Molly Arost Staub is a travel and food journalist who has visited 125 countries and found Jewish stories in most of them. She is a former editor of Palm Beach Jewish World, and has written for the Jewish Forward and Hadassah Magazine. Her syndicated Jewish travel column appeared in the Jewish Exponent, Washington Jewish Week, The Jewish Journal (Los Angeles), Jewish Weekly of Northern California, and other publications. Her stories have also been published in Family Tree Magazine and Ancestry Magazine. She has been tracing her family’s genealogy for 35 years.

“Unearthing Missing Ancestors: How I discovered my Jewish Chinese Relatives” (Fri-101), 11:30 A.M.-12:45 P.M.

In 1948, when our relatives visited from Tientsin, China, I expected to see Asians. My second cousin Shura Shtofman indeed looked Asian to me. She sported a dark, short pageboy haircut with bangs, and wore a red silk chong-sam. However, seeing her later, she looked as Eastern European as most of us. And surely many West Coast Jews have similar stories about Harbin and Shanghai, while others might be fascinated by this strange aspect of European Jewish immigration. Years later, we visited the family in Los Angeles. But, while delving into genealogy, I couldn’t find her.

I finally remembered her son’s name, Saul. After that, using Facebook and emails, I located his family and a branch in Israel. Plus three Shtofman tombstones in China from the 1920s recorded on JOWBR. Describing my methods, I will show how this opened a unique look at how some of our ancestors fled the European pogroms.

Topics: Ashkenazic research, Immigration and migration over the ages, Jewish history and culture, China