Los Angeles: Bad Arolsen program, Nov. 10

A trip by professional genealogists to the Bad Arolsen ITS Archives last May is the basis of the next program of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, at 7.30pm, Monday, November 10, at the Skirball Cultural Center.

In May 2008, 40 genealogists spent a week researching at the International Tracing Service archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany, the most important repository in the world containing information about individual victims of World War II.

Although its stated mission was to document "the fate of the victims of Nazi persecution," it remained closed to the public for more than 50 years.

A short video will provide a first-hand look at the vast resources of the ITS and what the on-site research process looks like, followed by a panel discussion in which three trip participants - Lori Miller, Judi Gyori Missels and Pamela Weisberger - will offer their unique perspectives on their experience.

The program will cover:

- Description of ITS, the archives, categories of documents and their accessibility to the public
- Gaining access to and researching in the archives
- Obtaining copies of documents
- Analyzing documents for greater meaning
- How to research the ITS archives yourself
- Community documents as an adjunct to personal research

There will also be a special focus on the non-personal/community records and testimonies held by the ITS which include the former Polish/Galician towns of Zbaraz, Jezierzany, Drohobycz and Boryslaw.

The program is free to members; others, $5. The JGSLA traveling library collection of genealogical reference books - and volunteers to answer questions - will be available from 7pm.

For additional details, check the JGSLA website.

MyHeritage.com: Nine new languages added

This week, MyHeritage.com added nine new languages - Danish, Romanian, Bulgarian, Serbian, Croatian, Lithuanian, Malay, Arabic and Farsi - making a total of 34 languages supported on the site.

More than 26 million members around the world connect and communicate with their extended family networks and research family history with MyHeritage tools.

Says founder/CEO Gilad Japhet, “Families everywhere want to learn about their history and stay in touch with relatives who may be spread around the world.” The company is committed to making itself the most inclusive online destination for families, regardless of location or language. The additional languages make it even easier.

Gilad and I first met - long before the company went live - at a genealogy conference in Israel and discovered we were related through the Diskin family of Mogilev, Belarus.

Every few months or so, we'd speak and I'd ask what was happening with his interesting concept. When MyHeritage went live, I wrote one of the first articles - in the Jerusalem Post - about the company.

In Israel, it is rather common for people to know several languages. It is, after all, a country of immigrants from countries around the world who have brought their own languages and then learned Hebrew, English and other common languages.

It was no surprise, therefore, that Gilad's concept included offering the site in a multitude of languages, making it even easier to connect with extended family while researching and sharing family histories.

In regards to data, users can enter information instantaneously in two languages of choice, making it simple to share family history with people in far off places who may not be proficient in your own native language. For example, I can look at my data in English and Russian or Hebrew.
As a genealogist, this feature helped me personally as I have easily learned what my names of interest look like in different alphabets. Recognizing given names and surnames in various languages is a useful, practical skill for all researchers.

Visit MyHeritage on the web or by downloading a simple free piece of software and set up a family website so you and your extended family can share information and research.

Also, take a look at the new photo tagging technology that automatically recognizes and labels faces in digital photos, making it even easier and faster to organize, search for, and share pictures with family and friends.

Tel Aviv: Italian Jewish Studies, February 2009

The Israeli Association for the Study of History of Italian Jews is organizing its first annual conference on February 25, 2009, at Tel Aviv University.

It is billed as an opportunity for researchers of different fields to meet and present recent contributions to all aspects of history and culture of Italian Jewry.

Lectures are 20 minutes, followed by discussion. The deadline for proposals abstracts and applications is 1/12/2008. For more information about the conference, email associazione.assei@gmail.com.

Reminder to Tracing the Tribe readers: This is a perfect example of why genealogical formulas for recording dates are better.

Because this is coming from Israel, that deadline could be 1 December 2008, in the European style of day-month-year. But the conference's co-chair is at Brandeis, so it could be the American January 12, 2008, month-day-year, which of course is long past, so that pretty much indicates it is the European style.

I just thought we could all use a reminder in how to record dates so that they will be immediately understood by everyone and won't require any protracted discussion.

Canada: Jewish studies conference call for papers

The Association for Canadian Jewish Studies annual conference has issued a call for papers for the event to be held May 24-26, 2009, at Carleton University, Ottowa. The conference provides a platform for original scholarly research in Canadian Jewish history, life and culture.

Individuals are invited to send proposals for paper presentations twenty minutes in length (approximately 2,000 words) that concern some aspect of the Canadian Jewish experience.

