 Years After group, is extremely important as it gives voice to the memories and experiences of this community. Thanks to this Iranian Jewish young leadership group first organized in Los Angeles (with a branch in New York, and which has also sponsored events in Tel Aviv), an oral history endeavor is now underway.

"Our Legacy" is a first-ever unique community project to commemorate and preserve Iranian Jewish history by connecting the future of the Jewish people with the legacy of their past.

Some have seen loved ones arrested and imprisoned as political prisoners. Others have fled across borders like nomads on the backs of camels. More escaped the Islamic Republic as political refugees in search of safety and opportunity. Yet, the stories of sacrifice and courage that sustained this community have never been fully told.

Headed by young Los Angeles attorney Sam Yebri, his organization is striving to document this history before it disappears from the community’s collective memory. It is an attempt to tell the history of a Jewish community through videotaped stories and interviews conducted and organized by the community's youth and young leaders.

According to the website, people may upload videos shot with video cameras or even cellphones, making it very easy to capture the memories of their parents, grandparents, aunts and uncles and help the younger - and future - generations understand what the immigrant generation experienced.

On December 13, some 100 people descended on Nessah Synagogue in Beverly Hills and shared their memories of life, after being directed to one of four available cameras.

Nessah is headed by Rabbi David Shofet, who graduated from the Rabbinical School of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City. His late father, Hakham Yedidiah Shofet, was Iran's chief rabbi for decades. I've known David since his JTS days, and knew the family when we lived in Teheran. When he returned to Iran, he even arranged for some high school students at Teheran's Abrishami synagogue - where his father presided - to participate in USY Pilgrimages to Israel with their US counterparts.

Iranian Jewish journalist Karmel Melamed covered the session in the Los Angeles Jewish Journal, who wrote, in part:

Recording oral history is not a new endeavor for the local Iranian Jewish community. In recent years the L.A.-based Center for Iranian Jewish Oral History, with the help of volunteers, conducted more than 100 video and audio interviews with Iranian Jews who had influenced Iran’s history, literature and culture in some way since 1906.

In 2002, the group released “Esther’s Children: A Portrait of Iranian Jews,” a colorful book sharing the 2,700-year history of Iranian Jewry along with personal photos from community members.

Yet 30 Years After’s project is unique in that it encourages young Iranian American Jewish professionals to embrace their heritage by videotaping their own parents’ and grandparents’ often painful memories from life in Iran.

Yebri said the video testimonials recorded by 30 Years After will be available on the group’s Web site. Additional tapings will be scheduled during 2010 at local community synagogues and senior citizen centers, and the group plans to use the videos in collaboration with established institutions like the Library of Congress, the Jewish Museum in New York and the Diaspora Museum in Tel Aviv.

The faces in the videos were familiar, and it was good to see people I knew back in the old days in Teheran and later in Los Angeles. Some videos are in English, some in Farsi, which brought back many of my own memories.

For more information, visit the Our Legacy Project. However, be patient as the website seems extremely slow to load ("clunky" comes to mind) and needs some tweaking.

Read Karmel's complete story at the Jewish Journal link above.

Oregon: Jewish Museum reopens

The Oregon Jewish Museum has moved to a new home in the northwest part of Portland.

Its resources include art exhibits and much more, including the Jewish historical society's archives and library (open by appointment to researchers).

Back in the 1950s, the city's Old South Waterfront was a vibrant Jewish and Italian neighborhood. There is a walking tour of the area.

The opening was on Sunday, and various exhibits included:

The Shape of Time: accumulations of place and memory
Arnold Newman – Street Scenes
The Berger Collection of Ceremonial Judaica
Deanne Belinoff – The Book of Keys
Alex Appella – The Janos Book
Shelley Jordon – Family History

The museum also conducts the Oral History Jewish Cemetery Project and the Oral History Project. Seniors' memories are a precious resource that dwindle over time, and both projects are aimed at saving these memories and archiving them.

The first project takes small groups to Portland's Jewish cemeteries to film and interview the seniors as they walk together and talk about family and friends buried there. Gravestone names trigger memories and conversation. The films will be open to archival research and eventually made public. This project is funded by the Oregon Heritage Commission, the Oregon Cultural Trust and Helen and Jerry Stern.

The second oral history project is part of the museum's mission to preserve the state's Jewish history. The current project expands the Oregon Jewish Oral History and Archive collection begun in the 1970s. Its goal is to collect a wide range of oral histories from community members across the state. Volunteers are trained to to conduct interviews and transcribe tapes.

A third project - Museum in a Suitcase - is an outreach program for elementary school students. The goal is to teach diverse students about the successful integration of the Jews, who were one of the state's earliest immigrant groups. Significant objects including Judaica are included in the suitcase, along with curriculum materials and teaching guide. The museum wants to train docents who will visit schools and organize programs. Funding is via The Collins Foundation, Oregon Heritage Commission and the Jewish Federation of Greater Portland have funded this project.

