Canada: BC's first Jewish arrivals

British Columbia owes much to the first Jews who arrived in 1858, as they contributed greatly to the province's development, according to today's story in the Vancouver Sun, which also focuses on diversity.

Among the first arrivals flooding into sleepy Fort Victoria when word of rich strikes on the Fraser River reached San Francisco in 1858 was a large contingent of Jews from the California gold fields.

Some, like Selim Franklin and Henry Nathan, were British-born; many, like the Oppenheimer brothers, originally came from Germany. Whatever their origins, they would contribute richly to the commercial, cultural and political development of what would become the province of British Columbia.

At a time when anti-Semitism still emerges with depressing regularity, it's worth remembering that the best of what we are derives from our diversity.

Of these Jews, three would make political history, four would build a globe-spanning business that thrives a century-and-a-half later, two would help shape Vancouver's emergence as B.C.'s preeminent city.

The first year, the Jewish immigrants had established some 70 businesses.

American stampeders quickly overwhelmed the tiny British outpost. Fort Victoria's population exploded as an estimated 30,000 prospectors and camp followers passed through.

The son of a Liverpool banker, Selim Franklin was was the first government auctioneer, and owned downtown lots. In 1859, the Victoria Philharmonic Society was founded at his home.

Interestingly, he ran for a seat in the new legislative assembly the following year. He was supported by Victoria's black community and defeated a high-profile newspaper editor to become the first Jew in North America elected to public office.

Franklin refused to take the Christian oath of office and Governor James Douglas immediately amended the oath for non-Christian office holders. Franklin's brother Lumley was elected mayor of Victoria in 1865 - the first Jew to be elected mayor of a North American city. London-Born Henry Nathan Jr won the 1871 Victoria seat in Parliament, the first Jew elected to the House of Commons.

Charles, Godfrey, David and Isaac Oppenheimer's wholesale Victoria provisions company supplied miners. Civic-minded, David founded the Union Club, while Isaac organized the Barkerville fire brigade. The family built Vancouver's first brick building after the great fire of 1886. David and Isaac also served on the city's second city council in 1887, and David began serving four terms as mayor in 1888.

The Oppenheimer Group today is a leading North American fresh produce company and celebrating its 150th anniversay, and claims to be the oldest business founded in the province. It began importing Mandarin oranges from Japan some 120 years ago.

As mayor, David invested in the Vancouver Water Works, the Vancouver Electric Railway and Light (to become BC Hydro) and the Westminster and Vancouver Tramway. He established a steamship line plying between Vancouver and Australia, helped found the BC Sugar Refinery, the YMCA, Alexandria Orphanage and more.

According to the story's author:

Jews assisted in giving B.C. its present shape and place in Confederation. Jews led Vancouver to the bridges, sewers, clean water, schools, public transportation and not least, Stanley Park, in short, most of the civic services that make this an enviable place to live. And that's the best answer to anti-Semitism that I can marshal.

Read the complete story here.

Detroit: The Jewish Experience, March 9

Spotlighting a community's Jewish history enables family history researchers of that locality to understand their ancestors' experience, both as immigrants and contributors to that unique history.

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Michigan will host Irwin Cohen (known as Mr. Baseball) in "The Jewish Experience in Detroit," at 1.30pm, Sunday, March 9.

A native Detroiter, Cohen is a historian, writer and lecturer. His books include "Echoes of Detroit: a 300 Year History, "Echoes of Detroit's Jewish Communities", and "Tiger Stadium - Images of Baseball"

He'll speak about his research, his employment with the Detroit Tigers, Jewish Detroiters who shaped the community and those who are making a new Detroit, among other topics.

The meeting will be at the Detroit Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills. There is no fee for JGSMI members; guests, $5. For more information, click here.

In May 2007, Detroit's first Jewish settler was remembered in stories in the Detroit Jewish News and the Detroit Free Press. It covered both pioneer Chapman Abraham and local boys serving in the Civil War. Tracing the Tribe's May 1 posting provided links to both stories which unfortunately are no longer live. However, some judicious googling will provide links to Detroit's early Jewish history.

