The following is a press release written by the folks at Sefaria:

A complete English translation of the Mishneh Torah interconnected with other Jewish texts is being digitally offered for the first time ever by the nonprofit organization Sefaria, which digitizes and shares Jewish texts for free in Hebrew along with translations and commentaries.

“We are so excited for learners to dive into this rich text and share their reflections with each other and the world,” said Sara Wolkenfeld, Sefaria’s chief learning officer. “For the Jewish people, our texts are our collective inheritance. They belong to everyone and we want them to be available to everyone, in the public domain or with creative commons licenses.”

The Mishneh Torah, authored by the medieval Torah scholar Maimonides, commonly known as the Rambam, between 1170 and 1180, while he lived in Egypt, consists of 14 books and is a major code of Jewish religious law. Users can access it on Sefaria’s website and through the Sefaria app.

The translation provided by Sefaria was completed between 1986 and 2007 by Rabbi Eliyahu Touger. The text on the Sefaria website comes with Hebrew commentaries; interlinking to other religious texts, to help readers understand the work; and topic tagging so they can research related ideas that interest them.

The Sefaria website also allows users to create shareable source sheets that incorporate religious texts from Sefaria’s catalogue with their own commentary.

Sefaria is used by more than 500,000 people each month, including students, educators and scholars.

The following announcement was written by the Augusta (Georgia) Genealogical Society:

Augusta Genealogical Society
Augusta, Georgia

October 2022

Virtual Genealogical Program

Cemetery Symbolism and Conservation

When:      Saturday, Oct 29, 2022

Time:       1:00 - 2:00 pm EST

Where:    Online - Register at www.augustagensociety.org

                 The Registration deadline is Oct 28.  Registration required to receive Zoom link

Price:       FREE to AGS members or $10 for nonmembers

Limited seating will be offered at Adamson Library to view the virtual presentation. To reserve a seat, please call (706) 722-4073.

Speaker:  Michael Lacefield

Although some people may feel uncomfortable in graveyards, genealogists relish the information that can be gleaned from their ancestors’ headstones. Michael Lacefield will walk us through the ins and outs of cemetery symbolism and how best to preserve our ancestors' final resting place.

Michael Lacefield grew up in Perry, Georgia, and graduated from Middle Georgia College and the University of Georgia with a business degree. In 1969, he was drafted; and he retired from the Army after almost 22 years with the rank of Master Sergeant.

Michael began his interest in genealogy in 1991 when Colonel Giddens, who worked with Michael's wife Dollie, had a listing of his own relatives in his office. Thus, began Michael's quest to find the connection between Dollie and the Colonel, who were third cousins. Since then, Michael has been hooked on genealogy.

Michael began research on his family in the Bowen Cemetery, which was in the woods. It was there he discovered the grave of his great-great-great grandfather. Michael has given many tombstone presentations and has studied with John Appell, a nationally known professional gravestone conservator.

JOIN AGS NOW and enjoy the benefits of several programs, which will be free to members in 2022 - 2023.

The Augusta Genealogical Society is a non profit organization founded in Augusta, Georgia in September 1979.

From an article by Zvika Klein published in The Jerusalem Post:

Tens of millions of descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities, whose ancestors were forcibly converted from the 14th century onward, can now apply to receive a “Certificate of Sephardi Ancestry.”

Recent academic and genetic research has shown that as many as 200 million people, largely in Latin and North America and Europe, have “significant Jewish ancestry” dating back to the time of the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal.

The initiative was launched by the American Sephardi Federation’s Institute of Jewish Experience (ASF IJE), Reconectar, an organization dedicated to helping the descendants of Spanish and Portuguese Jewish communities reconnect with the Jewish people, and Genie Milgrom, an award-winning author, researcher and genealogist who was able to fully document her unbroken maternal lineage 22 generations, as far back as 1405 to pre-Inquisition Spain and Portugal.

Milgrom is also leading work to digitize Inquisition records that provide an unprecedented amount of genealogical information for those who seek to discover their possible Jewish roots. These and a vast array of other information on the certification website will help the descendants, otherwise known as Anusim, Marranos, Conversos or Crypto-Jews, discover their heritage.

You can read more at https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/article-717479.

Selected by Georgia stakeholders and funded by the DLG, these materials document the Church’s interaction with slavery, emancipation, and religion.

These collections are: 

Lexington Presbyterian Church (Lexington, Ga.) records, 1822-1916. 

The names of enslaved church members may be found inside this collection. It’s possible that these are the sole documents proving that some of these people actually existed. There are also records of famous academics and politicians who lived in Oglethorpe County, Georgia.

Henry Newton papers, 1842-1900. 

Henry Newton grew up in Athens, Georgia, as a Presbyterian preacher. In 1841, he received his bachelor’s degree from the University of Georgia, and in 1845, he received his master’s degree from Columbia Theological Seminary. Newton preached to both enslaved and liberated African Americans throughout the state from 1845 to 1897 in several northeast Georgian churches.

These projects are the Columbia Theological Seminary’s second collaboration with the DLG. 

