Once again a fun genea-challenge from Randy Seaver:

What is the most unique, strangest or funniest combination of given name and last name in your ancestry? Not in your database - in your ancestry.

Well, I don't have any unique ancestral names. My pedigree is full of Sarahs, Jacobs, Abrahams, Moshes and so on. You could say that my great-grandfather Ze'ev Arieh Kielczewski is an unusual name since in English it mean Wolf Lion Kielczewski (in Yiddish it is Wolf Leib).

So as usual I turn to my wife's side and since she has mostly Irish and English ancestry, nothing jumped at me right away. But there is one name that is unique in another way.

My wife's third great-grandmother was Sarah Whitehead Battle CARTER Tuggle (1820-1883). Her middle names are unique but that's only part of the story. She was the daughter of Sarah Whitehead BATTLE Carter who was the daughter of Sarah WHITEHEAD Battle. So that's three generations of women all named Sarah who kept their surnames as middle names.

Sarah Whitehead Battle Carter married Pinckney Jackson Tuggle and they lived (and died) in Greene County, Georgia. They are buried together in historic Oakland Cemetery in Atlanta, Georgia, and did not want to be buried in the Greene County family cemetery on William Tuggle plantation. I found their grave site and added them to find-a-grave:

I just finished reading a great fiction book called "People of the Book" by Geraldine Brooks, who won a Pulitzer prize in 2006 for a previous book, her second novel, "March", a retelling of Louisa May Alcott’s classic "Little Women" from the point of view of Mr. March, the absent father.

Ms. Brooks likes to write historical fiction and I have to say she did a great job with "People of the Book" which deals with the famous Sarajevo Haggadah. This piece of history is truly amazing and I have to admit I had never heard of it before. Here's what Wikipedia says about this amazing codex:

The Sarajevo Haggadah is an illuminated manuscript that contains the illustrated traditional text of the Passover Haggadah which accompanies the Passover Seder. It is one of the oldest Sephardic Haggadahs in the world, originating in Barcelona around 1350. The Haggadah is presently owned by the National Museum of Bosnia and Herzegovina in Sarajevo, where it is on permanent display.

If you want to see some of these fantastic images, whose history is shrouded in mystery, click here.

So what did I like about this book? It's based on some facts that have already been discovered about the history of the Haggadah, but it takes the reader through a journey of all the (fictional) characters that may have been associated with its creation and survival. These characters are very well written and intrigue the reader to keep going to find out what all the clues mean.

The story is about an Australian manuscript restorer who goes to Bosnia after the war to restore the Haggadah in order to get it ready for permanent display at the museum. During the restoration she finds several items that then get their own story through history to explain how they eventually got there in the first place.

In order for a Jewish Haggadah to survive for over 650 years, it had to go through a lot. And the story follows many account of Jewish suffering and weaves the story of the Haggadah and the characters surrounding it. As I said, the characters are amazing: A Partisan girl, an African slave, a drunk Inquisitor, a Gambling Rabbi, the deaf-mute son of a wealthy Jewish doctor living in medieval Spain and many others comprise "the people" of the book.

One thing that this book made me think about is the history of the Jewish people, also known as the people of the book. It made me think about how fortunate we are to actually still be around and exist today. Throughout history, Jews have been persecuted, tortured, converted and mercilessly murdered. Just because they were Jews. No other reason. It's just absolutely mind-boggling to me, every time I think about it.

Anyway, I encourage everyone to read this book. It's a fairly easy read and has a lot of twists and surprises that will keep you guessing.

As usual Randy Seaver comes up with great genea-challenges. This time we're finding descendants of one of our great-grandparents:

1) Pick one of your four great-grandparents - if possible, the one with the most descendants.

2) Create a descendants list for those great-grandparents either by hand or in your software program.

3) Tell us how many descendants, living or dead, are in each generation from those great-grandparents.

4) How many are still living? Of those, how many have you met and exchanged family information with? Are there any that you should make contact with ASAP? Please don't use last names of living people for this - respect their privacy.

5) Write about it in your own blog post, in comments to this post, or in comments or a Note on Facebook.