Fur trader Chapman Abraham landed in Detroit in 1762; a Detroit River shoreline marker now commemorates the event.

The other side of the marker remembers the Detroit Jewish families who sent men to the Civil War in the 1860s; 150 Jewish families sent 181 men, 38 of whom died.

Michigan's first Jewish settler was another fur trader, Ezekiel Solomon, who moved to the Mackinac area in 1761.

According to the story, the early Jewish families made great sacrifices to settle in Michigan. Abraham's synagogue was in Montreal and, each year for the high holidays, he traveled 75 miles each way - by canoe - to worship with his congregation.

Seattle: Jewish medieval music, March 8-9

Medieval Jewish music is the focus of Seattle concerts this weekend. A relatively unknown repertoire offers a glimpse into the past with Sephardic romances, 14th-century composers, Hebrew psalms and more.

Seattle's large Sephardic community and others are in for a treat as the Seattle Medieval Women's Choir presents concerts on Saturday and Sunday, March 8 and 9, at Seattle's Temple Beth Am.

Although the 8pm Saturday concert is sold out, the 3pm Sunday concert had available tickets at this writing.

The program notes provide extensive information on this rare program.

Read about two manuscripts prepared by 12th-century cantor Obadiah, am Italian Christian convert to Judaism who moved to Egypt to live and work. Unfortunately, his works are too fragmented to perform.

Music of the time was transmitted orally, rarely written down. Some philosophers, including Maimonides, considered music sinful. In other communities, the cantor (hazzan, in the Sephardic terminology) was praised for his artistry, his own melodies.

According to the website, the Jewish and Islamic cultures in the Middle Ages chose not to write down their music, for a variety of reasons:

-Music was transmitted orally, from person to person, from teacher to student.

-There were moral and ethical questions about the role music should play in worship. Music was considered sinful by some famous medieval philosophers (such as Maimonides) and their followers, and therefore most certainly not deemed worthy to be recorded.

-In the communities that did not follow the banning of music from temple and home, the cantor's (hazzan) inventiveness was valued. It was a matter of artistry for each to compose his own melodies, or make his own arrangements of pre-existing ones, so that each community took pride in its unique song collections.

-There was the practical problem regarding the notation of Jewish medieval music: while Hebrew language reads right to left, musical notation reads left to right.

In Alfonso X's court members of all three religions worked together. Languages were Hebrew, Greek and Arabic, as Jewish philosophers and writers knew several tongues. The Jews were also poets and musicians, and there are records of Jewish musicians known for singing and playing of stringed instruments, hired for all sorts of events, and even for Christian religious services. Rare ancient music writings are preserved only in Arabic and Hebrew translations.

The program includes

-Cantillations of biblical texts, such as the Song of Songs.

-Piyyutim (liturgical poems, popular in the 11th-12th centuries).

-Nigunim (dance songs, instrumental and vocal, primarily Ashkenazi).

-Romanzas and Coplas in Judeo-Spanish or Ladino (Sephardic secular songs in the Iberian peninsula until the 1492 expulsion).

-Additionally, works by 17th century Italian Salamone (Shlomo) Rossi (1570-1630), who wrote music for 33 Hebrew psalms, hymns and temple songs while at the court in Mantua, where he was connected with that city's Jewish Theatre.

Performers include the choir's artistic director Margriet Tindemans, with singer/instrumentalist Shira Kammen and soloist Linda Strandberg.

This tip comes from Lyn Blyden, president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State. Thanks, Lyn!

San Francisco: Jewish genetic diseases, March 16

Statistical geneticist Neil Risch, PhD, will present a program on Jewish genetic diseases for the Jewish Genealogical Society of the San Francisco Bay Area, on Sunday, March 16, at 1pm.

The meeting takes place at San Francisco's Jewish Community High School.

