A slower pace of travel

We arrived in Chicago a few hours ago after a two-day trip from Seattle on Amtrak's Empire Builder, train number 8, which crossed Washington, Montana, North Dakota, Wisconsin and Illinois.

Lyn Blyden - president of the JGS of Washington State - and I left Seattle at 4.30pm Wednesday and arrived here Friday around 5pm, just about an hour late. Here are some notes written on this kicked-back mode of transportation.

We enjoyed this voluntary email vacation - she's trying to finish "Lost" by Daniel Mendelsohn up in the observation lounge, while I have a stack of computer magazines.

We've shared dining room tables with interesting fellow travelers and discussing each others' reasons for taking the train to our destinations. As we mention we're on our way to a genealogy conference, most chime in with their own or relatives' experiences. Genealogy is always a great ice breaker!

We learned about how apples are stored from a Yakima couple who were a bit disparaging of Wenatchee, which calls itself the apple capital of the world, as we went through the town.

We enjoyed two meals with a couple who used to teach at the American school in the Philippines and now were going to the North Dakota wedding of a grandson of friends they've known for 40 years.

We had breakfast with a woman who weaves and her young nephew, a 4-H-er and learned interesting facts about the Nubian goats he raises for milk and exhibits at state fairs.

We learned that the only two lower-48 states that Amtrak doesn't cover are South Dakota and another one I promptly forgot. If we'd known that before the trip, we could have won a bottle of wine. We also learned that very few people can recite the names of all seven dwarves from Sleeping Beauty. Can you? Hint: The seventh one is not Irving!

A lot of Upper Midwest phrases pepper the conversations we hear, such as "You betcha!" that I've only heard on television programs and films like "Fargo," which was one of our stops.

While I knew I wouldn't have email - Amtrak has not yet caught up with the 21st century - I hadn't realized that the open expanses of Montana's Big Sky Country and North Dakota would also produce "no service available" or "emergency calls only" screens on my newish cell phone. Somehow the lack of cell service was more disturbing than lack of internet. We have grown so dependent on instant electronic communication, some might say too dependent.

There were about 10 minutes of rain, followed by a magnificent rainbow, which was worth the entire trip. We tried to watch for the Perseid meteor showers the first night out, and think we saw two, but the swaying motion of the train put us to sleep.

At every stop with a few minutes' wait, passengers ran out on platforms trying to communicate on iPhones, BlackBerrys and ordinary old cells - no one had service but it was fun watching them try - shaking their phones and wondering what was wrong, finding it hard to believe that there really was a place in America with NO cell tower.

So now - along with the open fields, corn fields, far-away herds of cattle and horses, bales of hay, clouds so close you can touch them - I'm also dreading the hundreds of emails I'll find when we get to Chicago. I finally got some cell service as we approached Milwaukee and connected with some people.

It was a great trip through beautiful countryside and natural scenery, from open fields to ancient forests, reminiscent of "Jurassic Park." Mountains, rivers, skirting some national parks - all were part of this ride.

It's good to kickback once in a while.

Amazingly, although we had been out of touch with the world for almost two days, the world was still there and nothing much had happened, except for a lot of medals won at the Olympics.

Hilary Henkin (formerly of Atlanta, now Los Angeles) is our third roomie at the conference and she's bringing along a special device that should work in the room, so all of us can be online and wireless at the same time.

I'm hoping to meet some Talalay relatives in Chicago on Saturday afternoon. This will be a first-ever reunion with this particular branch with origins in Novgorod Severskiy, Chernigov gubernia (and Mogilev, Belarus before). I have previously met Arkadiy's daughter Rina and her family who used to live in Israel and now in New Jersey, and Zhanna's son and his family in Israel.

On Saturday morning, some of us are going to services at Rabbi Caper Funnye's the Ethiopian Beth Shalom southside synagogue. In the evening, a group of DNA people are getting together to see Second City, for a Sunday city boat ride, and a Monday night dinner. It should be fun.

The remainder of the week will be non-stop conference activities from early morning to late at night.

After registering and unpacking, we went for dinner and ran into Judy Simon, who had just arrived from New York. As we walked into the Italian restaurant across from the hotel, we saw Catherine Youngren, president of the Jewish Genealogical Institute (Vancouver BC Canada), and she joined our table. We had a far-ranging discussion and went over our respective years. One of the nicest things about these conferences is meeting friends from all over and re-connecting.