Potential presenters are asked to submit an abstract, 400-500 words in length, by January 7, 2009. Abstracts - to be reviewed anonymously - should state the main argument of the paper. Notification will be made by February 16, 2009. Submission of full panels (three to four papers) will receive priority.

For full details concerning the conference and proposal submissions, click here.

Book: Sephardi responsa

The online Jewish Magazine has an interesting selection of articles each month. The November issue offers a book review by Jay Levinson on "Jewish Questions: Responsa on Sephardic Life in the Early Modern Period," by Matt Goldish (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 2008).

These Sephardic responsa were written from 1492-1750 and provide information on social history as well as Jewish law. What were the important questions of those days and how did they illustrate the times in which our ancestors lived?

The first section of the book is a broad overview of Sephardic political and social history starting with the Inquisition and stressing facts that general readers often overlook. Those who fled Spain and later Portugal faced the perils of travel - shipwreck, piracy, and being kidnapped into slavery. It was often hard to find a port that would accept Jews. Nor were they always allowed to leave the Iberian Peninsula. Rules and restrictions were random and selectively enforced

Most of Western Europe was closed to Jews and Moslem countries were common destinations.

The responsa illustrate the problems of conversos (anousim, Hebrew for "forced ones"), many who left in exile, while others accepted a Catholic lifestyle and kept secret Jewish traditions. Over generations, Jewish identity was impacted by lack of Jewish education.

Among the interesting portions of the review:

Rabbinical authorities had a strong reputation as Biblical scholars. There were no overt Jews in England when Henry VIII was determined to divorce Catherine of Aragon, so he sought advice about Biblical divorce from the Sephardic rabbis of Venice. One might say that this was a classic case of a non-Jew asking a question in Jewish Law.

In England, when Jews were not permitted to reside, conversos - with a non-Jewish persona - were permitted. Amsterdam was another location where conversos settled. In some places, once Jews were allowed to live in certain areas, conversos had to live separately. One of the responsum addresses the question of a converso rejoining the Jewish community. There are also questions on Karaites.

Business and trade are topics. Jews traded with both parties during the Ottoman war with the Venetians. Questions ask about interest charged to Jews and non-Jews, government official relations and other topics.

Jewish men often travelled in danger over long periods of time, so important questions focused on chained wives (aguna) and marriage annulment.

Unknown political events are addressed, such as a Turkish blood libel case not recorded elsewhere. The question: if Jews were away from the city during the event, must they contribute funds to the ransom amount?

Fire was a constant problem in crowded cities with wooden houses, and open cooking and heating fires. Numerous towns were destroyed along with libraries and rabbinic writings, such as responsa.

The selection of responsa in this book is a serious contribution to preserving not only memory of those responsa, but also perpetuating an understanding of the Jewish communities in which they were written.

I'm ordering a copy of this book and believe it should be of interest to other Sephardic researchers as well as all genealogists interested in this historical period.

Read the complete review at the link above.

Ancestry.com: Jewish Collection stats and updates

Mike Daniels of The Generations Network (Ancestry.com's parent company) , whom I met at the Chicago 2008 conference, has just provided me with some stats and information on the new Jewish History Collection and the webinar with Gary Mokotoff at 8pm, Wednesday, November 5:

"Since announcing the micro site and the webinar on Wednesday, we've had some 70,000 page views and 35,000 unique daily visitors. In addition, 925 people have registered for the webinar with three days remaining to registration.

"The IAJGS board of directors will be visiting Ancestry the evening of the webinar and viewing it on site."

Mike has been assigned to prepare the content acquired from JewishGen, the Joint and JRI-Poland that went live last week. Gary Mokotoff has been working with him on the November 5 webinar and the site, and addressed this in his newest "Nu? What's New?" newsletter. If you are not a subscriber to that newsletter, view it here.

For more information on the webinar and how to register, see Tracing the Tribe's previous posting on the event.

Philly 2009: Lodz, Bialystok and Paterson, New Jersey

The 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy
will be held 2-7 August 2009, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

The website will soon be active.

Tracing the Tribe will inform its readers about Philly 2009

as information is made available.

Here's an announcement that will be of interest to those with roots in Lodz, Bialystok or Paterson, New Jersey.

Roni Seibel Liebowitz is coordinator of the Lodz Area Research Group (LARG) discussion group and website. She is in close contact with many families and descendants of people who came from Lodz and the surrounding area.

Lodz was a textile city and many people who emigrated to the US from there, settled in another textile city - Paterson, New Jersey - once known as Silk City. The other large group of immigrants to the city came from Bialystok.

