Bloomberg News talks genealogy

Tracing the Tribe loves it when non-traditional (e.g. financial news) media writes about genealogy. Today, it was the turn of Bloomberg News columnist Rich Jaroslovsky to detail family history software programs as he tried out Family Tree Maker 2010.

Although he details what the subscription costs are for Ancestry, and provides some information for Mac users, as well as where other costs of gen research might be found (DNA testing, publications and more), he didn't mention free downloadable software such as MyHeritage.com's Family Tree Builder 4.0.

If you are researching your family history, the best thing about the Internet is the vast amount of information available. Records, recollections and resources previously accessible only to those with the time and money to travel to distant locales are now mouse clicks away.

That flood of data is also the worst thing about the Internet. Locating information can be hit or miss; older records are often poorly indexed or unintelligible; cataloging your finds and establishing relationships can be a confusing, time- consuming operation.

There’s a vast array of software to help find and organize family information, says the article, which focuses on Family Tree Maker 2010.

Jaroslovsky details his own family history quest:

For instance, I have been using the software to locate and organize information about the Lerners, the family of my paternal grandmother, who died at age 25 during the great influenza epidemic of 1918-1919.

Through conversations with an elderly aunt, I learned enough to be able to locate U.S. Census records from 1900 that gave me the names of my great-grandparents -- as well as various great-uncles and aunts I never knew I had. Had I recorded video or audio of my conversation with my aunt -- which I should have done -- I could have saved that to Family Tree Maker, too.

For those who use Macs, the software field is limited; most are Windows-only. The article offers some hints if you want to use Family Tree Maker, such as a copy of Windows and Apple's free Boot Camp program, or VMware's Fusion or Desktop from Parallels.

On the other hand, there are Mac programs such as Reunion (Leister Productions Inc.), and MacFamilyTree (Synium Software), both of which have separate Apple iPhone paid apps to help collect information from onsite and in-person research trips and integrate with desktop systems.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Facebook: Translation tool for developers

Facebook's new translation tool in 65 languages was the focus of Brad Stone's New York Times' "Bits" column the other day.

In his column, he writes that the previously English-only site introduced a tool in January 2008 that enabled users to translate the site into their native languages. Today, it is in 65 languages with most users outside North America.

As of Thursday, October 1, Facebook made the tool - Translations for Facebook Connect - available to some 15,000 sites and apps using the Connect service.

The translation tool works by asking users to submit possible translations of phrases, and then soliciting their votes on which is the most accurate. So now a country’s tourism Web site, for example, can use the tool to solicit help with a translation, and then present the site to users in their native language when they log in using their Facebook ID. It is free for developers, but Facebook hopes it will increase the use of the Connect Service.

Facebook’s human-powered approach juxtaposes quite sharply with Google’s service, which uses technology to automatically translate Web sites and text — with occasional unintentionally comical results. (The Facebook system, of course, has had to handle a relatively tiny number of phrases.)

According to Facebook's head of platform Ethan Beard, technology doesn’t take into account cultural values or idioms that are hard to translate.

It will be interesting to see how this evolves.

Halupchis: The perfect Sukka treat

There's nothing like my grandmother's stuffed cabbage.

We called it halupche, but other names for it are halupki, galumpki, golabki or sarme, depending on geographic origin of the grandmother who may have come from Slovakia, Serbia, Ukraine, Poland, Hungary, Belarus or elsewhere.

My maternal grandmother, Chaya Feige Talalai (to become Bertha Tollin Fink), was born near Mogilev, Belarus and came to Newark, New Jersey in 1904. Her mother Riva Bank Talalai was born near Kovno/Kaunas, Lithuania and, after her marriage, lived in Vorotinschtina, Belarus, some 12 miles SSW of Mogilev. Her mother Riva was a phenomenal cook as were her sisters, one of whom became a caterer, so Grandma had a great teacher.

Although she's been gone for so long and the last time I remember her making these was even longer before her death, I can still smell that special fragrance and those huge pots she filled with mountains of rolls. And I still talk about this dish in the present tense.

While I loved that sweet-sour sauce and the meat filling, cabbage was never on my favorites list. When I finished a plate, there was always a pile of limp cabbage leaves on the side. I only ate the filling.

I hadn't thought about this dish in a long time. It is food for nippy weather, for shtetl autumn and winter weather, not Mediterranean climates.

It all came back to me this morning in a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette newspaper article that gave a Hungarian recipe used by Josephine Gresko, who learned it from her mother-in-law, Bertha who was a cook for a Jewish family in Brownsville.