Jeff Malka, a pioneer Sephardic researcher - who also has the www. SephardicGen.com site, asked Judy and I to help out during the Sephardic Special Interest Group meeting. Judy is presenting a fascinating talk for the Sephardic SIG meeting from 9.45-11am on Tuesday, focused on the IberianAshkenaz Project, which Judy and I co-administer at Family Tree DNA. It is for Eastern European Ashkenazim who carry Sephardic surnames, or a Sephardic genetic condition, or have a strong oral history of Sephardic roots. I'll be relating some other information.

Every day more people join; about two-thirds of these ostensible Ashkenazim are genetic matches with Converso/Hispanic families in the US or elsewhere. We've had some very interesting matches recently and participants have upgraded tests to get a better handle on their most recent common ancestors.

We are always happy to help Jeff and to convey more Sephardic research information.

The importance of the IberianAshkenaz project is to encourage researchers to record family stories, no matter how strange or silly they seem, and to attempt to find the kernel of truth, illustrated by genetic matches.

It also points up that we don't always know who we really are, how we got here (wherever "here" is) , or where we've been for centuries. And it underlines the bottom line that researchers should always be prepared for what testing might discover or uncover.

I'll be posting as much as possible about the different sessions I attend over this coming week.

And, if you weren't able to make it to Chicago this year, enjoy Tracing the Tribe's postings and remember that 2009 will be in Philadelphia, from August 2-7. Think ahead and plan for that one as soon as the announcements are made.

It's now easier to add comments!

Hello, readers.

Ta-da! Tracing the Tribe readers have indicated it is difficult to figure out how to add comments to a post.

It may have taken some time, but as of today it is now much easier.


Under each post, you'll see three lines of little items. The second line gives the number of comments already made and now says "Add your comments here!"


Just click on that item, and you'll be able to see past comments and leave a new one.


I do hope this improvement means hundreds of additional readers will now be leaving comments, and I look forward to reading them!


Best wishes

Schelly

New York: Shearith Israel cemetery

The KnickerbockerVillage blog covers many aspects of New York history. I found this posting on the early history of a New York Jewish family, which was originally posted here, at the Center of Jewish History website.

Read about Ruth Hendricks Schulson, a 10th-generation Jewish American.. In the family archives is the oldes Jewish bible brought to New York by Louis Moses Gomez - Schulson's direct ancestor - in the 1700s. Both her parents are direct Gomez descendants.

It mentions the American Sephardi Federation’s current exhibition “Pernambuco, Brazil: Gateway to New York” which includes prized family heirlooms.

Schulson descends from Gomez's son Mordecai and his wife Rebecca De Lucena who traces her American ancestry to 1655. This is the year after 23 settlers arrived from Brazil.

From a genealogical standpoint, she has four separate bloodlines going back three centures which means she is connected to practically every 18th century Jew in America.

Her father was a WWI naval officer and attorney who served as president of Shearith Israel, Jewish Family Serive and the Jewish Welfare Board, among other important community positions. Her mother's family descends from a Revolutionary War veteran and to one of Manhattan's first Jewish borough presidents.

There are connections to copper industry pioneer Harmon Hendricks (1771-1838), who was also a philanthropist and Shearith Israel president, who was the great-grandson of Gomez.

The story details the family's connections through the generations.

Ruth Hendricks Schulson’s family saga covers the arc of the American Jewish experience. It is the story of how a group of Jews stretching back to colonial days did well and good in America while preserving the Jewish way of life.

Do read the complete CJH article for fascinating detail on early Jewish life.

Connecticut: Beth Israel reaches century mark

Wallingford's Beth Israel congregation turns 100 this month and it was a bit of a surprise to members, according to this story.

The North Orchard Street synagogue was dedicated August 23, 1908, according to the Record-Journal archives; a reporter called the date to the attention of the congregation, which has about 50 families.

After some sleuthing, the newspaper and the synagogue archives found the building goes back further, as far back as 1901. After a flood damaged the structure in the 1960s, a new and larger building was built on the foundations of the old one.

Henrietta Stolzman, one of the congregation's oldest members, remembers - because her first husband, Walter Fried, helped design and build the new synagogue.

Over the years, Stolzman has seen the congregation itself grow and change from Orthodox to Conservative to its current "very conservative" interpretation of Judaism.

She has also seen other synagogues and congregations in the area come and go, but Stolzman keeps coming back because, she says, Congregation Beth Israel and its synagogue have become a part of her life:

Through the years we've seen the congregation grow and dwindle down, but I keep coming because it's a part of my culture and my family history."

