For more information, see http://www.jgstoronto2002.ca. Caring for Your Invaluable Documents & Annual MeetingSunday, June 2, 2002 -- 1:30-4:30 pm
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For more information, see http://www.jewishgen.org/dc2003.
Jewish Boston: Where Once We Walked 
Norman Morris
June 1, 2003 -- 1:30-4:30 pm
Temple Reyim, West Newton
Annual Meeting: "Jewish Boston: Where Once We Walked", with Norman Morris. Norman Morris is the author of two books on Dorchester, Mattapan, and Roxbury.
Boston native Norm Morris will describe the Jewish Boston of his youth and early adult years. He has recently written two books about the former Jewish neighborhoods of Dorchester, Roxbury, and Mattapan. In Ghetto Memories, Norm depicted in text and photographs the vibrant life from the 1930s until the flight to the suburbs in the 1960s. The ‘prequel’, Ghetto Memories Revisited, begins with immigration and development of the area in the early 1900s and ends with “what it is like today.”
Norm Morris was President of NMA, Inc., an international audit and consulting firm; a commissioned Examiner for the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston; and a faculty member at Northeastern University and the Banking School at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He holds an undergraduate degree in finance with a graduate degree in economics from Brown University and is a graduate of the MIT Sloan School. Prior to his military service during the Korean War, Mr. Morris was a professional baseball player.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Memorial Books as a Source for Genealogy
Joyce Field
May 4, 2003 -- 1:30-4:30 pm
Temple Reyim, West Newton
"Memorial Books as a Source for Genealogy", with Joyce Field. Joyce Field is the coordinator of the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, which translates memorial (Yizkor) Books from Yiddish, Hebrew and other languages into English.
Yizkor books provide a valuable source of information about Jewish communities in Eastern and Central Europe. Former residents published these books, written mostly in Hebrew or Yiddish, as a tribute to their home towns and the people there who perished during the Holocaust. The JewishGen Yizkor Book Project was organized in 1994 to unlock the valuable information contained in these books, by compiling an online database of Yizkor Books, and online translations.
Joyce Field, a founder of the Yizkor Book Project, now serves as its Project Manager. As Vice President for Research at JewishGen, she oversees a number of other research projects, including the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry (JOWBR). She has also served on the steering committees of the Romania and Gesher Galicia SIGs.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Lithuanian Jewry Yesterday and Today
Dina Kopilevic
April 6, 2003 -- 1:30-4:30 pm
Temple Reyim, West Newton
Dina Kopilevic is the Secretary for Cultural, Public, and Educational Affairs at the Embassy of the Republic of Lithuania in Washington, DC. She will speak about the history of Lithuanian Jewry, the current Jewish culture in Lithuania, and travel for archival research and to visit one's ancestral home.
Born in Lithuania, Ms. Kopilevic received a Master’s of Science Degree in Pharmacy from the Kaunas Medical Academy in 1988. Upon joining the Lithuanian Embassy in 2000, she became the only Jewish staff member. Ms. Kopilevic has been active in various Lithuanian Jewish cultural societies. Dina has accompanied her sister, Regina Kopilevic, the foremost Lithuanian Jewish research guide, on several of her guided tours.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Sephardic Genealogy
Jeff Malka
March 9, 2003 -- 1:30-4:30 pm
Temple Reyim, West Newton
"Sephardic Genealogy", with Jeff Malka, author of a recent 400-page book entitled Sephardic Genealogy published by Avotaynu.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Traveling to the Lands of Our Ancestors
Tom Weiss, Judi Garfinkle
February 2, 2003 -- 1:30-4:30 pm
Temple Reyim, West Newton
Join two of our members, Judi Garfinkel and Tom Weiss, as they describe and illustrate their travels to their ancestral homelands in search of their genealogical roots. There will be an opportunity for questions and answers after each presentation.
Judi Garfinkel, a first-time traveler to Romania, spoke about her trip at the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Toronto last summer. Her talk was well received, and she will now share with us her experiences as a novice journeying to Romania for genealogical research.
Tom Weiss has made numerous trips in search of his genealogical roots in Ukraine, Austria and the Czech Republic. Some were made independently; others were organized JewishGen "ShtetlShlepper" trips. From him we’ll get the perspectives of a seasoned traveler.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
JGSGB’s Night at the National Archives
January 7, 2003 -- 6:00-9:00pm
National Archives, New England Region, 380 Trapelo Road , Waltham, MA.
Our annual meeting at the National Archives and Records Administration facility in Waltham features instruction on how to access the materials at NARA and an opportunity to carry out research.
The Archives will be open in the evening especially for us. If your membership is not current, please send dues in advance to: JGSGB, P.O. Box 610366, Newton Highland, MA 02461-0366.
The National Archives, New England Region holds many records for genealogical research, including the U.S. Federal Census (1790-1930); Passenger Arrival Records for Boston and other New England ports; New England Naturalization Records, Canadian Border Crossing records, WWI Draft Registration Card for New England, Russian Consular Records, and WWII War Crimes records.
For a complete list of the National Archives' relevant holdings, see Resources for Jewish Genealogy in the Boston Area, (Boston: JGSGB, 1996).
Jerry Anderson will give the orientation at 6:00 PM, repeating it as often as needed during the evening. Archives staff and experienced JGSGB members will be available to help anyone who needs assistance. Microfilm copiers are available, so bring quarters.
Refreshments will be served.
Directions:
- From Route 128: Exit at Trapelo Road (Exit 28 or 28A) and continue east on Trapelo Road for 2.8 miles to the National Archives, on the right side of the road.
