Philadelphia: Marion Smith to speak, Oct. 11

Senior CIS historian Marion Smith will speak on Philadelphia's role as an immigration center and the Red Star Line at the next meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia, on Monday, October 11.

This special program is co-hosted by the JGSGP and the Gershman Y to spotlight the Borowsky Gallery exhibit at the Y.

The JGSGP meeting will begin at 7.30pm at the Gershman Y, 401 S. Broad St., Philadelphia.

Smith - Chief of the Historical Research Branch for US Citizenship and Immigration Services - will discuss various organizations and individuals who made their living from immigration to Philadelphia at the turn of the last century. The two presentations are:

-- "One Foot in America - The Jewish Emigrants of the Red Star Line and Eugeen Vn Mieghem," and

--  "Philadelphia's Immigration Business in the Late 19th-Early 20th Century"

For more information, see these links: Red Star Line Friends, and two Gershman Y links here and here.  information check out the following links:

Guests are always welcome. Fee: JGSGP members, free; others: $2.

The JGSGP - and the entire Jewish genealogical community - extends its deep condolences to Mark and Joan Halpern on the death of their beloved son, Jeremy, on September 2. May his memory be a blessing.

Contributions may be made In Jeremy’s memory to: Be The Match Foundation, 3001 Broadway Street NE, Minneapolis, MN 55413-1753.

In the story of Jewish immigration to America, Philadelphia and the Belgian city of Antwerp share a special link. Ships of the Red Star Line carried over one million Jews from Antwerp to Philadelphia and other cities. The artist Eugeen Van Mieghem captured many of them in poignant portraits just before they set sail - as they figuratively put "One Foot in America."

From government officials to steamship lines, local businesses to charitable organizations, each played a role in the business of immigration.

Music: Galeet Dardashti's "The Naming"

Family history takes many forms. An artist may use images of his ancestors or where they lived on canvas, while a musician takes the stories and culture of her family and brings them to life in a different way.

For our talented cousin, singer/composer Galeet Dardashti, the stories of the women in her songs intertwine with her family’s tales of women breaking rules.

When we met for lunch recently in New York, she said her new CD - The Naming - would be launched September 14 in New York City. I wish I could be there or at her other upcoming concerts in Toronto, Philadelphia and La Jolla, California (see below).

Those who connect with Persian and Middle Eastern music will appreciate Galeet's performances. She has truly inherited the talents of her grandfather, Yona - renowned for his classical Persian singing and known simply as Dardashti - whose recordings are still revered by Persians of all religions in today's diaspora, and of her father, Hazzan Farid Dardashti.

Yona rarely sang at family events in Teheran, yet he did so at our housewarming there so very long ago. We were very honored.

For clips from the new CD, click here. Don't miss the one titled "Michal."

Read the Huffington Post review and watch this video.

From Galeet's website:

This is the story of why the brilliant Queen of Sheba shaved her legs, how the stunning Vashti laid down the line for her drunken husband, and how a mysterious witch spoke King Saul’s doom and then served him a nice dinner.

Dardashti's forthcoming solo release and multimedia performance, The Naming, draws on the Persian music deep in her bones to transform the ghostly outlines of Biblical women into full-blown flesh-and-blood personalities, combing emotional Middle Eastern-inflected musical delivery with powerful storytelling.

Dardashti unites the Persian classical music that made her grandfather an icon in Iran with her family's deep connection to Jewish poetry and song, creating electronica-edged Middle Eastern music that springs from where the midrash meets midwifery, where modal melody meets sleek modernity.

For Dardashti, the stories of the women in her songs intertwine with her own Iranian family’s tales of women breaking the rules as well as those of women in the Middle East today fighting to have their voices heard. The stories also echo through Dardashti’s personal story, in her recent transition into motherhood. Concerts feature vivid video art and live dance.

Upcoming appearances:

8-9pm, Sunday, September 5, 2010 - Toronto
Galeet Dardashti & Divahn
Ashkenaz Festival, Harbourfront Centre

7-9pm, Tuesday, September 14, 2010 - New York City
CD Release Party, Le Poisson Rouge, 158 Bleecker Street. Tickets

6-8.30pm, Sunday, October 17, 2010 - Philadelphia
CD Release Party, The Rotunda, 4014 Walnut Street

7pm, Saturday, October 30, 2010 - La Jolla, California
Galeet Dardashti & Divahn
Congregation Beth El, 8660 Gilman Dr., La Jolla, California

The project was supported by a grant from the Six Points Fellowship for Emerging Jewish Artists, a partnership of Avoda Arts, JDub Records, and the Foundation for Jewish Culture, and made possible with major funding from UJA-Federation of New York.

For more information and tickets, click here.

Fellowship: Travel facts, fictions and Jewish identity

The University of Pennsylvania is seeking applications for a post-doctoral fellowship (2011-2012) on "Travel Facts, Travel Fictions, and the Performance of Jewish Identity," at the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies.

