Some blog glitches being worked on!

Hello, Tracing the Tribe readers!

Tracing the Tribe is experiencing some strange glitches in a few areas. We are in contact with tech support for possible incompatibilities of some widgets, and hope to make corrections soon.

Some readers are also experiencing problems when clicking on the Tracing the Tribe links on Facebook. We think we know what the cause is and we're working to fix it very soon.

Thank you to readers who notified me of these problems so that they may be addressed.

If you experience any glitches at any time, please let me know.

Google: Searching with options

One of the best things about our geneablogging community is that we are often inspired by our colleagues.

Randy Seaver's Genea-Musings post on Google Options, which followed Dick Eastman's post on the same subject, was interesting. I hadn't had time to previously check out these new features, but it seemed like a fun idea now.

Having a bit of time available, I decided to try some WonderWheel searches, anticipating searches on variations of DARDASHTI, TALALAY, TALALAI, TOLLIN and some others.

- "talalay" = 248,000, included the foam rubber Talalay process (patented by the Mogilev-Moscow-USA branch) and family members.

- "talalai" = 4,800, many from the Polish-origin group from New Jersey, works by known St. Petersburg and Moscow cousins, and other interesting results.

- "tollin" = 230,000, many people I knew, many I thought might be connected, as well as a bunch of Swedes, whom I doubt are connected. Where's a DNA testkit when you need one?

- "tallin" = 1,980,000, the majority on Tallin, Estonia, not about Talalay relatives who changed their name to Tallin, like Uncle David in Newark, New Jersey.

I went on to "schelly dardashti" "Schelly Talalay Dardashti" "tracing the tribe" and "tracing the tribe the jewish genealogy blog".

The results were a bit mind-boggling on the straight searches, and the WonderWheel and Timeline results were also interesting and quite different - with some very pleasant surprises.

The "schelly dardashti" WonderWheel produced this with 548 results:

The "schelly talalay dardashti" WonderWheel looked like this with 5,450 results:

The "Tracing the Tribe" WonderWheel showed 49,500 hits:



The "tracing the tribe" (all lowercase) WonderWheel showed 49,700 hits:

"tracing the tribe the jewish genealogy blog" produced 9,880 hits but with no spokes. I assume there were too many categories. The last WonderWheel search was for "the jewish genealogy blog" for 9,960 hits.

If you click on any spoke of the center circle, you get an additional related WonderWheel with more terms and different numbers of hits. Try it out yourself.

The Timeline option produced the least number of hits for all searches. I am as confused as Randy about this option, as I indicate many years in my blog postings. Hits for searches conducted were "schelly dardashti" 10; "schelly talalay dardashti" 88; "tracing the tribe" 22; and "tracing the tribe the jewish genealogy blog" 4.

In any case, there were some very pleasant surprises.


The first search produced a Los Angeles Daily News article (March 10, 1990) about a Persian Shabbat I organized at our synagogue, Valley Beth Shalom. Honestly, I had completely forgotten that the paper had covered it - I'm now trying to get access to the full 450+ word article (only a snippet shows), which is at NewsBank.com.

It also called up a May 6, 1998 Las Vegas Review Journal story about a program we ran at Jewish Genealogy Society of Southern Nevada-East (now dissolved), which met at Midbar Kodesh congregation in Henderson. I remembered that story, but didn't have a copy of it.

There were a slew of Jerusalem Post-related items.

Using a Timeline search for "schelly talalay dardashti," which became my nom de plume around 1999 when I began writing for the Jerusalem Post, there were 88 hits, again with many JPost stories on genealogy, food, travel and other features. The search also pulled ads and other stories on the same page as my stories.

Just for the heck of it, I searched "it's all relative" jerusalem post to see what that would bring up ("It's All Relative" was the name of my gen column). The 49 hits included some interesting items I had forgotten. How time flies when we're having fun!

Using Google Search, I typed "schelly dardashti" in the box; in the "related" box underneath, it showed 6,180 results for this search. For "schelly talalay dardashti", the "related" list showed 4,350 hits. When I hit on those names however, the numbers were rather different. Schelly Dardashti showed 550 and Schelly Talalay Dardashti showed 5,450. "Tracing the Tribe" produced 78,600 hits.

