Researcher Fred Blum speaks in Philly

One of Jewish genealogy's intrepid researchers, Fred Blum, is spotlighted in Philadelphia's Jewish Exponent.

Blum "puts these sleuthing and research skills to good use as someone who helps the Red Cross reunite members of families separated during the Holocaust."

He began to use his talents for others after he saw an advertisement in 2005 in none other than the Jewish Exponent.

The Red Cross was looking for a relative of one Shlomo Adelman, a Romanian Jew who had come to Israel in 1940. Always at the ready, Blum decided to lend his skills to the effort.

So he waded through Census records, Social Security death indexes, city directories, passenger-arrival indexes and naturalization records. Within two weeks, he had found Adelman's long-lost cousin: Bessie Zauber from Ventnor, N.J.

Says Blum, who is co-president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia: "with genealogy, you're never finished." Visit the site to learn about area resources and repositories.

Blum will speak on "Secrets of Finding People" at the JGSGP meeting on March 12 at 7:30 p.m. Click here for more information.

Looking for Latvian resources?

If Latvia is your interest, here's something for you. The new Latvia SIG (special interest group) Web site is up and running at JewishGen. Estonian information is also included, along with information for those just starting a geographic quest.

SIG editor Barry Shay welcomes all comments and suggestions, and is looking for additional photographs and materials to add to the site.

The Latvian State Historical Archives hold vital records from 1854-1905. The complete inventory of Jewish records is at the Shtetlinks Riga Web site.

JewishGen's Latvia Database has about 95,000 entries and is frequently updated as more information becomes available. Major categories are Latvia, Livland Gubernia, Courland Gubernia and Vitebsk Gubernia, each with various components. Additional information is here.

For the information on Estonia, which utilizes Mark Ryback's site and additional articles, click here.

There's also a history of Jews in Latvia and Courland, a section on shtetl memories, the small "shtetlach" of Latvia, book reviews and links for more information.

For a book on Latvia and Estonia resources, click here
here.

Happy Hunting!

Jewish DNA mentions in major media

Thanks to the Rev. Al Sharpton and his connection to Sen. Strom Thurmond, everyone in the media is asking questions about DNA.

Fortunately for Tracing the Tribe's readers, reporters are also talking to Jewish genealogists, such as Herb Huebscher of New York and to Bennett Greenspan, founder of Houston-based Family Tree DNA, the very first company to do genetic genealogy.

Thanks to recent stories by Matt Crenson of the Associated Press and Jamie Talan of Newsday, DNA - specifically Jewish DNA - is in the news. And Amy Harmon of the New York Times is working on another article in this vein.

And for those families of Eastern European origin with an oral family tradition of Sephardic roots, there is a just-established Family Tree DNA project called "Iberian Surnames of Ashkenaz," headed by Judy Simon. She writes "We are starting a geographical DNA project for male Ashkenazi Jews with a Spanish or Portuguese surname or an oral tradition of having Sephardic roots, who are interested in tracing their ancestry by DNA."

To read more about the project, click here. You may also e-mail Judy for more information, IberianAshkenaz@yahoo.com

If you want to learn even more about DNA in genealogy, the upcoming 27th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy will feature a DNA and Genetics track. There will be programs by author Jon Entine, genetics counselor Gary Frolich and the Shoah Project with Syd Mandelbaum. Greenspan will speak on Genetic Genealogy 2007 and Huebscher will provide an update to his fascinating project linking a growing number of Galizianer (Austro-Hungary) and Litvak (Lithuanian) families to genetically matching Sephardic families, which may indicate a pre-Expulsion Sephardic origin for the entire group.

The conference program is now online, for all event details, registration and much more.

Manila: The Jewish presence

In February, the synagogue in Manila hosted a lecture by San Diego Jewish Historical society archivist Bonnie M. Harris, who recovered the papers of Cantor Cysner, who was part of the Manila community during WWII. Cysner's widow provided boxes of material to the society.

The Philippines have a fascinating Jewish history.

A Web site sponsored by the Embassy of Israel in the Philippines provides an excellent exhibit that tells the little-known story of the history of Manila community from Spanish colonial days through to contemporary times, The community provided aid to so many refugees during the war years.