Go to the museum site (link above) and read all about the exhibit... - Shape of Time - which explores urban landscapes and public memory through the Jewish experiences in the state. It utilizes the museums extensive collection of historic photographs.

Sephardim: Oral history project launched

Five thousand oral histories of Sephardic Jews are sought by the end of 2015 in an ambitious project to give voice to this community, regardless of whether they immigrated or were born here.

"Sephardic America Voices: A Jewish Oral History Project,” is sponsored by the American Sephardi Federation (ASF) in New York, with the University of Miami and Hebrew University.
The New Jersey Jewish Standard carried the story.

Organizer Carlos Benaim is an ASF board member born in Tangiers, and created the project after participating in a Barcelona conference. The event featured author Helene Trigano's film with testimonies of Sephardic Jews living in France.

There was no such initiative for the US Sephardic community, said Benaim, so he decided to preserve these stories that could be lost forever.

A New Jersey resident who also serves on the ASF board, Raquel Benatar (born in Tetuan, Morocco), said the project is a unique opportunity for American Sephardim to convey their history, customs, and traditions of diverse countries of origin, reasons for immigration to the US, and to help preserve Sephardic heritage. She may help conduct some of the interviews.

ASF executive director Stanley Urman says that nobody is capturing the history of Jews who fled, emigrated, escaped, or were expelled from countries throughout Europe, North Africa, the Middle East, and the Gulf region, and this is an important chapter in Jewish history.

As with Steven Spielberg's Shoah interviews, this project has a time element as the elders of this community are getting older. Information needs to be recorded as soon as possible before it is lost forever.

Using New Jersey as an example, there are some 20 Sephardic congregations in various towns (Fort Lee, Teaneck, Englewood, West Orange, Highland Park, Long Branch, and Deal), but not major Sephardic communities, except in Deal, where the Syrian Jews are some 16% of the residents.

People always ask about the definition of Sephardic. There are two definitions, the narrow and the broad. The narrower one limits it to Jews (and their descendants) who come from the Iberian Peninsula and settled around the Mediterranean or Ottoman Empire after 1492. The broader definition includes those who follow Sephardic liturgy, didn't originate in Iberia, and includes Jews who come from Asia or North Africa (known as Mizrahim, "easterners").

The project includes those who are Sephardim in the broader sense.

In 2002, the Institute for Jewish and Community Research, headed by the late Gary Tobin, estimated that there are some 600,000 Sephardic and Mizrahi Jews in the US.

The first "pilot" phase began in August and ended in October and a handful of people were interviewed. Urman is looking for those who want to be interviewed as well as for those who wish to be trained to be interviewers. ASF has already trained, as interviewers, 16 students of the Magen David Yeshiva High School in Brooklyn.

The third and final phase of the project will run from June 2010 to December 31, 2015 and hopes to reach the target of 5,000 interviews.

According to Urman, foreign-born parents may be interviewed with American-born children. In other interviews, children will share stories about their parents and stories from their grandparents. Each subject receives a DVD copy of the interview, which may be up to two hours long. The interview will be archived at the ASF. There are plans to publish educational materials, such as books and videos at the completion of the project.

Shelomo Alfassa is coordinator and did conducted the initial interviews. There are, he said, two different questionnaires. One is for Jews from Arab countries, and one for Jews from the Balkans, Turkey and Greece.

NOTE: One of Tracing the Tribe's pet peeves is that Jews from Iran are included in the first group when Iran is not an Arab country, although it is Moslem. Tracing the Tribe continually informs ASF and other news sources that this is a misnomer, and should be called Jews from Moslem countries, not Arab countries. ASF agrees, but finds that news media prefers to use the other designation, although it is wrong.

In the US, the questionnaire was designed by ASF with professors Henry Green (University of Miami Jewish Studies Department), and Margalit Bejarano (Hebrew University's Oral History Division, Hartman Institute of Contemporary Jewry).

Questions include the subjects' lives in their home countries, the need to leave when life became difficult, life in other countries prior to settlement in the US, and how they rebuilt their lives.

Although the article detailed immigration of Sephardic Jews to the US back to 1654, when 23 refugees arrived in New York from Recife, Brazil, as well as communities in such places as Newport, Rhode Island; Philadelphia; Charleston, South Carolina; and Savannah, Georgia; the 3,000+ Ottoman Empire Jewish immigrants (1885-1908), and 10,000 Turkish Jews after 1908; the story does not mention the huge Persian Jewish community that arrived in both New York and Los Angeles following the Iranian Revolution in the late 1970s-early 1980s.

For a bit of New Jersey history, the most well-known Sephardic congregation was Etz Ahaim, founded in 1929 in New Brunswick. Earlier Sephardim showed up in even earlier according to records, such as Aaron Louzada (Bound Brook, 1698), Daniel Nuñez (Piscataway town clerk, early 1700s), and David Naar, born in St. Thomas, Virgin Islands (Elizabeth mayor, 1843).