The recipe "tastes" much like my grandmother's, but lacks the sweet-sour (brown sugar, lemon juice) of what I remember. The recipe given is for 2 pounds of meat and 2 medium cabbages, makes 25-28 rolls and serves 8-10. [NOTE: I'm think that if you add 1/4 cup of fresh lemon juice (or red wine vinegar) and 1/2 cup packed brown sugar, it will taste like what I remember. ]

Foodwriter Miriam Rubin described the "Pig Festival," (they call stuffed cabbage "pigs in a blanket" there, giving the festival its name, not because it utilizes pork) in Carmichaels, Greene County - a coal mining region in southwest Pennsylvania.

This is a great dish for Sukkah-eating in colder climes.

Denmark: Rare Jewish manuscripts online

The Royal Library (Copenhagen, Denmark) just made available some 160 Judaic manuscripts originally belonging to Rabbi David Simonsen (1853-1932). The collection was acquired by the library in 1932, and thanks to a private donation, they have been digitized.

The digitized collection contains items from 20 countries in 15 languages, and 163 volumes of various types, covering 131 shelfmarks, and more than 26,000 digitizations.

Denmark's Chief Rabbi, Simonsen was also a scholar, bibliophile and philanthropist, whose private library (some 25,000 printed volumes in numerous languages, 500 periodical titles and 160 manuscripts) forms the core of the Royal Library's Judaica Collection. Some items exist in only a few copies worldwide, making this collection very rare. His personal archives (some 100,000 documents, letters, etc.) are also at the Library.

The manuscripts have been digitized, with exceptions noted below. Read more about the project, including the user's guide. See the digital facsimiles here.

Tracing the Tribe was mesmerized by the collection's most well-known manuscript.

Gemma’s Prayerbook is a Hebrew prayer book written for the widow Gemma (Yemma) in Modena, Italy in 1531. Many pages are decorated with red and blue ink designs (see above left for an example on page 86; cover at right).

View each of the interior 622 pages by clicking the green square to the right of the photo in the link above to reach the viewer.

For those into Jewish heraldry, the title page has two coats of arms (at the top and bottom), and it includes a Haggadah, complete with wine stains. View each of the interior 622 pages by clicking the green square to the right of the photo to reach the viewer.

View page 8 for more handwritten personal information concerning the scribe and recipient. The Mahzor was written by Eli'ezer ben Avraham, of Pisa; אליעזר בן אברהם מפיסה for Yema, widow of Moshe of Modena; יימה, אלמנת משה ממודמה

The Passover haggadah (seder shel pessah) starts on page 334, and see page 344 for the Four Questions (mah nishtana.....).

The image viewer provides excellent detail except that only a narrow window is given and one must focus on a detail to see it in magnification. I would have liked to see the whole page in large format, rather than pieces.

There are handwritten inscriptions dated 1601 in Bologna (page 628), 1613, 1626 and others, containing names of individuals that I cannot decipher.

Other items include the only Genizah fragment in Danish collections, a Judeo-Arabic letter, tentatively dated to the 12th century , a musical score, three Jewish marriage contracts (ketubot)and more.

The unusually shaped ketubot are for: (1831, Rome) Ya'aqov Avraham ben Yosef Pipirnoa (Pipierno?) and Perla bat Shabtai; (1847, Rome) Yeshayahu ben Shlomo Piani and Yudita bat David; and (1847, Rome) Ya'aqov Refael ben Shabtai and Grazia bat David.

Items excluded include 10 megillot (scrolls of Esther for Purim), as a new viewer needs to be developed to view the scroll format. Also excluded are those with technical problems (size, condition or other concerns), although they are expected to be included eventually.

High resolution copies (B&W, Color, and even posters) of the digitized documents may be ordered. For more information, contact the Royal Library's Judaica Collection research librarian Eva-Maria Jansson.

Montreal: Quebec property records, Oct. 20

Many special interest groups, genealogy societies and historical societies have already realized that property and land records are valuable documents. Some of these groups are involved in major projects, such as using such records to reconstruct Eastern European villages.

Closer to home for many Tracing the Tribe readers, the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal, in association with the Jewish Public Library, will present "Uncovering Mysteries with Property Records - Hidden Landscapes of Quebec," at the next meeting on Tuesday, October 20.

The presenters will be Gary Shroder and Sharon Callaghan of the Quebec Family History Society (QFHS).

Callaghan has written various articles for genealogical and historical societies across Canada, while Schroder, who has served as president of the QFHS since 1995, is also a member of the Special Advisory Board of Library and Archives Canada.

The meeting begins at 7.30pm in the Gelber Conference Centre, 5151 Cote Ste-Catherine/1 Carré Cummings.

The JGS of Montreal also holds Sunday morning Family Tree Workshops.

Pittsburgh: Jewish oral histories now online

A local project in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania in conjunction with the National Council of Jewish Women (NCJW) has produced 516 oral history interviews now accessible and searchable online.