The islands were a Spanish colony from 1521-1898, and conversos accompanied Spanish adventurers who settled the islands, according to Harvard University history professor Jonathan Goldstein, who wrote a paper on Jewish merchants in Far Eastern ports.

New Christians Jorge and Domingo Rodriguez are the first recorded Jews to have arrived, reaching Manila in the 1590s. In 1593, both were tried and convicted at a Mexico City trial (called an auto-da-fe) because the Inquisition was not operating in the Philippines. At least eight other New Christians were also tried and convicted. Others with Jewish roots kept very quiet, settling in rural areas, living a precarious existence and keeping their traditions very secret in a very Catholic colony.

The Suez Canal opened in March 1869, cutting the travel time from Europe to the Philippines from three months to 40 days. In 1870, brothers Adolf, Charles and Rafael Levy arrived from Alsace-Lorraine, fleeing the Franco-Prussian War, and established a Manila jewelry store famous throughout the Philippines, La Estrella del Norte (The Northern Star). Their businesses eventually included general merchandise, gems, pharmaceuticals and automobiles. Leopold Kahn, also from Alsace, arrived in 1909 and joined them in business.

Later, Syrian Jew A.N. Hashim arrived with watches to sell and also established a jewelry business; Turkish and Egyptian Jews also came to Manila.

The community expanded during the period that the Philippines were under American control and during the Holocaust the community rescued many refugees. The community increased with SephardicBagdadi Jews from India, as well as an American/European Ashkenazi community, each with their own synagogues.

The exhibit was organized with the help of the San Diego Jewish Historical Society, Manila community members, archives of the Americal Historical Collection (Rizal LIbrary, Ateneo de Manila University), Archives of the Main Library at the University of the Philippines in Diliman, and the Israeli Embassy staff in the Philippines.

Click here to read the story of Cantor Cysner and more.

Some Sephardic discussion groups, such as Sephardim.org have messages from Filipinos discussing their Jewish backgrounds.

Digging deeper with DNA in Seattle

Family Tree DNA founder Bennett Greenspan recently had a very successful visit to Seattle. The Jewish Transcript wrote a nice follow-up and interview about his visit.

In the article, he describes how genealogists are inspired to begin their research: listening to family stories, looking for old documents and photographs, the never-ending Internet search, travel to the "old country" and rooting around dusty archives. We may then hit the inevitable brick wall, which is where DNA may be the only place to turn for more information.

"For many families, the story of how they got to where they are and what they have become consists of gathered tales from an uncle who served in World War II, a great-grandfather who somehow got from a village in the “old country” to Ellis Island, or some black sheep cousin last seen heading for the wilds of Canada.

"The more determined familial historian may have scoured family attics and the courthouses of the land. They seek out tattered newspaper clippings often filled with factual errors, portrait photos or fuzzy snapshots of unidentified and long forgotten relatives, simply to seek yet another piece of the puzzle.

"The most resolute may have made documenting family history a passion and went modern a decade ago, hitting the Internet or perhaps traveling to the ancestral homeland. In the end, the trail inevitably ran out within a few hundred years — if it had not been diverted by fire, flood or language barrier.

"Even the best genealogists might be able to tell you they have found family lines dating back to the 15th century, but after that, the mists of time seem to shroud all. Paper records were not kept or have not survived.

"There is little, if any, useful information in existence until the point that a society began to make use of surnames, a practice that did not come into use in some areas until the last 150 years."

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State is following up with author/researcher Colleen Fitzpatrick, a former NASA scientist, who will speak on "Forensic Genealogy," focusing on old photographs. For more information on the meeting on March 19, click here.

South Florida: Genealogy is addictive!

Are you a snowbird visiting South Florida while the white stuff is still piled high up north?

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Palm Beach County numbers some 300 members and just held a mini-conference.

The society's founder, Alfred Silberfeld, 85, has discovered 10,761 relatives with 4,000 different last names. He has found family branches in Argentina, Brazil, Italy, France, Poland and Belgium. He checks phone books wherever he goes to spot more.