Tracing the Tribe readers are invited to participate as both interviewees or interviewers. For more information, send an email to the ASF.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Tex-Mex: Jewish food traditions

If one really wants to learn about how Jewish customs are manifested in a still-secret community, take a look at food traditions in southern Texas and northern Mexico.

In this article from the Harlingen News in Texas, read about how these customs - in food, oral traditions, culture and secret religious customs - are still part of the folklore, habits and practices of the early settlers' descendants in this geographical area.

In northern Mexico and what today is Texas, the Jews of Nuevo Leon and its capital, Monterrey, Mexico, lived without fear of harrasment from the Holy Office of the 1640’s and beyond.

Many of the leading non Jewish families today of that area are descended from secret Jewish ancestors, according to scholar, Richard G. Santos.

Santos states there are hundreds, if not thousands of descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jews living today in San Antonio, Texas, USA and throughout South Texas. Not all are aware of their Jewish heritage.

Santos is a renowned San Antonio, Texas scholar in ethnic studies of South Texas secret Spanish Jewry.

Back in 1973, when few people knew anything about this, he presented a paper to the Interfaith Institute at the Chapman Graduate Center of Trinity University on secret Sephardic Jewish customs in the same region.

Historically, most scholars accept that the founding families of Monterrey and the Mexican border area of Nuevo Reno de Leon are of Sephardic origin. The Diccionario Porrua de Historia Geografia y Biografia states that Luis de Carvajal y de a Cueva brought a shipload of Jews to settle his Mexican colony – with some Jews being converts to Catholicism from Judaism and others “openly addicted to their (Jewish) doctrine."

The late Seymour Liebman, a specialist on colonial Mexico's secret Jews, explained in his book (“Jews in New Spain”) that Jews settled in areas far from Mexico City to escape the 16th century Inquisition.

Conversos colonized the Mexican states of Nuevo Leon, Coahuila, Tamualipas and into what would become the stateof Texas, in the 1640s-1680s and later. Most of Texas’s Spanish-speaking immigrants came from Nuevo Leon, Tamaulipas, and Coahuila (the old Neuvo Reyno de Leon) from the 1680s.

Those who settled in today's southern Texas in the 17th century brought Jewish food customs, such as pan de semita or Semitic bread eaten around Passover and Lent.

According to Santos, the memories of delicious Jewish pastries eaten around the world in today's Sephardic Jewish communities today still live in Tex-Mex pastries, such as pan dulce, pan de semita, trenzas, cuernos, pan de hero and pan de los protestantes (Protestant’s bread).

Pan de semita is considered a 17th century recipe for unleavened matzoh, and it is never made with lard, forbidden by Jewish law. The article offered a quick recipe of 2 cups of flour, 1/2-2/3 cup water, a few tablespoons of butter or olive oil. Mix it together and bake it.

Today, according to the article, all Mexicans (regardless of religion) eat it in the geographical area detailed above.

Santos himself descends from colonial-era Conversos and he details a special kind of pan de semita - including raisins, pecans and vegetable oil - made only in Texas and along the border. This is another sign of Jewish dietary rules. According to Jewish dietary laws, pan de semita with butter couldn't be eaten with meat, but made with vegetable or olive oil, it could.

Santos' recipe: 2 cups flour, scant cup water, a handful (Note: Tracing the Tribe is not sure how to measure a handful of oil) olive oil, mixed with 1/2-2/3 cup each of raisins and pecans. Knead and bake at 350 until lightly browned and easy to chew.

In Guadalajara, semita de trigo substitutes milk for water. In Texas and in Guadalajara, there is semita de aniz (anise), but neither of these include raisins and pecans. Only olive oil or butter is used.

The article also covers the special method of chicken slaughter used today and in the 1640s.

Another Passover/Lent custom is eating cactus and egg omelets (nopalitos lampreados). The only bread eaten is the unleavened pan de semita.

In Texas, Mexican Americans throw a piece of bread dough into the fire before making tortillas or bread; a very Jewish custom. Some do not eat pork on Fridays or after sundown on Friday.

Capirotada is another food eaten around Lent and Passover. It is wheat bread with raw sugar, cinnamon, cheese, butter, pecans, peanuts and raisins.

The Inquisition preserved these ingredients and even recipes in its archives, so we know Conversos in the 1640s used them. (NOTE: In the old days, lard was the preferred fat to use in cooking and baking; olive oil and other vegetable oils were not as common. Only those people who needed to use these oils for religious dietary reasons would go out of their way to acquire them, when lard was all around. Anyone not using lard would be suspect!)

Mexican Americans eat meat on Fridays, even before the Catholic church relaxed the rule about not eating meat. Older women cover their hands while praying, a custom that may come from Jewish women covering their heads.

