Russia: Lenin's Jewish roots on display

A letter by Lenin's sister claiming their maternal grandfather was a Ukrainian Jew is on display in Russia's State History Museum.

The Jerusalem Post - reporting on the AP story on May 24 - indicated that Stalin told the sister to keep quiet.

Among newly released documents displayed at the museum is a letter written by Lenin’s sister, Anna Ulyanova, claiming that their maternal grandfather was a Jew from the Ukraine who converted to Christianity to escape persecution in the Pale of Settlement and have access to higher education, the report said.

"He came from a poor Jewish family and was, according to his baptismal certificate, the son of Moses Blank, a native of [the western Ukrainian city of] Zhitomir,” Ulyanova wrote in 1932 in a letter cited by AP.

In the letter written to Josef Stalin, who replaced Lenin after his death in 1924, Ulyanova wrote, “Vladimir Ilych had always thought of Jews highly. I am very sorry that the fact of our origin – which I had suspected before – was not known during his lifetime.”

Lenin, born Vladimir Ilych Ulyanov in 1870, adopted the name Lenin while in Siberian exile in 1901. Under Czarist anti-Semitism, he identified only as Russian.

According to the AP, he oversaw a brief period of promotion of Jewish culture ending in the early 1930s when Stalin encouraged anti-Semitic purges and planned to relocate Soviet Jews. Lenin's sister requested that her brother's Jewish background be made public to combat anti-Semitism.

Stalin ignored the request, telling her to “keep absolute silence," according to exhibit curator Tatyana Koloskova. Lenin's official biography (written by his niece Oga Ulyanova) refers to the family's Russian, German and Swedish roots.

In the early 1900s, Russian historians found the sister's letter, but questioned its authenticity.

Read the complete article at the link above.

San Francisco: Jewish life in Tsarist Kiev, May 3

Learn about Jewish life in Tsarist-era Kiev with Natan M. Meir of Portland State University on Tuesday, May 3, at a meeting co-sponsored by the Jewish Community Library and the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society.

Meir's talk - "A 'Russian Zion' or a Jewish Nightmare? Jewish Life in Tsarist Kiev" - will be presented in Russian at 4pm and in English at 7pm, at the Jewish Community Library. There is no admission fee for the two talks.

The JCL is at 1835 Ellis Street, in San Francisco; there is free parking.

From a small group of merchants in the early 1860s, the Jewish population of Kiev grew rapidly until it became one of the largest urban Jewish communities in the Russian Empire.

Meir - author of "Kiev, Jewish Metropolis: A History, 1859–1914"- will chart the growth of this vital community from its founding until the outbreak of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution. He will discuss the external and internal challenges that it faced, including pogroms, intracommunal divisions, and the 1913 Beilis affair, in which a Ukrainian Jew was accused of ritual murder.

Meir received a Ph.D. in Jewish history from Columbia University in 2003 and is now the Lorry I. Lokey Assistant Professor of Judaic Studies at Portland State University (Oregon). He is co-editor of the recently published "Anti-Jewish Violence: Rethinking the Pogrom in East European History" and is currently working on a study of vulnerable and marginalized groups among East European Jews in the 19th century. He is a consultant for the Russian Jewish Museum of Moscow, now in its development stages.

For directions and more information, click here.

Southern California: Leaving the Pale of Settlement, February 13

Some 80% of our ancestors lived in Poland and the western Russia Pale of Settlement in 1880.

Why they left such a "nice place" is the topic of the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County (JGSCV), on Sunday, February 13.

The program runs from 1.30-3.30pm at Temple Adat Elohim, 2420 E. Hillcrest Drive, Thousand Oaks. There is no charge to attend.

Speaker Hal Bookbinder will present "Why Did Our Ancestors Leave a Nice Place Like the Pale?"

Most Jewish genealogists are aware of the pogroms and mass exodus of our ancestors over the next generation. Hal's talk will provide background on the 120 years of the Pale from its formation at the turn of the 19th century to its dissolution during WWI.

Understanding this period in history provides context to the lives of our ancestors in the Pale, and their decision to leave everything behind for new lives elsewhere. The Pale of Settlement, in the Russian Empire, included much of  present-day Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Moldova, Ukraine and parts of western Russia.

The Pale afforded permanent residency to Jews, and beyond its borders, Jewish permanent residency was generally prohibited.

Hal Bookbinder has been researching eight family lines for more than 27 years, identifying 4,000 relatives and tracing two lines into the mid-1700s. A JGSCV founding member and former JGSLA and IAJGS president, he created and continues to edit the annual Jewish Genealogical Yearbook.

In 2010, he received the IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award for his contributions to Jewish Genealogy, and was recently elected to the JewishGen Board of Governors. He has spoken at numerous conferences, synagogues and society meetings on topics from computing to geography to brick walls.

For more information, contact the JGSCV or view its website.

Boston: Finding lost families, Dec. 12

Tracing the Tribe has - over the years - discovered Talalay relatives in St. Petersburg, Novosibirsk, Mogilev, Moscow, as well as those in the US, Germany and Israel.

It is always an interesting experience to reconnect with "lost" relatives, who each provide details previously unknown.

Finding and reconnecting lost relatives in the FSU and Russian Empire is the focus of the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, on Sunday, December 12.