The deadline for applications is November 10, awards will be announced by February 1, 2011; applications are available here.

Tracing the Tribe thinks that this topic might be interesting for Jewish genealogy conferences. Readers may wish to put on their thinking caps as the call for papers for the 31st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (Washington, DC; August 2011) is coming up.

About the topic:

The past decades have seen the emergence of an intense interest in the subject of travel as a complex range of practices and representations. The inherent richness and diversity of the evidence, texts and materials related to Jewish travel make it a perfect venue to engage scholars from a broad range of disciplines and periods(ancient, medieval, and modern history, literature, art and film, anthropology, postcolonial and gender studies) in a critical dialogue.

Travel writing in particular (in its mimetic, imaginative and hybrid modes) has served a variety of social and ideological functions throughout the ages, and unquestionably, travels of dislocation and return, pilgrimage, trade and conquest, hold a prominent place in formative Jewish and non-Jewish fictions of identity.

Interdisciplinary common questions and issues include:

-- What are the institutions and conditions that foster travel, such as new technologies, concepts of leisure, or commercial networks linking Jewish communities in far-off places? How do these factors provide social, political, and economic contexts that influence both travel fact and travel fiction?

-- How do travel discourses engage in a critical dialogue with "hearth and home," supporting or disturbing dominant perceptions of centers and margins? How do these categories look like when viewed through a Jewish lens as opposed to a Christian or Muslim one?

-- How do the various genres and discourses of travel writing interact and influence one another? How does the real affect the imaginary, and vice versa? How do travel literatures themselves circulate?

-- How is the journey depicted in visual media such as photography, sketches, and film? How is travel imagined in postcards or touristic advertising?

-- To what extent does Jewish travel map onto the movement made possible by the expanding frontiers of empires, both ancient and modern? How, for example, do Jewish authors interact with European models of expansion and discovery?

-- While relatively few pre-modern travel narratives were written by women, travel accounts do raise important issues of gender agency and representation. How does gender influence both what is seen and how it is interpreted in the various modes of travel writing?

The Katz Center invites applications from scholars at all levels in the humanities and social sciences and outstanding graduate students writing dissertations. Stipends are based on academic standing and financial need.

For more information or questions, contact Sheila Allen.

Call for Papers: The Jewish Atlantic World, March 2011

In June 2006, the journal Jewish History offered a special issue on the port Jews of the Atlantic. As a result, there's a call for panelists and papers on the topic for a March 2011 conference.

Editor Lois Dubin noted that the concept of port Jews identified the role and experience of Jewish merchants who lived in Mediterranean and Atlantic port cities in early modern Europe. The issue's authors followed these merchants across the Atlantic to the North and South American colonies. The trans-Atlantic leap demonstrates the life and times of colonial American Jews.

They rarely stayed in one place, and traveled between ports on both sides of the ocean, as they married and traded with Jews of other key towns.

This transnational world of early American Jews is the focus of a call for panelists/papers is being made for "The Jewish Atlantic World," at the seventh biennial conference of the Society of Early Americanists, set for Philadelphia, March 3-5, 2011.

For more information on the conference, click here.

According to the announcement: "Proposed papers may explore, but are not limited to, such issues as trade, slavery, race, messianism, mysticism, everyday life, politics, gender, education, gravestones, the synagogue, or the arts."

A broad disciplinary range is sought, and submissions are welcome from literary scholars, archeologists, art historians, historians, and scholars of religious studies. Comparative studies of Jews and other colonists are also welcome.

Send one-page abstracts for consideration - by September 20 - to Reed College's Laura Leibman.

Tracing the Tribe reminds those interested that such topics may also be of interest to the program committee of the 31st IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy (Washington, DC; August 2011). The call for papers for DC 2011 is set for the near future.

Jewish Publication Society names new CEO

The Jewish Publication Society has named rabbi and author Barry L. Schwartz as its new CEO.


JPS - in Philadelphia -has been publishing biblical, scholarly and popular Jewish works in English for more than 122 years.

The company is also known for its Jewish history volumes covering many countries and topics.

From the press release:

Schwartz comes to JPS from Congregation M’kor Shalom in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, where he served as senior rabbi for the past 11 years. Rabbi Schwartz has served on the board of several nonprofit social justice organizations, and is especially active in Jewish environmental work.

“Barry has a passion for reaching out broadly to the Jewish community, whether through scholarly study, storytelling, or performing works of tikkun olam,” said David Lerman, president of the JPS Board of Trustees. “We look forward to his leadership in energizing our existing constituents as well as building bridges for JPS with new audiences.”

"Leading JPS into the digital age is the challenge of a lifetime,” Schwartz said. “The Jewish people have survived and thrived by studying and being inspired by Torah while the world around them changes, and our age is no different. I believe JPS will remain the source of choice for the next generation of life-long Jewish learners, publishing books of enduring quality.”