The Inquisition, according to the article, never was established in what is today's Texas, which encouraged settlement by Converso families.

Some 16 families from the Canary Island arrived in 1731 and founded San Fernando de Bexar township - today's San Antonio. Many Canary Islanders were Conversos.They married with families from Nuevo Reyno de Leon, many of whom were Spanish and Portuguese secret Jews who moved there because the Inquistion wasn't there.

Although not all Mexican Americans are of Sephardic origin, many continue to transmit oral Sephardic traditions.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Connecticut: Recording oral histories and more

The Jewish Ledger of Connecticut covered oral history interviews in conjunction with National Day of Listening (November 27), while focusing on Estelle Kafer, executive director of the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Hartford.

The article covers Kafer's suggestions and the society's goal in the collection and preservation of the area community's historical documents, photos and memorabilia. Its archive (open to the public by appointment) holds synagogue and organization collections as well as individual oral histories and memorabilia.

Kafer has organized several projects, from "Remembering the Old Neighborhood," a book project on Hartford's north end, to Hartford, to "Pride, Honor and Courage," a documentary and exhibit on area women during World War II.

Reading through the Q&A from the article may provide ideas for you to think about in relation to your own Jewish genealogical society, your towns and cities, synagogues and school projects.

Kafer says oral history is important as it is a primary source, from the individuals who lived that history. In the old days (pre-computer and television), people talked more and families met more frequently, often sharing stories.

An oral history allows us to have an accounting of a person's life as they recall it, which becomes part of our community history. We have researchers who come in all the time to look through the oral histories and see what was happening at a certain time: where people lived, what they did with their free time, where they went to synagogue and what those places were like. It's a true-to-life accounting of history, because it's a primary source. They lead us to facts about what was going on in the community at the time. It's interesting to hear a true-to-life experience as opposed to reading facts in a book, to hear first-hand what a synagogue was like and what happened there, for example, instead of merely reading statistics in a book.

The Jewish Historical Society also offers workshops on interviewing and brings in professionals to help those interested. Such people have included the director of the University of Connecticut Oral History Office and the president of the New England Association of Oral History.

On May 2, the Family History Day will feature prominent Jewish genealogist Arthur Kurzweil, author of the must-read Jewish genealogy bestseller "From Generation to Generation: How to Trace Your Jewish Genealogy and Family History," and co-founder of the first Jewish Genealogical Society (New York City) in the '70s. It will feature beginner and advanced workshops on genealogy, memoir writing, how to do an oral history and its importance, scrapbooking and preserving photos and documents. Additionally, some videographers will do short 15-20-minute interviews for participants to take home.

The day will provide an opportunity to learn about interviewing parents and grandparents and will likely result in a resource for the community archive as these interviews are shared with the JHS.

For the past few years, the JGS has been conducting an oral history workshop for 7th-grade students and their parents at Beth El Temple religious school.

Says Kafer, the parents usually say how great it is for kids to have the opportunity to ask parents and other family members those questions.

Tracing the Tribe wishes we had had the opportunity to ask our grandparents and older relatives all the questions that we wanted to ask after we become interested in genealogy. By the time we'd learned what questions to ask, there was no one to ask. These projects with young people will enable them to record valuable information while they still can from the people who can provide the answers.

There's also informtion on the book project about the North End, and how students interviewed temple members who grew up there. The students also interviewed women in the synagogue for the WWII project. They transcribe their interviews and give them to the JHS.

What does the JHS archive offer?

Said Kafer, it is an archives by the community for the , and includes collections from synagogues, Jewish educational institutions, Jewish agencies and the JCC, as well as more than 800 oral histories, a large photo collection of all subjects - institutions, synagogues and individuals. There are also files on people and documents concerning those who made community contributions which were covered in the media.

The JHS is always looking for more material.

Says Kafer:

When you go through your parents' home, we ask people to not just throw things into the garbage, but to look through things carefully and contact us if there's something they think we could incorporate into the archives.em>

Some good ideas to think about. Read the complete article at the link above.

Pittsburgh: Jewish oral histories now online

A local project in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) has produced 516 oral history interviews now accessible and searchable online.

The story is in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The project - Pittsburgh and Beyond: The Experience of the Jewish Community - can be viewed online here. The interviews were made on 11,000 audio cassettes over 32 years - more than 1,200 hours of recordings - and were available online on Tuesday, September 28.

The local NCJW chapter provided the recordings to the University of Pittsburgh's library system, which digitized them and designed a searchable site.

In 1968, volunteers began interviewing the men and women who arrived from Eastern Europe 1890-1924. It expanded to include the oral histories of Pittsburgh's Jewish residents.

"It's one of the largest oral-history projects in the country and perhaps the largest focused on a region — and then a population within that region," said Rush G. Miller, director of Pitt's library system. "We haven't found one larger."

