RootsTelevision: The people have spoken!

Tracing the Tribe is delighted to report that, by popular demand, RootsTelevision.com will remain online.

Megan Smolyanek Smolyanek has announced that RTV viewers have convinced her - via emails, Twitter and Facebook - to keep the lights on!

Here's Megan's announcement in its entirety:

Dear RootsTelevision.com Viewer, OK, you convinced me! After getting inundated with emails, tweets, and Facebook postings and messages about the closing of RootsTelevision.com (RTV), I've decided to keep it going. I honestly had no clue how valued it was by the genealogical community, and I agree with the many of you who pointed out that it serves a somewhat different purpose than the prime time programming that's on TV at present (much as I've been enjoying that!).

At the same time, I think many had not realized that RTV is a one-person company, but one that's not inexpensive to provide. Thanks very much to all you who reached out to share your thoughts and experiences. Although I haven't been able to respond to all of you, I hope you realize that your comments made all the difference in the world. Thanks also to the more than 20 individuals, organizations and companies that contacted me to explore the notion of adopting RTV. It's refreshing to know how many were willing to step in and help. I also need to thank Brightcove, the video platform used by RTV, for working with me to find viable solutions.

I should probably clarify one point of confusion. Many were under the impression that even if RootsTelevision.com closed down, the video archive would remain. Quite a few also wrote asking me to send DVDs of the videos, but with more than 700 videos on the site, popping them on a DVD is not an alternative. Hosting and streaming this wide array of videos is one of the most costly aspects, and there are rights issues involved as well, so if RTV had gone, so would have all the videos.

That's why I surveyed genealogists on Twitter and Facebook, asking whether you would be willing to tolerate commercials if it would help preserve RootsTelevision.com. I was beyond relieved how lopsided the response was! So please be aware that I will be adding commercials to help pay the bills.

Unfortunately, I don't have the resources to customize them, but I'll experiment with ways to make them as painless as possible. I'd also greatly appreciate it if you let me know of any people, companies or organizations that would be interested in running banners ads on RTV. Boston University and Family Tree DNA have both helped support RTV in the past by sponsoring ads, and more of the same would help ensure that the doors of RTV stay open in the future!

Og and I are going to do a little tinkering under the hood at RTV, so you'll see fewer new videos for a while, but please use that time to explore the hundreds of videos that are already there. Please also consider uploading your own videos (podcasters welcome!) through RootsTube and let us know of any great genealogical videos you come across in your online travels.

If we see something we like, we'll do our best to secure permission to share the video on RootsTelevision.com, so you can have the widest, high quality viewing selection possible all in one place. And finally, I would ask that you spread the word to your friends, relatives, libraries, and genealogical societies that the lights are still on at RootsTelevision.com! The more viewers, the better – so watch often!

Thanks again,
Megan
P.S. Be sure to follow us online for new videos, announcements and special events:
Megan on Twitter
Megan on Facebook
RTV on Twitter
RTV on Facebook

Way to go, Megan!

WDYTYA: Lisa Kudrow, March 19

The March 19 episode of the US-version of Who Do You Think You Are? features the show's executive producer - actress Lisa Kudrow.

The episode includes Kudrow's trip back to Belarus and the answer to her father's lifelong question.

Since childhood, Lisa Kudrow ("Friends") has known that her grandmother Gertrude had it tough. Gertrude's mother, Meri, perished in the Holocaust.

Lisa's father recalls hearing about her death from a young Polish sailor, a cousin named Yuri who was last seen in New York in the late 1940s. Lisa's father never forgot Yuri for warning him and his family to leave their village for safety before the Nazi army invasion.

From Los Angeles to Belarus, to the actual village where Meri once lived, Lisa's journey reveals clues leading her to something neither she nor her father ever thought possible.

The show airs Fridays, 8-9pm ET on NBC.

Melbourne: The conference opens

Although Melbourne suffered from a 100-year rain, with flooded streets, damaged and leaking roofs, hail (from marble-size to much larger!), nothing stopped these intrepid genealogists from arriving at the Beth Weizmann community building in Caulfield South.

Sallyann Amdur Sack-Pikus gave the keynote address and focused on "Jewish Genealogy: Past , Present and Future," as she detailed the history and growth of Jewish genealogy in the US and worldwide.