So I chose the only great-grandparents who have a big list of descendants, Moshe Zinberg (died about 1960) and Elka Benditovich (holy cow, I don't have any dates for her - adding to my to do list right now):

1. Children - 6 (3 deceased, 3 living) - I met all but two.
2. Grandchildren - 11 that I know of, there may have been more. I have met 8 of them.
3. Great-grandchildren - 20 that I know of. I believe I have met 11 of them. Obviously I need to fill in some gaps because I don't even know the names of some of them. I have to call my grandma, she'll know.
4. Great-great-grandchildren - I only know of 4 of which 2 are my own children. I am sure there are more out there, but I need to research that more.

Since this is a relatively young line, the total comes out to 41. Since almost all of the descendants that I have not met are still alive, I will not list them here. I have a lot of work to do on the Zinberg line. So much work, so little time...

I got this in an email today. I think it is good advice so wanted to pass it along to my readers:

I try not to get political on this blog, but once in a while something comes up that is relevant and to the point. While I don't always agree with his views and his tactics, I think Prime Minister Netanyahu is an amazing public speaker. His speech at the UN this week touched so many important subjects that I felt compelled to post it here on my genealogy blog. The topics of Holocaust denial and the threat of global terrorism need to be talked about at every opportunity.

The text of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's speech to the UN General Assembly
Sept. 24, 2009

Mr. President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Nearly 62 years ago, the United Nations recognized the right of the Jews, an ancient people 3,500 years-old, to a state of their own in their ancestral homeland.

I stand here today as the Prime Minister of Israel, the Jewish state, and I speak to you on behalf of my country and my people.

The United Nations was founded after the carnage of World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust. It was charged with preventing the recurrence of such horrendous events.

Nothing has undermined that central mission more than the systematic assault on the truth. Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews.

Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

This June, President Obama visited the Buchenwald concentration camp. Did President Obama pay tribute to a lie?

And what of the Auschwitz survivors whose arms still bear the tattooed numbers branded on them by the Nazis? Are those tattoos a lie? One-third of all Jews perished in the conflagration. Nearly every Jewish family was affected, including my own. My wife's grandparents, her father’s two sisters and three brothers, and all the aunts, uncles and cousins were all murdered by the Nazis. Is that also a lie?

Yesterday, the man who calls the Holocaust a lie spoke from this podium. To those who refused to come here and to those who left this room in protest, I commend you. You stood up for moral clarity and you brought honor to your countries.

But to those who gave this Holocaust-denier a hearing, I say on behalf of my people, the Jewish people, and decent people everywhere: Have you no shame? Have you no decency?

A mere six decades after the Holocaust, you give legitimacy to a man who denies that the murder of six million Jews took place and pledges to wipe out the Jewish state.

What a disgrace! What a mockery of the charter of the United Nations!

Perhaps some of you think that this man and his odious regime threaten only the Jews. You're wrong.

History has shown us time and again that what starts with attacks on the Jews eventually ends up engulfing many others.

This Iranian regime is fueled by an extreme fundamentalism that burst onto the world scene three decades ago after lying dormant for centuries.

In the past thirty years, this fanaticism has swept the globe with a murderous violence and cold-blooded impartiality in its choice of victims. It has callously slaughtered Moslems and Christians, Jews and Hindus, and many others. Though it is comprised of different offshoots, the adherents of this unforgiving creed seek to return humanity to medieval times.

Wherever they can, they impose a backward regimented society where women, minorities, gays or anyone not deemed to be a true believer is brutally subjugated. The struggle against this fanaticism does not pit faith against faith nor civilization against civilization.

It pits civilization against barbarism, the 21st century against the 9th century, those who sanctify life against those who glorify death.

The primitivism of the 9th century ought to be no match for the progress of the 21st century. The allure of freedom, the power of technology, the reach of communications should surely win the day. Ultimately, the past cannot triumph over the future. And the future offers all nations magnificent bounties of hope. The pace of progress is growing exponentially.

It took us centuries to get from the printing press to the telephone, decades to get from the telephone to the personal computer, and only a few years to get from the personal computer to the internet.

What seemed impossible a few years ago is already outdated, and we can scarcely fathom the changes that are yet to come. We will crack the genetic code. We will cure the incurable. We will lengthen our lives. We will find a cheap alternative to fossil fuels and clean up the planet.

I am proud that my country Israel is at the forefront of these advances by leading innovations in science and technology, medicine and biology, agriculture and water, energy and the environment. These innovations the world over offer humanity a sunlit future of unimagined promise.