The interviews illustrate such community aspects as academic, business, civic, cultural, medical, political, religious, and social evolution and development in Pittsburgh, national and international events.

Search parameters include given and surnames, geographical list and other subjects and keywords. Topical headings (including local proper names) are found under a generic heading for service or type. Find individuals, hospitals, newspapers, orphanages, synagogues, television and radio stations, fashion, medical and legal specializations. The geographic index includes three categories (Pittsburgh and vicinity, US and outside the US).

Other key pages:

The project's history includes information on two books and two documentaries. There is a 2002 guide available as a PDF.

The tapes have intentionally never been transcribed to encourage researchers the opportunity to hear the actual voices with inflections of the respondents. Rather, all interviews have been accurately abstracted by NCJW members to reflect the balance and content of each interview and to aid researchers in accessing specific information in the interviews. The inclusion of geographic, name and subject indices further enhances research access to information on the tape interviews.

Methodology and use offers more information on the updated guide which offers abstracts and indices (geographic, personal name and subject). Dates given are those provided by the respondent, and Eastern European hometown spellings were determined through "Where Once We Walked" (Avotaynu). Names of regions or provinces - when given - are in parentheses and the country of origin refers to political boundaries of the time.

A timeline of achievements was created to show the project's development.

Visit the site to learn how to order copies of the interviews and of supplemental materials - if available.

Oregon: Eugene oral history project

A Jewish oral history project in Eugene, Oregon is preserving the memories of residents.

According to the Register-Guard's August 5 story, the Lane County Jewish History Museum is collecting oral histories of Eugene Jewish residents to document the area's Jewish history.

Similar projects could be duplicated in any Jewish community.

Arriving in Eugene a half-dozen years apart from each other, Elizabeth Siegel and Hilde Geisen remember the days when the city’s population was barely 35,000, and few Jewish families lived here.

“It was unusual to be Jewish,” acknowledges the German-born Hilde, who was barely 18 years old when she arrived in Eugene in the late ’40s, a survivor of the Holocaust.

Elizabeth, raised in Astoria, moved to Eugene in the mid-’50s with her own young family.

Their stories, along with a dozen others, have been preserved by the Lane County Jewish Oral History Project and are archived along with 300 oral histories of Jewish Oregonians at the Oregon Jewish History Museum (OJM). The state’s Jewish community is just 1.01 percent of Oregon’s population; after Portland, Eugene has the second largest population.

The Lane County project was started by Temple Beth Israel member Lee Miller in response to Senior Rabbi Yitzhak Husbands-Hankins’ concerns about the loss of Jewish histories as elder members passed away.

“Every time someone dies, we feel the loss of them, but also the loss of their stories,” explains Ellen Todras, co-coordinator of the local project.

Transcribers interview the oldest community members first.

The story focuses on the now recorded memories of Elizabeth Siegel and Hilde Geisen. The inclusion of these stories in the archives means their memories will always be remembered.

Siegel's story includes Russian and Lithuanian parents and begins in New York. It covers her father's secondhand and junk business, as well as some anti-Semitism in Astoria where maybe six families lived. It covers her love and talent for singing and music, teaching ballet to young children. They joined the Portland community for high holidays.

She met her husband in 1949, and was engaged that year.

Nevertheless, having made a commitment to promote her talents, Elizabeth sang and danced her way through auditions in New York City. Television star Ted Mack asked her to join the Ted Mack and Original Amateur Hour Tour, and radio talk-show host Arthur Godfrey offered her a spot on one of his programs.

After the frenetic schedule of singing lessons, rehearsals and auditions, Elizabeth decided she wanted to go home. “I didn’t think (show business) would work with being married. I was 20 years old. How could I know about life?”

The couple married in the Astoria synagogue, moved to Seattle and lived there for eight years before moving to Eugene. They became active in the Temple Beth Israel congregation. Elizabeth performed in Actor’s Cabaret, Very Little Theater and Oregon Festival of American Music productions.

She sang in the synagogue choir, was active in Hadassah and Sisterhood. Now 80, she still teaches tap dancing at the Eugene Ballet Academy. From a small Jewish community, there are now some 400 families.

Now in her 80s, Hilde Geisen is originally from Cologne, Germany. At 18, she arrived in Eugene in 1947, following two years in a Czechoslovakian displaced person's camp in as an orphaned camp survivor.

Following Kristallnacht, her parents began completing immigration paperwork to immigrate to Eugene, where her aunt and uncle lived - Trude and Ludwig Kaufman. However, they could not leave in time.

In 1941, her parents were transported to a camp near Lodz, Poland. Geisen was transported nine months later to a camp near Prague, where she was assigned to care for aged and sick people.

“The first few weeks, the old people died like flies,” Hilde says. “They got sick with malnutrition and diarrhea, and there was no medication.”

She says she survived only because her camp was not an extermination camp like Auschwitz and didn’t have any gas chambers. “It was like a transit camp,” where the inmates stayed temporarily before boarding trains to imminent death.

