There's always something new at Steve Lasky's virtual Museum of Family History. Here's the March update: - “Churbn Lettland: The Destruction of the Jews of Latvia� – Very important telling of events, written in 1947 by a survivor. More material from the English... Continue reading here.......

In 1349, nearly 1,000 Jews died in one day from the Black Death in Erfurt, Germany. The plague wiped out about a third of Europe's population.In Erfurt, the Jewish population was destroyed and Europe's oldest synagogue abandoned.Fast forward to Erfurt in 1998, when a trove of jewellery weighing near...

There's more to genealogy than name lists. The field includes all aspects of life, including music. How did music impact the lives of our ancestors? Were they involved in music as performers or listeners? As an important part of life, music helps us understand our ancestors and the times they lived....

Keynote speaker at Philly 2009's opening session will be Father Patrick Desbois, the distinguished French priest, author and humanitarian.He will speak on "The Holocaust by Bullets: A Priest’s Journey to Uncover the Truth Behind the Murder of 1.5 million Jews," the title of his book.The conference...

Portugal has seen the first kosher wine, the first kosher olive oil, and now, the first kosher cheese - a hard, goat's milk cheese - since the Inquisition, detailed in this Haaretz story.As Tracing the Tribe's readers know, bnai anusim (Hebrew; conversos, Spanish) are the descendants of Jews forced ...

Family roots in San Diego, California? If so, the new searchable website of The Jewish Historical Society of San Diego may help you add leaves to your family tree.The JHSSD offers more than 50 collections of personal and communal papers, documents and photos, local Jewish newspapers, including signi...

A recent book details the Jewish history of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, reviewed in the Pittsburgh Tribune.Barbara Burstin, author of "Steel City Jews: A History of Pittsburgh and its Jewish Community, 1840-1915," says that Cincinnati was a more enticing destination than Western Pennsylvania for a pra...

Some 100 people attended Arthur Benveniste's February program, "Secret Jews: History and Culture of Crypto-Jews and Their Research for Jewish Roots and Identity," hosted by the Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley (JGSCV), near Los Angeles.Tracing the Tribe informed readers about this pr...

Here's a "clash of culture" I have personally lived.The Los Angeles Jewish Journal focuses on Ashkenazi-Sephardic cross-cultural assimilation. Not out from Judaism, but between the two major groups of Jews as delineated by origin, Eastern European and the widest definition of Sephardic roots.Writes ...

We Jews are called the People of the Book for good reason, and throughout history, many of our books have been lost for well-known reasons. If you have a spare $40 million in your pocket and love rare Jewish books, this 13,000-item (Sotheby's says "more than 11,000") collection is for you. If you do...