After a coffee break, I was up next with our "Iberian Ashkenaz DNA Project: So You Think You're Ashkenazi." It generated many questions and people were talking to me all day about their family's stories. The point was to raise awareness of the possibilities and it certainly seemed to do just that.

I hadn't known previously, but I was to lead a Sephardic SIG group next, with another group of interested people with even more interesting stories to tell and questions to be answered.

Following lunch (complete with felafel, potato salad and the rest), I then presented "The New Technology Frontier: Social Networks and Blogging," which also encouraged questions and comments, as I covered Facebook, Twitter, Blogging and genealogy social networking sites. Several people at the session and ater during the day mentioned that their trees had been hijacked at Geni.

There were several concurrent sessions. I attended Jenni Buch's Belarus session and Peter Nash's excellent "China: Resources for Family Research," which offered some rather amazing sources discovered by Peter. Attending Peter's talk was our new friend Helen Bekhor of Melbourne, whose Sephardic family - originally from Baghdad - was interned by the Japanese in Shanghai. Peter attended the Kadoorie School in Shanghai and it sounded like they knew some of the same people way back then. Rieke Nash's session on JRI-Poland was next.

What I missed: Krystyna Duszniak's "Unearthing the Polish Past by Necessity: The Historica Journey to a Poish Passport," Todd Knowles' "British Holldings of the Family History Library," Daniela Torsh's "Finding Hilda: An Austrian Genealogy Story," and Prof. Martin Delatycki's "Genetic Disease Among Jewish People." There were also SIG groups on researching early Australia, German research, Hungary and the Netherlands.

In the evening, a reception was held at the nearby Glen Eira Town Hall, complete with wine, sushi and more. A moving address was given by the young mayor, Steven Tang, who described his trip back to Poland and search for his mother's Jewish roots, as well as his father's Chinese roots. Awards were given to hardworking society members.

The society lost some time ago one of its major movers and shakers - Les Oberman - a good friend of mine. A meeting room was dedicated with a plaque bearing his name.

Ziva Fain and I are now out the door to day two of the conference.

Photos and more will be posted tonight.

Montreal: Back to the Shtetls, March 15

Return to the shtetlach of yesteryear as John Diener highlights an emotional 2005 journey back to the Ukraine and towns previously in Galicia, on Monday, March 15.

The program begins at 7:30pm at the Gelber Conference Centre, 5151 Cote Ste-Catherine/1 Carré Cummings. It is sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Association of Montreal in association with the Jewish Public Library.

In "Journey Back to the Shtetl," Diener, who is the vice-president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Ottawa, will also cover the rewards of this kind of adventure.

He visited Grzymalow, Skalat, Kamenets Podilsky, Zhvanets, Sokolets and Hotin. All are today in Ukraine.

Tracing the Tribe's paternal grandfather's FINK connection is to Skalat and nearby Suchostaw.

Diener also visited the Auschwitz-Birkenau and Belzec camps in Poland, and spent time in Krakow and Warsaw.

If your roots are in Galicia, you might find this program very interesting.

America's WDYTYA: Tree or shrub?

Tracing the Tribe assumes the television reviewer at the New York Times simply doesn't understand genealogy and the passion it creates in many of us.

Neil Genzlinger's review seemed sarcastic with twinges of jealousy toward those with what he considers "interesting" family histories.

It appeared his only contact with genealogy was a quick family tree demo that Ancestry.com built for him. It's easy to see that he perhaps just didn't get it, although he did say that he could understand how people could spend hours on some gen sites, as he did, after seeing that demo.

Genzlinger called today's mass of genealogists and family history fans "a happy cult." We tend to be happy, of course, when we discover new information, although "cult" seems the wrong word. It carries the meaning of "brainwashed" to the extent that such individuals cannot see clearly.

I think that the millions of researchers think clearly, and can handle the expected and unexpected, the unusual and mundane, the simple everyday facts of life, warts and all.

We know there are no Indian princesses and few royals, that our names were not changed at Ellis Island, and we are not only interested in names and dates, but in the people who bore those names and lived in those historical times.

I'm not sure if he is being sarcastic when he writes about the "raised expectations" that the show might trigger among viewers. Genzlinger also writes that "other shows have also worked the gimmick, both in the United States and abroad."

Gimmick? A show that encourages interest in our roots and our families is a gimmick? Providing resources and raising awareness of the possibilities to find information on our families is a "gimmick"?