- From Boston: Take Storrow Drive, follow signs for Route 2. Cross the Charles River at the Eliot Bridge, bear right but keep left, left on Mt. Auburn Street till it forks, bear right onto Belmont Street. When Belmont Street forks, bear right onto Trapelo Road, follow for 2.4 miles to the National Archives on the left.
Research and Genealogical Networking Day
Sunday, December 5, 2004 -- 1:30-4:00 PM
Temple Reyim, Newton
Join other members who are researching family roots from your ancestral areas in one-hour roundtable discussions. Discover the ancestral towns and family names your fellow members are researching. Share your successes and get advice from others on how to overcome obstacles in exploring your roots and connecting with living relatives. Roundtables will be set up to cover the following Special Interest Groups: Belarus, Bohemia-Moravia, Galicia, German, Litvak, Poland, Ukraine, and the U.S. Other roundtables will be formed if there is interest.
After the roundtable discussions, genealogical books, including some brought in from our collection at AJHS, will be available for your perusal. Translators will be on hand to help decipher those difficult documents you've been waiting to interpret.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions..
Insights into Rabbinic Genealogy — Myth Buster!
Neil Rosenstein
Sunday, November 14, 2004 -- 1:30-4:00 PM
Join us in hearing Dr. Neil Rosenstein, the internationally known author and speaker in the sphere of rabbinic genealogy. Dr. Rosenstein was born in Cape Town, South Africa. As a result of almost four decades of investigative research, he has accumulated a vast matrix of material on Jewish genealogy, especially in the field of rabbinical dynasties. He was the founder in 1977 and the first president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of New York.
He is the author of many works on Jewish genealogy. His most recent publication, The Lurie Legacy: The House of Davidic Royal Descent was published by Avotaynu in May 2004. He has also written, in 1976 and 1990, The Unbroken Chain, two volumes of genealogy on the Katzenellenbogen family, The Gaon of Vilna and his Cousinhood, 1997, and produced a CD-ROM with the indexed obituaries of the first Hebrew weekly, HaMagid (1856-1903). Dr. Rosenstein’s biography is included in Who’s Who in World Jewry, 1987, and Marquis’ Who's Who in America, 52nd edition, 1997-2004.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Beginner’s Workshop in Genealogy
Nancy Levin Arbeiter
Sunday, November 7, 2004 -- 1:00-5:00 PM
Lasell Village, Auburndale (Newton)
Cost of $25 includes light refreshments and extensive handouts.
Please register by mailing in the form at http://workshop.jgsgb.org/, with your check payable to "JGSGB", postmarked no later than November 1, 2004.
Lasell Village (2nd floor ballroom in "Town Hall" Bldg.), 120 Seminary Ave., Auburndale, MA
The Center for Jewish History: Resources for Genealogy
Robert Friedman
Sunday, October 17, 2004 -- 1:00-4:00 PM
Temple Reyim, Newton
The new Center for Jewish History in New York has been heralded as the diaspora’s “National Archives of the Jewish people.” The Center’s five partners -- American Jewish Historical Society, American Sephardi Federation, Leo Baeck Institute, Yeshiva University Museum, and YIVO Institute for Jewish Research -- collectively house 100 million archival documents and half a million books. The Genealogy Institute’s director, Robert Friedman, will explain the services offered by the Center and will help you identify and access items of interest. Learn about the variety of resources available and how to prepare in advance for an efficient and rewarding research experience.
A native New Yorker, Robert Friedman has a BA in Anthropology from Columbia, an MS in Environmental Health Science, and an MS in Library Science with an Archives and Records Management Certificate. His family history research, begun eight years ago, focuses on Hungary, Transylvania, eastern Slovakia, and the former Suwalki Gubernia in Russian Poland. Active in H-SIG, Bob also participated in the IAJGS Cemetery Project and JewishGen Yizkor Book Project, and he has served on the Executive Council of JGSNY.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
The Role of HIAS in the Rescue of Jews During World War II
Valery Bazarov
Sunday, September 12, 2004 -- 1:30 PM
Temple Reyim, Newton
Following the German invasion of France in 1940, the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS, part of the former HICEM) moved its European headquarters to Lisbon, Portugal. The unique geographical and political position of neutral Portugal made Lisbon the only European port of departure for North and South America. Records of the refugees who were saved are contained in the HICEM/HIAS collection of 171 microfilm reels at YIVO in New York. They are arranged by the refugees’ last names and include ship passenger lists, travel document requests, departure cards, family search requests, and camp survivor lists.
Valery Bazarov was born in Russia and immigrated to the United States in 1988. He joined HIAS that year and over the next decade aided the arrival of more than 200,000 Jewish refugees. Valery is currently responsible for the HIAS “Location and Family History Service,” helping immigrants find family members and friends with whom they lost contact. He is especially committed to finding and honoring the heroes who rescued European Jews during the Holocaust. Valery also researches the history of HIAS.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Revolutionary Jews: Their Genealogy and
Contributions to Colonial and Revolutionary America
Dr. Joseph L. "Joel" Andrews
Sunday, June 13, 2004 -- 7:00-9:30 PM
Hebrew College, Newton Centre
A joint evening meeting with the American Jewish Historical Society. This will also be our Annual Meeting with elections. American Jewish Historical Society Open House at 7:00 in Rae and Joseph Gann Library, followed at 7:30 by Program and JGSGB Annual Meeting in Berenson Hall.