The most interesting part was finding mentions of Tracing the Tribe in places (journal and magazine articles, other genealogy blogs, etc.) that I hadn't known about. Now I have quite a few thank-you notes to write!

Bottom line: Whether you're a blogger, a family historian or merely curious, conducting searches with these options for your families of interest or yourself might turn up some valuable - or at least interesting - items.

I'm interested in learning what you've discovered about your own families!

Book: Learning how to network!

Sometimes it seems that we jumped almost overnight from ink and quill pens to electric typewriters and then to the Internet. Advances in technology and tools appear so rapidly that it helps to have a book to explain all of the possibilities.

Family history researchers must be aware of how to access the daily additions of genealogical information on the Internet, provided by myriad sources, including companies, organizations and individual researchers.

I just received "Social Networking for Family Historians" from author Drew Smith.

A digital genealogy expert, Drew has always been interested in family history. He's well-known to the genealogy community as co-host of the Genealogy Guys Podcast and also writes for Digital Genealogist magazine. He is a realtime University of South Florida academic librarian.

"Social Networking for Genealogists" (Genealogical Publishing Co., Baltimore, Maryland, 2009) isn't a big or heavy volume, yet its concise 129 pages offer the nuts and bolts of how the social information revolution can benefit all of us in our quests.

It covers, in a very easy-to-read way the building blocks of social networking. Today, these include podcasts, RSS, tags, wikis, genealogy social networks, general social networks, message boards, mailing lists, sharing photos and videos, collaborative editing, blogs, sharing personal libraries and virtual worlds. While no one knows what the next new thing will be, I'm sure Drew will write a sequel.

Each chapter begins with a definition, provides screenshots and explanations and also ends with a list of activities to get involved with that technology.

The focus is on finding specialized communities of other people who want to know about the same things we do. While we may have social networks closer to home in the physical sense, technology has provided us a way to connect with individuals who may live on the other side of the world but who are just as interested in a specific locality, subject or name as we are.

Drew reminds us that for 10 years, online social networking sites and services have seen a remarkable increase, and some have been designed exclusively for genealogists. We also use general networking sites for genealogical research (such as Facebook and Twitter, which Tracing the Tribe has previously commented on).

Each chapter in the book also provides a "getting involved" list. For the chapter on RSS (syndication), activities include:

- Set up an account at a free aggregator website, such as Google Reader.

- Subscribe to one or more web feeds by visiting one of the social networking sites.

- Read items of interest from the feeds you've subscribed to.

- Organize your feeds into categories.

Tagging sometimes confuses beginners, but think of it like labeling a shelf of spice jars. Spices can be alphabetically classified by name, by spice color or through a personal system. For example, I put the spices used most frequently up front, the most easily accessible in my kitchen.

In tagging Tracing the Tribe posts, I look for the big picture. I don't tag, for example, the name of a specific Jewish cemetery or the specific city it is in as those tag lists will quickly become unwieldy. Instead, I use the big picture tag of "Jewish cemetery," but also add tags for the state or country. A reader looking for a Jewish cemetery in Germany, would search for "Jewish cemetery Germany" and see what posts come up under those terms.

Drew offers definitions for the tagging chapter:

- tag (noun): A word or short phrase used to identify or describe some item of information (such as a textual entry, photograph, or video) in order to make to easier to find later.

- tag (verb): To assign one or more tags to an item of information.

- folksonomy (noun): An informal classification system resulting from a large number of people applying tags of their own choosing to items in a repository of information.

Folksonomy? That was new to me. Drew's experience as a librarian gives him a unique insight to classification issues. Information is only as good as our ability to access it quickly and easily, which means the classification system must make obvious sense to the majority of people who use it.

Tagging also reflects the new information added to our knowledge, and how it is serious business as performed by passionate, interested and experienced researchers and genealogists.

Of course, he includes a chapter on blogs, where he details blogging and social networking, blogging and personal research; blogging, news, personal opinion; finding blogs of interest, creating and maintaining your own blog(s), and getting involved with blogging.

His activity list for getting involved includes:

- find and read one or more genealogy blogs of interest, using the Genealogy Blog Finder.