Bialystok discussion group coordinator Mark Halpern (who is also the Philly 2009 program chair) lived in Paterson as a young boy, while Roni lived there until she was 12 and then moved to nearby Fair Lawn.

Genealogy is full of coincidences. Mark and Roni both became involved in family history research at the same time (1997-98), and often talked about future generations who will look for their Paterson roots.

The two former Paterson residents are already making plans for the Philly 2009 event.

They've decided to ask how many researchers would be interested in attending a Birds-of-a- Feather (BOF) meeting for the Paterson area, which also includes Passaic, Kearny and other nearby towns.

Unfamiliar with the term? BOFs are informal meetings of researchers with interest in a specific locality, region or topic. Often, BOFs become more formally organized Special Interest Groups (SIGs) on JewishGen.

Mark and Roni have already contacted the president of the Jewish Historical Society of North Jersey and other individuals active in similar organizations focused on Jewish Paterson's history. If there is interest, they would also be invited to attend.

Mark, as conference program chair, is rather busy now (an understatement!) , so responses to this announcement should go to Roni. If you are interested in Paterson, email her with the following information:

1. Your interest in a Paterson group
2. Name of your family from Paterson or nearby town
3. Any memorabilia you may have from Paterson.
4. Plans (even tentative) to attend the conference

Depending upon reader responses, a Paterson and area Birds-of-a-Feather meeting will be scheduled at the conference. If there is significant interest, they will consider creating a Paterson ShtetLink website on JewishGen.

The Phoenician Footprint and more

There's a fascinating New York Times story today about the genetic mark left by the Phoenicians.

While the entire story is very interesting, I was most intrigued by Dr. Spencer Well's comments at the end of the story, which holds promise for Jewish researchers. He suggested that perhaps similar future projects might investigate the multi-cultural traffic on the Silk Road, used by many Jewish traders and merchants through the centuries.

Another possible project, said Wells, might investigate Alexander the Great's Asian marches through the Near East.

When we lived in Teheran, I distinctly remember an article in either the English Kayhan or Teheran Times (perhaps published in 1976 or 1977) which reported on anthropologists' finds of isolated villages near Shiraz (I believe) that still spoke a Greek dialect. Speculation at the time was that these villagers were descendants of Alexander's soldiers who remained in the area. I have never been able to find more information on this, so if any readers have heard this story or seen an article published in a journal, please let me know.

The Phoenicians are also interesting as historians believe that Jewish traders traveled with them and were the source for some communities around the Mediterranean.

The New York Times story indicated that as many as 1 in 17 men living today in North Africa and southern Europe may have a Phoenician male ancestor, according to DNA research. The mysterious Phoenicians traveled the eastern Mediterranean and were the dominant seafaring commercial power until Rome defeated them in the second century BCE.

Among their achievements, they founded Carthage which rivaled Rome; introduced the alphabet, exported Lebanon cedars for shipbuilding and marketed the murex shell purple dye. The meaning of Phoenicia, their home base in current Lebanon and south Syria, is "land of purple."

According to the scientists, this was "the first application of a new analytic method for detecting especially subtle genetic influences of historical population migrations."

Directing the project were the Genographic Project, a partnership of the National Geographic Society and IBM Corporation, with additional support from the Waitt Family Foundation. The findings are in the current American Journal of Human Genetics.

“When we started, we knew nothing about the genetics of the Phoenicians,” Chris Tyler-Smith, a geneticist at the Wellcome Trust Sanger Institute in Cambridge, England, said in an announcement. “All we had to guide us was history: we knew where they had and hadn’t settled.”

It proved to be enough, Dr. Tyler-Smith and Spencer Wells, a geneticist who directs the Genographic Project, said in telephone interviews.

Samples of the male Y-chromosome were collected from 1,330 men now living at six sites known to have been settled in antiquity as colonies and trading outposts of the Phoenicians. The sites were in Cyprus, Malta, Morocco, the West Bank, Syria and Tunisia.

Each participant, whose inner cheek was swabbed for the samples, had at least three generations of indigenous ancestry at the site. To this was added data already available from Lebanon and previously published chromosome findings from nearly 6,000 men at 56 sites throughout the Mediterranean region. The data were then compared with similar research from neighboring communities having no link to Phoenician settlers.

From the research emerged a distinctive Phoenician genetic signature, in contrast to genetic traces spread by other migrations, like those of late Stone-Age farmers, Greek colonists and the Jewish Diaspora. The scientists thus concluded that, for example, one boy in each school class from Cyprus to Tunis may be a descendant of Phoenician traders.

Further research, according to scientists, may demonstrate where the Phoenicians expanded through time and where they established colonies.

Read the complete story at the link above.