Wales: Oldest synagogue to be converted

The oldest Welsh synagogue will be converted to apartments, according to the Jewish Chronicle.

The 1870s' Neo-Gothic synagogue in Merthyr Tydfil - the only one known to incorporate a Welsh dragon in its architectural design - has been closed since 1983. Now empty and a target for vandals, it was used as a Christian community center and gym.

A company in Warwickshire plans to convert the Grade II listed historic building into eight apartments, and will leave the exterior intact as well as maintaining the synagogue's Magen David stained glass windows.

Today, some 2,000 Jews live in Wales, about half of the total living there in the early 20th-century. Only about a dozen live in the town today, and most Welsh Jews live in Cardiff, which has an Orthodox and a Reform synagogue.

Read more at the Jewish Chronicle.

JGSLA 2010: Call for Papers

The Call for Papers is open for the 30th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (July 11-16, in Los Angeles).

The topics of interest are listed below. See the next JGSLA 2010 post for details and tips on submitting session proposals.

Your ideas are requested for what will be one of the most exciting conferences ever. Read all about the event, sign up for the newsletter, the blog and much more at the conference site.

There will be 5 1/2 days of information-packed programs and lectures by experts for all attendees from beginners to advanced. The program will include the Jewish Film Festival, computer classes/workshops, as well as artistic workshops and musical performances. It's the perfect time to network, collaborate, meet old and new friends, experts and archivists from around the world.

Mark your calendar: Proposals must be received through the online process only by 12:00am Pacific Coast time January 15, 2010. You may edit proposals through that time. No emailed proposals will be accepted.

These topics are of special interest, but this is just a guide to the possibilities:

Research sources/methodology: For beginning genealogists
Research sources/Jewish history: Los Angeles/State of California.
Research resources/methodology for:
-- Eastern Europe
-- Western Europe
-- Sephardim
-- Mizrahim
-- Converso/B'nai Anousim
-- Persian Jewish History
-- Israel (pre-/post-1948)
-- US/Canada
-- South/Central America
-- Other locales (Australia, China, South Africa, India, etc.)
Jewish immigration/migration
Jewish surname adoption/naming patterns
Genetics/DNA research
Holocaust research
The immigration experience
"Hollywood" and the Jewish community
Oral histories/family newsletters
Jewish history/culture
Yiddish theatre/Tin Pan Alley/klezmer music/Broadway
Roots/"shtetl" travel
Rabbinic research
Photographic/document preservation
Technology/Internet resources
Computer training workshops
Other workshops (photo identification, face-recognition, document preservation, etc.)

The program committee invites creativity, innovation, originality and even esoteric topics for new relevant sessions. Have suggestions for double sessions, panels, interactive and/or special presentations? Tell the committee.

Click here for more information, or email for answers to other questions about the program.

See the next JGSLA 2010 post for details and tips for preparing your proposals.

What makes a newspaper Jewish?

Is a Jewish newspaper intended only for a Jewish audience? Is its content only for "Jewish" topics and issues?Should local and regional newspapers be included?

According to the historical Jewish press database detailed below, a Jewish paper will be written and published by Jewish writers and editors, which will necessarily include local and international events impacting its audience.

In addition to local and international general and Jewish news of interest to its readership, there will be social announcements, along with local business and event news and ads. Some publications may be directed towards niche audiences - adults, children, young people, institutions or political parties.

Most importantly for Tracing the Tribe's readers, these papers are important sources for genealogy and name searches. Jewish papers from international communities provide a source for those of us interested in searching for information on our relatives and ancestors to reconstruct our family trees. And we also learn how our ancestors lived.

While searching in the French language Bulletin de l/Alliance Israelite Universelle, using "perse juif juives" as a search term, some 124 articles came up. One of them, from 1892, listed the 22 restrictions placed on Jews in Hamadan, including: a Jewish doctor may not ride a horse, all Jews must wear a red badge, a Jewish house must not be higher than a Moslem's and the door to a Jewish home must be low.