- Subscribe to one or more blogs, using a feed aggregator.

- Comment on a blog posting that you have enjoyed, disagree with, or can provide an answer to.

- Create your own blog about genealogy using Blogger.

- Tag your blog postings so that others can find them more easily.

- Maintain a blogroll on your blog to help others find interesting blogs that you enjoy.

- Allow others to comment about your blog postings.

I was also interested in Drew's chapter on virtual worlds (Second Life), as I haven't had time to read too much about it. I still don't think I'm ready for it, but who knows what will happen later on?

While the book is more targeted to newcomers faced with so much new technology and likely overwhelmed, more experienced researchers will also better understand the concepts and tools detailed by Drew.

Knowledge is our business, so we are always learning.

Philly 2009: Israeli genealogists to present

Israeli genealogists are among the presenters at the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (August 2-7; Philadelphia).

-Shalom Bronstein, "Yad Vashem as a Genealogical Resource." Member, Israel Jewish Genealogical Society (IGS); deputy director, Jacobi Center, International Institute of Jewish Genealogy (IIJG).

- Rose Feldman, "Creating a Database of Medical Professionals in Mandate Palestine." Member / webmaster, IGS.

- Horia Haim Ghiuzeli, "Stories from the Black Forest." Director, Internet and Databases Department, Beth Hatefutsoth.

- Michael Goldstein, "Finding Family in Israel." President, IGS; professional researcher.

- Daniel Horowitz, management seminar speaker ("Engage Children in Learning by Teaching Family History"), computer workshops on genealogy programs and search engines. Member / webmaster, Jewish Family Research Association (JFRA Israel) and Horowitz Family Association. Database and translation manager, MyHeritage.com.

- Michael Karpin, "Six Centuries of a Galician Jewish Dynasty." Israeli TV/radio news reporter / anchor for more than three decades.

- Rose Lerer Cohen, "The Children's Tracing Archive at the International Tracing Service." Editor, IGS journal Sharsheret Hadorot; author, The Holocaust in Lithuania.

There is more information for each speaker and his or her program(s) at the conference website.

The 2009 conference is co-sponsored by the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Philadelphia and the IAJGS, with some 75 member societies worldwide.

For all conference details, click here.

Philly 2009: Yiddish, preservation, food sessions added

Two workshops and a Yiddish session have been added to the Friday morning line-up at the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (Sunday-Friday, August 2-7, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania).

To see the new additions, click the Philly 2009 website for the program and all conference details.

Tours and the Film Festival schedule will soon be added. Tracing the Tribe will let you know when those are available.

The session with Rabbi Ilene Schneider - "Yiddish: A Fun Look at the Language of our Ancestors" - is sure to be great. She's the author of the recently published "Talk Dirty Yiddish: Beyond Drek." I recently received a copy of her very funny book and will review it in Tracing the Tribe.

The new Friday hand's-on workshops (added fee) are:

- "Preserving Documents and Photographs," a workshop with preservation services director Laura Hortz Stanton and preservation services officer Kim Andrews, of the Conservation Center for Art and Historic Artifacts. Friday, August 7, from 8.15-10.15am, $10.

- "Tasting World Jewish Cuisines: Turkish, Syrian, and Ashkenazi-Italkeni Recipes." with cookbook authors Sheilah Kaufman and Aliza Green. Friday, August 7, 10.30-12.30am $20.

Trying to figure out which sessions to attend during this very busy week?

Download the updated Conference Program. Go to the program page, and click "HERE" near the top of the page for the PDF format. There is an alternative program which illustrates a session time and its related subject or track. Rooms are not yet added.

If you have already registered and want to add sessions, click here. Remember to sign up for the SIG luncheons, which fill to capacity very quickly. Also check out the computer workshops. Don't be disappointed!

If you have not yet registered, go to the conference site and look on the left sidebar for "Registration."

Waxing nostalgic about inspiration

Today we wax nostalgic about the event or person who inspired us to start our genealogy research, as challenged by Genea-Musings' Randy Seaver.