“It’s a miracle that I survived the war and another (miracle) that I was able to come” to America, Hilde says.

Eventually, she joined her aunt and uncle in Eugene. She learned the fate of her father in Lodz only 10 years ago; her mother's fate is still unknown.

Her aunt and uncle owned women's clothing stores and, after a few years living in Los Angeles and San Francisco, she returned and worked as a buyer for the stores.

She has many friends at the synagogue and around the world; lives half the year in Palm Springs and Israel, and travels to Germany and other countries. In Eugene, she volunteers in a nursing home in various capacities.

Read the complete story at the link above.

Georgia: Savannah genealogy classes

Savannah residents have an opportunity to learn about genealogy, oral history, the Civil War, Savannah's influential women, participate in tours and more, when the Georgia Historical Society becomes a summer classroom.

The classes, seminars and walking tours represent an opportunity to expand GHS' community visibility and raise some funding, according to the group's senior historian Stan Deaton. The reference library is closed to researchers on mornings because state cuts resulted in staffing reductions, and made the library available as a classroom.

Topics include:

- Basic Preservation for Your Family Treasures. June 8 and July 20, 10 am-noon. $75.

- Transforming the Bully Pulpit: American Presidents in the 20th Century. June 15-19, 10-11am $125.

- Decisive Battles of the Civil War. June 22-26, 10-11:30am. $125.

- Introduction to Genealogical Research. June 29, July 13 and Aug. 24, 10am-noon. $50.

- Savannah Women: A Downtown Walking Tour. July 27 and Aug. 10, 9-11am. $20.

- The Gardens of Clermont Lee: A Downtown Walking Tour. July 30 and Aug. 13, 9-11am. $20.

- Civil War Leadership. Aug. 3-7, 10-11:30am. $125.

- Oral History: Getting Started. Aug. 17, 10-11am $35.

- Oral History: It's Recorded, Now What? Aug. 20, 10-11:30am. $35.

For more information, reservations and registration, click the GHS. All classes are open to the public and GHS members receive a 10% discount.

San Diego: Write your life story, April 12

Writing your life story is more than listing facts and dates. If you do that, your future descendants will be bored to death.

The biggest lesson journalist Marsha Kay Seff learned from her deceased parents, Manny and Toba Seff, is “without laughter, growing old is no laughing matter." To keep her sense of humor honed she is teaching classes in “Writing Your Life Story.”

The San Diego Jewish Genealogical Society will host Seff in a program on writing the story of your life at its next meeting. It begins at 1pm, Sunday, April 12, at the Lawrence Family Jewish Community Center in La Jolla.

Seff - a reporter for 40­ years - knows the secrets of writing a life story and its milestones, and how to to highlight life's ups and down. Learn how to leave your descendants a part of you they will cherish.

A San Diego Union Tribune columnist for 24 years, Seff knows how to make a story. For 12 years, she wrote a column on aging and caregiving until she left the paper in 2008. She'll show how her years of caregiving influenced her writing.

For more information on this event and the SDJGS (founded in 1982), click here.

Oral History Institute: UC Berkeley, August 2009

Learning how to interview is one of the most important skills for genealogists, family historians and others. What are the proven techniques and methodologies? How do we plan a project to gain the information we need?

To help answer these questions, there's a one-week advanced institute on methodology, theory and practice of oral/video history scheduled at the Regional Oral History Office of the University of California Berkeley, August 10-14.

It is designed for academic, independent, public and community scholars engaged in serious research that in some manner utilizes oral/video history and/or interview-based methodologies. Only 30 participants will be accepted, the cost is $800 and and the application deadline is May 1.
Presentations will cover project planning, preparation for interviewing and interview techniques, interview analysis, legal and ethical responsibilities such as copyright and human subject protection requirements.

The goal is to strengthen participants' skills to conduct research focused interviews and to consider the special characteristics of interviews as historical evidence.

Special attention will be given to how oral history interviews can broaden and deepen historical interpretation situated within contemporary discussions of history, subjectivity, memory, and memoir.

Participants will also work in small research interest groups led by faculty with similar interests.
For more details, click here.

Vancouver, BC: Two workshops, March 1- Update

I just received a correction from dear friend Cissie Eppel in Vancouver who writes that the beginning Jewish genealogy program described below will be held at the Jewish Community Centre, in Victoria, BC, on Vancouver Island, and not at the Jewish Museum and Archives in the city of Vancouver. This is a great opportunity for those living in and around beautiful Victoria to get started in Jewish genealogy!

March 1 is a busy genealogy day at the Jewish Museum and Archives of BC, with two workshops scheduled.

The Museum and Archives demonstrates 150 years of Jewish culture and history in British Columbia. It is also the home of the Jewish Genealogical Institute of BC (founded 1992), the Jewish Historical Society of BC, and the Nemetz Jewish Community Archives.