The program, featuring a panel of experts, begins at 1.30pm at Temple Emanuel, Newton Centre. There is no admission fee.

US descendants of immigrants from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union report on finding relatives from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and a recent Soviet émigré reports on finding descendants of his family who came to the US in the earlier waves of immigration.

Speakers include:

-- Aaron Ginsburg: A first-generation American; founder and president of The Friends of Jewish Dokshitsy. He spearheaded an international effort to help the local government of Dokshitsy, Belarus restore and re-dedicate the town’s Jewish cemetery. He recently organized a Dokshitsy reunion in Rhode Island (documented at Tracing the Tribe). He has been involved with cemetery restoration, shtetl and family history since 1995.

-- Yefim Kogan: Born in Kishinev, Moldova; emigrated from Moscow in 1989. Since then, his extensive genealogical research has enabled him to trace part of his family to the mid-18th century and to find relatives in the US who left Russia in 1906. Currently a graduate student at Hebrew College with a focus in Eastern European Jewish cultural history, he has presented on Jewish history in Bessarabia and genealogy at IAJGS conferences. He is a volunteer JewishGen coordinator.

-- Carol Clingan: A third-generation American, her grandparents came from Belarus and Ukraine. Over nearly 20 years of research, she has traced family back to the early-19th century and discovered relatives still living in the FSU. She is JGSGB vice-president and Program Committee co-chair.

For directions, click here.

Boston-area readers should mark this upcoming date:
-- January 16: Robert Weinberg, "DNA of the Jewish People, Similarities and Differences."

For more information on JGSGB programs, click here.

Colorado: Create a ShtetLink website, Nov. 14

You've thought about creating a ShtetLinks website to memorialize your ancestral community but don't really know how to do it.

Regardless of your technological skills, you can do it!

Learn all about JewishGen ShtetLinks at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado on Sunday, November 14.

The program runs from 10am-noon at Congregation Har HaShem, Boulder.

Judy Petersen will present "What are, why use, and how to create a ShtetLinks website."

A JGSCO member, Judy wanted to do more than just keep files of family trees.

She wanted to share the information and place her family in an historical and geographical context. Collaboration with other researchers of the same area was also on her agenda.

Using ShtetLinks on JewishGen, volunteers create individual web pages for their ancestral towns.

Judy will share how she overcame her "technologically-challenged" status and how anyone can develop a site, increase their computer skills and make progress by networking with others researching the same towns.

She began researching her family after her father told about being an orphan after his parents and brother died. She contacted her paternal first cousins and this developed into a quest to find out as much about her extended family.

All she knew was that they came from Russia and her mother's family from Hungary. Today she has determined the towns of origin for all but one of her great-grandparents, constructed an extensive family tree and located living relatives in California, New York, Canada, Argentina, Israel and Denver.

Judy is also active in JewishGen's Hungarian SIG. 

In real life, she is a physical therapist and library director for Congregation Har Shalom, Fort Collins.

For more information and directions, visit the JGSCO website.

Washington DC: JGSGW celebrates 30th anniversary, Oct. 17

The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington (DC)  will celebrate its 30th anniversary on Sunday, October 17.

Russian and Central European specialist researcher Boris Feldblyum (a JGSGW member) will present "Archival Research: Challenges and Strategies for Success."

He will share some tips and tricks he uses when researching for private clients. Learn how to get the most for your effort.

Doors open at 1pm, with the program at 1.30pm, at Har Shalom, 11510 Falls Road, Potomac, Maryland.

The event includes hors d'oeuvres, snacks and punch, door prizes.

Fee: JGSGW members, free; others, $5. For more information and directions, click the JGSGW website here.

The JGSGW is the host of the 31st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (14-19 August 2011) at the Grand Hyatt in Washington DC. Click here for all conference information.

Seattle: Czarist laws, Sept. 13

Learn what 1,500 Czarist laws can tell us about Jewish genealogy, at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State, on Monday, September 13.

Michael Steinore is the speaker at the program, which begins at 7pm, at the Stroum Jewish Community Center auditorium on Mercer Island.

Following a brief review of the history of 19th-century Russian Jews, he'll discuss myths and realities of Jewish life during that period, while demnostrating elements of truth and fiction in each, and using Czarist laws as examples.

The details of these laws give insight to important genealogical documents such as revision lists and metrical books, as well as information on the mobility of Jews within the Pale of Settlement, various occupational and residence restrictions, military conscription, social class, and property ownership.

The Levanda Index website - a legal resource on Jewish life in the Pale - will also be discussed.

Steinore is the author of numerous articles and web pages on Jewish genealogy, focusing on the history and genealogy of Czarist Russia Jews. He has translated Russian-language materials and made them available on the Internet, including maps, Duma voter lists, Holocaust victim lists, and Czarist decrees.

Fee: JGSWS members, free; others, $5.

For more information and directions, visit the JGS of Washington State's website.

Boston: 24 years leads to three databases!

What a great story about a Boston-area Jewish genealogist who's been researching for 24 years and has created three databases linked to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston's website.

The databases include state-wide synagogues, cemeteries and Jewish newspapers.

The news has spurred me to investigate once again our Boston and Springfield branches of TALALAI (TALL, TOLLIN), CONVISER and others.