A dynamic speaker and prolific writer, Schwartz is the author of four books, a prize-winning short story, and scholarly articles that have appeared in the Journal of Reform Judaism, American Jewish History, and the Hebrew Union College Annual. His textbook, Jewish Heroes, Jewish Values, is used in more than 300 religious schools nationwide and Honi The Circlemaker: Eco-Fables From Ancient Israel is a series of folktales for children. His latest book, Judaism’s Great Debates, will be published next year.

Schwartz received his BA, magna cum laude, from Duke University, and an MA and rabbinical ordination from Hebrew Union College, New York, which recently awarded him an honorary doctorate for his 25 years of service to the rabbinate.

Maybe we can now convince JPS to publish Pere Bonnin's Sangre Judia in English?

JPS is the oldest nonprofit, multi-denominational publisher of Jewish works written in English.

Pennsylvania Dutch: Ashkenazi, German encounters

Matt Singer has an interesting idea.

He's writing an independent project on the encounter between Ashkenazi Jews and Pennsylvania Germans in Pennsylvania Dutch Country as a material culture analysis.

A Penn State American studies doctoral student, his project should be of interest to Tracing the Tribe's readers. Matt was happy to share additional information with me.

He plans to document and analyze material culture reflecting the encounter between Pennsylvania Germans and Yiddish- and German-speaking (Ashkenazi) Jews from Central and Eastern Europe who settled in the so-called Pennsylvania Dutch Country from the 18th through early-20th centuries. The area is centered in Lancaster, Lebanon, and Berks counties but encompasses most of southeastern and central Pennsylvania.

While Pennsylvania Germans and American Jews have both been the subjects of extensive scholarly research, this particular history - which focuses on the interaction and influence between two Germanic people whose separate diasporas brought them to Southeastern and Central Pennsylvania - has not been studied, he says.

Matt also plans to incorporate and focus on fraktur (example left), a text-based Pennsylvania-German art-form, as part of this study.

Fraktur (example left) is the decoration of paper with calligraphic texts and related designs, figures and symbols, using pen and ink and/or watercolors. Click here (a gallery of examples and many other articles) or here for another article. The first link has many examples of this vibrant folk-art that was used for many types of documents.

Says Matt, a small but significant number of Jews worked as itinerant fraktur artists and scriveners. They functioned much like countless Jews who - typically in their earliest years in the US - earned their livelihoods as peddlers. However, traveling fraktur artists and scriveners, unlike most peddlers, left surviving evidence of their work.

A Google search for "jewish fraktur" turned up a mention in Irwin Richman's book "the Pennsylvania Dutch Country." Pages 57-58 offer information on this variety and mentions two artists, Martin Wetzler who drew a Star of David on his creations and signed his name in Hebrew, as well as Justus I.H. Epstein who lived and worked in Reading.

Fraktur incorporating Hebrew words and phrases was created by Christian Hebraists, and at least one example was made by a Pennsylvania German artist for a Jewish patron.

Finally, through the examination of fraktur in relation to traditional Ashkenazi-Jewish forms such as the ketubah (marriage contract), wimpel (Torah binder), illustrated prayer-books, and mizrachim (a wall-hanging that indicates the direction for prayer - East, mizrach), Matt will search for artistic motifs, approaches, and intentions shared (or not shared) by Pennsylvania Germans and Ashkenazi Jews and their continuity (or discontinuity) as the two distinct yet geographically and culturally related groups established new lives, communities, and cultures in the New World.

Matt, like many of us first became interested in genealogy after watching "Roots" in 1977, as a young teenager. Later, the emergence of JewishGen in the 1990s "turned this interest into a passion."

His paternal SINGER line was from the Ponevezh (Panevezys) area in Kovno Gubernia, Lithuania.

Says Matt, according to a distant cousin (now deceased) who was equally obsessed with genealogy and family history, the family moved from East Prussia to Lithuania around 1840.

"Such a migration pattern is slightly counterintuitive," he says, "and I’ve never been able to document it.

What I do know is that my great-grandfather David Singer immigrated from Neustadt Ponevezh, Lithuania, in 1886 and seemed to have moved directly to Middletown, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, a small Pennsylvania-German town outside of Harrisburg (where much of the family eventually settled).

His primary maternal line - the KLEINMAN/N) - were from the Kurland/Courland region (now southwestern Latvia) which, though absorbed by Russia in the Partition of Poland in 1795, was German in language and culture and not part of (although not far from) the Pale of Settlement.

My great-great-grandfather Abraham Kleinman immigrated from Friedrichstadt (now Jaunjelgava), Kurland, in 1887 and first settled in Lancaster, the heart of “Pennsylvania Dutch Country,” and later lived in several smaller towns in the region before ultimately settling in Harrisburg.

Counting my older brother’s children, five generations of my Jewish family (I’m also one-quarter Austrian and German Catholic by descent) have been born in “Pennsylvania Dutch Country,” and seven have lived in it (my great-great-great grandparents Elias and Sarah Rachel Kleinman—Abraham’s parents—followed their son, immigrating here in 1891).