Dr. Neil Risch will explain how modern genetics can reveal insights helpful to genealogists, such as the historical relationship among different Jewish groups and evidence of Jewish migrations. As a human geneticist, Dr. Risch has been particularly interested in the inheritance of genetic diseases in Jewish populations.

The term "Jewish genetic diseases” applies to conditions that afflict Ashkenazi Jews as much as 20 to 100 times more frequently than they affect the general population. Known for his collaborative work on numerous genetic diseases including torsion dystonia, hypertension, cardiovascular disease and multiple sclerosis, Dr. Risch emphasizes the links between population genetics and clinical application.

Risch is director of the Institute for Human Genetics and professor of Epidemiology and Biostatistics at the University of California San Francisco. He has held faculty appointments at Columbia, Yale and Stanford Universities, and is a graduate of the UCLA biomathematics program. In a 2005 article, he was described by one of the field's founding fathers as "the statistical geneticist of our time" and "a mensch."

For more information, click here.

A Sephardic glassmaker's odyssey

The Hebrew History website is packed with incredibly fascinating stories of Jewish arts, artisans and history.

This paper on Juan Robles and the Inquisition is subtitled "The Odyssey of a Sephardic Glassmaker."

The Robles family tree, displayed by Juan Robles, until his death a resident of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands. The family traces back through Amsterdam to Spain, where another Juan Robles, scion of a glassmaking family, was condemned in absentia to eternal damnation for heresy by a tribunal of the Inquisition in 1535. Until 1492 the Iberian glassmaking industry was essentially Judaic.

Other members of Sephardic glassmaking families followed the same route through Amsterdam to the Virgin Islands. Prominent families included the Robles, Medina, Salas and the da Costa families which intermarried over four centuries.

The art of glassmaking was born near the city of Ur, birthplace of Abraham, about 2400 BCE. It remained a uniquely Semitic, and subsequently a Judaic art through the early centuries of the Common Era. In Spain, the Jews remained predominantly the glassmakers until the horrendous massacres of 1391 ushered in a drive for conversion. Some Jews left Spain, others converted, and most others feigned conversion. Finally, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492 made the continuation of the art by professed Jews impossible.

The enlightening story of master glassmaker Juan Robles has been preserved in the Inquisition proceedings as one of eight cases concerning glassmakers in the town of Cadalso de los Vidrios (Cadalso, the Glassmaker's Town); they were conversos accused of Judaizing.

Cadalso de los Vidrios was a center where Jewish glassblowers dominated the art, carrying it with them from Alexandria under the Greeks, continuing it under the Moslems in old Cairo, fleeing from Moorish-dominated North Africa and then into Moorish Spain.

Burgos was another important glassmaking center of Christian Spain, "a gathering place for Moorish and Jewish glassmakers during the late years of the 15th century." All three major glassmaking centers in Spain, Barcelona (Cataluna), Toledo (Cadalso de los Vidrios) and Burgos (Medina del Campo) were also Jewish population centers.

When the pogroms and persecutions of 1391 began, Jews sought a better climate. Many converted by force and those who resisted then converted in 1412. In 1492, with no options, most Jews left Spain, leaving their assets. Accusing conversos of Judaizing was a good way of eliminating the glassmasters.

Juan Robles, son of Hernando Robles and Maria Alfonso, was born in the town Cadalso de los Vidrios in Toledo province. Hernando was a Converso, whose father had been forced into conversion. Maria was likewise born into such a family, but her family had abandoned heritage and never told her.

Hernando, however, secretly taught his son as his father had taught Hernando, and he eventually got caught up by the Inquisition.

His case, which dragged on for five years, is well-documented and the paper provides much information on his testimony. Juan Robles, alias Abraham the proselyte, was convicted, burned in effigy, on December 21, 1535.

The story continues and mentions the other glassmaking families, extending the saga into other countries, including the Netherlands, the Caribbean, Italy, France. The Salas family was the outstanding glassmaking family in Barcelona and after 1492 moved into Europe (Venice) and appearing in the records of Panama, Suriname, Curacao and St. Thomas.