Searching for Isfahan or Isphahan produced no hits, it was necessary to write Ispahan, to find 118 articles. An 1890 article - by which time our Dardashti family had already been in Teheran for some 40 years, although some branches had remained in Isfahan - detailed an 1888 visit there by Sir Julian Goldsmid and Sir Albert Sassoon, representing the Anglo-Jewish Association.

While "big" papers tend to focus on "important" people, local community papers offer information on ordinary people, and include social announcements with information on births, engagements, weddings and deaths, information on court cases and business dealings, in addition to advertisements.

It also provides information on what items might cost, such as this 1932 bit (left) from the Palestine Post on what oranges sold for in Manchester.

What it means for family history researchers is that our families' details may be lurking in these pages, and for some of these details, it might be the only place to find that information.

However, for some communities, remember that countries and local geographic names have changed (e.g., Istanbul was Constantinople before 1930; where exactly was Prussia?), and searchers need to know the old names of places and where they were located at the time the paper was published. A quick bit of Googling will likely turn up the information you need to search more efficiently.

Tracing the Tribe has been writing quite a bit about historical newspapers in general, and this post details a site to help researchers interested in pre-/post-state Israel, France, Egypt, Morocco, Prussia, Poland and Austria.

This site contains a collection of Jewish newspapers published in various countries, languages, and time periods. Digital versions of each newspaper are displayed, so researchers can see the paper in its original format. Full-text search is also available for all content.

There are 11 newspapers in the interactive database (Hebrew University of Jerusalem) and here (Tel Aviv University) (two access URLs for the same site). The papers are organized in three sections: the Jewish press in Arab lands, 19th-century Hebrew press, and the Yeshuv and State of Israel.

Each search must be performed in the language of publication. Caution: searching in Hebrew characters using the foreign (French or English) interface or searching in Latin characters using the Hebrew interface will not produce any results. And, for the linguistically challenged, there is only one English publication, the Palestine Post (forerunner of today's Jerusalem Post).

Some were published daily, weekly, every two weeks, monthly. The papers, language, years, pages and place of publication are listed below:

Palestine Post - Palestine/Eretz Israel
English - 1932-1950 - 32,745 pages

Bulletin de l/Alliance Israelite Universelle - France
French - 1860-1913 - 10,774 pages

Paix et Droit - France
French - 1921-1940 - 2,344 pages

L'Avenir Illustre - Morocco
French - 1926-1940 - 3,335 pages

Ha-Magid - Prussia, Poland, Austria
Hebrew - 1856-1903 - 19, 445 pages

Ha-Levanon - Palestine/Eretz Israel, France, Prussia, Britain
Hebrew - 1863-1886 - 7,629 pages

Israel - Egypt
French - 1920-1939 - 3,158 pages

Davar - Palestine/Eretz Israel
Hebrew - 1925-1996 - 97,707 pages

Ha-Zvi - Palestine/Eretz Israel
Hebrew - 1884-1915 -7,695 pages

La Liberte - Morocco
French/Judeo-Arabic - 1926-1940 - 440 pages

La Voix des Communautes - Morocco
French - 1950-1963 - 578 pages

For tips on searching, read the FAQ with more on the content and how to use it here.

The site also offers links to other sites with historical Jewish newspapers, such as Historical Hebrew Press (with titles from the beginning of the Hebrew-language press), Compact Memory (Jewish German-language periodicals, 1837-1938), Exilpresse (text database of some 30 Jewish German-language papers, 1933-1945), The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project (Jewish papers from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and environs), The Occident and American Jewish Advocate (one of the first Jewish papers in the US, full text access but not scanned original images), The Jewish Chronicle (subscription site but search is free, oldest British Jewish paper (1841-today), and The Jewish Theological Seminary (periodical list related to Judaism on the Internet, historical/current).

For general historical press, see Chronicling America: Historic American Newspapers (Library of Congress, 1836-1922), The 19th Century British Library Newspapers Website (1 million digital pages via National British Library).

For sites with US focus, see The New York Public Libraries, Historical Newspapers, University of Pennsylvania, Historical Newspapers Online, Historical Newspapers and Indexes On The Internet – USA.

Of course, three excellent subscription sites for historical newspapers are NewspaperArchive.com, Footnote.com and GenealogyBank.com.

What have you found?

Thanks to Rose Feldman for this tip.