Does he really think that only Lisa Kudrow had families exterminated by the Einzatsgruppen in Belarus, as my entire ancestral shtetl of Vorotinshtina also experienced (except for a handful of people away on business or at school that day)? Does he realize that 90% or more of Belarus' rural Jews were murdered during the same period? And that was just one geographic area.

He does detail in a few words the focus of each episode, and writes "But all are fascinating, and that’s the problem."

Some of us may take the genealogical plunge expecting cool family stories like the ones the celebrities get, only to find that we’ve been ordinary and uninteresting since we were living in caves.

I think the reviewer missed the point.

Genealogists and family history researchers are happy to find any information on our families. While confirming or uncovering exotic or unexpected family stories are nice achievements, I don't think most of us go looking for these. We are merely searching and tracing our ancestors through whatever means are available. No matter what we find is valuable and we still do our "happy dances" when we find something unexpected or long sought-after.

WDYTYA helps its viewing audience by illustrating the fact that information does exist, that all is not lost, that there is assistance and expert knowledge out there - although viewers may have to dig for it.

To say that viewers will only identify with the celebs isn't giving the viewing public enough credit.

Tracing the Tribe only wants that special permit that the celeb gets, when he or she finds a parking spot every time right in front of archives and libraries, and no lines at the desk when they enter the building.

While many people have romantic histories, the majority of us have ancestors who lived ordinary lives, and all we are doing is to try and understand them, how and where they lived, while preserving and transmitting this information to the younger generations.

So what, if - as the reviewer writes - “you may find that everyone you’re related to was nothing but a drone in the vast hive of humanity, living unremarkably and dying unexceptionally, just as you probably will.”

Tracing the Tribe doesn't think, as the reviewer writes, we need a companion site called fakeancestry.com to supply us with cattle-rustlers, horse thieves or other black-sheep types. The mere fact that we had ancestors who were brave enough to pick themselves up and take dangerous journeys to different countries and manage to survive - or not - is enough for most of us. Could we do what our ancestors did?

I often think of my great-grandmother Riva Bank Talalay, who shlepped across several countries, carrying a 5-month-old infant and a 2-year-old toddler, a samovar, a schissel, feather beds and more, hiding in churches during pogroms hoping her baby wouldn't cry and be smothered by other Jewish refugees also hiding in the building. She led a very ordinary life, but her courage, bravery and strength in doing what she had to do was spectacular.

Every family has a story. I don't think we need to "swap ancestors" to liven things up.

Getzlinger interviewed Kudrow:

Genealogy, she counseled, isn’t just about looking for ancestors who were historically noteworthy; the most remarkable fact of history is simply survival, through mass migrations and economic depressions and flu epidemics and so on. Several of the stars in “Who Do You Think You Are?” seem genuinely humbled by how close they came to never existing.

“To me that’s what this show is about,” Ms. Kudrow said, “that all of us are here because the people before us endured something extraordinary.”

Tracing the Tribe's sentiments exactly.

Read the entire review at the link above.

Today in Jewish history: March 6

Interesting things happen every day, and to keep up with interesting Jewish history, try "This Day in Jewish History."

On this day in history:

1239: With the Edict of Valencia, Spanish King James I validated privileges of the Jews of Aragon. The Jewish courts (bet din) were authorized to try all cases except capital offenses.

1475: Birth date of famed Italian artist Michelangelo Buonarroti. Say Michelangelo to most people and they respond, Sistine Chapel ceiling. Say his name to Jews and the response is “Moses.” “Moses” is a marble sculpture which depicts the greater Jewish leader. Originally intended for the tomb of Pope Julius II in St. Peter's Basilica it was placed in the minor church of San Pietro in Vincoli on the Esquiline in Rome after the pope's death. The statue depicts Moses with horns on his head. This is believed to be because of the mistranslation of Exodus 34:29-35 by St Jerome. Moses is actually described as having "rays of light" coming from his head, which Jerome in the Vulgate had translated as "horns." This horned Moses provided further proof that the Jews were, as the Gospel says, “the Devil’s spawn.”

1815: With the defeat of Napoleon, new restrictions were imposed on the Jews all over Europe.

1816: The Jews were expelled from the Free City of Lubeck, Germany at the instance of the local guilds. This was part of the reactionary backlash that followed the defeat of Napoleon a year earlier.

For more information, go to the Temple Judah website and open the Adult Education Tab.