The story is in the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.

The project - Pittsburgh and Beyond: The Experience of the Jewish Community - can be viewed online here. The interviews were made on 11,000 audio cassettes over 32 years - more than 1,200 hours of recordings - and were available online on Tuesday, September 28.

The local NCJW chapter provided the recordings to the University of Pittsburgh's library system, which digitized them and designed a searchable site.

In 1968, volunteers began interviewing the men and women who arrived from Eastern Europe 1890-1924. It expanded to include the oral histories of Pittsburgh's Jewish residents.

"It's one of the largest oral-history projects in the country and perhaps the largest focused on a region — and then a population within that region," said Rush G. Miller, director of Pitt's library system. "We haven't found one larger."

The interviews illustrate such community aspects as academic, business, civic, cultural, medical, political, religious, and social evolution and development in Pittsburgh, national and international events.

Search parameters include given and surnames, geographical list and other subjects and keywords. Topical headings (including local proper names) are found under a generic heading for service or type. Find individuals, hospitals, newspapers, orphanages, synagogues, television and radio stations, fashion, medical and legal specializations. The geographic index includes three categories (Pittsburgh and vicinity, US and outside the US).

Other key pages:

The project's history includes information on two books and two documentaries. There is a 2002 guide available as a PDF.

The tapes have intentionally never been transcribed to encourage researchers the opportunity to hear the actual voices with inflections of the respondents. Rather, all interviews have been accurately abstracted by NCJW members to reflect the balance and content of each interview and to aid researchers in accessing specific information in the interviews. The inclusion of geographic, name and subject indices further enhances research access to information on the tape interviews.

Methodology and use offers more information on the updated guide which offers abstracts and indices (geographic, personal name and subject). Dates given are those provided by the respondent, and Eastern European hometown spellings were determined through "Where Once We Walked" (Avotaynu). Names of regions or provinces - when given - are in parentheses and the country of origin refers to political boundaries of the time.

A timeline of achievements was created to show the project's development.

Visit the site to learn how to order copies of the interviews and of supplemental materials - if available.

Banned Books Week

As Tracing the Tribe readers have noticed, I like the new JPS Blog. Yesterday, Naomi took a stab at banned books and also referenced Tablet Magazine's article on the same subject.

Most voracious readers know that the quickest route to best-seller status is to have a book banned or challenged. It is good business for authors and publishers. Tracing the Tribe figures (tongue in cheek, of course) that for an author to really make it, they need to figure out a way to get their book banned so that it becomes a best-seller.

Hmmmm ... any ideas on how we can get some really excellent genealogy books challenged and increase interest in the market for readers looking for the "really good parts"?

Both posts stem from this week's annual celebration of Banned Books Week by the American Library Association. The ALA's awareness campaign is a stand against censorship and for intellectual freedom. It encourages the reading public to read books that have been targets of attempted bannings. Readers are encouraged to challenge such events in local schools, libraries, bookstores and religious institutions.

Read Naomi's JPS Blog post. She was planning to compile a list of Jewish authors whose books were nearly banned or challenged, but Tablet Magazine beat her to the punch. Here are some books referenced by Tablet and the reasons for the banning attempt:

Shel Silverstein's Where The Sidewalk Ends (1974) was challenged in Wisconsin (1986) because it “suggests drug use, the occult, suicide, death, violence, disrespect for truth, disrespect for legitimate authority, rebellion against parents,” and in Pennsylvania (1993), because the poem “Dreadful” (with the line “someone ate the baby”) encourages cannibalism. A Light in the Attic (1981) was challenged in Wisconsin (1985) because “How Not to Dry the Dishes” “encourages children to break dishes.”

There's even a poem entitled "A Pile of Vile Books." The last verse:

Reading is dangerous, everyone knows.
Young minds are quite fragile, like eggs.
If you teach open-mindedness, that is just gross.
We will come there and break both your legs.

Tablet referenced some interesting challenges (read the complete article for the full list and links), and provided a link to the ALA's 100 Most Frequently Banned or Challenged Books of the 1990s.

A Louisiana librarian (1972) painted a diaper on the naked baby in Maurice Sendak's "In the Night Kitchen." In Minnesota (1993), it was challenged because "reading the book could lay the foundation for future use of pornography." This book ranks 10th on the ALA's list above.

In Illinois (1977), the Illinois Police Association wrote to libraries asking them to remove the award-winning "Sylvester and the Magic Pebble," by William Steig, because police officers are drawn as pigs, even though the pigs in the book "are perfectly nice pigs."

Judy Blume's "Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret" is ranked 60th on the ALA's list and frequently challenged for sexual and religious themes.

