Vancouver BC: Writing family stories, memoirs

If you've been thinking of collecting family stories for your children and grandchildren, then this workshop is for you - if you live within reach of Vancouver, British Columbia.

The Jewish Museum & Archives of BC will present a "Writing Family Stories and Memoirs" workshop, by Lil Blume on Sunday, November 8.

Stories passed from one generation to the next carry the values, culture, and unique mythology of that family. Knowing our family's stories solidifies our sense of belonging. If you have been thinking of collecting family stories for your children and grandchildren, then this workshop is for you.

Writer and editor, Lil Blume, will give you ideas for reviving memories and writing and organizing your family story project. Come prepared to do some writing and storytelling.

The session takes place from 1-5pm at the Jewish Community Center where the Museum & Archives are located.

The fee is $30 for JGSBC members; $35 for others. Seating is limited; call 604-257-5199 to register.

Film: Wild Jewish roots

Be careful when you pinch the cheeks of young relatives! You might be the inspiration for characters in books and films created in the future by one of those cuties.

Causing a rumpus in the box office this week: Spike Jonze’s fanciful film adaption of the perennial childhood favorite, Where the Wild Things Are, by Maurice Sendak. The flick was officially the film of choice this weekend, pulling in a whopping $32.5 million.

Sendak’s story, well known for its poignant themes of family and the conflicts it engenders, has some interestingly Jewish roots. Born in 1928 to Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Sendak modeled his “wild things” on aunts and uncles who visited his family’s Brooklyn home on weekends during his childhood.

JTA's story on this references 2003 and 2005 interviews Sendak gave to New York's Jewish Museum and the Los Angeles Times.

... the author said that his only relief from these family members, who pinched his cheeks and had voracious appetites, "was to examine those relatives critically and make note of every mole, every bloodshot eye, every hair curling out of every nostril, every blackened tooth." Sendak even modeled one of the book’s famed phrases, “I’ll eat you up!” from a similar, albeit friendlier saying these relatives used to use: “You're so cute, I could eat you up.”

The original title was "Where the Wild Horses are," but his horse drawings weren't that great. He finally based his drawings on his relatives: "They're all dead now, so I can tell people."

The story goes on to comment on his heritage and growing up in Brooklyn among Yiddish-speaking immigrants, and also references other characters from his writings.

A first generation American, many of his relatives perished in the Holocaust (his paternal grandfather, aunts, uncles and cousins). His writings and drawings, according to the story, show his "journey to emotionally process the Holocaust."

In his Zlateh the Goat (which Tracing the Tribe has always liked) his illustrations include portraits of relatives who perished.

The story also details his illustrated book and opera - Brundibar - which was based on a 1938 children's opera by Hans Krasa. Sendak created the book's illustrations, the sets and costumes.

Brundibar follows two penniless children, Pepicek and Aninku, who set out in search of milk to feed their sick mother. The hurdles they overcome in the process, including an encounter with the teenaged bully Brundibar, became symbolic of the resistance of inmates at Terezin concentration camp, where the opera was originally performed by young Jewish prisoners.

There's also a surprising connection with Spike Jonze (born Adam Spiegel), the great-great-grandson of Joseph Spiegel of Spiegel catalog fame.

Read the complete article at the link above! And remember, when you are tempted, about pinching those cheeks. You might be reincarnated in a book or film.

Colorado: Jewish Family Tree Initiative

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado received a Rose Community Foundation Grant to develop an innovative program to help start Jewish family history research.

The grant covers development and publicity costs.

The eight-session Jewish Family Tree Initiative: Workshop and Mentoring Series will be held at Denver's Temple Sinai.

If you've never started tracing your family history, this is for you.

If you've started before but stalled and got sidetracked, this is also for you.

The one-time fee of $18 includes a book and materials, and a one-year membership in the JGS of Colorado. Mentoring assistance outside of class is available as part of the program, which is open to everyone.

Participants may attend every session or pick and choose according to their interests and schedules. Each two-hour session includes an instructional lecture and a hands-on workshop to assist with the creation of family trees and historical research utilizing genealogical resources and techniques.

The first session (Sunday, October 18) covered "Family History Starts with Family: Interviewing Techniques Offline, Online and On Tape."

The second session - mark your calendars now - will be Sunday morning, November 22 - will be "What’s Jewish about Jewish Genealogy: Naming Patterns, Calendar, Gravestones and Lifecycles."

For more information, visit the JGSColorado website.

Amsterdam: Saving more than 100

Ten minutes from Anne Frank's house in Amsterdam is another building that saved 100 Jews.