But if the most primitive fanaticism can acquire the most deadly weapons, the march of history could be reversed for a time. And like the belated victory over the Nazis, the forces of progress and freedom will prevail only after an horrific toll of blood and fortune has been exacted from mankind. That is why the greatest threat facing the world today is the marriage between religious fanaticism and the weapons of mass destruction.

The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons. Are the member states of the United Nations up to that challenge? Will the international community confront a despotism that terrorizes its own people as they bravely stand up for freedom?

Will it take action against the dictators who stole an election in broad daylight and gunned down Iranian protesters who died in the streets choking in their own blood? Will the international community thwart the world's most pernicious sponsors and practitioners of terrorism?

Above all, will the international community stop the terrorist regime of Iran from developing atomic weapons, thereby endangering the peace of the entire world?

The people of Iran are courageously standing up to this regime. People of goodwill around the world stand with them, as do the thousands who have been protesting outside this hall. Will the United Nations stand by their side?

Ladies and Gentlemen, the jury is still out on the United Nations, and recent signs are not encouraging. Rather than condemning the terrorists and their Iranian patrons, some here have condemned their victims. That is exactly what a recent UN report on Gaza did, falsely equating the terrorists with those they targeted.

For eight long years, Hamas fired from Gaza thousands of missiles, mortars and rockets on nearby Israeli cities. Year after year, as these missiles were deliberately hurled at our civilians, not a single UN resolution was passed condemning those criminal attacks. We heard nothing absolutely nothing from the UN Human Rights Council, a misnamed institution if there ever was one.

In 2005, hoping to advance peace, Israel unilaterally withdrew from every inch of Gaza. It dismantled 21 settlements and uprooted over 8,000 Israelis. We didn't get peace. Instead we got an Iranian backed terror base fifty miles from Tel Aviv. Life in Israeli towns and cities next to Gaza became a nightmare. You see, the Hamas rocket attacks not only continued, they increased tenfold. Again, the UN was silent.

Finally, after eight years of this unremitting assault, Israel was finally forced to respond. But how should we have responded? Well, there is only one example in history of thousands of rockets being fired on a country's civilian population. It happened when the Nazis rocketed British cities during World War II. During that war, the allies leveled German cities, causing hundreds of thousands of casualties. Israel chose to respond differently. Faced with an enemy committing a double war crime of firing on civilians while hiding behind civilians? Israel sought to conduct surgical strikes against the rocket launchers.

That was no easy task because the terrorists were firing missiles from homes and schools, using mosques as weapons depots and ferreting explosives in ambulances. Israel, by contrast, tried to minimize casualties by urging Palestinian civilians to vacate the targeted areas.

We dropped countless flyers over their homes, sent thousands of text messages and called thousands of cell phones asking people to leave. Never has a country gone to such extraordinary lengths to remove the enemy's civilian population from harm's way.

Yet faced with such a clear case of aggressor and victim, who did the UN Human Rights Council decide to condemn? Israel. A democracy legitimately defending itself against terror is morally hanged, drawn and quartered, and given an unfair trial to boot.

By these twisted standards, the UN Human Rights Council would have dragged Roosevelt and Churchill to the dock as war criminals. What a perversion of truth. What a perversion of justice.

Delegates of the United Nations, Will you accept this farce?

Because if you do, the United Nations would revert to its darkest days, when the worst violators of human rights sat in judgment against the law-abiding democracies, when Zionism was equated with racism and when an automatic majority could declare that the earth is flat.

If this body does not reject this report, it would send a message to terrorists everywhere: Terror pays; if you launch your attacks from densely populated areas, you will win immunity. And in condemning Israel, this body would also deal a mortal blow to peace. Here's why.

When Israel left Gaza, many hoped that the missile attacks would stop. Others believed that at the very least, Israel would have international legitimacy to exercise its right of self-defense. What legitimacy? What self-defense?

The same UN that cheered Israel as it left Gaza and promised to back our right of self-defense now accuses us - my people, my country - of war crimes? And for what? For acting responsibly in self-defense. What a travesty!

Israel justly defended itself against terror. This biased and unjust report is a clear-cut test for all governments. Will you stand with Israel or will you stand with the terrorists?

We must know the answer to that question now. Now and not later. Because if Israel is again asked to take more risks for peace, we must know today that you will stand with us tomorrow. Only if we have the confidence that we can defend ourselves can we take further risks for peace.

Ladies and Gentlemen, all of Israel wants peace.