Commemorate the 350th anniversary of the 1654 arrival of the first Jews in the future United States with Dr. Joseph L. “Joel” Andrews. Jews settled in the five most tolerant colonial cities of Newport, New York, Philadelphia, Charlestown, and Savannah. Though few in number, Jews, both as soldiers and supporters, contributed disproportionately to the patriotic cause. The American Revolution was one of the first wars since antiquity in which Jews were actively allowed to participate.
Dr. Andrews, now semi-retired, has been on the medical staff of Lahey Clinic, New England Deaconess Hospital, and Harvard and Tufts Medical Schools. Tracing his ancestry to Haym Salomon, the major financier of the Continental Army, and to Col. Isaac Franks and Major Benjamin Nones, officers under General George Washington's command, he is the only Jewish member of the Massachusetts chapter of the Sons of the American Revolution. Fascinated with history, Dr. Andrews founded and directs the Concord Guides Walking Tours and writes books and articles about the history of the colonial and Revolutionary eras.
Hebrew College is located at 160 Herrick Rd. From Centre Street in Newton Centre, turn east onto Beacon Street, and immediately bear right onto Union Street. Take the first right onto Herrick Road. Near the top of the hill, bear left into the Hebrew College campus.
A Cemetery Research Project - On-site in West Roxbury
Jane Salk, Executive Director, Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts
Sunday, May 23, 2004 -- 1:00 PM
This will be a new kind of program, one that combines our usual educational activity with a special project. We will begin by gathering in the Dana Chapel on the grounds of the Adath Jeshurun Cemetery, 350 Grove Street, West Roxbury, where Jane Salk will introduce the history of the Jewish cemeteries of Boston. She will also tell us about the Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts (JCAM) and its growth from managing five cemeteries in Boston to overseeing nearly one hundred throughout the state. The focus will then turn toward preparing us for our project of gathering tombstone data for the JCAM and JewishGen databases. This project will provide us the opportunity to express our gratitude to the members of the genealogical community who have gathered and made available to us such data from other places all over the world.
After Jane Salk’s talk, we will take a five-minute drive to the nearby Centre Street Hill Cemetery, where we will help create a map of the grounds and begin photographing and recording data from the tombstones. Those who will participate in the project should wear hiking boots or sturdy shoes, long pants, and a hat. A water bottle is also recommended. Please bring the following items if you have them: pens/pencils, clipboard, digital camera, GPS receiver.
For further information, including maps and driving directions, please visit our web page at http://cemetery.jgsgb.org. If it is raining on May 23 -- or if there was a lot of rain in the preceding days -- the program will be postponed two weeks to June 6. In case there is any doubt, call our telephone on the day of the program for a recorded announcement.
Preserving Cemetery Information in Eastern Europe
Thomas Fischer Weiss
Sunday, May 2, 2004 -- 1:30-4:30 PM
Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington St., Newton
The Jewish cemeteries of Eastern Europe were ravaged during World War II and have been neglected ever since with the absence of Jewish communities to maintain them. Tom Weiss and family members traveled to Eastern Galicia, now located in Western Ukraine, in 2000 and 2001. He visited a number of cemeteries and will describe their conditions and the factors that continue to degrade their genealogically important content. He will also describe the methods used to photograph all the remaining and legible gravestones in the cemeteries of two towns (Buchach and Rozhnyatov) and to make maps of the cemeteries. The photographs of the gravestones and the translations of the inscriptions are being placed on a JewishGen web site to make their content widely available. The talk will include numerous photographs and video clips.
Tom Weiss has been researching his family history for 6 years. He has been a member of JGSGB for two years and a member of the JGSGB Board for one year. The family surnames he is researching are Abraham, Apfelberg, Buchhalter, Fischer, Frnkel, Frenkel, Fruchter, Katz, Klepetar, Meisels, Orlk, Rubin, Siegelmann, Turteltaub, Vodicka, Weissglas, And Zarnicer. His paternal family is from Bohemia; his maternal family from Vienna/Galicia. He can be reached at tfweiss@mit.edu.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Research the National Archives New England Branch
Tuesday, April 20, 2004 -- 6:00-9:00 PM
National Archives, New England Region, 380 Trapelo Road , Waltham, MA.
Two concurrent programs at 6:30:
- Introduction to the archives, by Al Luftman. For those who have never done research at the National Archives, JGSGB member Al Luftman will introduce the resources available and how to access them. Learn how to look up census records, passenger arrival records, Canadian border crossings, New England WWI draft registrations, naturalization records, and much more.
- At the same time, a NARA staff member will give an update of what's new at the archives, for the more experienced NARA researcher.
Experienced researchers will be able to use the entire three hours for research. JGSGB members will be available to assist those needing help. This is a members-only program.
Directions: From Route 128 take Exit 28 (Trapelo Road). Head east (toward Waltham and Belmont) on Trapelo Road for 2.75 miles. The National Archives is on the right down an incline, and the entrance road is beyond the building. If you are coming from Belmont, head west on Trapelo Road, 0.75 miles past Waverly Oaks Road. The National Archives is on the left.
Genealogy Roundtables: Special Interest Groups
February 15, 2004, Sunday -- 1:30-4:30 PM
Temple Reyim, West Newton
Join members who are researching family roots from your ancestral areas in two roundtable discussions, each lasting one hour. Learn the ancestral towns and family names that your fellow members are researching. Share your successes and obstacles in connecting with living relatives and in discovering your roots. Roundtables will be set up to cover the following Special Interest Group areas: Belarus, Galicia, Germany, Lithuania, Poland, Romania, Sefardic areas, Ukraine, and the United States (for those seeking current roots in the U. S.).