All of Matt's Jewish ancestors were Litvaks, although he adds:

The Kleinmans represented a sort of German-Litvak hybrid, as did the Singers, I suppose, if they really did move from East Prussia to Lithuania ), as seems to be the norm in the vicinity of Harrisburg (of course, the Litvaks were preceded by Jews from southern Germany ). I believe the same is true of all of Pennsylvania Dutch Country—but that’s a matter for research far from completed!

Matt's geographical locations and names of interest include East Prussia, Singer; Courland, Kleinman, Toor, Tuch, Singer; and Lithuania, Singer, Tuch, Gerber, Garonzik, Ringer and Blau.

Do you have any written memoirs inherited from immigrant ancestors who settled in the area?

Would you share them with Matt? Readers are welcome to contact him.

Only in America: The Jewish experience

The new Philadelphia-based National Museum of American Jewish History has produced a video, "It's Your Story." Perhaps it should be titled "Only in America."

The new National Museum of American Jewish History is dedicated to telling the still-unfolding story of Jews in America, who embraced freedom with its choices and challenges as they shaped and were shaped by our nation.

The Museum envisions its new home as a place that welcomes all people, inviting them to discover what they have in common with the Jewish experience in America, as well as to explore the features that make this history distinctive.

Rising five stories above Independence Mall, in the heart of historic Philadelphia, the National Museum of American Jewish History will join Independence Hall, the National Constitution Center, the Liberty Bell and other landmarks at the hallowed site of America's birth. There could not be a more fitting place for a museum that will explore the promise and challenges of liberty through the lends of the American Jewish experience.

Tracing the Tribe recommends the video, which demonstrates various aspects of the American Jewish community's achievements.

View it here or below

Pittsburgh: 125 city directories online!

Searching for relatives who lived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania? Here's a collection of 125 directories dated 1815-1945.

The directory collection is "Historic Pittsburgh City Directories," in the University of Pittsburgh's Digital Research Library. Thanks to ResearchBuzz for this head's-up.

Search parameters: simple keyword (even an occupation) or advanced search; author or title. Results show which city directories contain the keyword and a count of how many hits in that specific directory. Click on "results detail," learn more about the specific directory and see the lines that matched your search.

You can also explore the community for that directory. Click on "Table of Contents," and see that directory's contents, including maps and advertisements. Click on those items and link to other pages.

Save images of pages of interest with a mouse right-click. While ResearchBuzz noted the option to view the page as an image or PDF, it didn't seem to work properly.

While ResearchBuzz did sample searches for SMITH and "clockmaker," Tracing the Tribe used a surname (COHEN/COHN) and keywords that might be more useful to our readers.

Here's one of the useful titles for Tracing the Tribe's readers:

The Pittsburgh Jewish community book; comprising the names and addresses of members and the history of Jewish organizations, also a history of the Jewish community of Pittsburgh. Publication Info: Pittsburgh, Pa., Jewish criterion, [c1917]-

A general search for COHEN produced 98 hits in the following resources (adding COHN produced more):

-- Wiggins' directory of Greensburg and Westmoreland County for 1890-91 containing, in alphabetical order, the names, occupations and residences of the inhabitants of Greensburg, also of a list of the taxpayers in the township, giving the assessed value of real estate and personal property.

-- Harris' Pittsburgh business directory for the year 1837 : including the names of all the merchants, manufacturers, mechanics, professional, men of business of Pittsburgh and its vicinity.

-- 1920 The Pittsburgh social secretaire.

-- 1917 The Pittsburgh Jewish community book; comprising the names and addresses of members and the history of Jewish organizations, also a history of the Jewish community of Pittsburgh.

-- 1898 Directory of all business and professional men and official guide of Beaver County, Penn'a. : together with a complete map.

-- 1913-17 Directory of the philanthropic, charitable, and civic agencies of the city of Pittsburgh. Vol. 1

-- Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities, 1864-1865.

-- The Pittsburgh and Allegheny blue book, 1895, Vol. 9.

-- Pittsburgh Allegheny business directory, 1875-6 : containing a complete classified and alphabetically arranged list of the business houses of the cities and adjacent boroughs

-- 1878 A confidential business report of Pittsburgh and Allegheny.
Author: Business Men's Protective Association.

-- Directory of Homestead Borough, West Homestead Borough, Munhall Borough 1902

-- Directory of Pittsburgh and Allegheny cities ... 1861-2 through 1895 (not a complete series)

-- 1850 The Pennsylvania business state directory: containing the names of professional men, mercantile firms, and manufacturing establishments, together with all the courts, post offices, public institutions, banks, corporations, companies, hotels, associations, & c. & c., throughtout the state, also the principal firms of the city of Cincinnatti, Ohio, and Baltimore, Maryland ;

-- 1854-5 Ulman's Pennsylvania business directory and eastern, western, and southern circular : for the year 1854-5,

-- c1880 Watson & Co.'s classified business directory of Pittsburgh, Allegheny, and prominent towns within a radius of forty miles.