"This Day...In Jewish History " is part of the Jewish History Study Group in Cedar Rapids, Iowa: "There is no claim to originality or scholarship by the 'compiler,' Mitchell A. Levin. The sources, including texts and websites are too many and too varied to provide academic citations for each entry or part thereof. "

Ancestry: SSDI now updated weekly

One of Ancestry.com's first databases, the Social Security Death Index will now be updated weekly.

The Social Security Death Index is known by its acronym SSDI. Names have been added to that database since 1996, more than 86 million of them, in fact.

The weekly updating means that this useful database will be much more current with recent deaths reported to the Social Security Administration.

What does the SSDI contain? It lists deaths reported to the SSA or the Railroad Retirement Board. Individuals who did not have social security cards are not included. Thus, not everyone you're searching for may be found.

Ancestry offers these search tips:

-- Search by the surname used by the individual at the time of death.

-- No hits? Try other surnames used at other times during that person's life.

-- Search by given name, death year, birth year - without a surname.

-- Try using initials as SSDI records do not always include a full given name.

-- Try searching with a middle name instead of the first name.

-- Try variant name forms, such as Sarah/Sally or Mary/Polly/Molly and other common forms or nicknames, such as Jacob/Jake, Isaac/Ike, Matthew/Matt, or James/John.

-- For dates, switch day and month (e.g. 5 February or 2 May, which can be written 5/2 or 2/5). Some records list the entire date of death, some only the month or year.

-- You can also search using the Social Security Number (SSN) alone, if you have it.

Ancestry has now made it easier to search using only the first few letters of the name and a wild card asterisk (*).

Researchers should remember that the location for death is not always where the person died or was buried, but is in fact the last place of residence known by the SSA for that person.

For example, the individual might have been on vacation or spending the winter in a warmer climate or have been anywhere in the world when they died, but the SSA would only be concerned with the official last place of residence.

Researchers need to find more evidence to determine the exact place of death.

With more records appearing weekly, check back often for family members of interest.

Melbourne: Shabbat down under

The weather report indicated possible showers today, and the heavens have really opened up, with thunder, rain and hail. Glad I'm inside today!

After nearly two weeks of travel, jet lag has finally hit.

This past week was spent kicking back, frequently napping and getting the travel fuzz out of my brain.

My hosts, Ziva and Sam Fain, couldn't be nicer, and their two pooches are wonderful.

Last night, for Shabbat dinner, I cooked up a Persian Shabbat meal of abgusht, gonde, khoresht-e-lubia sabz, rice and golden tahdiq. None of the guests had ever eaten Persian food before and it seems this was a big hit.

For readers unfamiliar with the cuisine: abgusht is a chicken soup flavored with handfuls of mint and parsley, carrots, parsnips, onion and lots more. Gonde are meatballs of ground chicken, grated onion, roasted chickpea flour, cardamom, turmeric, pepper and salt, cooked in the soup.

Khoreshts are stews with meat and vegetables and/or herbs. Lubia sabz are green beans. This particular dish uses very lean stew meat, sauteed fresh green beans, lots of carmelized onion, crushed tomatoes, whole tomatoes, lime juice and cinnamon. Shirazi salad - finely diced tomato, cucumber, red onion dressed in lime juice, salt, pepper, and a little olive oil - was also on the table.

Ziva has a beautiful herb garden, and there is nothing like the taste of fresh-picked herbs (two kinds of mint, flat-leaf parsley, basil, oregano and more). It really made a difference. She also has a small vegetable garden, and a big fig tree in her front garden.

Dessert included watermelon and cantalope slices, strawberries and blueberries.

This week, we visited the new Holocaust museum that is just opening - school groups are already going through it. I met many of the volunteers, and some of the JGS people, including Lionel Sharpe, on our quick visit.

The conference starts tomorrow, so I'm trying to kick back and go over materials.

I've connected with my long-lost cousins from Bobruisk who have lived in Melbourne for quite some time - they are still in shock over my phone call and one of the brothers and his family live only a few blocks from my hosts! They are Katsnelson and their mother was a Talalay. We will spend one day next week together. Another day will be spent with Bene Israel friends from India, who have lived here for many years.

On Sunday, March 14, the plan is to be in a place called Kangaroo Flat for the Bendigo Family History Expo. My hosts are planning a visit down to Phillips Island to see the penguins (I love penguins). Sydney is also on the list as I will be seeing my cousins, Bob and Di Conley.

Stay tuned for the conference first day report!