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Brandeis University Library: On-site Tour of Genealogical Resources &
James Rosenbloom
January 18, 2004 -- 2:00-4:00 PM
Rappaport Treasure Hall, Goldfarb Library, Waltham, MA
Did you know that Brandeis University offers a treasure trove of resources for Jewish genealogical research? James Rosenbloom, Judaica Specialist at Brandeis University, will meet us in the Rappaport Treasure Hall of the Brandeis University Library to introduce the genealogical resources available at Brandeis. Following the orientation, we will be given a tour through the Judaica area and shown the library’s extensive collection of Yizkor books and microfilms of newspapers and periodicals.
James Rosenbloom has worked in the Judaica Department of the Brandeis University library system since 1976. He now oversees the entire collection of Judaica, including the Bible, rabbinics, Jewish thought, all periods of Jewish history, contemporary Jewry, and Hebrew and Yiddish literature.
In the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers (wayfarers)
Jill Culiner, Sunday, Dec. 11, 2005
The Canadian author, Jill Culiner, will speak about her book, Finding Home: In the Footsteps of the Jewish Fusgeyers, at the next program sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston (JGSGB). 
The book is about a little known story in Jewish history. Nearly 70,000 Fusgeyers, Yiddish for wayfarers, fled persecution in Romania in the early 1900s, walking through Romania in small groups, while earning their living by giving theatrical performances, until they were able to immigrate to the New World. Culiner retraced their journey, walking herself through Romania, and picking up their trail through Budapest, Vienna, Frankfurt, Rotterdam, London, and Liverpool to the cities in the United States and Canada, where many settled. Research for the book was supported by a grant from the Toronto Arts Council.
The book, published last year, won the Joseph and Faye Tanenbaum Prize in Canadian Jewish History and a Helen and Stan Vine Canadian Jewish Book award. Culiner is a professional photographer as well as an author, and her book includes both her contemporary photographs as well as archival prints. She lives in Toronto and also in Tiszaors, Hungary, where she is working on a book about the Hungarian Holocaust.
Researching My Family In Europe: Successes And Failures
Tom F. Weiss, Sunday, Nov. 6, 2005
Weiss' talk will describe the saga of the family history research he has been conducting,
with its many twists and turns. Weiss and his family escaped from Prague five months
after the German occupation in 1939. He returned for the first time 59 years later in 1998
and has been researching his family's history since then. The talk will describe some of
the results of this research and the methods and resources used. During his first visit to Prague, his birthplace and that of his father, Weiss found the apartment building where he lived before fleeing. In Vienna, his mother's birthplace, he found his grandparents' home and the synagogue where his parents were married, the only synagogue in Vienna to survive Kristallnacht.
Weiss returned in 2000 and 2001 to the birthplaces of his maternal grandparents in Eastern Galicia, now located in Ukraine, the towns of Buchach and Rozhnyatov. Weiss has taken on the preservation of the gravestone inscriptions there. During his 2000 trip, he took almost 400 photographs of cemetery stones in both towns and posted them on the JewishGen website for other genealogy researchers to use. He returned in 2001 with his adult sons and took 1500 more photos of all the legible gravestones in Buchach, marking their locations using a GPS device. An international team has nearly finished translating these gravestones for posting on the Internet.
A fifth trip to Vienna in 2005 followed up on earlier research and led to important discoveries about his grandparent's families, most of whom died in the Holocaust. Weiss is still searching for the survivors he has identified through his research.
A retired MIT professor who lives in Newton, Weiss is active in the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston and nationally in JewishGen, the major website for genealogy research. He is webmaster for the JewishGen Rozhnyatov ShtetLinks page, coordinator for translation of the Yizkor Book for Rozhnyatov, and an active member of the JewishGen Suchostav Region Research Group. He is writing a book about his family's history.
How to Organize your Notes
Rhoda Miller, Sunday, Oct. 16, 2005
Rhoda Miller, CGRS, Vice President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Long Island
will speak on "Organizit: Reducing Your Genealogy Clutter". The program will be
held from 1:30 - 4:00 pm at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street in
Newton Center. The talk will present creative solutions and problem solving ideas for genealogy researchers interested in getting organized, so they can free up mental and physical space for more research. Miller will discuss clutter, how it happens and what to do about it. She will explain how to organize files, documents, photographs, correspondence, research projects, and research materials. She also will cover methods of approaching a genealogy project and how to plan for a research trip in a lively and entertaining talk.
Miller, a Certified Genealogical Record Searcher, has lectured and volunteered widely on genealogy in the New York City area and at international genealogy conferences. She is a doctoral candidate conducting research on the relationship of family history and the retention and persistence of first generation college students. She also teaches a family history course at Dowling College in Oakdale, New York.
Write Your Family History Now!
Mike Karsen, Sunday, September 11, 2005
Bring Your Own Written Family History to Display Before and After the TalkGenealogists are very good at doing research and collecting many facts about their family, but they frequently fail to publish the results of their research. Mike Karsen will show how you can publish your findings in book formats ranging from a 30-page pamphlet to one that contains detailed biographies and places your family in historical context. Karsen emphasizes the importance of organizing your findings and sharing them as soon as possible.
Mike Karsen is a professional genealogy speaker and instructor. He is a member of the National Genealogical Society and the Genealogical Speakers Guild. Mike has spoken at state, national, and international conferences on genealogical topics and has taught classes on genealogy. He has published five of his own family histories and has inspired many others to write their own family history.