Hits for COHEN ranged from one (and also a COHN) in the 1861-62 Pittsburgh and Allegheny City Director, page 55:

There were 17 hits for COHEN (and a few COHN) on several pages in the 1869-70 book. On page 101, see:

Scrolling through more recent books, numbers rise with the growth of the Jewish community in the city and surrounding areas.

On the Historic Pittsburgh site, there are top tabs for Full Text, Maps, Images, Finding Aids, Census, Chronology and the HSWP Catalog. Under Images, find more than 13,000 historic photographs in 44 collections, including the recently added 27-image Hebrew Institute Collection (1915-1970).

Read more here.

Tales of success: How sweet it is!

Back in June, Kevin Bowman in Ohio wrote to Tracing the Tribe about his Dutch Jewish ancestry, and shared information on the Akevoth database of Ashkenazim in 18th-century Amsterdam.

He used the Akevoth database to find information on his EZEKIEL family. The photo below is Moses Jacob Ezekiel at the Virginia Military Institute (VMI), who fought in the battle at New Market.


Just recently, he found additional success using a new UK database, SynagogueScribes.com, described by Tracing the Tribe.

Here's more on his two reports of success:

In addition to informing me about the Akevoth database, he described his success over several months.

I find it is the most extraordinary website. With this database, I have taken my family tree back 200 years beyond the tree that Rabbi Stern mapped in "First American Jewish Families."

He reported on the ancestors of his great-great-great-grandfather Jacob Ezekiel, a prominent American Jew, whose family was mapped by Stern here. His son, Moses Jacob (photo above), became a famous sculptor. Kevin did note that the points mapped by Stern each led to a brick wall on his genealogical quest.

Kevin knew the family adopted the surname in the US, but were known as Schreiber in the Netherlands. As he played with name variants, he discovered the Akevoth database.

Just googling around with alternative names, one day, I ran into the Akevoth database, and found this.

I was stunned to compare what I knew about the Ezekiel family to Jacob Jokeb Ezechiel Posnan(s)ki Schreiber’s family in the database. It matched nearly perfectly. Then, even more amazingly, it mapped out family trees going back another 200 years.

Says Kevin, an Ohio attorney, matching American families to the Dutch database is a difficult process because of changes in spelling, surname and others. He has been successful more than once, and believes that several of Stern's family trees could be expanded using the Akevoth database.

Occasionally, he's found people in the notes that should have been in the trees, but were somehow overlooked.

As an example, he writes about Sarah Abraham Waterman (Wasserman), listed as the wife of Michiel Mozes Doesburg Gompert Kleef, but not listed among the children of Abraham Waterman, despite the clear connection. The family moved to England and became Gompertz and their children moved to the US.

He recommends searching the entire website with alternative names to see if there are any missed connections, and also recommends variants with "ben" and "bat" as these constructions appear frequently.

Kevin, who also has Sephardic ancestry (De Castro), says the Ashkenazi database is far better than the Sephardic stuff available. Although materials consistently report that the Ezekiels were Sephardic, as does the family legend, and the fact that they attended a Philadelphia Sephardic synagogue, records reveal a patrilineal Ashkenazi family.

However, he's never been able to connect any of the individuals listed by Rabbi Stern on the De Castro to any information regarding Sephardic Jews in the Netherlands, except for one marriage entry (possibly!). But he keeps trying!

He further describes the transformation of the Kerkhoven surname into Myers in the US, which could help Myers descendants go back in time.

Aaltje Abraham Waterman, the sister of Kevin's Step-GGGG-Grandfather, married Emanuel Jacob Kerkhoven, son of Jacob Levie Kerkhoven. See this Akevoth family page. In the US, she became Adeline and he Emanuel Jacob Myers (see this Stern page)

In early December, Kevin had another round of success. Following his reading our post about CemeteryScribes.com and SynagogueScribes.com, his quest revealed the marriage record of his GGGG grandparents.

I always recommend that people using new databases and sites write to them when they find success, and that's what Kevin did. Gaby Laws of SynagogueScribes.com then forwarded his email to me.

I heard about your site through the Jewish Geneablog "Tracing the Tribe." They suggested that you may like to hear about any success in using your database. I think I may have found the marriage record of my 4xG Grandparents.

Ref.No. GSM 232/39 shows a marriage record Jabob Elias (Jeker ben Eliahu) who married Eliza Barnett (Libisha bat Jacob Simon) at the Great Synagogue in London on August 3, 1825. The dates and names all seem to fit, although I did not know Eliza's maiden name.

By 1849, Jacob Elias had died and Eliza remarried, their daughter Kate married John Bowman and the whole family moved to Chicago.This new information may have knocked down a brick wall for me.