Illinois: Maxwell Street film, Nov. 22

If you can get to Skokie, you'll be able to see a great documentary called "Maxwell Street: A Living Memory," on Sunday, November 22.

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois is hosting the film at 2pm, at Temple Beth Israel.

I saw the 2001 film when it was shown at Beth Hatefutsoth in Tel Aviv several years ago and interviewed filmmaker Shuli Eshel. Whether or not your family's roots are in old Chicago, it is a wonderful homage to long-ago days.

Read about the Maxwell Street Foundation, dedicated to preserving, interpreting and presenting the multicultural history of some 150 years of the old Maxwell Street Market and neighborhood in Chicago.

In 1994, when the University of Illinois at Chicago and the City of Chicago teamed up to move the market and begin the neighborhood's final destruction, there were many pockets of resistance. A coalition formed consisting of property owners, neighborhood businesses, street vendors, residents, blues musicians and fans, and historic preservationists.

The group was formed in 1997 as the Maxwell Street Historic Preservation Coalition. In 2004, with the destruction and redevelopment of the neighborhood nearly complete, it became the Maxwell Street Foundation. When the last residents and businesses were remove, the new focus became preserving the area's history.

With Eshel, it co-produced the 30-minute documentary which captures the Maxwell Street Market through memories of the children and grandchildren of Eastern European Jewish immigrants who built it, incorporating some rare film and photographs.

In association with the Chicago Historical Society, the group also produced a book of photographs - "Chicago's Maxwell Street," and a book of oral histories, Jewish Maxwell Street Stories. (both by Arcadia Publishing).

The JGSI meeting will open at 12.30pm, so that members and guests can use the genealogical library, get help with genealogy websites or ask related questions before the film is screened.

For more information, view the JGSI website.

DNA and the death of Venice

The population of Venice, Italy is dwindling, and is now below 60,000. A mock funeral for the city was also the impetus for a DNA project on the origins of Venetian families.

One reason is the high cost of living in the city, and tourism is also taking the blame as food and housing costs rise and people move to the mainland. The number of residents has dropped by 66% since the 1950s.

Some residents say that a house in Venice costs twice as much as a similar one elsewhere.

A recent event highlighted the situation with a mock funeral. Activists claim Venice is a ghost town, populated only by tourists, although the city calls the its death premature.

A city demographer said the low number ignores 120,000 people on Murano and Lido Beach islands, while admitting the population had decreased in the central historic section of Venice.

On a brighter note, which should add to DNA databases, the event was used to collect DNA samples from Venetians to discover more about the origins of central and western European populations. Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Massachusetts) scientists hope to take some 5,000 DNA swabs to learn more about the Venetians' origins.

Several sources covered the story, including BBC and AFP.

Volunteer mapmakers: Changing our views

Do you use Google Maps? Do you know where they come from? Have you ever had a GPS device problem?

In summer 2007, I spoke at the Jewish Genealogical Society of Sacramento (California). The president drove me from the train to his house, cautioning me to watch his GPS device. As we neared his home, the voice repeatedly said "turn left" at the next intersection, but my friend was in the right lane. As I checked our surroundings on the left, I saw a large building (no road through it!). As he made the right-hand turn into his street, he said that he enjoys showing that to visitors and that complaints were made but nothing had been updated.

Perhaps by now it has been updated by local residents, who are tired of being told to make a left turn where there is no such possibility.

People on-the-ground in their own neighborhoods and cities know when there are local map errors or changes in roads or new buildings. According to a New York Times technology story today, Google and other websites now understand that local residents can fix problems more quickly than professional digital map providers.

The new philosophy of mapmaking and geo-volunteerism was addressed today in the story by Miguel Helft. Read it here.

Geo-volunteerism is a new term to Tracing the Tribe, and the story began with Richard Hintz, 62, of San Francisco, who enters map details into atlases accessible online. Using GPS devices and simple software, volunteers create digital maps that never existed and, on existing maps, fix mistakes and add data.

Google says accessible maps are even more important these days as so many cellphone users rely on them to get where they want to go. You can't get there from here without reliable data, and local users are providing it.