A Taste of Jewish Genealogy
Nancy Levin Arbeiter, Tuesday, Sept. 20, 2005
Newton Free Library, Newton, MA
Exhibit at the Newton Free Library
Discovering Your Jewish Roots
Sept 1 - 30, 2005
Newton Free Library, Newton, MA
The Straus Family: How Social History Enhances Genealogy
Joan Adler, Sunday, June 12, 2005
Drawing on her research as the director of the Straus Family Historical Society, Joan Adler will discuss the importance of social history in putting our genealogical research in context. Learning more about social, political, historical, and even physical aspects of the family and where they lived, can give us more clues for research and help us bring to life an otherwise dry recitation of names and dates. The Straus family is the Jewish-American immigrant family whose members prospered as owners of Macy's department store in New York City and distinguished themselves in public service and philanthropy.
Held in conjunction with the AJHS, whose first president was Oscar Solomon Straus, this meeting is also JGSGB's Annual Meeting and will include the election of the next Board of Directors.
Admission is free for members, $5 for non-members. Refreshments will be served.
A Most Extraordinary Situation: Genealogical Adventures in Poland
Yale S. Reisner, Thursday, May 19, 2005
Yale S. Reisner directs the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation Genealogical Project of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland in Warsaw. Since 1994, he has been assisting individuals and families in uncovering their family history. The Lauder foundation is a non-profit Jewish educational foundation. Yale Reisner will present dramatic, moving, and sometimes amusing accounts of the work of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation Genealogy Project as it helps Jews of Polish origins and Poles of Jewish origin rediscover and sort out their often twisted roots and complex backgrounds. He will tell of child survivors and their offspring, of family ties lost and found, and of new potential sources of information.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Admission is free for members, $5 for non-members. Refreshments will be served.
Research Workshop at the National Archives
Tuesday, April 12, 2005 -- 6:00-9:00 PM
National Archives, New England Region,
380 Trapelo Road, Waltham, MA.
Join fellow JGSGB members at our annual research night at the National Archives and Records Administration on Trapelo Road in Waltham. There will be an orientation session for those who have not recently used the NARA facilities and resources. Learn how to look up census records, Boston passenger arrival records, Canadian border crossings, and New England WWI draft registrations and naturalizations. Help will be available for both beginners and experienced researchers.
Directions: From Route 128 take Exit 28 (Trapelo Road). Head east (toward Waltham and Belmont) on Trapelo Road for 2.75 miles. The National Archives is on the right down an incline, and the entrance road is beyond the building. If you are coming from Belmont, head west on Trapelo Road, 0.75 miles past Waverly Oaks Road. The National Archives is on the left.
Genealogical Treasure Troves of Israel: How to Use Them Here and There
Dr. Martha Lev-Zion, Sunday, March 13, 2005
Israel offers an amazing array of genealogical resources. In addition to major repositories such as the Central Archives of the Jewish People, every kibbutz, every association of Shoah survivors, every Jewish youth movement, every Jewish organization, active or dormant, has an archive with priceless material. The Israel Genealogical Society has posted on its website a thorough survey of available archives in Israel. This talk will tell you which resources are likely to be most useful to you (for example, the new Yad Vashem database), which ones make their data available online, how to discover hidden ways to access online databases, and how to use other internet facilities to plan in advance for a research trip to Israel.
Dr. Martha Lev-Zion is an historian of modern European intellectual history. She is the founder and president of the Israel Genealogical Society of the Negev, serves on the board of directors of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, and was a key organizer of the IAJGS Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem last summer. She is a former president of the Latvia SIG and a member of the steering committee of the Courland Research Group. She will be happy to answer questions on Latvian and Courland research.
The meeting will take place at Temple Reyim, 1860 Washington Street (Route 16), West Newton. The Temple is near Newton-Wellesley Hospital and the Woodland Stop on the Riverside Green Line, as well as a short ride from Route 128 at Exit 21. Click here for directions.
Admission is free for members, $5 for non-members. Refreshments will be served.
Jewish Settlement Patterns in the US: Why Jews Ended Up Where They Did
Jonathan D. Sarna, Sunday, February 13, 2005
Jews are by no means evenly distributed across the United States; in fact, they are among America’s most densely concentrated faiths. Today, some 85 percent of America’s Jews live in just twenty metropolitan areas. How and why did this happen? What determined where Jewish immigrants settled and where their descendants moved? We will look at some examples from the colonial era to the present.
Jonathan D. Sarna holds the Joseph H. & Belle R. Braun Professorship of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, and chairs the Academic Advisory and Editorial Board of the Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives. Author or editor of more than 20 books on American Jewish history and life, he is also the chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History in Philadelphia and of the 350th commemoration of Jewish life in America, 1654-2004. His most recent book, American Judaism: A History, won the top prize of the 2004 National Jewish Book Awards.
NOTE: This meeting is being held at the Wellesley Free Library, 530 Washington St. (Rt. 16), Wellesley. It can be reached from Rt. 16 at Exit 21 and from Rt. 9 at the Wellesley Hills exit. Map and directions.
Admission is free for members, $5 for non-members. Refreshments will be served.
Jewish Genes and Genealogy
Robert Weinberg, Sunday, January 9, 2005
By following the pattern of inheritance of certain DNA sequences, it has now become possible to determine where various ethnic groups have originated throughout the world. The Jewish gene pool is especially interesting because of the geographic dispersion of the Diaspora. Among the most dramatic findings has been the discovery of the Cohen Y chromosome, which traces its roots back to a common ancestor who lived more than 2500 years ago. Yet other findings provide indications of the Middle-Eastern origin of many Jewish mutations, including those that afflict particularly the Ashkenazic population. Knowing a bit about your DNA can even help you verify the details of your family tree.
