Nu? What's New? The E-zine of Jewish Genealogy From Avotaynu Gary Mokotoff, Editor Volume 13, Number 40 | September 30, 2012 Every government puts value on preserving its history. That is why we have national archives. Genealogy preserves history; the history of a family. It cannot be done without access to records, just as historians cannot preserve a nation's history without access to records. It is a greater good than the right to privacy. It is a greater good than the risk of identity theft. Subscribe to Nu? What's New? at http://avotaynu.com/SubscribeNWN.htm

2014 Conference Dates Announced For those who like to plan far ahead, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies has posted to their website that the 34th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy will be held July 27–August 1, 2014, in Salt Lake City at the Hilton Salt Lake City Center, just three blocks from the Mormon Family History Center. No other particulars are available. The 2013 conference is in Boston from August 4–9. Information about that conference is at http://iajgs.org/2013_Boston/2013.html. IIJG Announces Research Grants The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy has announced it has awarded two grants from proposals it has received for family history research. One is for a study into "Family and Kinship in the Jewish City of Piotrków Trybunalski in the 19th Century” by Tomasz Jankowski of Wroclaw, Poland. The second is to Laurence Leitenberg of Lausanne, Switzerland, who, together with Sandy Crystall of Bow, New Hampshire, USA, will create a series of "Digital Maps of Jewish Populations in Europe (1750–1930)" for online viewing. IIJG reports that the Jankowski work will be wholly innovative, because he proposes to use sophisticated family reconstruction techniques that have never been applied in a systematic fashion to a large Jewish community. If successful, the work will have broad implications for the genealogical reconstruction of Jewish communities. The Leitenberg-Crystall maps fall into the category of the "Tools and Technologies" which the Institute strives to produce for Jewish family historians and social scientists generally. Information about IIJG can be found at http://iijg.org. Status of Various Freedom of Information Activities in the U.S. Jan Meisels Allen, IAJGS Vice President and Chairperson of its Public Records Access Monitoring Committee has reported on a number of matters regarding access to government records important to family history research. Six bills before Congress regarding the Social Security Death Index (Death Master File) have not been acted on, and Congress has adjourned until after the elections. If they are not passed by the time the new Congress is seated in January, the bills will die and have to be reintroduced. All these bills limit access to the SSDI in some way. Laws at the state level which restrict access are being challenged, Allen reports. The State of Virginia recently passed a law that includes provisions of its state public disclosure law that allows only its own residents access rights to public records. This is now being challenged in federal courts. Information can be found at http://tinyurl.com/99emf8o. Some states no longer provide cause of death on death certificates, something important to family medical history. Such a law is being challenged in Indiana. An article about the topic can be viewed at http://tinyurl.com/8dm3xz5. JewishGen Offering Course in Search Strategies for Genealogy How to search the Internet to locate people, information about people, or information important to your family history research is an important skill for genealogists. JewishGen is offering a course titled “Search Strategies for Genealogy” which will be held October 15–28. It is two-week class that is a series of 10 lessons. Included will be search basics, search tips and tricks and advanced search parameters. There will be a concentration on using Google as the preferred search engine. This class will be taught in a forum setting open 24/7 with daily tasks and assignments that should take no more than an hour a day. Each lesson includes illustrative quick search problems using Google and selected genealogical internet databases. The cost is $18. Additional information and how to enroll can be found at http://www.jewishgen.org/education. October 1 Deadline for Discount on City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York  New York University Press has just published a remarkable history of the Jews of New York, and Avotaynu is offering it at a discount until Monday, October 1. Titled City of Promises: A History of the Jews of New York, it is a three-volume boxed set; 1108 pages in total. The list price is $99. Until October 1, Avotaynu is offering it for $84 plus shipping, a 15% discount. Furthermore, the publisher has informed us they plan to increase the price on January 1, 2013, to $125. Order now! The first volume, titled “Haven of Liberty,” chronicles the colonial days of New York Jewry from the arrival of the first Jews to New York (then New Amsterdam) in 1654 and highlights their political and economic challenges. Volume II, “Emerging Metropolis,” describes New York’s transformation into a Jewish city. Focusing on the urban Jewish-built environment—its tenements and banks, synagogues and shops, department stores and settlement houses—it conveys the extraordinary complexity of Jewish immigrant society. Volume III, “Jews in Gotham,” highlights neighborhood life as the city’s distinctive feature. New York retained its preeminence as the capital of American Jews because of deep roots in local worlds that supported vigorous political, religious, and economic diversity. Additional information, including how to order, can be found at http://avotaynu.com/books/NewYork.htm. Too many Myxxx.com, Ancestxxx.com, Genealxxx.com The last issue of Nu? What’s New? referred to the new record matching feature of MyFamily.com. The correct company name is MyHeritage.com. The link, http://tinyurl.com/RecordMatching, was correct. Avotaynu Anthology of Jewish Genealogy     All back issues of our journal AVOTAYNU from 1985–2011     • 27 years   • 105 issues   • 2,900 articles  • 7,000 pages,   Google Custom Search engine  Download or print articles  Cost is $35.  Additional information at http://avotaynu.com/books/anthology.htm. Number of articles in Anthology by topic: Algeria 8 Argentina 21 Australia 36 Austria 17 Austro-Hungary 7** Belarus* 26 Belgium 24 Bermuda 1 Book Reviews 289 Brazil 25 Bulgaria 5 Burma 1 Canada 94 Caribbean 9 Cuba 3 China 10 Computers 21 Conferences 52 Costa Rica 1 Croatia 3 Cyprus 1 Czech Republic 33 Denmark 2 DNA 25 East Europe– Gen’l  16 Egypt 11 England 125 Estonia* 5 Ethiopia1 Europe-General 25 Finland 1 France 102 Galicia 20 General 233 Germany 173 Gibraltar 1 Greece 12 Holland 83 Holocaust 177 Hungary 46  India 6 Iraq 3 Iran 5 Ireland 2 Israel 125 Italy 14  Latvia* 26 LDS 29 Libya 1 Lithuania* 71 Methodology 84 Moldova* 5 Morocco 18 New Zealand 13 North Africa 2 Poland 118 Portugal 21 Rabbinic 57 Romania 33 Russia 46**  Scotland 27 Sephardic 42 Serbia 2 Slovakia 1 South Africa 22 South America 1 Spain 13 Sudan 1 Sweden 5 Switzerland 27 Syria 3 Tunisia 3 Turkey 22 Ukraine* 57 United States   227 USSR 92** Venezuela 1 Zimbabwe 1

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