In fact, I found on the synagogue list the Springfield congregation built by our first TALALAI immigrant to the US. Mendl (Max) TOLLIN from Mogilev/Vorotinschtina, Belarus, arrived in 1898 and was a builder who constructed the first Kadimah synagogue building, its cemetery, the first and second homes for the aging and residential housing.

According to the database, Congregation Kodimoh (sometimes spelled Kadimah), was founded 1916/1919 in Springfield, and closed in 2007 after merging with the Longmeadow Alliance of Orthodox Congregations.

In the database of Jewish newspapers, I found two for Springfield, one running from 1929 and the other from 1952. Accessing those microfilms may well be my first task when attending the 2013 international conference on Jewish genealogy in 2013, to be hosted by the JGSGB. We genealogists plan ahead!

The story, on Boston.com (the Boston Globe's online portal), focuses on Dedham resident Carol Clingan's "hunger" for connection to her Jewish ancestry from Ukraine and Belarus to New England.

Many people tracing Jewish roots find stories with heartbreaking gaps as families were split apart by immigration and the horrors of the Holocaust, and records of birth, marriage, and death are often missing or deliberately destroyed.

Now, three new databases compiled by Clingan, who lives in Dedham, and others with the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston are about to go public to help Jews all over the world track their Massachusetts roots.

In the lists, every synagogue in the state is inventoried, as well as all Jewish cemeteries and newspapers, rendering the search for family a little more manageable for those starting out.
Clingan’s labor of love, which included searching through dusty archives and tapping the foggy memories of strangers to trace her grandparents’ emigration, two to Chelsea and two to Burlington, Vt., honors basic Jewish principles, she said.

According to Clingan, her labor of love honors basic Jewish principles. At Passover, as we read the Hagadah we are told to remember the exodus from Egypt as if it happened to each of us.

But, as genealogists know, that's not enough. We want to know much more than names, dates and places. We want to reveal the real stories of the people and their lives and the decisions they made to travel so far from their homes.

Clingan's database with 568 listings offers a listing of every congregation in the state, past and present.

It says when and by whom it was founded, the various locations it occupied, as well as when it closed and what happened to its records, and tracks the many mergers among congregations, to the last surviving one.

That list is cross-referenced to a cemetery database compiled by Groton resident Alex Woodle, and a third database prepared by David Rosen of Boston that lists the state’s Jewish newspapers. The plan is eventually to convert all the information into a database format and to make it accessible using a one-step search tool, but that may take time to implement.

Also quoted is JGSGB president Heidi Urich of Cambridge: “So many families were severed, and so many lost or left behind, that each piece you find is precious.’’

Judy Izenberg of Framingham tracks her work on large poster boards, as she investigates her family from Russia (Novograd Volynsk and Olinka), which settled in Chelsea and attended the Orange Street Shul. Two of Clingan's grandparents - her maiden name was Isenberg - settled in the same place and attended the same synagogue. Their mothers were high school classmates.

In another warm fuzzy part of the story, Isenberg is using the databases to find about relatives who went to Argentina 90 years ago. Using leads from the lists and with the help of others, she's found the South American relatives and is, in fact, leaving for Buenos Aires next week to meet them.

According to Woodle, the first Jew in the Boston area was Solomon Franco, - a well-known Sephardic name - in 1649. He returned to Europe because he could survive economically. However, from the mid-19th century, Boston had a Jewish community of German and Russian Jews.

Another Sephardic Jew, dry goods merchant Judas Monas was a Hebrew teacher at the Spanish-Portuguese synagogue in New York, came to Harvard College and taught Hebrew for 40 years. In 1735, the college published the "Grammar of the Hebrew Language." To keep his post, however, he had to convert to Christianity.

Several other genealogists are mentioned in the detailed story. Congratulations to reporter Michele Morgan Bolton, who got all the details right!

Read the complete story at the link above, and see the database links at JGSGB.org.

Belarus: Guess what I found in Gomel?

As Tracing the Tribe often mentions, dedicated researchers around the world cooperate to transliterate, translate and make available little-known records.

While I often receive information and write about new projects, I rarely discover anything for our elusive TALALAY family.

Last week was very different, and thanks go to Paul Zoglin for another piece of family history.

Let's backtrack a bit and I'll provide you with a snapshot of our Mogilev-centered family.

Rabbi Leib ben harav Mikhl TALALAI had numerous children: Bashe, another daughter (name unknown), Movsha, Ber (my direct ancestor), Mikhel, Anshel, Pinkhas Leizer, Chaim Velvel. There may another one or two according to some single records.

This story concerns Anshel ben harav Leib. Anshel's birth was noted in the Mogilev Crown Rabbinate records, written in Rabbi Leib's beautiful Hebrew handwriting. Some birth records say 1834, others 1837; he died 22 August 1884 in Moscow. He was married twice, but we only know his second wife, Perla bat Elkanon Minken Muenster.

Anshel's children were Benzion Mikhl from the first marriage, and Avram, Chaya Sora, Minai, Sonia (MENUHIN), Rosa (BERLIN), Yosef Yoel (Joseph), and three children who died very young (Leib, Leah and a second Leib).