Bob Weinberg is Professor of Biology at MIT and Member, Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research. He received his BS at MIT in 1964 and his PhD from MIT in 1969. He held post-doctoral fellowships at the Weizmann Institute in Rehovoth, Israel, and the Salk Institute, La Jolla CA. He has been on the MIT Faculty since 1974. Bob has been a genealogist since 1957, and his genealogical tree includes two to three thousand people. He has traced his father’s line of descent through nine generations to the late 17th century in Westphalia.
NOTE: This meeting is being held at the Wellesley Free Library, 530 Washington St. (Rt. 16), Wellesley. It can be reached from Rt. 16 at Exit 21 and from Rt. 9 at the Wellesley Hills exit.
Admission is free for members, $5 for non-members. Refreshments will be served.
The History of the Jewish Community in the Merrimack Valley — Louise Sandberg
How Strange It Seems: An Oral History of Jewish Cultural Life in Small Town New England —Michael Hoberman
Sunday, December 3, 2006 — 1:30 - 3:30PM
Hoberman's presentation will highlight findings of his research about how the Jewish heritage in rural New England has been both unique and similar to Jewish experience in other regions of the United States. He will illustrate these findings with examples drawn from 60 oral history interviews he conducted in Jewish communities in Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, and western Massachusetts and Connecticut. The talk will feature an audiotape of excerpts and accompanying photographs.
Hoberman is an assistant professor of English and folklore at Fitchburg State College. He also is the author of Yankee Moderns: Folk Regional Identity in the Sawmill Valley of Western Massachusetts, 1890-1920. He lives with his family on a small farm in Shelburne Falls, MA.
Sandberg, who is in charge of the Special Collections at the Lawrence Public Library, wrote Lawrence in the Gilded Age, part of the Image of America series.
Piecing Together The Quilt
Judy Cohen, Sunday, November 19, 2006
The Photo Archives at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have some 80,000 historic images documenting not only the tragic events of the Holocaust but also Jewish life in the decades before and after the war. While some of these photographs come from large well-known archival collections, many are the only remaining photographs of an individual family. Through the collection of private family photographs, the Museum both memorializes individual victims and also documents historic events.
Cohen has worked in the Photo Archives since 1998. Earlier, she was a researcher and text writer for the Museum's special exhibition, "Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto". Before joining the Holocaust Museum in 1995, Cohen taught history and Jewish studies in Jewish day and afternoon schools. She received a Bachelor of Arts from Harvard University in 1976 and a Master of Arts in Contemporary Jewish Studies from Brandeis University.
Learn how to donate your family photographs and artifacts to the Photographic Reference Collection of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
Introduction To Jewish Genealogy
Jay and Daphnah Sage, Tuesday, October 24, 2006
Jay and Daphnah Sage, past presidents of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, present an introduction to Jewish genealogy. They will describe some of the joys of discovering your relatives, debunk some of the common myths, and show you how easy it is to get started on your own research.Exhibit on Discovering Your Jewish Roots
October 5 - 30, 2006 JGSGB at the Brookline Library
This program will feature Stephen Morse speaking about the tools he has developed for genealogical research on the internet. His One-Step website started out as an aid for finding passengers in the Ellis Island database. Shortly afterwards it was expanded to help with searching in the 1930 census. Over the years it has continued to evolve and today includes over 100 web-based tools divided into twelve separate categories ranging from genealogical searches to astronomical calculations to last-minute bidding on e-bay. This presentation will describe the range of tools available and give the highlights of each one.
Stephen Morse is an amateur genealogist who has been researching his Russian-Jewish origins for the past few years. His websites on searching the Ellis Island database and the 1930 census have attracted attention worldwide. He has received both the Outstanding Contribution Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the IAJGS.
In his other life, Steve is a computer professional who has spent a career alternately doing research, development, teaching, consulting, and writing. He is best known as the designer of the Intel 8086 microprocessor (grandfather of today's pentium processor) which sparked the PC revolution twenty years ago. He has a Ph.D. in electrical engineering and still enjoys tinkering with electronics in his spare time.
How To Restore Photos - Roger Weiss
How To Digitize Your Family History - Hal Slifer
Sunday, September 10, 2006
Hal Slifer, one of New England's top videographers, has been capturing family memories for over 25 years. His work has been shown at numerous Jewish organizations. He has also done promotional videos for the Rashi School, Solomon Schechter Day School, and Gann Academy. Hal's specialty is producing biographies for families that include family interviews, photographs , and home movies to create a family legacy that will be passed down through the generations. He will be speaking about how to make your own family history DVD/video using interviews, old photos, and film, etc.
Jewish Migration Into and Within Greater Boston
Ellen Smith, Sunday, June 11, 2006
Award-winning historian, curator, and author, Ellen Smith is the Associate Director of the Gralla Fellows Program for Religion Journalists at Brandeis University, where she teaches courses in American Jewish Women's History and American Jewish Material Culture. Smith is the co-editor, with Jonathan Sarna, of The Jews of Boston, and she was the chief a dvisor to the Emmy Award-winning WGBH television documentary of the same name. The former Curator of both the American Jewish Historical Society and the National Museum of American Jewish History, she is also Principal of Museumsmith, a firm specializing in museum exhibitions and historic site interpretations throughout the nation. She has curated over three dozen exhibitions—including three on Boston Jewish history and has published over two dozen books, articles, and catalogs on American Jewish life and culture.