We are all inspired by such stories of achievement, and Kevin has done very well in 2009.

When you find success, write in or comment on the relevant Tracing the Tribe post. Also, tell the database or website described that you learned about it here. This makes all of us very happy for you! Success inspires success.

Tracing the Tribe wishes Kevin and all our readers continued genealogical good fortune at this festive time of miracles!

Pittsburgh: Jewish Genealogy resources, Nov. 8

Tracing the Tribe readers in the Pittsburgh area will be interested in an open house at the Rauh Jewish Archives, on Sunday, November 8.

"Finding Your Family's Story: Jewish Genealogical Resources in the Rauh Jewish Archives" will run from 1-3pm, in the Senator John Heinz History Center library.

Learn to trace your family in Western Pennsylvania and beyond by using the archive's resources. Susan M. Melnick is the archivist at the Rauh Jewish Archives.

Archivists and a professional genealogist will be present to answer questions and provide assistance in archival and online resources, as well as information on preserving family documents.

The program is free with History Center admission. For more information and to register, send an email.

Philadelphia: The new Jewish archives, Oct. 12

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia will welcome Carole Le Faivre-Rochester, president of the Philadelphia Jewish Archives, at its next meeting on Monday, October 12.

The topic is "The New PJAC: Where We Are and Where We Are Going." The meeting begins at 7.30 pm at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, in Elkins Park.

The collection of the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center is one of the nation's finest regional collections documenting Jewish culture and history.

The PJAC's 5 million item collection is now part of the Temple University Libraries' Urban Archives, which documents the Delaware Valley's social, economic and physical development during the 19th-20th centuries.

At a September 9 ceremony marking the official handover, LeFaivre-Rochester received a priceless item, the 1924-29 diary of Lithuanian immigrant Israel Chanin.

For more information, see the JGSGP site. See more on the PJAC here.

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.

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.

Books: Jewish Publication Society's new blog

The Jewish Publication Society (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania) is directly responsible for my general interest in genealogy and specifically in Sephardic history.

Back in junior high school, when I attended summer music camp at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst, I found the campus bookstore and my first buy was the JPS edition of Cecil Roth's "History of the Marranos" - before most of us knew that the word was pejorative.

JPS now has its own blog and one post I found interesting was Don't know much bout Jewish history, which addresses historiography, or the history of history. Some historians write about history, other historians write abut how other historians write history.

Depending on who is writing for whom, their research methodology, philosophy and values, various writers will develop different views of the same event or period.

Naomi wrote in this post about Zakhor: Jewish Memory and Jewish History, by Yosef Hayim Yerushalmi, a case of Jewish historiography.

In this book, Yerushalmi traces the development of how Jews not only studied, but remembered, their own history. According to Yerushalmi, throughout much of its lifetime, Judaism has had an uneasy relationship with the formal writing and studying of history. He claims that writers of Jewish history over the ages have typically engaged in what should really be called “selective memory” – recording and commemorating some events and not others, couching historical events in a religious language and context, or simply forgoing recorded history in favor of commemorative holidays or liturgical poems. It’s all fascinating stuff, gracefully written, and completely accessible for any lay reader.

She adds that in the near future JPS will be publishing a Jewish history work dating to the medieval period. Sounds interesting!

Philadelphia: University's Jewish history collection

In Philadelphia, Temple University has taken in a treasure trove of local Jewish culture and history.

While attendees of the international Jewish genealogy conference - Philly 2009 - heard all about the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center's move to the university, it merits additional mention.

The university's dean of libraries Larry Alford, says the collection - a gift from the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center - is breathtaking: "The collection began to be built in 1972. It is five million items, some 4,500 linear feet of boxes." The collection documents Jewish life, experiences, culture, and history in this area.

Alford says it's a historian's dream, packed with hidden jewels throughout: "And that's what makes it so exciting for researchers. Discovering letters, documents that perhaps haven't been read before that really add to our understanding of history, understanding of life in the 19th century and the early 20th century, perhaps documents that shed light on historical mysteries."

One prime item is Israel Chanin's diary, written by the teenaged Lithuanian immigrant from 1924-1929.

Read more here.

Philly 2009: You thought it was over?

The excellent Philly 2009 event isn't over, not by a long shot!

Conference program co-chair Mark Halpern, who is also the JGS of Greater Philadelphia webmaster and editor of the group's publication, Chronicles, has informed Tracing the Tribe that the society is archiving for posterity relevant material for the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy.

So far, the JGSGP has gathered a selection of thank-you messages posted online or received by the society.

And here are links to articles about the conference in newspapers and other media (such as Tracing the Tribe's blog postings for Philly 2009) about the conference or speakers.

Read about JGSGP founder/first president/author Harry Boonin who was honored by both the IAJGS and the society.

The online Philadelphia-Area Jewish Genealogical Resource Guide, prepared by Steve Schecter and a team of volunteers is here.