A researcher for 31 years, Silberfeld claims his 27th great-grandfather is Rashi, the great Jewish sage of France (1040-1105). Since Rashi is a descendant of King David, he believes he can trace his ancestry to the great Jewish leader, even though there are 35 generations - without records - between David and Rashi.

Read the complete story here.

New York: Lost Jewish civilization in the Bronx

In 1639, Jonas Bronck operated the first farm in a region of New York that would eventually take his name -- the Bronx. The Jews of New Amsterdam (later New York) traversed the area on their way to Jewish communities in Westchester County and New England.

Some 17th-18th century Jewish families who settled in the area included the Hays (in New Rochelle), Marks (Greenburgh), Jacobs (Rye) and Davis (Northcastle) families.

In Newburgh, Lewis Gomez traded with Native Americans in 1712, while Abraham I. Abrahams went to Bedford and Philips Manor, through The Bronx, to perform brit milahs in the later 18th century.

Early Westchester Jews were members of Shearith Israel in Manhattan, and shlepped through the Bronx frontier to worship.

The first large group of Jews arrived from Germany and Hungary in the 1840s. An 1871 city directory lists no synagogues in the area of the Bronx. In 1884, the first Jewish institution opened - a Sunday school which later became Reform Temple Hand in Hand, the first synagogue in the Bronx. It was followed by Adath Israel in 1889 and Agudat Achim Anshe Podal in 1890. The first Hebrew school opened in 1896 and the first Talmud Torah in 1907.

For much more on Jews in the Bronx, including all the synagogues that were or are, go to the "Remembrance of Synagogues Past: The Lost Civilization of the Jewish South Bronx" Web site, founded by Seymour J. Perlin and Rita Perlin. Their site is fascinating. I recommend reading "Personal Impressions," recollections of those who lived in the area.

As a child of Parkchester, grandchild of the Bronx, and great-grandchild of the Grand Concourse, I was delighted to learn that the Perlins will speak on this topic at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York on March 18 at the Center for Jewish History. For more information, click here.

Joy Rich, editor of the society's journal Dorot, first became aware of the site after both her parents had passed away. She searched it for information and found the synagogue in which her parents had married - Temple Zion on the Concourse. "When I found it, I fell in love with Dr. Perlin for putting it online. I printed out the photo and practically hugged the piece of paper."

Joy's family moved to New Jersey when she was six, and she remembers driving to the Bronx to visit her grandmother and strolling with her father to Burnside Avenue to look in shop windows.

When she was 8 or 10, her father took her on "a train ride in the sky." Later, of course, she realized it was the El (elevated train), a part of the subway system. The El also took her to a magical place where you put coins in a slot and took food out from behind a glass door - the Horn and Hardart Automat. Likely, she recalls, it was the one at Fordham Road and the Grand Concourse.

For a picture of a different Horn and Hardart Automat, click here

I rememer going to H&H and eating coconut cream pie that came out of one of those little windows. Joy also suggests an interesting New York Public Library Web site - The Robert F. Byrnes Collection of Automat Memorabilia 1912-1990s bulk (1940-1960s).

If your grandparents lived in the Bronx, you might have had an experience similar to Joy's. "When I stayed with my grandmother for a few days, she'd say 'Let's go to the benches.'" These Burnside Avenue benches weren't on the sidewalk but on an island in the middle of a busy street, inhabited by her grandmother and her friends.

Ah, the nostalgia. Anyone with memories to share?

Montreal: Explore roots resources on March 20

If you are reading this blog in Montreal, here's your chance to learn about the resources of the Mormon Family History Center in the suburb of Lasalle.

On March 20, the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal is taking a field trip to the center. On hand to provide expert assistance will be the center's assistant director, Pam Stewart, and Quebec Family History Society president Gary Shroder. Resources available to visitors include online databases such as Ancestry.com. There is no charge for the visit.

The Montreal society will hold its monthly Family Tree workshop on March 11 at the Jewish Public Library. The informal workshops, for both beginners and experienced genealogists, provide one-on-one answers and help.

For information on the society's activities, click here.