Smith sits on numerous civic and academic boards, and she is a past president of the Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community Center in Newton, Massachusetts. Smith and her husband have a grown daughter and son and live in Newton in a multi-generational house with Ellen's father and multi-generational pets.
How to Read Hebrew Tombstones
Judith Shulamith Langer-Surnamer Caplan, Sunday, May 21, 2006
Judith Shulamith Langer-Surnamer Caplan, has published articles on genealogy research and on her Surnamer family (which she has traced to 1650) in Avotaynu, the Jewish Star, Lineage and the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly. She created a Holocaust database and the Rabbi Samuel Langer Database (searchable online at JewishGen) and is working on two New York City synagogue databases. She is the Chair of the Litvak SIG Publications Committee and Editor of the Litvak SIG Online Journal for JewishGen (www.jewisihgen.org/litvak/journal.html). Caplan also founded a professional genealogical research and cemetery visitation service in New York City - Long Island, called Up, Roots!
Caplan earned a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from Brooklyn College, a Masters in Mass Communications from Syracuse University and studied at the Jewish Theological Seminary. She taught high school English in New York City for 20 years and is a published poet and short story writer. She and her husband have two grown sons and three grandchildren, one of whom is named for her eighth great grandmother.
Dr. Skorecki is head of the Jewish Genome Project which is tracing the origins of the Jewish people through DNA. He will discuss the revelations resulting from his research which traces the direct male line through the Y chromosome and the direct female line through mitochondrial DNA. Dr. Skorecki became known worldwide in Jewish genetics when he helped to determine that half of the Jewish people claiming descent from the priestly class, the Cohanim, are descended from one man who lived 3,000-3,800 years ago.
In a recent study, Dr. Skorecki and colleagues reported new information on the origins of the Jewish population in Europe. They determined that just four women who lived about 2,000 years ago in the Middle East are the ancestors of 40 percent of Jews whose families came from in eastern and central Europe. The women are thought to have migrated with men who came, perhaps as traders to Europe. Researchers had previously thought that only the men came from the Middle East and that they had married local women.
For the last 10 years, Dr, Skorecki has been a researcher in molecular biology and human genetics at the Technion and a clinical nephrologist at the Rambam Medical Center. During this time, he also has served as the Director of the Nephrology Department and Director of the Rappaport Research Institution in Haifa. Dr. Skorecki's current research focuses on population health and genetics as well as stem cell biology, among other areas. His work has attracted funding from major agencies leading to over 150 publications, over 80 invited lectureships or visiting professorships throughout the world and many international awards.
A native of Toronto, Canada, Dr, Skorecki received his medical degree from the University of Toronto with the highest overall standing in the Faculty, He did his post graduate clinical and research training in Boston at Brigham and Women's Hospital and at the Massachusetts General Hospital. After nearly 10 years of teaching and research at the University of Toronto, he and his wife, Linda, fulfilled a lifelong ambition and moved to Israel. They have five children and four grandchildren who all live in Israel.
The Krelitz Family: A Personal Face in Berlin's New Memorial to the
Murdered Jews of Europe
Joel Alpert, Sunday, April 23, 2006
"No one wanted to speak about family members who perished in the Holocaust," said Alpert. He found out about his relatives who died from a 1960s conversation with his grandfather, a 1903 immigrant from Lithuania. "This behavior was very common in many families. Now that our parents and grandparents are gone, it is up to our generation to find out about and honor our murdered ancestors. Amazingly we can now research this information using the resources available on the Internet."
His illustrated talk includes a historic 1927 film from a cousin's visit to Yurburg, as well as archival photographs and letters that the relatives sent just before the war and are now permanently exhibited in Berlin. Alpert also will discuss his recent visit to Yurburg.
A resident of Woburn, Alpert has been an electrical engineer at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington for 24 years. He began doing genealogical research and computerizing his family tree in the 1990's when the genealogical software became available. He also translated and published a Yizkor (Memorial) Book about Yurburg.
How To Plan a Family Reunion
Judy Izenberg & Jay Sage, Sunday, March 19, 2006
Izenberg says, "If you've never planned a reunion, it can seem like a daunting task. But if you plan ahead, it can be a wonderful experience both for you and your relatives." A retired school teacher who is currently co-president of the JGSGB, she has been doing research since 2000. She helped a friend plan a reunion in 2002.
"The greatest joy after doing genealogy research and finding people is to have them meet each other," says Sage, a past co-president of JGSGB who has been doing research since 1996. "Telling stories, meeting relatives for the first time, sharing pictures, displaying family treasures and solving mysteries are part of an awesome reunion." He organized the genealogical part of a family reunion held in August 2000.
After the talks, there will be opportunities to do research and meet with other genealogists. Informal discussion groups will be available for beginning genealogists and for those who are interested in writing their family history.
Getting More from JewishGen
Michael Marx, Sunday, Jan. 8, 2006
Marx, who lives in Lexington, has been interested in genealogy since he retired in 2000. He now has over 1500 people in his family tree. He frequently used the resources available on JewishGen to further his research, and he found the site to be the most useful internet source for Jewish genealogy.
Following the presentation, attendees will have a chance to participate in small discussion groups based on their genealogical interests.