Anshel and his children nearly all were born, lived and died in Moscow, except for Yosef (Joseph) who lived in Moscow, then in Berlin until 1933 and then to England and the US.

We knew Yosef Yoel (Joseph) was married to Sophie Brusterman of Gomel. They were the parents of Naum (who settled in Toronto), Anselm (Cleveland), Leo (New Haven) and Paul (Baltimore). Naum's son Victor was my excellent co-investigator into our family history before his recent death.

We know the birth and death dates for most of Anshel's children and grandchildren and whom they married, but who Avram's wife was a mystery. We knew his children, all born and died in Moscow, were Mina (CHERNIAK), Anselm and Boris.

Now thanks to Paul Zoglin and his team's work in Gomel vital records we know more about Avram.

Paul sent me the surname list for brides and grooms.

Since I knew we had a Gomel connection (Joseph and Sophie), I ran down the names quickly and saw several names of interest, particularly those families who I knew married into our Mogilev TALALAY family, including AZBEL (several marriages), BAEVSKY (a marriage gift of a book to my great-grandparents was signed by the family), BALTER, BERLIN, BRUK, CHERNYAK, DONIN, DYSKIN, ENTIN, GINZBURG, IOFA/E, IOFFA/E, KATSNELSON, KHANIN, KROLL, KRUGLYANSKY, MIKHLIN, PERLIN, PINSKY, RAKHLIN/ROKHLIN, RASKIN, RATNER, RAYKHENSHTEIN, SHUB, SHULMAN, IASIN/YASIN/YASINOV and others.

There is a separate list of bride's surnames as well, and I saw names of interest here as well: ALTSHULER, AZBEL, BOLOTIN, OMDIN/EMDIN, RAKHLIN/ROKHLIN, RASKIN, RATNER and others.

Gomel was one point of a triangle; the others being Mogilev and Bobruisk. People from Mogilev, the largest of the three cities, often married people from Gomel and Bobruisk, opened businesses or branches in those other cities, and thus it seems rather common for people to have relatives in the other two cities. As families got together to celebrate weddings and holidays, it stands to reason that the young people attending weddings met each other, leading to additional marriages.

If you are searching Mogilev, Gomel and/or Bobruisk and surrounding shtetls, make sure to look at records for the other two and you might find interesting connections.

In both the groom and bride lists, many shtetls are listed near the three larger locations.

The kicker, of course, was seeing Avram (Joseph's brother) TALALAY as a groom on line 2137.

I wrote to Paul and asked about this particular record. He provided the following information:

Abram, son of Anshel, TALALAY, 35
married Dveyra, daughter of Abram, KAPLAN, 21
on 10 January 1902 in Gomel

Are you searching Gomel (or Bobruisk or Mogilev)? You might want to contact Paul Zoglin for more information.

Now's a good time to remind researchers that contributions to continue special projects are always welcome, so ask Paul about that as well.

But you must promise to let Tracing the Tribe know if you find records of interest!

Thank you, Paul!

Russians ordered to return Jewish library

A US judge ordered the Russian government to return a Jewish library, according to the World Jewish Congress website.

A federal judge in Washington, DC issued a ruling against the Russian government for its refusal to return a library of historic books and documents to the Chabad-Lubavitch movement. Seized by the Nazis, the library was transferred by the Soviet Red Army to the Russian State Military Archive.

The order was filed July 30 and published August 4.

Justice Royce Lamberth told the Russian government to surrender the complete collection of religious books, manuscripts, documents and other items to either the US Embassy in Moscow, or to Chabad representatives.

He ordered the defendants to assist and authorize the transfer of the collection and to provide the necessary security and authorization to insure prompt and safe transportation of the collection to a destination chosen by the plaintiffs.

“This victory is a triumph for justice for the Jewish people and others who abhor the Nazi and Soviet exploitation of victims of genocide, and the unlawful and immoral suppression of religious faith by the current Russian government,” said Seth Gerber, one of the lawyers representing Chabad.

Last year, lawyers for the Russian government argued that US judges had no authority to tell Russia how to handle the matter.

Under the US Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act, a sovereign nation is not immune to lawsuits in cases where property is taken in violation of international law. Lamberth found that the religious group had established its claim to the material.

During the 1990s, as documented in court papers, Russian President Boris Yeltsin told US Secretary of State James Baker that the Russian government would return the library to Chabad-Lubavitch.

Read more here.

Seattle: What's in a name?

Marlene Schiffman of Yeshiva University provided an interesting session at the Association of Jewish Libraries conference on the historical impact of modern governments on Jewish names.

Focusing on Ashkenazi names, she covered the concept of "legibility," (a better term might be "visibility") or the identifying of a person, essential to the modern state. The phrase "name it - organize it" summed up the concept.

In 1843 Paris, other modern organizational tools were also used, involving language, uniform codes, registration, surnames, legal issues and taxes. "The object was to enumerate, register or conscript," said Schiffman, who stressed that this was not so much for personal identity but for state control. Thus, Personal surnames became important.

In Austria, Jews were given more freedom in the late 18th century and were also subject to the draft. They were required to obtain surnames from a list of German names, and even to choose given names from a list. While this was hailed by secular Jews, others considered it a conspiracy. Jews were integrated into the population.