Read the complete article at the link above for more details.

Here's to you, Alex Haley!

Where would we be today if Alexander Murray Palmer Haley hadn't written "Roots"? If it hadn't later been broadcast on television all over the world, thus inspiring millions of viewers?

I think he deserves a birthday shout-out!
Happy Birthday, Alex Haley (August 11, 1921-February 10, 1992).

If not for Haley, what would be spending our leisure time doing? What other hobbies were important to us, pre-genealogy? Can you remember when we weren't involved in genealogy and the mysteries of our histories?

OK, fellow genea-bloggers - let's chime on this one.

Personally, I would be needlepointing or working with gold and silver bullion threads on velvet - I haven't completed a project since 1990.

There would likely not be an Ancestry, Footnote, GenealogyBank or even JewishGen.

Genealogy sections in libraries would be very limited - if indeed there was a section at all.

Only a few people worldwide were hardcore genealogists prior to seeing those episodes of "Roots," which garnered the largest viewing audience ever.

Haley was the father of contemporary genealogy. For more information, click KinteHaley.Org

UK: Who do you think you are?

Genealogy can be more than just an amusing pastime, according to an article in the UK's Guardian paper, which talks about the new series of the extremely popular Who Do You think You Are? television show.

The story even raises the spectre of snobbism of "old families," talks about class (which seems to still be a big thing in the UK). Happily, it also mentions the loss of family records:

Going back to my roots. Ancestor-worship is spreading out from the aristocracy to the downtrodden masses. Offers received via direct mail to trace your entire family tree for £50 should be treated with scepticism – often you just get a telephone directory of people with the same surname – but the yearning is natural enough.

When adopted children grow to a certain age they invariably have an urge to meet, or at least find out about, their birth parents – however much they love their adoptive parents. Yet many of us are hazy about where our great grandparents lived and what they did – let alone of previous generations. Ignorance does not equate to indifference. We would be interested to know. When people move house all the time an awful lot of old family records get lost or chucked out. But whatever the quality of our record keeping, we all go back to Adam and Eve.

The story talks about the new series of WDYTYA and mentions how each show is the culmination of months of research and travel on behalf of the celebrity spotlighted and how they each react to the discoveries.

This season's lineup includes Patsy Kensit, Boris Johnson, Esther Rantzen and Jerry Springer. According to the story, NBC (here in the "colonies") will be producing its own copycat version of the show. While class here is not the issue it is on the other side of the Big Pond:

For the classless Americans the interest will be not so much what their ancestors did but where they came from. However fierce the patriotism and strong the identity in that cultural melting pot there will no shortage of takers wishing to identify their forebears amidst the huddled masses who yearned to breathe free. For many of the Brits, geography rather than class is also the key aspect.

It addresses what we genealogists know to be the advantages of genealogical family research:

Encouraging genealogy is an effective method of combating racism. By understanding the diversity of one's own background, "celebrating", or at least respecting, the diversity of others becomes more likely.

Genealogy can also be a spur to education. We will pay more attention to history and geography if our families are caught up in it. There is also the sobering thought that as we evaluate our ancestors we focus on what our descendants will think of us – if they can be bothered to find out.

Read the entire article at the link above. And you may be interested in the comments of readers following the article.

On the road again: To Chicago

This afternoon (Wednesday), we head from Seattle to Chicago by train, arriving Friday afternoon. I'm spending some time scheduling posts to appear while we are Internet-less on Amtrak.

Yesterday, I met a really nice group of people at the Mercer Island Library (Seattle) while presenting a program on getting started in Jewish genealogy. Some participants were just beginners, some were quite advanced - a very nice group.

The program was sponsored by Endless Opportunities of the Jewish Family Service in Seattle. EO offers various educational programs at different venues.

Towards the end, I went online and looked up family names for some of the attendees. It is always amazing when someone sees the name of a father, an uncle, an aunt, in a database. I was waiting for someone to jump up and do a Happy Dance - no one was that exuberant - but from the reactions of the audience, I could tell that genealogy has found a few more aficionados!

Thanks to Lyn Blyden, president of the JGS of Washington State, for arranging this.

Last week, Lyn and I also drove up to Anacortes - about a two-hour drive - to meet with a small group of interested people, Jewish and not, and I delivered much the same program.