The story of Dr. Tina Strobos was detailed in the New York Times.

Now 89, she continues to be honored for the brave deeds of some seven decades ago. Working with her mother, the then-medical student hid the Jews in their three-story rooming house.

That sanctuary, which included an attic lair that was never discovered, was just a 10-minute stroll from a more famous hideout: Anne Frank’s at 263 Prinsengracht. Indeed, the question of why the Franks did not have an escape hatch for when the Gestapo barged in gets her fairly worked up.

At her home, the Jews were stowed away on the upper floors with quick access to the attic, which had a secret compartment for two or three people to cram into. “A carpenter came with a toolbox and said: ‘I’m a carpenter from the underground. Show me the house, and I’ll build a hiding place,’ ” she recalled.

There was an alarm bell on the second floor so she or her mother, Marie Schotte, could alert those above. They drilled their fugitives in how to scramble out a window to a roof and make their way to an adjoining school, which was not likely to be raided.

A psychiatrist who retired last May, Strobos was honored Monday by the Westchester-based Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center.

Along with hiding individuals, she carried news and ration stamps to Jews on farms outside the city, carried radios and guns for the Dutch resistance. Nine times she was seized or questioned by the Gestapo. So why did she do it for people she barely knew?

“It’s the right thing to do,” she said with nonchalance. “Your conscience tells you to do it. I believe in heroism, and when you’re young, you want to do dangerous things.”

The Center's director Donna Cohen says this philosophy is "learned behavior."

Strobos' family were socialist atheists who sheltered Belgian refugees during World War I and hid German and Austrian refugees before World War II. She had close Jewish friends and even a Jewish fiancé (although not her husband) Abraham Pais, who went on to become a particle physicist.

In addition, Strobos created false papers by stealing documents from gentile guests and adding new photos and fingerprints. The family's six-bedroom house was a way station, until better hiding places could be found.

Among the people who lodged with her was her close friend Tirtsah Van Amerongen, a blonde who passed for a gentile, and her sister and brother-in-law. She hid an Orthodox couple with five children, who brought their own kosher food. She helped Jews in other hideouts, including a prominent impressionist, Martin Monnickendam, who painted her portrait, which now hangs in her apartment, at a residence for older people.

Read the complete story at the link above for more of her story.

Insight: Septembers of Shiraz

It was a bit of a shock, and more than slightly incongruous, to see a review of Dalia Sofer's "The Septembers of Shiraz" in the National Yiddish Book Center's monthly newsletter.

However, the universal themes of revolution, Jewish history, refugees, survival, personal experiences cross all cultural boundaries, so I was glad to see it featured.

In case anyone is wondering, there was small Ashkenazi congregation in Teheran until the early 1970s, and there are some Ashkenazi burials in the main Jewish cemetery there (see Beheshtieh.com). However, Sofer's "Shiraz" is purely Persian.

Tova Mirvis' review is good, as is the book. Sofer has put her finger squarely on many characteristics of the Persian Jewish community, both in Iran and in its post-Revolution diaspora.

I sometimes wonder how non-Iranians can really understand books like this. To anyone who has lived within this community, each character is as familiar as the fingers on our own hands. The author says that she drew on her own family, and any one with a fleeting connection to the Persian community will recognize the people they know so well.

Questions for discussion include:

In a biographical note at the end of the paperback edition, Sofer describes the many similarities between her own family and the one portrayed in the book.

Sofer's characters are not unique to her family - they are "community" characters, found in every Persian Jewish family regardless of where they live today.

Among the very wealthy of this community - who tried to leave as quickly as possible before or during the Revolution's early days - characters like Aunt Shahla were common enough. Which family didn't have an Aunt Shahla or many of her type? We certainly did.

...especially her depiction of Isaac’s sister Shahla, a woman so in love with her material wealth and status that she won’t consider the prospect of leaving Iran. “If we leave this country without taking care of our belongings, who in Geneva or Paris or Timbuktu will understand who we once were?”

When social standing and respect were (and are still) judged by the house one lives in, the car one drives, one's furnishings and jewelry, how could people just up and leave it all behind? When people wonder why the remaining Jews do not leave Iran, they need to understand that lifestyle and status is important to this community.

For our impoverished shtetl ancestors from Eastern Europe, immigration was going towards something better, towards success, achievement, a better life. For the Persians, while immigration was considered safer, it was considered a step back in time, status and living conditions. In our family, when we left just a few months before the revolution, I was asked by immediate family members, "Why do you want to leave this Gan Eden? (Garden of Eden, Hebrew). Not long after that exchange, many followed us.