Ashley Simpson, former president of the Athens Historical Society and Georgia historical marker researcher, describes the importance of having these materials available for research freely online:

“Digitization has allowed historians, genealogists, family researchers, and the merely curious to see and use records without harming the originals. 

During COVID, we discovered that we could all work with the digitized manuscript simultaneously by working remotely.  

Access to digital copies of original documents permits some claims to be verified and some misinformation to be disproven. 

Granting digital access to the Henry Newton papers and the Lexington Presbyterian Church records facilitates a greater understanding of daily life and the rich historical background of northeast Georgia. ”

About Columbia Theological Seminary 

Columbia Theological Seminary exists to educate and nurture faithful, imaginative, and effective leaders for the sake of the church and the world. It is an educational institution of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.) and a community of theological inquiry, leadership development, and formation for ministry in the service of the church of Jesus Christ. Visit ctsnet.edu for more information. 

The following announcement was written by the folks at rootstrust:

Do you have Hispanic names in your family tree or among the members of your extended family? If you do, you have likely noticed that some genealogy programs do not allow them to be properly entered. The reason is that Hispanic names do not fit the mold of Anglo-American name components: forename, middle names and surname. Hispanic names can have multiple forenames, no middle names, a paternal surname and a maternal surname. The two surnames may be separated by a space, a hyphen or the conjunction ‘e’ or ‘y’. In addition, married females retain their surnames but may append to their name the preposition ‘de’ followed by their husband’s surnames.

For example, the president of Mexico is Andrés Manuel López Obrador. His forenames are Andrés and Manuel, his paternal surname is López and his maternal surname is Obrador. His first lady is Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller de López Obrador. Such names, especially the female ones, provide enough information to start a pedigree chart.

The current version of rootstrust (Build 411.1) that can be downloaded from rootstrust.com, supports the Hispanic naming tradition. Hispanic names can be entered component by component.

When you add a child or children of Hispanic parents, the forms will be prepopulated with the parents’ paternal and maternal surnames. The name search form also accommodates the idiosyncrasies of Hispanic names.

Prior to adding support for Hispanic names, rootstrust already accommodated two other types of unconventional personal names:

1. 1. Family name first. Hungarian names and the names of most far-eastern countries and parts of India place the family name before the given names. For example, we refer to the president of Hungary as Viktor Mihaly Orban, yet in Hungary he is Orbán Viktor Mihály. The Chinese president is Xi Jinping, but many westerners do not realize that the Xi is his family name. And to make things more complicated, the components of Hungarian names are separated by spaces, and honorific titles such as Dr. precede the family name. The parts of a far-eastern name are not separated by spaces, and honorific titles follow the family name. Thus, Dr. John Smith would be smithdr.john. rootstrust automatically handles these cultural idiosyncrasies for the user and optionally lets you specify whether a person’s name is to be displayed with the family name in initial position. With rootstrust you can even maintain foreign names in their native character set as well as their Romanized equivalents (习近平 and Xí Jìnpíng) as shown below.

Note: the green tab titles in the above figure indicate that the tab has content.

1. 2. Patronymic names. Such names were frequently used instead of fixed surnames in past centuries in Scandinavia, Iceland, Finland, the Netherlands, Dutch Colonial America and the Ottoman Empire. A patronym is the father’s given name with a gender suffix (Johanssson, Johansdotter). Fixed surnames remain the same, generation after generation, whereas patronyms change each generation. If the father’s naming tradition has been appropriately set, rootstrust will automatically generate the patronyms of children as you add them. Similarly, if a child’s naming tradition is set to a patronymic type, the father’s given name will be automatically provided when adding the parents. In the following screenshots notice the difference in the automatically generated male and female patronyms. The father’s name was Johan Bengtsson, and he was the son of Bengt Svensson.

So, if your current genealogy program does not allow you to deal with unconventional personal names in an acceptable manner, give rootstrust a try. You can download it for Windows, macOS, Linux or ChromeOS at rootstrust.com, and you can test it free of charge for 30 days.

Here's my hint of the day (or week or month or whatever... there's really no timeframe for this): Put tape or something else over the webcam on your computer. Or Amazon Show. Or any other device capable of sending video.

It doesn't really have to be tape. It could be a sticky note, or a business card, a sticker of some sort, or a dab of peanut butter. Your choice.

If you have children or grandchildren in your house frequently, this article is doubly important to you. The methodology may vary but the underlying principal remains the same: stop your webcam from being on all the time (or ever).

Hackers, government agents, and teenagers can, and do, use easily accessible tools and phishing techniques to hijack webcams of unsuspecting people, often who they know, and watch them through their camera. They can store images and videos of people in compromising situations in their bedrooms, and many of these images and videos are uploaded to shady websites. A slew of news stories in the past few years have revealed that what was once considered paranoia is now an uncomfortable frequent reality.

If you really want to get fancy, you can purchase the CloudValley Webcam Cover Slide.

It is designed primarily for laptops but, with a bit of imagination, I suspect it can be applied to other computers. (A bit of tape should do it.) These cost $6.99 for package of 2 on Amazon (go to Amazon and search for "CloudValley Webcam Cover Slide.") You can then block or unblock your webcam within a second or two by simply sliding it with your finger.