Community archives indicate the intermarriages between the Robles, de Medina, Salas and other families. The paper's notes are extensive and provide more sources and references.

Read the entire paper here.

Other titles at the site include Glassmaking, Photography, the Silk Route, Iron Working, Navigation, Music, Medicine, Artisanship and Literacy, Craftsmanship, Nomadic Jews, Silkmaking, gold and Silver, Carpets, Jews in Africa, Beads, Dyemaking, Venetian Glass, Jews of Brescia, Florence and Cremona, the da Costas, Jewish Traders and more.

Pennsylvania: 2008 FEEFHS conference

In 2007, The Federation of East European Family History Societies (FEEFHS) conference was held in Salt Lake City, immediately prior to the IAJGS conference; several speakers appeared at both events.

Its 2008 event will be held Friday and Saturday, August 1-2 in Pittsburgh, with an optional tour on Sunday. Co-sponsors include: The Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, The Jewish Genealogical Society of Pittsburgh, The Western Pennsylvania Slovak Cultural Association, and the Mifflin Township Historical Society.

In 1992, FEEFHS was organized as an umbrella organization promoting family research in eastern and central Europe without any ethnic, religious or social distinctions. It provides a forum for individuals and organizations focused on a single country or group of people to exchange information and updates on developments in the field.

Primarily serving North Americans interested in tracing their families back to Europe, members from all countries are welcomed.

The opening day key note speaker will be Dr. Stephen P. Morse, creator of the " One-Step Web Pages."

The preliminary program covers geographical research such as Slovakia, Ukraine, Poland, gazetters, Russian Empire, Czech, Austria Hungary, Galicia, Bukovina, Austrian Army, Bulgarians, Macedonians, Croatia, Baltics, Balkan, Romanian, Lithuania; Greek Catholic and Roman Catholic records; languages and translation of Latin, Polish and Russian; other programs include writing family history, role of historical societies, publishing a society journal, resources, beginning genealogy, maps, newspapers, researching women, Ellis Island, land records, Jewish research, Jewish calendar, DNA basics, websites, German emigration, preserving photographs.

For speakers, program schedule and registration details, click here.

Jews of Sicily: A history

The Philadelphia Jewish Voice has an interesting article on the history of the Jews of Sicily by Sergio Caldarella.

There is relatively little written on the Jews of Sicily although some researchers are working in the archives there and there are archeologists excavating remains of Jewish sites.

There is also a fascinating 17th century map of the island, which was at the crossroads of the Mediterranean for thousands of years.

Sicily was, of course, not just Greek. Phoenicians, Carthaginians, and Romans in antiquity, and later the Byzantines, Arabs, Normans, Swabians (Hohenstaufen), French (Angevins), and Spaniards (Aragonese) also entered the island as conquerors.

The author writes about the Sicilian Jewish role in the island's history until the 1492 Expulsion from Spain and a year later when the Jews were expelled from Sicily; but claims that Spanish anti-Semitism was not shared by the Sicilians.

The Viceroy of Sicily, Don Ferdinando de Acugna, did not make the edict public until two and a half months after its proclamation. Some parts of Sicilian territory, for instance Pantelleria, a little island in the Channel of Sicily, were entirely populated by Jews.

The events of 1492-1493 ended 15 centuries of Jewish history, and the author writes that today there is more Jewish archeological evidence in Sicily than in all of Spain.

Says the author, "Some scholars have already pointed out that part of the largest number of Jews captured and enslaved by the Romans after the sack of Jerusalem by Pompey in 63 BCE could have ended in Sicily and that the Proconsul Crassus sold 30,000 thousand captured Jews. He claims that it isn't far-getched to assume that some of them went to Sicily."