Then there's the case of Robie Harris’s comic-book style sex-education books. In 2008, a Maine library patron borrowed the book and refused to return the "disgusting" volume. Other patrons donated four additional copies of the book, which are in circulation. The book has just gone into its 15th edition.

Tracing the Tribe really enjoyed the Tablet reference to a Georgia school banning "The Bad Beginning," the first volume in Lemony Snicket's (aka Daniel Handler) "A Series of Unfortunate Events." Why? Well, it seems the "evil" character tries to marry his niece, and the school deemed the book to endorse incest.

Jewish law, of course, permits both uncle-niece and cousin marriages, so from the Jewish viewpoint, that challenge wouldn't hold water.

In any case, the piece is an interesting read.

How many banned or challenged books are on your own shelves?

Place of space: Our ancestors' homes

How do our surroundings, our living spaces impact our families, our thoughts, our history?

Isn't this what our pursuit of genealogy helps to reconstruct? To make sure that our family history remains alive and known and preserved?

In a poem by Leib Borisovich Talalai, a young Yiddish poet whose family was from our shtetl of Vorotinschtina, who later lived in Baranovich and in Minsk, and who was ultimately murdered in the Minsk Ghetto in 1941, he writes about his family house in our shtetl, "If the walls of this house could talk. ..."

What do you know about the spaces in which your ancestors lived? At left are steep steps in the old Jewish quarter of Girona, Spain.

On Yom Kippur, I usually read for a good portion of the day. This year, it was "Sepharad," by Antonio Munoz Molina, one of Spain's most famous writers, who draws on the Sephardic diaspora and touches on the Holocaust and even the purges of Stalin while telling this story I couldn't put down.

The book, praised as "a masterpiece" by "The Lost" author Daniel Mendelsohn, offers some insights into what I'm terming "the place of space" in our lives and in our family history. Mendelsohn wrote in the New York Review of Books:

"Shame and guilt, homelands and exile, ceaseless wanderings and bitter alienations both internal and external, metaphorical and real, are persistent motifs...."

Writes Munoz Molina:

"What is the minimal portion of country, what does of roots or hearth, that a human being requires?" Jean Amery asked himself, remembering his flight from Austria in 1938, perhaps the night of March 15, on the express train that left Vienna at 11:15 for Prague, his troubled, clandestine journey across European borders toward the provisional refuge of Antwerp, where he knew the endless insecurity of exiled Jews, the native's hostility toward foreigners, humiliation from the police and officials who examine papers and certify or deny permits and make you come back the next day and the next and who look at the refugee as someone suspected of a crime. The worst is to be stripped of the nationality you thought was yours inalienably. You need at least a home in which you can feel safe, Amery says, a room that you can't be dragged from in the middle of the night, that you don't have to run from as fast as you can when you hear police whistles and footsteps on the stairs.

Later on he asks the reader:

What do you do if you know that from one day to the next you can be driven from your home, that all it takes is a signature and a lacquer seal at the bottom of a decree for the work of your entire life to be demolished, for you to lose everything, house and goods, for you to find yourself out on the street exposed to shame, forced to part with everything you considered yours and to board a ship that will take you to a country where you will also be pointed at and rejected, or not even that far, to a disaster at sea, the frightening sea you have never seen?

He describes an old Jewish house with a low door, on a narrow street in a neighborhood of 15th century houses. On the two ends of the large stone lintel are two Stars of David, inscribed in a circle. The author adds:

The two Stars of David testify to the existence of a large community, like the fossilized impression of an exquisite leaf that fell in the immensity of a forest erased by a cataclysm thousands of years ago. They couldn't believe that they would actually be driven out, that within a few months they would have to abandon the land they had been born in and where their ancestors had lived. The house has a door with rusted studs and an iron knocker, and small Gothic moldings in the angles of the lintel. Maybe the people who have gone carried with the key that fit this large keyhole, maybe they handed it down from father to son through generations of exile, just as the language and sonorous Spanish names were perpetuated, and the poems and children's songs that the Jews of Salonica and Rhodes would carry with them on the long hellish journey to Auschwitz. It was a house like this that the family of Baruch Spinoza or Primo Levi would leave behind forever.

Quite by coincidence, a Google alert this morning led me to the Genealogy Blog's post which also commented on "the place of space" in our family histories.

This leads me to a thought: what part do places hold in our family histories? It would seem places (like houses) take on a character of their own, a spirit, if you will. They facilitate gathering and celebrating and memories. When they are taken away, it seems there is a disruption in our gatherings until we can find another substitute. In our transient society where we uproot every two years, are we constantly severing these vital ties with the past and memory.

Is there a difference between taking away a house, or taking away the family that lived there? What happens to the generations and centuries of memories? How long do they remain to be passed on to younger generations?

When do those memories disappear?

When does the disconnect occur between history and youth?