Like everyone else of thinking age back in the late 1970s, I had seen "Roots" and thought it was a fascinating story, but I didn't know anything about genealogy. I had not yet caught the bug as did the early pioneers, such as Dan Rottenberg and Arthur Kurzweil, whose books later proved inspiring.

I had always heard the story about our Talalay name - "This was our name when we left Spain." One sentence. One idea. Everyone laughed about it, no one believed this could be the origin of our strange and rare name. How could Yiddish-speaking Ashkenazim from Eastern Europe be Sephardim from Spain?

This despite the fact that in New York, my mother with her dark hair and eyes, olive skin, was always being spoken to by strangers in Italian, Spanish, Greek. The story was told that when my father brought the Brooklyn girl home to meet his Orthodox parents in the Bronx, they asked him (in Yiddish) why he was bringing this non-Jewish girl to them.

I filed all of this away in a small corner of my mind, much more interested in needlework, cooking, reading, etc. Until 1989.

Until our daughter was a year away from her bat mitzvah ceremony. She came home from a Hebrew school class with a fateful homework assignment that would change my life forever - a sheet of paper with a few questions. Write your name and Hebrew name, your parents' names and Hebrew names, your grandparents' names and Hebrew names, your great-grandparents' names and Hebrew names (if you know them).

That weekend we attended a big Dardashti family event in Los Angeles for a multitude of relatives - hundreds of them. We worked the room and came home with stacks of cocktail napkins scribbled with information. She wrote blue and pink labels, organized family branches, and everything was glued on four large poster boards. We had hundreds of family names and branches going back to about 1820 - as a result of talking to our family's "walking encyclopedias." Needless to say, she got an A!

Our daughter then said to me, "Now we have to do your family!"

Easier said than done. Whereas Los Angeles was crawling with Dardashti relatives eager to share their knowledge, I wasn't even sure where in White Russia (as my grandmother said) we came from. I remembered "Molyah," and it took a long time to discover that was Mogilev. Some tried to tell me I was looking for Mogilev Podulsk, but my grandmother talked about the Dnieper River her mother had described. Mogilev Podulsk is nowhere near that river which does, however, run right through through "our" Mogilev.

We spent time together at the Santa Monica Family History Library and saw my great-grandmother's New York passenger arrival manifest, evidencing for the first time the family name and a location. A Happy Dance moment, if there ever was one.

I knew Newark, New Jersey was where they settled, but who else from the family was there? Digging around among the few relatives, we heard "well, there was Uncle David, but I don't know if he was really an uncle," (he was my great-grandfather Aron Peretz' brother) or "There was Mariyasha who had several husbands," (she was their sister) or "Ask about the Jassen cousins" (I did - cousin Charlie's father, William Zev, was the brother of Aron Peretz and David Aryeh's mother, Kreine Mushe). Little by little, information accumulated.

As her bat mitzvah approached, our daughter had to begin working on her talk. Her parasha was Chukat, detailing rules and regulations about the red heifer. She wasn't thrilled with that topic and received the go-ahead to speak about family history and her project. And so she did to a congregation of more than 1,000 on Shabbat morning. I don't know if anyone else was inspired to start a project after that, but it was interesting and a departure from the norm.

My obsession with family history has continued until now, expanding to archival records in Minsk, Belarus and Lerida, Spain; finding lost Talalay and misplaced Dardashti; a fascination with Sephardic genealogy and resources; a connection with DNA and genetics; and locating other Eastern European Ashkenazim who are really Sephardim.

Above all, there continues an abiding fascination with Jewish history and how my ancestors - all of our ancestors, including yours - were impacted by historical events throughout history. For us, it meant the Babylonian Exile which resettled my husband's ancestors in Isfahan, Iran. The 1391 riots across Spain and the Inquisition. A trek into Eastern Europe. Major waves of New World immigration followed by the Holocaust. Our own contemporary expeditions from New York to Iran, back to the US and to Israel. Talk about the wandering Jews!

So, the person that truly inspired me was our daughter who said so long ago, "Now we have to do your family!" and the event was her bat mitzvah.

