Nu? What's New? The E-zine of Jewish Genealogy From Avotaynu Gary Mokotoff, Editor Volume 16, Number 13 | March 25, 2015 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://www.avotaynu.com/nuwhatsnew.htm

Underlined words are links to sites with additional information. Special Edition! Announcing Avotaynu Online! Avotaynu Inc is pleased to announce the creation of “Avotaynu Online,” an exciting new venture intended to stimulate collaboration among Jewish genealogists in all its forms, including conferences and meetings, DNA studies, online family trees, social networking, the development of genealogical standards suitable for the Internet age, and developments in related fields (i.e., history, law, computer science) that have an impact on Jewish genealogy. Leading participants in these areas will provide in-depth reports on events and discoveries on a regular basis. Avotaynu Online will be available free of charge from the venture’s website at http://avotaynuonline.com, which will be shared simultaneously on Facebook and Twitter. Reports will be delivered in different formats, including text, video, and podcasts. As a bonus to readers, all articles from 2007–2011 published in AVOTAYNU, the International Review of Jewish Genealogy, are available at no charge at the Avotaynu Online website. Articles from all other years will continue to be available on a subscription basis by visiting http://www.avotaynu.com/books/Anthology.htm. Subscribe Now! Readers are encouraged to subscribe to the Avotaynu Online news feed by registering their e-mail address at the top of our web page, and to also follow public commentary on its articles by “liking” the official Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/AvotaynuOnline as well as our pages at Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other social media outlets. By virtue of its focus on the in-depth reporting of specific subjects, Avotaynu Online is intended to be entirely distinct from the existing print journal, AVOTAYNU, which for over three decades has covered the broad spectrum of Jewish family history research, and from the weekly Nu? What’s New?, which reports breaking stories in the world of genealogy. Planned DNA Project Avotaynu Online intends to stimulate activity in our field. One excellent example relates to the field of Jewish DNA studies, in which Avotaynu Online has taken up the challenge of helping genetic genealogists develop, execute and publish studies of publishable quality. To accomplish this, Avotaynu Online has teamed up to create the Avotaynu Foundation DNA Project at FamilyTreeDNA.com. This project will help fund the development of a worldwide Jewish DNA database and will assemble a team of experts to help nurture studies that will make use of the database to illuminate recent and ancient Jewish history. Avotaynu Online, with its ability to publish stories of virtually unlimited length and detail, hopes to bring these new academic-quality studies to its readers. Avotaynu Online aims to promote conversation within the genealogical community on the subjects it covers. Unlike print, which is a one-way medium, readers of articles will be encouraged to respond to our authors directly from our pages, and to engage them in developing new lines of thinking. Similarly, unlike print, our authors will be encouraged to revise their articles with new or revised information as soon as it becomes available, so that their stories will continue over time to remain fresh and accurate. Experiment and Collaborate Avotaynu intends to experiment and collaborate. It is our belief that there are subjects tangential to Jewish genealogy that may be of great interest to our readers, such as Jewish travel, history, demographics, and health issues. In the past we have been limited by available space in our quarterly when deciding whether to cover these interesting subjects. The availability of virtually unlimited space on our Avotaynu Online website will free us from this limitation. We have also developed partnerships with prestigious institutions such as the Leo Baeck Institute and the International Institute of Jewish Genealogy, among others, so that we may bring you the best thinking from some of the genealogy’s leading experts. Principals Managing editor of Avotaynu Online will be Adam Brown, who has for many years been a Curator for the collaborative online family tree hosted by Geni/MyHeritage and is the founder of the Jewish DNA Project at FamilyTreeDNA. Sallyann Amdur Sack-Pikus will be Editor-in-Chief and Gary Mokotoff will be Publisher. History of Avotaynu Inc Avotaynu Inc began in 1985 as the publisher of its namesake, AVOTAYNU, the International Review of Jewish Genealogy. To date 117 issues of AVOTAYNU have been published. In 1991, the company expanded its efforts to provide the tools genealogists need to research their Jewish family history by publishing its first book, the award-winning Where Once We Walked. To date, the company has published 70 books. For its publishing efforts, the company received the “Body of Work” award of the Association of Jewish Libraries. This award has been given only five times in the past 30 years. In 2001, Avotaynu added Nu? What’s New?, a weekly e-zine that provides information about current events that affect Jewish family history. In 2009, Avotaynu introduced the AVOTAYNU Anthology, which provides the online ability to search back issues of the publication using a full word search engine provided by Google. Avotaynu Online is it newest venture. 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 (one-time charge).  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

Nu? What's New? is published weekly by Avotaynu, Inc. Copyright 2015, Avotaynu, Inc. All rights reserved To change an e-mail address, send a request to nuwhatsnew@earthlink.net To subscribe to AVOTAYNU, The International Review of Jewish Genealogy, go to http://www.avotaynu.com/journal.htm To order books from our catalog, go to http://www.avotaynu.com/catalog.htm To contact us by postal mail, write: Avotaynu, Inc.; 794 Edgewood Ave.; New Haven, CT 06515 Telephone  (U.S.) : 475-202-6575