In 1804, in multicultural Russia, a surname law was passed, even though Russian Jews tried to remain invisible to avoid the draft. As many genealogists are aware, many brothers in the same family often adopted different family names as another way of remaining "illegible."

In 1836, the Crown Rabbinate began keeping registers. In my own experience, the seven microfilm rolls of registers kept by the Mogilev (Belarus) crown rabbi have been invaluable research tools. Crown rabbis were later replaced with state rabbis, and by the 1850s, Jews and others were no longer invisible.

According to Alexander Beider, she added, there is no extant direct testimony of this or lists of surnames, there are evident naming patterns with Jews. For example, in Belarus, many names end in -in (Sorkin, Dvorkin, Belkin), deriving from female names (Sora, Dvora, Bella).

In 1857 Russia, Jews couldn't change their surnames. After they had finished their term of army service, they could take their godfather's name if they converted.

In Poland, Jews were assigned surnames at various times from 1787-1807. In 1821, when Poland was under Russian control, they handed out "certificates of names," which had to be carried and used for all civil or legal transactions. By 1824, most Jews had names.

In 1808, Napoleon forbid toponyms (those indicating a geographical location). Names from a list were adopted unless the name in question had already been used for a long time.

In Austria and Galicia, many names were pejorative or negative, with stories describing blackmail and bribes for a better name. The King of Poland decreed that each family was to have "a unique name" - unfortunately, it meant that six brothers may have required six different surnames. In 1787, names selected had to be approved.

Governments believed that standardized, permanent surnames would lead to greater interaction, would be more useful and help administration, track criminals and refugees. It was easy to identify Jewish names.

In Prussia and Germany, 1821 saw the acquiring of permanent names and citizenship for Jews. But by 1938, they could no longer adopt "Aryan" names. They couldn't change their surnames, had to return to non-German names, and also were required to add Sara or Israel to their given names, as identifiers.

Jewish names, said Schiffman, became Jewish "branding" in 1941, with the introduction of the yellow patch and tattooed numbers.

In the US, it was very easy to change a surname. Many immigrants did that as soon as they left Ellis Island, thus obscuring their origins.

The session conclusion was that modern governments needed to accelerate the control of population assets. When the naming process was complete, the government could see a specific group as a whole.

An interesting session, to be sure.

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.

Washington DC: 'Gift to Stalin' film, June 23

The Kazakh film - "Gift to Stalin" - will be shown in the Washington, DC area on Wednesday, June 23.

Sasha, a young Jewish orphan, is sent into exile during a Stalinist purge. Losing his grandfather on the long train journey, Sasha is rescued by a gruff widowed rail worker Kasym (the distinguished Kazakh actor Nurzhuman Ikhtimbaev). Kasym takes the boy to his remote village where Sasha becomes part of a surrogate family of other cast outs. A Muslim living by the tenets of ethnic and religious tolerance, Kasym renames Sasha as Sabyr, meaning "humble of heart" in its Arabic origin, but the older man still preserves the boy's Jewish identity. What Sasha/Sabyr finds on the lovingly-filmed, sweeping Kazakh steppes is more than survival in this lyrical, poignant story told through a child's memories. Film clips in Kazakh and Russian with English subtitles.

At noon, the film will be presented at the Library of Congress (Mumford Room,6th Floor, Madison Building), and at the Magen David Sephardic Congregation (Rockville, Maryland) at 7pm.

From the website of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival:

In 1949, railcars holding Jews and other deportees creep eastward into oblivion. Or is it? For young Sasha, salvation comes through a rubric of chance, defiance and love. His enforced rebirth finds him surrounded by a makeshift new clan: his savior and new grandfather, Kasym (veteran actor Nurzhuman Ikhtimbaev), who is Muslim; Verka, the wife of a traitor; Ezhik, a Polish resister; and a gang of orphans—a wilderness family with deep bonds despite habitual harassment from authorities. Rare news comes from Moscow announcing a children’s contest celebrating Stalin’s 70th birthday. If Sasha’s original gift wins, he hopes to achieve his parents’ freedom. Decades pass, and Sasha questions history and his fate: “Who are you in the land of your God if a part of your soul was left behind?” Gift’s allegorical ending will linger long in your heart and mind, likely to raise questions, yet perhaps answer others, such as Kasym’s early query, “Whose flock are you from?"

The screening is in cooperation with the European Division and Hebrew Language Table of the LOC with the Washington Jewish Film Festival and the Embassy of Kazakhstan.

The LOC event includes clips of the film and a lecture by producers Boris Cherdabayev and Aliya Uvalzhanova.

The complete film will be screened at Magen David, along with a discussion by the filmmakers.

Both events are free to the public.

Cherdabayev and Uvalzhanova founded Aldongar Productions Kazakhstan in 2006. Their mission is to preserve the cultural and historical legacy of the country, which has a history of tolerance and diversity, as exemplified by its Jewish community with a history of some 2,500 years.

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.

South Africa: Seeking Ochberg Orphan descendants

Genealogists are detectives, so here's a case many of us might be able to help solve.

David Solly Sandler of Australia is seeking 2,000 South Africans - the descendants of 60 Ukrainian war and pogrom orphans, known as Ochberg's Orphans.