In a famous paper published in 1957, Cecil Roth - among other things, author of A History of the Marranos - tells us that "the first native-born European Jewish writer of whom we have knowledge is Caecilius Calactinus . . . who flourished in the first century before the Christian era" and was also well known outside the Jewish intellectual community.

There are many scholars, rabbis, poets, and other Sicilian intellectuals who were Jewish. Named in the article are Samuel ben Nissim al-Masnut, author of Synagogal poetry, midrashic commentaries, and a book on Job, Ma'ayan Ganim republished in Berlin in 1899. Samuel ben Nissim, born in Palermo, later emigrated later to Spain where he was called "Sikilli" or "the Sicilian." Aaron Abulrabbi, born in Catania, compiled a lost defense of Judaism and a commentary on Rashi, was born in Catania. Abu Aflah, author of theosophical and magical works, was from Syracuse.

Twelfth century Anatoli ben Joseph was a rabbinical judge in Alexandria, Egypt, posed a difficult question to the rabbis of Syracuse in Sicily, and they submitted the topic to Moses Maimonides, who provided the answer in one of the Responsa.

Yehuda Shmuel ben Nissim Abu'l Farag, from Agrigento, was a convert to Christianity under the name of Raimondo da Moncada and "one of the most eminent European Hebraists of the fifteenth century;" translated the Koran and taught Hebrew and Kabbalah to one of the most eminent figures of the Italian Renaissance under the name Pico della Mirandola.

The discovery of the Cairo Geniza confirmed not only the existence of an extensive Jewish trade in silk and books between the 10th-12th century, but also the existence of sea and land routes that were in daily use between the Sicily and Palestine.

Around 120 CE, Rabbi Akiva stopped in Syracuse, reporting a small Jewish community. Almost every major Sicilian city has an area called la Giudecca, the Jewish quarter, and it is still possible to find the mikveh site. "In Syracuse, for example, the original ritual bath of the community is located under the church of San Filippo in the center of la Giudecca."

Sicilian Jews, says the article, had unique words for Jewish things. For example, Simchat Torah became La festa della Mortilla; kosher meat became carne tajura (possibly from the Hebrew tahor, or pure); and the synagogue is not Bet Knesset but la meschita (or muschitta).

Jews have left their mark in many Sicilian areas, from their language, to their culinary traditions, to the topography of cities, and in the names of the people. Most of these connections remain to be investigated, and much is yet to be done to better understand these Jewish communities, which have lived for more than fifteen centuries on the island, leaving us precious pearls still waiting to be discovered.

Read the complete article here.

Italy: Inquisition documents displayed

The Vatican has placed Inquisition documents on display through March 16, at Rome's Central Risorgimento Museum. For centuries the archives of the Holy Office were secret, but opened to scholars in 1998.

Among the items:

-1611 Holy Office order instructing Inquisitors how to carry out their job and how to conduct themselves when not on official duties.

-1703 list of rules spells out a crackdown on Huguenots and heretics and those sheltering them. Huguenots were persecuted French Protestants.

-1599 edict targets game hunters, bird hunters and fishermen who were poaching at a Vatican estate south of Rome.

Most importantly for members of the tribe:

The Vatican once controlled the lives of Rome's ancient, tiny Jewish community. On display is a 19th century drawing indicating the Ghetto neighborhood where Jews were allowed to live, and the streets where they could have their stores.

There is also a collection of maps of Jewish settlements across Italy, which are among the oldest evidence of the ghettos.

The edicts and orders were printed on remarkably durable material made from recycled rags at a Vatican printing house.

Monsignor Alejandro Cifres is one of the exhibit curators and on the staff of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (formerly the Holy Office), which relied on reports from Dominicans, Franciscans and lay people, and a network of monitors.

Napoleon's forces carted off bundles of documents from the Holy Office, and after his early 1800s fall, the French government wanted to return the material but the cost of shipping was too high. Rome gave the order to burn much of it. However, documents from famous trials (such as Galileo) were saved. He was condemned for supporting Copernicus' discovery that the Earth revolved around the Sun.

Read more here.