Most of my professional life since then has hinged on family history. Writing "It's All Relative" for the Jerusalem Post. Continuing research on both sides of the family since 1990. Being asked by JTA.org to start "Tracing the Tribe - The Jewish Genealogy Blog." Teaching genealogy online and co-founding GenClass.com. Speaking at conferences and to groups to encourage each person to get started in recording his or her unique family history.

Amazing what one sentence can do!

Vermont: Jewish genealogy at the library, May 19

Readers in Brattleboro, Vermont can attend a Jewish genealogy presentation at the Brooks Memorial Library on Tuesday, May 19.

The program begins at 5.30pm, when genealogist Norma Cavey presents her research on family and ancestral town community history. She'll describe research and interview techniques she has used to solve family riddles and myths, as well as privacy issues encountered in family history research.

Cavey has been curious about her own family history since earliest childhood. Five of her great grandparents immigrated to New York City. Recently, she traced one great grandmother's family back to 1790 in Pruzhany, Belarus. Cavey has had some success tracing 5 of her great-grandparents' families. Cavey will discuss research and interview techniques, difficulties, the Internet, and the importance of reading and using Jewish genealogy books available at the Brooks library. There will be an introduction to her next presentation: "Russian Empire Jews Acquire Family Names."

For 50 years, Cavey's work has included ethnic and immigration history, community studies and social policy. She was the first Environmental and Ethnic Community Planner for the National Park Service, Ellis Island, Statue of Liberty. A former college professor and senior administrative planner, she has conducted European research.

For more details, see the library site.

SephardicGen: 'Jews of Valencia,' index

A recently added database of SephardicGen.com is an index to a comprehensive study of the Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia from the 1391 massacres to the 1492 Expulsion.

The book by historian J. Hinojosa Montalvo - The Jews of the Kingdom of Valencia (Hispania Judaica, v.9), was published in 1994 by Magnes Press of Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

The author has published many articles and books on the pre-Expulsion Jewish communities. This book is based on more than 880 documents found in various archives and published in the book for the first time.

There are 180 different surnames from 16 localities. Fields include surnames, given names, year and place, and added notes. About 10% of the names relate to women.

The geographic localities included are: Aspe, Bejis, Borriol, Castellon, Elche, Hoya de Bunol, Jativa, Jerica, Liria, Morvedre, Orhihuela, Paterna, Segore, Valencia, Villareal, and Zaragoza.

Access the database here.

I could not bring up the geographic localities from that pull-down menu, but all the names appeared using an alphabetical search of the first letter of the name. I have notified Jeff Malka of SephardicGen of the problem, and I am sure it will be addressed soon.

For the letter A, there were 60 surnames including:

ABAGI, ABARIM, ABAYU, ABBU, ABDOLAZIZ, ABEGAN, ABENAMIL, ABENAZARA, AENCABAL, ABENCABORA, ABENDURO, ABENFERRIZ, AENGAMIL, ABENGAMIN, ABENHABIT, ABENLAMBUT, ABENMARUEC, ABENMUCA, ABENPELX, ABENRESCH, ABENRIAMIN, AENZAYDON, ABNAJUP, ABNAYUB, ABULAIG, ABUISACH, ADDAIX, ADDAX, ADDOR, ADZANI,ADZONI, ALAGRIAN, ALAQUO, ALATEFFI, ALFANGI, ALLUHAYEG, ALMALE, ALOLAIG, ALPEGNRI, ANDAIX, ARDIT, ARDUTELL, ARRAMI, ARRONDI, ARROT, ASCIPO, ASCO, ASRILLA, ASEYO, ASTORI, ATRONAY, ATZONI, AYMAR, AZDRILLA, AZERON, AZIZ, AZONI, AZTORI.

Women's given names included: Jamila, Astruga, Perla, Graciana and Flor.

Men's names included: Jucef, Abram, Salamo, Mosse, Vidal, Estruch, Jacob, Abraham, Gento, Nacan, Icach, Aim, Samuel, Moca (Moshe), Azmel, Davit, Mahiz, Jafuda, Abraffim, Gabriel, Astruc, Maymo, etc.

Letter T offered these surnames: TAMEFA, TARFON, THIFALLA, TORREGANO, TRIGO; given names were Yucef, Salamo, Samuel, Abram, Cenin and Gento.

Remember to read the FAQ for tips.