Writes David: 

In 1921, Isaac Ochberg, representative of the South African Jewish Community, travelled to Poland and the Ukraine and brought back with him to Cape Town 167 "Russian, Ukraine and Polish War and Pogrom Orphans" plus 14 "attendants and nurses," mainly older siblings.

Half the children were placed in the care of the Cape Jewish Orphanage (later Oranjia) and half went to Johannesburg, under the care of the South African Jewish Orphanage (later Arcadia). Many children were adopted by Jewish community members, who contributed generously to a fund to bring the children to South Africa and care for them.

What's David's connection to Arcadia? Born in 1952, David grew up from age 3-17 at Arcadia, the South African Jewish Orphanage in Sandringham, Johannesburg. Now a semi-retired chartered accountant, he lives in Western Australia and has completed two books on Arcadia (see below for more information). For the history of the orphanage - established in 1899 - click here.

David is now in month 18 of the 27 months he's allocated to record the life stories of the Ochberg Orphans. Of the 181 children, the stories of 90 have been recorded, contact has been made with another 30, but 60 still remain to be contacted.

How did he arrive at this number? David believes - for the so far "missing" 60 - that each child was born around 1910, married and had three children, nine grandchildren and 27 great-grandchildren, thus there should be more than the estimated 2,000 descendants cited above. Of course, no one knows for sure.

However, what is really important in this story is that many descendants might not know their connection to the Ochberg Orphans. The children did not often speak about this and many tried to hide the fact from their children because of the stigma of being an orphan.

One descendant wrote, says David:

Today, as for the general South African Jewish community, half  of the 2,000 descendants likely have left South Africa and now live around the world in Israel, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, the UK and the US.

“The general attitude of the community was that it was a mitzvah to have adopted one of those poor orphans, a good deed in a dark world, but you really wouldn't want one of them to marry into your family, would you? After all, you knew nothing of their parents and extended family, their health history and their genetic background. This is a generalisation that isn't true of all the adopters but it was certainly true of a fair number, nervous, insecure, only to do nothing that would jeopardise their increasing prosperity and emergent social solidity.”

Here's the kicker - here are the names of these orphans. If you have someone with this name in your family tree, born c1910, there's a chance you might be an Ochberg Orphan descendant, so read the list carefully and if you find a name of interest, contact David (email below).

-- BARMATCH Sara, BARUCH Leya, BERNFELD Hersh,
-- CWENGEL Saul,
-- ELMAN Blume, ELMAN Jentl/ Izzy, ELSHTEIN Abo, ENGELMAN Jakob,
-- FREMD/FRIEND Max,
-- GARBUS /GOLDSTEIN Shmul, GAYER Chawa, GEBENCOL/GOLZ Rochel, GERYNSHTEIN Abram, GINSBURG Mintcha, GUBER/GEIBER/GRUBER Tcharna (Charlotte ODES),
-- H/GURWITZ Rosa,
-- ISRAELSON Chaim,
-- JUDES Rubin,
-- KAHAN Channe, KAHAN Golda, KAHAN Morduch/Mordche, KAHAN Shachna, KAILER Rywka, KAUFMAN Cypora, KAUFMAN Soloman/Shlama, KAWERBERG Mayer, KAWERBERG Mees/Moshe, KIGIELMAN Jacob, KNUBOVITZ Zlata, KREINDEL Rejsel, KRUGERr Rejsel, KRUGER Abram, KRUGER Jacob,
-- LIPSHIS Moishe, LIPSHYTZ Perel,
-- MARGOLIN Sara, MILER Braindel, MORDOCHOWITCH Gutro, MORDOCHOWITCH Estel,
-- NUDERMAN Gdalia,
-- OCHSTEIN Salomon, ORLIANSKY Abram,
-- PERRCHODNIK/PERECHODNIK Ussr, PINSKY/PINSKA Faywel, PINSKY/PINSKA Feyga (Birdie GLASER), PINSKY/PINSKA Maisha, PINSKY/PINSKA Zlata,
-- REICHMAN Abram, REICHMAN Chaim, REISENDERRubin, REKLER Leya, RINSLER/RINZLER Chaskiel/Chaykel, ROSENBAUM Leon, ROSENBLIT Gdalia, ROSENBLIT Szamay,
-- Y/J/SAGOTKOWSKY Jacob/Jacov, SCHTERN/SHTERN Szlema/Solomon, SCHWARZ Josef, SHTEINER/STEINER Chaskel, SHTEINER/STEINER Hersh, SHTEINER/SZTEINER/STEINER Isaac, SMITH Morduch/Mordche, SHTRASNER Feyga, STILLERMAN Hersh/Harry,
-- TREPPEL Jacob
-- WEIDMAN Sheindel.

David adds that by the end of 2010, the lifestories of some 130 of the children will have been collected. They will be included in a book to be published and sold internationally with all proceeds going to Arcadia and Oranjia, as are the Arcadian Memory Books.

Readers who recognize names of interest should email David for more information, or if you are a descendant and want your family's story included.

"100 Years of ARC Memories" (March 2006) celebrates the centenary book of Arcadia, formerly the South African Jewish Orphanage.

"More ARC Memories" (December 2008) is the sequel to the first volume, and includes 17 chapters on the Ochberg Children.