The Nemetz Jewish Community Archives Reference Room (NJCA) The NJCA Reference Room in the Jewish Museum and Archives of British Columbia provides a quiet atmosphere for researchers. The Reference Room contains a small but definitive resource library and is equipped with an oral history listening area and access to the Jewish Historical Society’s Oral History Collection. Visitors can also access the Jewish Genealogical Institute of British Columbia’s reference library and the genealogical databases Ancestry.com and FindMyPast.com.

The following beginning Jewish genealogy program will be held at the Jewish Community Centre, in Victoria, BC, on Vancouver Island, and not at the Jewish Museum and Archives.

From 1-4.30pm, the Jewish Genealogical Institute of BC will present a beginning Jewish genealogy workshop, led by president Catherine Youngren, called "First Steps in Jewish Genealogy: Tracing Your Jewish Ancestry, Giving life to your ancestors." Participants will receive handouts and beginner's kit at the program. The cost is $35.

This workshop will introduce participants to the steps involved in doing genealogy research and the challenges involved in telling and sharing your ancestor’s stories. Topics will include: collecting family documents, interviewing family members, using genealogical tools such as ancestral charts and family group sheets, and using genealogical websites and databases. Participants will be introduced to important online tools such as Jewishgen.org and Familysearch.org, and most useful online databases including Ancestry.com, Findyourpast.com, and Footnote.com.

From 2-4pm, the Jewish Historical Society of BC will offer an oral history interviewer workshop for those interested in becoming involved with the JHSBC's Oral History Project.

Irene Dodek, who interviewed Holocaust survivors for the Shoah Foundation, and archivist Janine Johnston will lead the workshop. Cost is $20; $5 for those who are already interviewers with the JHSBC. For information on the oral history workshop, call 604-638-7286 .

The Museum's permanent interactive exhibit offers interesting details such as Gastown merchant Louis Gold, who jumped into Burrard Inlet to escape Vancouver’s Great Fire of 1886. Others include Vancouver's second mayor David Oppenheimer, called the “Father of Vancouver,” who was instrumental in opening beautiful Stanley Park.

There's a gift shop with relevant books (some of which I purchased on my last speaking visit to Vancouver) and even the kosher Nava Cafe. If you are visiting Vancouver, note that the museum is open from 10am-5pm, Sunday-Thursday, closed on legal and Jewish holidays, of course.

Lost forever: Family stories not passed down

If you're the creative type, you might win a free registration for the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (Philadelphia, August 2-7).

The winning design in this year's Jewish Genealogy Month Annual Poster/Flyer Competition will be unveiled at Philly 2009. The artist receives free conference registration. The design must reflect this year's theme: "From One Generation to the Next: Passing Down our Family History in the Oral Tradition."

There is one catch, however. Only member organizations of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies may submit, or rather sponsor, each entry for either JGS members or non-members; no age requirement. If you're interested, contact your local JGS (see the list at IAJGS).

Learn more about the competition here, including last year's winner and necessary forms. All work should be sent by the April 1 deadline to poster committee chair Steve Lasky; subject field: Poster/Flyer Competition 2009. Questions? Contact Steve.

Stories not passed down are lost forever

Steve and I have often discussed the importance of passing down a family's oral history. Each story is a precious gem that must be recorded in some way or be lost forever.

According to Steve, this year's poster theme recognizes that understanding family history extends far beyond the acquisition of paper documents providing dry facts about our ancestors' lives. Sharing stories and memories among the generations provides first-hand experiences as well as an opportunity to improve communication and family bonds.

My first word of advice to any beginning researcher has always been: If you have senior relatives, RUN - do not walk - to talk to them, to record their experiences and their knowledge. I always repeat the African proverb: When an elder dies, it is as if a library has burned down. That knowledge, unless recorded in some way, will be lost forever.

Most researchers, myself included, always talk about the Curse of Genealogy - the fact that we didn't ask our parents or grandparents or great-grandparents about our family while they were alive. Most of us caught the bug after no one was left to ask - this happened to me and many others. It is up to us now to plan how to transmit this knowledge to our children and to their children, whether they are interested right now or not.

Many researchers say their kids aren't interested. That's not a problem. Perhaps they will be - someday - and the information will be available to them. Perhaps one of our children or grandchildren will be the next great creator of a genealogical resource, technology or other innovation because a family story inspired them to get involved.

Personally, I find that the younger generations I meet are very interested in the past. They love the stories of individuals and how they lived, traveled to different countries and experienced life. They want the stories of their ancestors to come alive.

Over the centuries, historical events around the world have impacted us as a people as well as our individual families. Our children and grandchildren must understand collective Jewish history to gain a greater identity of who they are as links in the chain of time.

What better way is there to reinforce Jewish identity than by transmitting family history by passing this precious information to the younger generations, as some of us heard those stories from our own grandparents and older relatives. Stories not passed down are lost to the future.