New geneablogger colleague Steve Lasky, award-winning creator and founder of the Museum of Family History, created an exhibit honoring Philadelphia's Jewish heritage.

The JGSGP is also planning an extensive photo exhibit. If you have conference photos, please send the images (or a link to them) to [email protected]

Additionally, Mark is planning a special conference edition of Chronicles, and he's also asking speakers and attendees to submit articles about their experience in Philly. Suggestions are research you did at the conference, a brick wall breakthrough, a new family connection, a great session you attended, general observation of the event regardless of whether you were a first-timer or a veteran. Speakers can even submit their talk or a summary of it. Deadline for article submission is September 30.

What a great idea, Mark! Contact him to submit photos, links or articles (by September 30). Tracing the Tribe hopes future conferences will do the same.

South Jersey's Jewish genealogists spotlighted

I first met Rabbi Gary Gans back at the Boston IAJGS conference a very long time ago.

He's the First Rabbi of Rabbit World, over at the International Jewish Graveyard Rabbit blog (in fact, I've got to get some of his new posts up there!). His congregation, Beth Tikvah in Marlton, is the meeting place of the South Jersey affiliate of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia, and he's also active in DNA genetic genealogy.

So with all these interconnections, Tracing the Tribe was happy to see this story in Jewish Voices, published by the Southern New Jersey Jewish Federation, which covered several South Jersey Jewish genealogists.

For Rabbi Gary Gans of Marlton's Cong. Beth Tikvah, the best week of the year is when the international conference on Jewish genealogy takes place.

"This is one of the most creative weeks, when fellow genealogy addicts end up in the same place. It brings about a great new energy level," said Gans, whose synagogue is the meeting site for the Jewish Genealogical Society's South Jersey affiliate group. The rabbi, a tombstone maven, presided over two well attended workshops on the history of grave markers, focusing on how to decipher Hebrew inscriptions and use them to gain clues valuable in family research.

At the conference, Gans also discovered more contacts and resources to aid his own research. He has already found his great-grandmother's Lithuanian postal bank account in rubles, and noted that with the fall of the Iron Curtain and archives from Eastern Europe resurfacing, there has never been a better time for budding genealogists.

The story noted that conference co-chair David Mink who lived in Cherry Hill (where the paper is published) for more than 30 years before moving to Philly. The area proved important at the conference:

"South Jersey's Jewish agricultural communities are a story that isn't told too often, but this was an opportunity to tell that story," he said. Workshops and panel discussions about the Jewish agricultural colonies were followed by a mid-week bus tour of key sites.

The story covered other researchers from the area, such as David Brill, whose great-great-grandparents settled in the Carmel colony in the early 1880s but later moved to Philadelphia.

"A lot of the Philadelphia Jewish community find they have connections to these Jewish colonies," Brill said. He ran one of the workshops that gave the conference a unique local flavor, and helped lead the bus tour, which stopped at the one-room, circa 1890 Garton Road Shul in Rosenhayn, and visited the Alliance, Carmel and Woodbine colonies.

Ruth Bogutz, also of Cherry Hill, is president of the Tri-County Jewish Historical Society, and the story mentioned Rosenhayn, Jewish community buildings in Camden, Springville and Mount Laurel. Her conference session attracted area residents as well as those who had moved away.

"The dedication of the generations that came before me was quite amazing," said Bogutz, who plans to make a film about the Jewish communities of Burlington, Camden and Gloucester counties.

Mount Laurel resident Steve Schecter, who created the excellent 200-page Philadelphia and New Jersey resource guide for the conference (which he's planning to turn into a book or larger CD), was mentioned as well. He became interested when his mother talked about the old days in South Philadelphia.

"She'd refer to folks as 'boat relatives,' meaning they came over (from Europe) on the same boat. After my mother died and I did more research, I learned that they did come over and band together, but frequently they were related through marriage or were distant cousins," Schecter said.

Read the complete article at the link above.

Philadelphia: 'Lost' Jewish cemeteries

A Philadelphia organization is dedicated to the preservation of abandoned Jewish cemeteries.

The Association for the Preservation of Abandoned Jewish Cemeteries (APAJC) grew out of the mid-1990s discovery of the B'nai Israel Cemetery, later known as the Hebrew Mutual Burial Association. This southwest Philly site had been neglected for more than three decades and was an abandoned properties.

The Synagogue-Federation Council and the Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia organized volunteer efforts to clean up the site, but little progress was made. Community and council members formed a group to protect this and other abandoned Jewish cemeteries from vandalism.

The APAJC was created as an independent non-profit corporation in May 1999. In December 1999, it petitioned Orphan's Court of Philadelphia for title to the cemetery and received it later the same month.

The volunteers continue to clean-up the site and APAJC fund-raises and raises community awareness. When the project is complete, the group will work on two additional cemeteries.