Any time an Arab leader genuinely wanted peace with us, we made peace. We made peace with Egypt led by Anwar Sadat. We made peace with Jordan led by King Hussein. And if the Palestinians truly want peace, I and my government, and the people of Israel, will make peace. But we want a genuine peace, a defensible peace, a permanent peace. In 1947, this body voted to establish two states for two peoples a Jewish state and an Arab state. The Jews accepted that resolution. The Arabs rejected it. We ask the Palestinians to finally do what they have refused to do for 62 years: Say yes to a Jewish state. Just as we are asked to recognize a nation-state for the Palestinian people, the Palestinians must be asked to recognize the nation state of the Jewish people. The Jewish people are not foreign conquerors in the Land of Israel. This is the land of our forefathers.

Inscribed on the walls outside this building is the great Biblical vision of peace: "Nation shall not lift up sword against nation. They shall learn war no more." These words were spoken by the Jewish prophet Isaiah 2,800 years ago as he walked in my country, in my city, in the hills of Judea and in the streets of Jerusalem.

We are not strangers to this land. It is our homeland. As deeply connected as we are to this land, we recognize that the Palestinians also live there and want a home of their own. We want to live side by side with them, two free peoples living in peace, prosperity and dignity. But we must have security. The Palestinians should have all the powers to govern themselves except those handful of powers that could endanger Israel.

That is why a Palestinian state must be effectively demilitarized. We don't want another Gaza, another Iranian backed terror base abutting Jerusalem and perched on the hills a few kilometers from Tel Aviv.

We want peace.

I believe such a peace can be achieved. But only if we roll back the forces of terror, led by Iran, that seek to destroy peace, eliminate Israel and overthrow the world order. The question facing the international community is whether it is prepared to confront those forces or accommodate them.

Over seventy years ago, Winston Churchill lamented what he called the "confirmed unteachability of mankind," the unfortunate habit of civilized societies to sleep until danger nearly overtakes them.

Churchill bemoaned what he called the "want of foresight, the unwillingness to act when action will be simple and effective, the lack of clear thinking, the confusion of counsel until emergency comes, until self-preservation strikes its jarring gong."

I speak here today in the hope that Churchill's assessment of the "unteachibility of mankind" is for once proven wrong.

I speak here today in the hope that we can learn from history -- that we can prevent danger in time.

In the spirit of the timeless words spoken to Joshua over 3,000 years ago, let us be strong and of good courage. Let us confront this peril, secure our future and, God willing, forge an enduring peace for generations to come.

Here comes the video too (in four parts):

I am not actually retiring this blog, but rather submitting this post to the 81st edition of the carnival of genealogy: "Your Genealogy Blog's Obituary"

• Almost no oaks in my forest
• Rabbi Shmaryahu Smorgonski ZT"L (1854-1937)
• Bringing Moshe Zinberg back to life
• Our First "Ancestor Field Trip" & Buried Treasure
• Twins? Nobody saw this one coming!

In it's short life, the young blog has achieved several of its intended purposes. A recent email from one of my father's cousins says it all:

We met your father and mother and the rest of the family at the Simchoni wedding.
We all "blamed" you for the renewed connections and communications between the many members of the family. Good work.

Even though the blog will be dearly missed by all direct visitors, RSS readers and email subscribers, it is survived by a gigantic (10K+) Geni tree, countless new Facebook family friends and a RootsMagic 4 database that will hopefully continue to grow in the future.

I got my RootsMagic 4 Book in the mail about a week ago (you can still get it for $10). It is a very easy read especially if you already know what you're doing in RM4. Unfortunately, I am coming to the realization that I need to clean up my database. This will consist of a few steps:

1. Properly cite my sources. Rather than start merging and changing existing sources I am going to do it all over. Mainly because I want to use the handy multi-person source options. But also because many of my sources are either missing or not formatted correctly. I also want to classify these sources properly. This will be extremely time consuming but it must be done and I believe it will help me become much stronger when it comes to proof standards.

2. Organize my media files. I have a system, but I don't think it is a good one. I have saved a few posted with great recommendations and will start migrating my files to a new structure as I rebuild my database.

3. Focus on direct ancestors. My database was created from merging several trees and so I have people in it that are extremely distant relatives. I don't think they will make the cut in my new database as I will focus mainly on direct ancestors and their families.

4. Organize peripheral information. By this I mean I need to catalog and store documents, pictures and other memorabilia. I also want to properly archive correspondence that contains information I need to enter in the database and have been putting off for a while.