Oral tradition passes down the stories of real people and real experiences. A paper document provides facts and is essential to good research, but the story of the real person behind that record is just as important.

When generations can share these experiences, family bonds are strengthened. Steve suggests that local genealogical societies organize oral history workshops for multiple generations, where grandparents, parents and children interview each other, with help from experts.

On another front, such workshops are a good method of encouraging active participation as they help strengthen and grow local society membership - particularly among the younger generation who currently are in the minority of the active genealogy world.

For years, I have told anyone who would listen - and many who did not want to hear it - that new blood is the lifeblood of Jewish genealogy, and indeed of all genealogy sectors. It is needed to sustain, grow and inspire our societies and our passion.

Getting back to the poster competition, Steve says, "It would be great to have an attractive visual image to stir the viewers' imagination, to inspire them to ask questions."

I agree.

Israel: One Day Seminar, Dec. 1

Registration is now open for the registration for the Fourth Israel Genealogical Society One Day Seminar to be held Monday, December 1. The theme is "Oral Tradition and Lore as Sources for Family Roots Research."

Genealogy research usually relies on official documents such as birth, marriage, and death certificates. Even tombstone inscriptions can supply important data. Dates and names gathered from the above are used as the basis for constructing family-trees.

Gathering materials based on both private and public memory can fill the gap where official data is missing - a well known problem in Jewish genealogy - and serve as a cultural bridge between generations.

At the Fourth Annual One Day Seminar [Yom Iyun] which will take place on Monday, December 1, 2008 – 4 Kislev 5769 we will wander together between past and present.

We will examine legends and anecdotes with memories that are a leitmotif in every family. We all have relatives who tell us they are sure of "what was . . ."

Join us for a fascinating program in which we will get a taste of what we were always too impatient to hear about. Our families are transmitting unique traditions from generation to generation: From King David to the de Vinci code, from the Magreb to Aram Tzova, between Ukraine prairies and the new vineyards in Gedera there are tales to tell.

The event will take place from 8.30am-5.45pm (with lunch and coffee breaks) at Beit Wolyn, the Givatayim branch of Yad Vashem's International School for Holocaust Studies. For more information, click here.

Fees (lunch not included): Members, IGS/JFRA: NIS 105; others, NIS 125. Seating is limited; register early.

The opening keynote speech (Hebrew) by Dr. Anat Gueta is "The Family Traditions Relating to King David's Pedigree – Michael Halperin's Case Study."

There are two concurrent program tracks in English (E) and Hebrew (H).

11-11:45am
"Oral Documentation, Genealogy and History;" Dr. Margalit Bejarano [H]
"The Legacy of An-sky in the search for roots;" Rosemary Eshel [E]

11.45-12.30pm
"The Myth on the Chelouche Family Immigration to ‘Eretz Yisrael’in the order
of Time and Research;" A. Chelouche [H]
"Family Oral Tradition and Lore: Blind Loyalty or Critical Confrontation;" Paul King [E]

1.30-2.15pm
"Amnon Hurvitz as an Historian of GEDERA’s First Days;" Dr. Nili Arieh-Sapir [H]
"Stories my father told me;" Ida Chaya Schwartz Se-Lavan [E]

2.15-3pm
"The ANTEBI Family History in the Light of Traditional Family Stories;" Dr. Elioz Antebi–Hefer [H]
"The Jewish Historical Clock: The case of 'Megale Amukot;'" Michael Honey [E]

3.30-4.15pm - workshops
"Collect Genealogical Materials 'in the field;'" Yehuda Etsba'a [H]
"Gathering Oral Information for a Genealogical Research;" Shoshana Ben Dor [E]

4.15p-5pm
"10 Words, 7 Months, and a 5-Languages’ Meeting;" Arnon Hershkovitz [H]
"So, We are not really Friedmans?" Roni Golan [E]

5-4.45pm - Closing Session
"The Family Code: A Literary or Pseudo Scientific Subject?" Eli Eshed [H]

San Francisco: Listen to the past on April 16

The Peninsula branch of the Jewish Genealogical Society of San Francisco Bay (JGSSFB)has scheduled a meeting with Irene Reti, Regional History Project director at UC Santa Cruz's University Library.

At 7.30 p.m. April 16, Reti will present "Listening to the Past: An Introduction to Oral History for the Family Historian," in Los Altos Hills.

Reti's project documents UCSC and California's Central Coast through oral history interviews. She has been an editor with the project since 1989, and chair of the publications committee of the National Oral History Association, which recently published Oral History for the Family Historian, A Basic Guide.

Reti authored The Keeper of Memory, a memoir about her life as the daughter of two Holocaust refugees, and publisher of A Transported Life: Memories of Kindertransport, The Oral History of Thea Felkis Eden, and others.

For more information, location and directions, click here