by Susan Weinberg In Jewish genealogy, the fluidity of given names is often a brick wall. You can't find the record if you don't know the name.  Jewish traditions have unique features, presenting both challenges and clues. Typically, a Jewish child receives a secular name and a Hebrew name. For Ashkenazic Jews, that name is usually after a deceased grandparent or great-grandparent. When several cousins bear the same name, you can assume that a grandparent of similar name probably died shortly before.   Our ancestors came from another country where they had a secular name, a Heb ..read more

by Susan Weinberg As a genealogist, I am a keeper of stuff. I would hazard a guess that most genealogists are pack rats, as they know that gems are hidden in the materials that others with a less historical bent would blithely discard. With this orientation at my core, it is not surprising that I have recently become enamored by the Cairo Genizah. In a few days I head off to an international conference on Jewish genealogy in London. They will be showing the film ,From Cairo to the Cloud and Dr. Ben Outhwaite, the head of the Genizah research at Cambridge will be at the conference. I’ll have an ..read more

In February, MNJGS was pleased to host Michael Morgenstern, an educator at the LA Holocaust Museum who has taken on the project of translating portions of the Forverts (the Forward) for JewishGen. This is a valuable genealogical resource which can be mined with very limited Yiddish skills through his translations and or navigated in its original Yiddish. While the modern day Forward is published in English, this discussion focused on the Yiddish version which captures a picture of immigrant life. A Unique Role Michael shared the history of the Forverts and the role it played in Jewish American ..read more

Do you have family members who may have fought in the Civil War? Recently I heard from the Shapell Manuscript Foundation about their Roster Project, a comprehensive database of Jewish-American soldiers and sailors who fought in the Civil War as Union or Confederate soldiers. They started with an 1895 register by Simon Wolf titled The American Jew as Patriot, Soldier and Citizen. The register lists details on Jewish soldiers who fought in the Civil War and was pulled together in response to anti-Semitism. The database is included in the Jewishgen databases and you can find more information here ..read more

by Daniel Kazez, President, CRARG (Częstochowa-Radomsko Area Research Group) When I was growing up, I knew very few of our relatives. One grandmother lived 3000 miles away, another lived 5000 miles away; one grandfather died when I was quite young, another died many years before that. I was told, “We didn’t have any cousins.” When I graduated from high school, I honestly didn’t know what the word cousin meant! (Spoiler alert: In fact, we had lots and lots of cousins.) CRARG had an odd beginning: I visited the city archives in Chicago, found the naturalization record for my great grandfather, a ..read more

On the changing nature of given names in an immigrant population I love solving puzzles. I often have a “spidey sense” about the answer before I have the logical reasons to lend it credence. There is something operating beneath the surface that I can’t fully explain, but I study my path to try to grasp its secrets. I am drawn to genealogy in much the same way that I am drawn to reading. It is a way to imagine the lives of other people in other times, plus it has that added benefit of allowing me to solve puzzles. There is an impatient part of me that wants to rush the process, but I have learn ..read more

I often think of my life as a bit of a Rube Goldberg creation. I set something in motion, as if I were sending a marble spinning on its path. But that path is seldom a straight line and takes me in unexpected directions, introduces me to new people and new ideas, and often leads to surprises along the way. Just as I trace my path backwards when I solve a genealogy puzzle, I also retrace the pathways that have led me forward in my explorations in life. I am often amazed at the uncharted paths that result from that initial step. Among the many projects that I have taken on, one has proven especi ..read more

As genealogists we uncover our family stories. An important part of this process is to retell and commemorate that history. A recent article about stained glass artist, Claude Riedel, presented some unusual ways to do just that. Walter and Ruth Elias, a St. Louis Park couple, are named in the article with a unique story of the creation of a Ner Tamid. Walter told us that their story began in 2013 when on a roots trip to Poland. He recalled, “We visited Hasaq, a labor and concentration camp in Czestochowa, Poland where Ruth’s parents were slave laborers during WW2. The camp was in ruin and as w ..read more

When my father died, I was the first one to tackle his office. My father loved information. If something interested him, it ended up in a growing pile that ambitiously reached skyward. When we would prod him to tackle the clutter, he would threaten to light a match to it. I think he was joking. After his death, I wouldn’t let my siblings enter that space until I first went through it. Mind you, it wasn’t hard to keep them at bay; it was rather daunting. As the family historian, I feared that someone else would pitch something that only I would find valuable. When I got into family history, my ..read more

I was first drawn into genealogy when the immigration records went on-line. There was something about imagining that journey that fascinated me. It can become pretty frustrating however, when you can find no trace of it, as if family miraculously appeared, leaving no tendrils of history trailing behind. I’ve learned the key to solving puzzles is addressing the blind spots created by our assumptions. We can test our assumptions, but if we consider them to be givens, they block our path to the true story.  I’ve learned to approach every puzzle with skepticism, especially when eval ..read more