If you don't have a laptop, you can choose from dozens of other webcam blockers both on Amazon and probably any other computer retailer.

I was especially pleased to notice that most all Amazon Show devices ("Hey! Alexa") have built-in covers that slide over the webcam in a second or two. I have one of these in every room of my house (OK, so I admit I am a nerd) and the Amazon Show devices in my bathrooms and bedrooms all have the cover in place all the time. If I am chatting with someone and want to enable video, it only takes a second or so to slide the cover off. I use this to talk with my grandchildren who live about 1,000 miles from me.

This prevents me from displaying "more of me than I really wanted to show."

Regardless of which devices you have in your home, your rule of thumb should be "If it is capable of sending video, that video should also be blocked when not being used."

The following announcement was written by Findmypast:

Do you think you have learned everything about your ancestors' hometown? Think again. There may be some new (and very old) information available today.

Across Europe, once-submerged villages, ships and bridges some dating back thousands of years have re-emerged this year as rivers and reservoirs have dried up. The steady stream of gripping photos have circulated while much of the continent faced a string of extreme heat waves and a devastating drought, two phenomena that scientists say are made more likely and more severe by human-caused climate change.

The remains of Aceredo in northwestern Spain, including homes and trucks that usually sit at the bottom of a reservoir, have been visible since late last year. The compounding impacts of drought and extreme heat have been clear.

In Spain, the Dolmen of Guadalperal, a four- to five-millennium-old megalithic monument often called the Spanish Stonehenge, rose from a drought-hit dam west of Madrid. In Italy, where residents are facing its worst drought in 70 years, ruins of an ancient Roman Neronian bridge are visible in the Tiber River. One of Germanys largest reservoirs, the Edersee, has shrunken so much that the foundation of Berich, a village that was flooded in 1914, can be seen. In Prahovo, Serbia, water levels in the Danube River have fallen so low that more than a dozen sunken Nazi Germany World War II boats are now exposed. And in Northern England, falling water levels at Baitings Reservoir have revealed an ancient packhorse bridge.

You can read more on the nytimes.com.

The world’s largest family history conference is back—virtual and in person for 2023!

Save the Date! 2–4 March 2023

Should genealogy conferences be held in person or virtually? That is the question being asked nowadays by many conference organizers The organizers of the RootsTech conferences made a decision: let's do both!

For 2023, you may enjoy your choice: a full virtual conference experience, or join the crowds in Salt Lake City for an enhanced in-person event!

Quoting from the FamilySearch web site:

With hands-on classes, engaging workshops, exclusive live entertainment, and the innovative Expo Hall, there is nothing quite like being in-person for RootsTech. Plus, get access to all of the virtual classes and events, even after the conference is over, all for one low price.

What to Expect from RootsTech?

A family history conference. An on-demand learning library. A way to grow closer to the people, places, and stories that matter most. RootsTech is all that and so much more. Join us as we celebrate the joy of connection together.

There is a lot more information available at: https://www.familysearch.org/rootstech/.

From the 23andMe Blog:

This week, we released a new 23andMe+ Wellness report on seasonal allergies that is powered by 23andMe Research. 

While the sniffling, sneezing and itchy eyes that come with seasonal allergies are often triggered by pollen from blooming trees and flowers in spring and summer, many of those with seasonal allergies also have symptoms in the fall when levels of allergens from weeds and mold are at their highest.

A Common Condition

Seasonal allergies, also known as hay fever or allergic rhinitis, are relatively common. It is estimated that around 27 percent of people in the U.S. are allergic to grasses, trees, and weeds. Still, the actual percentage of people who develop symptoms of seasonal allergies is less clear. Many who might experience seasonal allergies are not exposed to pollens or allergens that would trigger a reaction, so remain unaware. The condition tends to hit women harder than men. A little over ten percent of males have seasonal allergies. More than 17 percent of women report having the condition, according to 23andMe internal data from customers who consented to participate in research. 

The US states with the least prevalence of seasonal allergies among 23andMe customers who consented to participate in research are Hawaii, New York, California, and Florida. Customers in Oklahoma, New Mexico, and Kentucky, were the most likely to report seasonal allergies.

A recent study indicated that climate change might worsen the situation for some due to the lengthening of the pollen season in North America. 

Beyond the common symptoms of stuffy noses and itchy eyes, seasonal allergies and their associated symptoms can also lead to other issues such as difficulty sleeping or difficulty concentrating during the day. In addition, individuals with seasonal allergies are more likely to develop asthma or experience difficulty breathing or wheezing.

A New Report

Our new report is powered by data from people who have consented to participate in 23andMe research and uses machine learning techniques to estimate an individual’s likelihood of having seasonal allergies to trees, grasses, weeds, and or molds.

This estimate is made using a statistical model that includes more than 6,500 genetic markers and information on an individual’s ethnicity and birth sex. You can learn more about the science and methodology behind our new report in this white paper. 

You can read more at: https://blog.23andme.com/health-traits/seasonal-allergies/