Together, the books total 1,100+ pages and hold the memories of more than 250 children. All proceeds go to the Arcadia Children's Home that still exists and looks after children in need. By the end of 2009, some Rand 365,000 had been raised and the target is Rand 1 million. The set of two books costs $100 plus $10 shipping (click here for more information).

USHMM: Soviet Jewish officers and Germany, March 18

"Jewish Revenge? Soviet Jewish Officers' Encounters with Germany, 1945" is the 2010 Ina Levine lecture at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum on Thursday, March 18, in Washington DC.

It starts at 7pm in the Helena Rubinstein Auditorium, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place SW.

Professor Oleg Budnitskii will present his work on Soviet Jewish identity through the lens of the Soviet Jewish military experience of World War II.

In Moscow, Budnitskii is: Senior research fellow, Institute of Russian History, Russian Academy of Sciences; academic director, International Center for Russian and Eastern European Jewish Studies: and professor of history, Department of Jewish Studies, Institute of Asian and African Studies, Moscow State University.

The author of numerous works, he most recently published (2008) Den'gi russkoi emigratsii: Kolchakovskoe zoloto, 1918-1957 (Money of the Russian Emigration: Kolchak's Gold, 1918-1957) and (2005) Rossiiskie evrei mezhdy krasnymi i belymi, 1917-1920 (Russian Jews between the Reds and the Whites, 1917-1920) of which an English translation is being published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

For more information or to register, click here. To learn about past presentations and hear recordings, click here.

Nice Ice: Jews on skates

Did you know that, from 1867, Jewish ice skating clubs existed in Lvov, Cracow and Warsaw?

Members of the Tribe who wanted to be part of Polish society were interested in sports, according to Yeshiva University professor American Jewish history Jeffrey Gurock, who is quoted in the story below.

The New York Jewish Week article, by Alina Adams, covers Jewish (or those with Jewish background) skaters and ice dancers, and the reasons for increased participation.

Skaters include Sasha Cohen, US; Emily Hughes, US; Irina Slutskaya, Russia (Jewish father); Benjamin Agosto (Jewish mother, Puerto Rican father); and Maxim Staviski, Bulgaria

Ice Dancers include Melissa Gregory and Jamie Silverstein, US; Galit Chait and Sergei Sakhanovski, Israel; and Alexandra and Roman Zaretski, Israel.

Agosto and the Zaretskis will compete in the upcoming Vancouver Winter Games.

Why the increased Jewish presence?

Kenny Moir, director of figure skating at Chelsea Piers in Manhattan, says he has witnessed an increase in Jewish students at all levels since the Israel Skating Federation was created two decades ago. “Very quickly, Jewish skaters who lived and trained in countries that had a high density of competitive skaters, such as Canada, the United States, Russia, etc., could move to Israel or at least compete for Israel,” Moir says.

Another reason: the breakup of the former Soviet Union, which sent trained skaters and coaches throughout the diaspora.

Another important event was the 1995 completion of Israel's first Olympic-sized ice rink - Canada Centre in Metulla. Those interested in the sport now had a place to train. The Israel Skating Federation was formed following a wave of Russian immigration in the late 1970s.

Russian skaters often hid their ancestry to represent the FSU.

The article provides interesting views of the USSR Skating Federation by former athletes and others. Basically, if a Jewish athlete could bring home a medal, they let him or her on the national team, but might not allow their Jewish coaches to travel internationally.

Odessa-born Mikhail Shmerkin, who made aliyah and became the first Israeli to enter the Winter Olympics, as a figure skater, asserts that while he was training with coach Galina Zmievskaya alongside eventual 1992 Olympic Champion Victor Petrenko, he was informed by the Soviet Skating Federation that if he intended to represent his country internationally, he would need to stop being Jewish.

As a result, Shmerkin’s mother divorced his father and married a non-Jewish friend so that, on paper, her son could be considered Russian. He went on to represent the USSR at the 1990 Junior World Championship.

Read the complete story at the link above.

California: Imperial Russia Jewish geographies, Feb. 10

The Center for Jewish Studies at the University of California Santa Cruz will present a colloquium - "The Right to Remain: Jewish geographies in Imperial Russia" - on Wednesday, February 10.

The event begins at noon, in room 210 of Humanities 1.

Professor Nathaniel Deutsch (Literature, History and Jewish Studies) is the speaker.

Unlike others who became a part of the Russian Empire as a result of the partitions of Poland, Jews were not viewed as native to the newly colonized territories.

Many accepted their doubly alien status; however, there also emerged Jewish views that rejected the assumption that they were necessarily alien.

Professor Deutsch will discuss the significance of these views against the backdrop of internal Jewish politics and Russian policies.

The event is free and open to the public.

For more information, click here. See future events in the top bar - click the small red arrow at right or left to move back or forward.

Tablet: Pale of Settlement photos podcast

There's another podcast at Tablet Magazine - this one focuses on the ethnographic expeditions through Russia's Pale of Settlement from 1912-1914.

Read the text and hear the interview here.

Author S. An-sky recorded music, folk tales, photographs and every day life. Much of it had never been recorded before. A new collection of material - some 350 photos - has been recently rediscovered, resulting in a book with 200 of them.