Our host, Michael, also shared some history of the very small Jewish community of the town of Anacortes - he's been there since the 70s.

Lyn is great at organizing these kinds of outreach programs and it is one reason why the JGSWS is growing! She never misses an opportunity to connect with prospective researchers, either right around the corner or a two-hour drive away.

Outreach is the lifeblood of genealogy societies - societies cannot just sit and wait for people to show up at a meeting, they must make the effort to get out there, offer programing and excite new individuals.

The word is outreach, ladies and gentlemen - and Lyn says it is really an "endless opportunity." 

The JGSWS also cooperates with the Jewish genealogical societies in Vancouver, BC; Portland and Eugene, OR, in bringing in name speakers and sharing expenses. This is another excellent format for regional JGSs to emulate. Cooperation among societies enables so many more people to hear expert speakers.

Kol hakavod! to the JGSWS.

Beijing: Olympic Jewish athletes

Thank you to readers who have added more names (please see comments below).

This August 6 list (JTA) of Jewish athletes at the 2008 Summer Olympics includes participants from Israel, the US Australia, Argentina, Britain and Canada:

Argentina
Hockey: Gisele Kanevsky;
Judo: Daniela Krakower;
Swimming: Damian Blaum;
Table Tennis; Pablo Tabachnik;
Weightlifting: Nora Koppel;
AustraliaTable Tennis: David Zalcberg;

Austria
Swimming: Maxim Podoprigora;

Canada
Baseball: Adam Stern;
Wrestling: David Zilberman, 96 kg; Ari Taub, 120 kg plus;

Chile
Tennis: Nicolas Massu;

Great Britain
Rowing: Josh West;

Israel
Artistic Gymnastics: Alex Shatilov, all-around;
Canoeing: Michael Koganov, K-1 500 and 1000 meters;
Fencing: Tomer Or, foil; Dalilah Hatuel, foil; Noam Mills, epee;
Judo: Ariel Ze'evi, 100 kg; Gal Yekutiel, 60 kg; Alice Schlezinger, 63 kg;
Rhythmic Gymnastics, Individual: Ira Risenzon, Neta Rivkin;
Rhythmic Gymnastics, Team: Kayta Pizatzki, Racheli Vidgorcheck,Maria Savnakov,Alona Dvorinchenko,Veronica Witberg;
Sailing: Gidi Klinger and Udi Gal, 470; Shahar Tzuberi, windsurfing; Vered Buskila and Nika Kornitzky, 470; Nufar Eledman, laser radial; Ma’ayan Davidovich, windsurfing;
Shooting: Doron Egozi, 50-meter rifle 3, 10-meter air rifle; Gil Simkovich, 50-meter rifle 3, 50-meter rifle prone; Guy Starik, 50-meter rifle prone;
Swimming: Itay Chama, 200-meter breaststroke; Gal Nevo, 200 and 400 individual medley; Guy Barnea, 100 breaststroke; Tom Be'eri, 100 and 200 breaststroke; Allon Mandel, 100 and 200 butterfly; Nimrod Shapira Bar-Or, 200 freestyle; Anya Gostamelsky, 50 and 100 freestyle, 100 backstroke, 100 butterfly; Synchronized Swimming: Anastasia Gloushkov and Ina Yoffe, duet;
Taekwondo: Bat-El Getterer, 57 kg;
Tennis: Andy Ram and Yoni Erlich, doubles; Shahar Peer, singles; Tzipora Obziler, doubles with Peer;
Track and Field: Alex Averbukh, pole vault; Niki Palli, long jump; Haile Satayin, marathon; Itai Magidi, 3000-meter steeplechase;

United States
Fencing: Sara Jacobson, sabre;
Kayaking: Rami Zur, 500-meter individual
Swimming: Jason Lezak, 100-meter freestyle, relays; Garrett Weber-Gale, 100 freestyle, relays; Ben Wildman-Tobriner, 50 freestyle, relays; Dara Torres, 50-meter freestyle, relays;
Track and Field: Deena Kastor, marathon.

Thanks to Jan Meisels Allen for her pointer to the Jewish Journal's special page, as reported by editor Rob Eshman in his editorial:

...I suggest you check out the special web page we've created that tracks Jewish and Israeli Olympic stories. Because remember the First Rule of Jewish Journalism: If it didn't happen to a Jew, it's not news.

And read a reader's comment below indicating that there's another name to add: Adam Duvendeck who cycles for the United States.