How difficult it would be to leave and start over - in very reduced circumstances - is, I think, very hard for non-Persians to fathom. While others feel this is a foolish attitude and the remaining community members should leave, others - who have left and gone through the rebuilding process - think it is too hard even though they've accomplished it themselves in some ways.

Some who left have even returned to Iran after trying to re-establish themselves in the diaspora. And, there are always those who believe that it would be better to leave, regardless of the consequences, if they could. This very personal decision is an exceedingly difficult one that cannot be decided for anyone from the outside.

Mirvis writes that "The family’s wealth and luxurious lifestyle loom large in the book as a source of envy, with a corrupting power of its own." Personally, I used to call it "living in DisneyWorld." Much of this simply transferred over to the diaspora communities in California, New York and Europe.

Mirvis addresses the ability of the Persian Jewish community to adapt, to go with the flow, to live with the new government. The community has lived through good and bad times for 2,700 years and they still survive by adapting.

Consider the various ways that wealth is described in the book. In portraying Isaac’s sister, Sofer focuses on her obsessive, foolish love of material goods. In what ways does her materialism blind her to the dangers at hand? Is Isaac’s family similarly blinded by their wealth? Is a fellow prisoner correct when he says of Isaac: “Who cares what kind of regime it is, as long as I make money”? Consider too Isaac’s own statement, as the family makes their escape and his family receives better treatment because they have paid more. “Why is it, he wonders, that wealth must always be accompanied by guilt, if not shame.”

Sofer also hits on another aspect of Persian Jewish life and individuality. All Iranians are brought up to understand that what they do as individuals reflects on their immediate and extended families, that the family is the most important element of life. Every aspect of public behavior has the possibility of bringing shame (or honor) on the entire family.

It is, I think, difficult for non-Iranians to understand these aspects of the Iranian Jewish mindset. Having lived within this community for so long - with one foot in each community - I understand it as well as I understand the American attitudes towards the same ideas.

I strongly recommend The Septembers of Shiraz. Sofer has done an excellent job of portraying the community and its personality.

For readers who are interested in the Iranian Jewish experience and community, other books to help round out knowledge are Wedding Song by Farideh Goldin and books by Gina Nahai (Cry of the Peacock and others),Israeli-born Dorit Rabinyan, Dora Levy Mossanen and Roya Hakakian. There are also numerous Iranian (non-Jewish) authors who have written extensively about general Iranian society, post-Revolution.

Each book provides the author's personal insight to what they or their families experienced. Each author went through something different, depending on their age when living in Iran, the city they lived in, the circumstances in which they were able to leave, where they went, and their family's personal experience as new immigrants.

Columbus: The Ladino connection

The linguistics professor now claims that Columbus was a Catalan-speaking Jew, according to an interview in the Latin American Herald Tribune.

While other articles - previously referenced by Tracing the Tribe - stuck to the Catalan theory, there seems to be more now to linguistics professor Estelle Irizarry's theory.

She has recently added the following Ladino references to the explorer's strange punctuation and spellings in an interview with EFE:

In addition, these peculiarities of his writing and other linguistic aspects associated with Ladino, a Jewish ethnolect in late medieval Spain, suggest that Columbus was Jewish, Irizarry said. “Columbus even punctuated marginal notes and he included copious notes around his pages.

"In that sense, he followed the punctuation style of the Ladino-speaking scribes,” the professor said.

Irizarry says her research clears up the mystery of his place of birth, which he never revealed. Others have claimed it was Genoa, Corsica; Portugal; Greece or Spain.

“The people who hid (their origins) more and had reason to do so were the Jews,” Irizarry said, referring to the forced conversions and mass expulsions of Jews in late medieval Spain.

While other media picked up the headline that Columbus was a Catalan-speaker, Irizarry goes further now and says he was a Catalan-speaking Jew.

In the interview she said,

Christopher Columbus’ origins are not obscure by chance, but rather the result of the famed explorer’s having purposely hid the fact he was a Jew or "converso" (convert to Christianity) whose native language was Catalan.

Irizarry revealed that other researchers had missed a very significant clue used to Columbus to indicate pauses in sentences.

The symbol - a virgule - is a slash mark (like we use in URLs) that did not appear in Catalan or in other countries' writings, but only in records and documents from Catalan-speaking areas, such as Catalunya and the Balearic Islands.