He also recorded Jewish popular and liturgical music on wax cylinders. A few years ago, the University of Kiev digitally transcribed the music on those cylinders to CDs. I heard them at the Fehrer Music Archives at Beit Hatefutsot when Dr. Yuval Shaked was the archives director.

I especially enjoyed the music recorded in our TALALAY ancestral town of Mogilev, Belarus, when branches of the family still lived there. There were recordings by hazzanim, and likely the same people our family heard in person, as well as popular songs, which they likely sung themselves. It was a very connecting experience!

The photos bring to life the lives of our ancestors.

An-sky - his pen name - wrote popular plays, such as "The Dybbuk."

The photos are the most comprehensive visual record available of these small towns and the people who lived there.

The book (pictured above) is Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-sky’s Ethnographic Expeditions, edited by Eugene Avrutin and Harriet Murav, professors at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, about the importance of this collection for anyone interested in shtetl life in the Russian Empire.

David G. Roskies, author of "Yiddishlands: A Memoir" wrote about this new book:

“Here, recovered and recorded at the last conceivable moment, is the living shtetl, those market towns large and small that were once home to the majority of Jews in the world: a bucolic landscape amidst the poverty and mud; school children posing with their nattily dressed teachers; mug shots of potential nannies; Jews of every age engaged in all manner of trade; a huge outdoor wedding; beautiful synagogue interiors, complete with chandeliers and signs of the zodiac; ritual objects and sacred graves; the Rabbi’s house and the local church. Here, also, is the story of the intrepid explorers, children of the shtetl themselves, who tried to salvage this Yiddish-speaking civilization for future generations. No less miraculous are their spiritual offspring, who authored this superb collection of essays and discovered these remarkable photographs.”

The list of editors, some names are familiar to readers, is here:

Eugene M. Avrutin, Assistant Professor of History and Tobor Scholar in Jewish Studies, University of Illinois. Valerii Dymshits, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies and Director of the Interdepartmental Center, “Petersburg Judaica,” at the European University, St. Petersburg, Russia. Alexander Ivanov, Senior Researcher at the European University, St. Petersburg. Alexander Lvov is Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the European University, St. Petersburg. Harriet Murav, Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, University of Illinois. Alla Sokolova, Assistant Professor of Jewish Studies at the European University, St. Petersburg.

The Tablet link provides a gallery of photos from the book.

Washington DC: Russian Judaica Collections, Feb. 3

St. Petersburg, Russia, is the home of unique Hebrew manuscripts, which are the focus of a Library of Congress lecture at noon, Wednesday, February 3.

The city's libraries, archives, institutes and museums hold many unique artifacts of Jewish culture, such as more than 15,000 items in The National Library of Russia, which holds the Abraham Firkovich collection. The Leib Friedland collection of manuscripts and rare books is at the Library of the Academy of Sciences, while the Museum of Ethnography houses S. An-sky's Pale of Settlement ethnographic expeditions material.

The Russian Museum of Ethnography's Judaica curator Shimon Iakerson PhD, will present this program at noon in the African and Middle Eastern Division Reading Room, Room LJ220 of the Thomas Jefferson Building, 10 First Street S.E., Washington, D.C. The event is free and open to the public; tickets not required.

The leading scholar in the field of Hebrew incunabula (books printed before the year 1501), and the author of several books on the subject, Iakerson is also senior researcher at the St. Petersburg branch of the Institute of Oriental Manuscripts of the Russian Academy of Sciences.

In 2005, he received the first Honorable Medal presented at the Euro-Asian Jewish Congress in Jerusalem for his two-volume work, "Catalogue of Hebrew Incunabula from the Collection of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America" (New York and Jerusalem, 2004-2005).

In 2009, he won the Antsiferov Award, an international prize in honor of the historian N.P. Antsiferov, for his overall contributions to the field of St. Petersburg studies for his most recent work, "Jewish Treasures of Petersburg: Scrolls, Codices, Documents" (Evreiskie sokrovisha Peterburga), St. Petersburg 2008.

Iakerson's book presents a selection of examples of 16th-17th century medieval manuscripts, incunabula and unique works such as richly illuminated manuscripts, individual pages of "lost" works, classic works and more. Unfortunately, the text of the 240-page text - with more than 140 color illustrations - is only in Russian. The cost is $299, through The Hermitage Museum online store.

See a newspaper article - Jewish Treasures Survive The Czars - about some of these treasures from the St. Petersburg (Florida) Times, from April 15, 1995. The Jewish Heritage Society here offers more information, as does the Petersburg Judaica Center. Here are details on a book, "Photographing the Jewish Nation: Pictures from S. An-sky's Ethnographic Expeditions," by Eugene M. Avrutin, ed, which includes 170 photos from the Pale of Settlement.

Sephardic researchers should know that St. Petersburg was home to Sephardim from the Netherlands (who were invited by the Czar), that the Russian court physician was the Sephardic Ribeira Sanchez, and that Russian collections hold Sephardic manuscripts.

The Library’s African and Middle Eastern Division is the center for the study of some 78 countries and regions from Southern Africa to the Maghreb and from the Middle East to Central Asia. The division’s Hebraic Section is one of the world’s foremost centers for the study of Hebrew and Yiddish materials.

Tracing the Tribe has often found materials of interest for our family history among the many resources in the Hebraic Section.