The Hebrew Mutual Cemetery was founded in 1857 by a group of Dutch Jews. They also started B'nai Israel Congregation, or the Hollander Synagogue. The cemetery was a miniature replica of Amsterdam's Muyderberg Cemetery. It contains approximately 440 burial sites, primarily Ashkenazi Jews of Dutch origin. Among them are veterans of both Civil and Spanish-American Wars, as well as several people of historical importance. The cemetery is the only one in the Philadelphia area built by Dutch settlers of any faith.

When Napolean liberated Holland's Jews in the late 18th century, the same freedom threatened the religious autonomy the Jews had enjoyed under Dutch rule, causing economic and religious problems. The Dutch Ashkenazi Jews began to emigrate to the US in the early 19th century.

Philadelphia's early Jewish community was comprised of Dutch, German and Russian Jews and synagogues were organized on the origins of the immigrants.

In 1855 (other sources say 1852), the city's Dutch Jews established B'nai Israel Congregation in South Philadelphia; it was the fifth congregation. By 1905, none of the Dutch synagogues survived; some cemetery and benevolent associations continued to be active.

A timeline shows that the Hebrew Mutual Benefit and Benevolent Society of Brotherly Love was formed in 1856 to provide congregants' aid for the sick, for families of deceased members and synagogue expenses. The cemetery was purchased in 1857, but Hebrew Mutual took it over.

After many German Jews arrived in the late-1870s, the Dutch were a minority and the congregation declined. It opened a Hebrew school in 1878, but disbanded a year later and members joined other synagogues.

As the years passed, people moved or died, including the descendants of those buried in the cemetery and society members. The society, which had maintained the site for more than 90 years, could no longer care for it; it was abandoned in the late 1960s.

Read more on the history here.

Pennsylvania: Daniel Horowitz to speak, Aug. 13

Sorry I received this so late, but readers in the Hollidaysburg (Blair County), Pennsylvania area will have an opportunity to hear Daniel Horowitz tonight (Thursday, August 13) at a meeting of the Blair County Genealogical Society.

The meeting is from 7-9pm, at 431 Scotch Valley Road, Hollidaysburg. There is no charge to attend.

The session will be helpful for those interested in new computer and Internet technologies, conducting general or Jewish family research or just helping others. Find out how to access resources for Jewish research in surprising areas and also learn about resources for pre-state Israel research.

Born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, he and his family have lived in Israel since 2005. Daniel is translation and database manager at MyHeritage.com, a genealogical social networking site with many exciting features for connecting families around the world.

He's a computer instructor, teacher/creator of the "Searching for My Roots" genealogy project for young people. He was a founder and lecturer for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Venezuela, and is a member and webmaster of the Israel-based Jewish Family Research Association (JFRA Israel) and the Horowitz Family Association.

He's lectured at several international conferences, and is a board member of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS).

Philly 2009: IAJGS award winners

At tonight's conference banquet, the annual International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) awards were announced.

The award committee was chaired by Marc Manson (Michigan), and committee members Daniel Horowitz (Israel), Phyllis Kramer (Florida), Kahlile Mehr (Utah) and Gary Mokotoff (New Jersey).

Outstanding Programming or Project that

Advances the Objectives of Jewish Genealogy

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, for its genealogy course. Accepted by president Heidi Urich.

Outstanding Publication by a

Member Organization of IAJGS

The New York Genealogical Society, for its Dorot quarterly journal which has been published for 30 years. Joy Rich is editor, and the award was accepted by president Linda Cantor.

Outstanding Contribution to Jewish Genealogy

via the Internet, Print or Electronic Product

Harry Boonin of Philadelphia for his two books, The Jewish Quarter of Philadelphia and Life and Times of Kesher Israel. He also received a special award from the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia, conference co-host, for his work.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Joyce Field was honored for her tireless efforts on behalf of JewishGen's Jewish Online Worldwide Burial Register, Holocaust Database, Yizkor Book Database and content acquisition.

The Malcolm H. Stern Grant

The Stern Grant committee was chaired by SallyAnn Sack (Maryland), with Saul Isroff (UK) and Rochelle Kaplan (Utah). A $2,500 grant was awarded to Shamir of Latvia for its project: "The guide to Jewish materials stored in the Latvian Historical Archive.

Although the award was not announced publicly at the banquet, society voting delegates received the information in their information packets at the business meeting.

Its main purpose is to prepare a comprehensive overview of existing materials about the Latvian Jewish community in the Latvian State Archive for a guide that will benefit Jewish genealogists and others.

The archive holds unique materials from the 16th century which have never been catalogued and never made available to the public. Only a few archive workers are aware of the amount of that information.

Shamir is a non-profit organization in Riga, Latvia. It's main goal is to commemorate the memory of Latvian Jews. Its activities are also aimed at genealogical issues, such as renovation if the Jaunjelgava Jewish cemetery to recover more than 300 names of Jews buried there; Latvian synagogues and rabbis (1918-1940), and the current project is the Latvian Jewish Encyclopedia. tracing the history and fate of Latvian Jewry from 1561 to today.