According to the story, Google is dropping traditional providers and using volunteers to create maps of 140 countries, which are more complete than those from professional providers.

Other online resources are mentioned, such as the non-profit OpenStreetMap, whose 180,000 contributors have made free maps available to anyone. Its maps are used in IPhones and even on a White House website. WikiMapia creates maps that are layered on top of Google’s.

There's information on how this data is being used in GPS devices.

A most interesting read at the link above.

'Cool' Chanukah videos

In Israel, Jacob Richman's website offers so many resources in so many categories. He's just created a list of 115 cool Chanukah YouTube videos.

Chanukah begins Friday, December 11 at sundown.

Laugh a little! It's good for you! And count the different ways the holiday is spelled!

The list includes these and many more:

Adam Sandler's - The Chanukah Song
Kenny Ellis sings his hit single Swingin' Dreidel
I Had a Little Dreidl - Bagel Blvd Chanuka Edition
Left to Right - Michelle Citrin
Captain Smartypants sings Dreidel
The Funky Gold Menorah by The Mama Doni Band
Chabad: Chanukah Around the World
Light Up - Moshe Skier Band
Poway Chanukah: Yes, We Can!
Nefesh B'Nefesh: Modern Day Miracles
Birthright: Light em Up
Hanukkah Bird (animation and song)
My Menorah - The knack is back! (animation and song)
Ahmedinijad admits he is addicted!
Eli Yazpan, Hanukkah (in Hebrew)
Jewlarious: he Miracle on 42nd Street
Benji Lovitt: Happy Chanukkah from Jerusalem!
Meshugga Beach Party - Oh Hanukkah
"First Time Lighting" - with Matisyahu, Nosson Zand
Al Hanisim - Six13 @ Chabad Chanukah Telethon
Hannukah Song Texas Style
Oy Cappella - Adam Sandler Chanukah Song
Voices of Liberty singing O Hannukah
Aish: Just Jew It - True Chanuka Story
Chana Zelda
"The Latke Song" by Debbie Friedman
How to play Chanukah Dredyl
LeeVees - Latke Clan
Gerber Folk Skewer The Dreidel Song
The Eight Nights of Hanukkah, as told by Jewish celebrities
Purim Homintaschen vs. Hannukah Latke debate
Feed Me Bubbe - Latkes

Enjoy many more!

APG: Election congrats to familiar faces

Some very familiar faces - from New Hampshire, Florida, Utah, New York and Israel - were among the 17 individuals recently elected to the Association of Professional Genealogists board.

Special congratulations from Tracing the Tribe go to the following:

Laura G. Prescott of Brookline, New Hampshire was elected president.

Andrew M. “Drew” Smith of Odessa, Florida, was elected secretary. Drew is the Florida Genealogical Society of Tampa president, and co-hosts (with George Morgan), the Genealogy Guys Podcast.

Among elected regional directors:

West Region: Suzanne Russo Adams AG of Utah, is a specialist in Italian research and employee of Ancestry.com.

I've known Suzanne for what seems like years and she was my host when I visited Ancestry's Provo headquarters a few years ago. We meet at the Southern California Genealogical Society's annual Jamborees as well as the annual IAJGS international Jewish genealogy conferences, where she is usually an Ancestry.com speaker.

Northeast Region: Debra Braverman of New York, is a national speaker and forensic genealogist who regularly testifies as an expert witness.

She is a JGS of New York member; we meet at the annual IAJGS conferences.

International Regions: Michael Goldstein of Israel, traces roots worldwide, specializing in family reunification, heir searches and Holocaust research.

Well-known to all genealogists in Israel, Michael wears several hats as president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and president of the Israel Genealogical Society. He speaks at Jewish genealogical societies in North America and at IAJGS conferences.

The Association of Professional Genealogists, established in 1979, represents nearly 2,000 genealogists, librarians, writers, editors, historians, instructors, booksellers, publishers, and others involved in genealogy-related businesses. APG encourages genealogical excellence, ethical practice, mentoring, and education. The organization also supports the preservation and accessibility of records useful to the fields of genealogy, local, and social history. Its members represent all 50 states, Canada, and 30 other countries.

Congratulations to everyone elected this year!