These symbols are part of his DNA, so to speak. Said the professor:

"Columbus was a punctuator and was one of the few of that era,” the professor and author of 34 books on literature said. Irizarry uses that metaphor as the title of her latest book, “Christopher Columbus: The DNA of his Writings,” in which she pored over the language and syntax the Great Navigator used in more than 100 letters, diaries and documents.

In her research she found Balearic documents from the island of Ibiza; 75% of them included virgules similar to Columbus.

In the late 15th-early 16th century, authors left punctuation for their publishers to add. Irizarry said that even Cervantes' "Don Quixote," wasn't filled in with punctuation until the 19th century.

She said she thinks Columbus grew grew up in a Catalan-speaking region and that that explains why he did not express himself correctly in Spanish, his second language. The variant spellings of the same words, sometimes in the same sentence is proof of that.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Long Island: Prussian Poland records, Oct. 25

Prussian Poland records, anyone? If this region features in your research, Roger Lustig will help you.

Roger will present Jewish genealogical sources for Prussian Poland at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Long Island, on Sunday, October 25.
The program begins at 2pm, at the Mid-Island Y-JCC in Plainview, New York.

If you have not heard Roger speak, you're in for an informative expert program.

His experiences with difficult data and old handwritten sources have helped his work with Jewish records. A genealogist and a data-analysis consultant, he studied statistics as an undergrad and musicology in graduate school.

The Prussian government maintained detailed Jewish vital records from 1812-1874. Many records still survive in the archives, although some has been microfilmed, available at Salt Lake City's Family History Library and its branches (via order).

Roger will focus on parts of Prussia now in Poland and outline what is known to exist.

He'll address what the archives are now uncovering and what may still be waiting to be unearthed. Other important issues he'll discuss are the difficulties being confronted by both researchers and archivists.

In addition to illustrating the program with records from varying places and times, he'll demonstrate how to read, understand and transcribe them.

Roger is the son of German Jews. Nearly 30 years ago, his father Ernst Lustig z"l began compiling vital records databases. Today, Roger continues this effort and works with JRI-Poland.

He has visited several Polish State Archives in former Prussian Poland and has transcribed more than 50,000 vital records. As GerSIG research coordinator, he supervises the NALDEX (Name Adoption List Index) project.

The program is free, and JGSLI experts will be available from 1.30pm to help with questions. Resource materials will be available.

For more information and directions, visit the JGSLI website.

Italy: Jewish paper for non-Jews launched

The oldest Jewish community in the Diaspora has launched a new Jewish newspaper aimed at non-Jewish Italians.

Ruth Ellen Gruber's story at JTA detailed the background of the online version of Pagine Ebraiche (Jewish Pages) which will feature news reports, essays, commentaries, historical articles and cultural pieces. (Pagine Ebraiche)

Sponsored by the Union of Italian Jewish Communities, or UCEI, the umbrella organization that links Italy's 21 established Jewish communities, the newspaper and an online Jewish information portal launched last year are part of a multi-dimensional media offensive aimed at bolstering the Jewish voice in Italy and creating a constructive dialogue between Jews and non-Jewish Italians.

Journalist Guido Vitale, who directs the newspaper, Pagine Ebraiche (Jewish Pages), and the Web site, Moked.it, said he wants "to construct a piazza, an agora, where they can interact with each other and with Italian society."

According to Gruber's story, Italians are fascinated by things Jewish although there are only 30,000 Jews among a population of 60 million.

"There is a huge interest in Jews and Jewish culture here," said Emanuele Ascarelli, who directs “Sorgente di Vita” (“Source of Life”), a biweekly Jewish television program co-produced by UCEI and state-run RAI television that draws 200,000 to 400,000 viewers. Ascarelli estimates that 90 to 95 percent of them are not Jewish.

Non-Jews flock to Jewish-themed cultural events - festivals, food tastings, book launches and concerts - all over the country. During September's annual European Day of Jewish Culture, some 60,000 Italians (most non-Jews) attended Jewish lectures, exhibits and other events held in nearly 50 towns and cities.

The mainstream Italian media presents many Jewish-related stories. However, although interest is high, there is still widespread ignorance about Jewish beliefs, traditions and values.

The paper will be published monthly with an initial run of 30,000 and sold at selected newsstands in major cities. It will include news reports, essays, commentaries, historical articles, cultural pieces and other material.

"A minority like ours cannot only have the goal of recounting itself and its history, or only reacting to the initiatives and actions of others, be they positive or negative," said UCEI president Renzo Gattega. "Rather it must act concretely to bear witness of its values, its identity, its vitality."

Read the complete article at the link above.