Finding "The Lost": Family History, Memory, and Writing the Holocaust
Daniel Mendelsohn, Sunday, December 9
Award-winning author Daniel Mendelsohn will describe his search to discover the fates of family members who perished in the Holocaust at the inaugural Jewish Genealogy Lecture, Finding the Lost. Mendelsohn, a professor of Humanities at Bard College and frequent contributor to the New York Times Magazine and Book Review, is author of The Lost: a Search for Six of Six Million (HarperCollins, 2006). The poignant history and memoir chronicles his global quest to uncover what happened to the family of his great-uncle Shmiel Jäger, who sent letters to American relatives pleading for help as the Nazis tightened their grip on Jews in his Polish town. The Lost became a bestseller and received the National Book Critics’ Circle Award, the National Jewish Book Award, the Salon Book Award and the American Library Association Medal for Outstanding Contribution to Jewish Literature.
The new annual lecture is part of a collaboration between Hebrew College and the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston (JGSGB) that also will include a course in Jewish Genealogical Research beginning February 25, 2008 (see below). The lecture and course are made possible by a generous grant from Harvey Krueger of New York.
Jews "Down Under": Tracing My Australian Forebears
Judith Romney Wegner, Sunday, December 2
Judith Romney Wegner has researched her family in Australia. Her great-grandparents sailed to New Zealand as British colonists in the mid-19th century where her grandfather was born in 1867. He later returned to England. However, other members of his family moved to Australia. Judith will share the process of her research and her findings. She has used information on tombstones, newspapers, Australian Jewish Historical Society Journal articles, Australian and New Zealand Birth, Marriage, and Death records, military service records, and in one case the entire proceedings of a coroner’s inquest to discover information about her relatives.
Professor Judith Romney Wegner holds law degrees from Cambridge and Harvard Universities and a PhD in Judaic Studies from Brown. She is a life-time member of the English Bar and a retired member of the Rhode Island and American Bar Associations. Dr. Wegner has pursued two careers, first as a lawyer and later as a professor of Judaic Studies and comparative religious studies at several New England colleges. Now retired, she continues to pursue research into various aspects of Judaism and Islam. Her other passion is researching the genealogy of her ancestors, especially the Anglo-Jewish branch, who came to England from Holland before 1800.
Contemporary Sephardic Communities in America - History and Overview
Moshe Tessone, Sunday, Nov. 11
Rabbi Tessone will clarify the term “Sephardic” and distinguish among contemporary American Sephardic communities of Spanish, Portuguese, and Middle Eastern origin. While focusing on cultural, social, and religious aspects of the various communities, he will also provide historical background. The origins and meanings of family surnames will be covered.
Rabbi Tessone is director of the Sephardic Community Program and a faculty member of the Belz School of Jewish Music at Yeshiva University in New York. Tessone is a cantor at the Ahi Ezer Congregation in Brooklyn, NY, and his album of original Jewish Sephardic pop music, Haskshiva, was released in 2006 to great acclaim.
Henry Wellisch, Sunday, October 14
Henry Wellisch escaped in 1940 from Vienna, where he was born. Over 20 years ago he began to investigate his family background, has concentrated his research on the Austro-Hungarian Empire and has traced his family back into the18th century. He has published numerous articles, including the section on Austria for
the Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy, and has presented lectures to
various genealogical groups, including the 1999 international IAJGS
conference in New York. He served as president of the JGS of Canada from
1993 to 1998.
Click here for Henry Wellisch's List of Resources (pdf).
This event was co-sponsored by the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
Fay Bussgang and Carol Clingan, Sunday, October 7
Society members, Fay Bussgang, former co-president, and Carol Clingan, vice president, will speak on An Introduction to Jewish Genealogy. The speakers will describe the many records available locally and in Eastern Europe and how to access them, as well as the myriad of materials now available on the Internet. They will show what gems of information they have discovered from these sources.
Keith Stokes, Sunday, September 23
Keith Stokes is a direct descendant of Judah Touro, the son of the rabbi of the Newport, Rhode Island synagogue in the mid-18th century. He is the executive director of the Newport County Chamber of Commerce, and a native of Newport, Rhode Island. Mr. Stokes is a frequent national, state and local lecturer in community & regional planning, historic preservation and interpretation with an expertise in early African and Jewish American history.
The presentations will include images of early Jewish families and historic structures that still exist where they once lived, worked and worshipped. The presentation will also include images and artifacts from his own family that spans the time from 18th century Newport and Boston through 19th century Richmond, Virginia and back to Newport in the 20th century.
Michael Good, Sunday, June 3, 2007
Michael Good, a family physician from Durham, CT, became interested in Holocaust history in 1999 during a family trip to Vilnius, Lithuania, with his parents to explore his family origins and hear their tales of survival during the Holocaust. During the trip, his mother told him of the mysterious German army officer, Major Plagge, who commanded her slave labor camp and saved over 250 of his Jewish workers from the murderous intent of the Nazis. She did not know what had become of the German officer. He had disappeared with the retreating German army in July of 1944.
Following this trip, Good set out to find this enigmatic officer, trying to understand who Major Plagge was and why a German officer would have acted so benevolently at a time when his countrymen were committing atrocities on a previously unthinkable scale. In his book, the author shares his parents' stories of survival and describes his search for the man who saved his mother's life. During this journey of exploration he built a team of camp survivors and researchers from Canada, France, Israel and Germany to answer the questions that had haunted camp survivors and their descendants for decades. Good gradually reveals the story of a remarkable man of conscience, who transformed from an early supporter of the Nazi party into a covert rescuer of persecuted Jews.
Good, the son of two Jewish immigrants from Vilna, Poland, grew up in West Covina California, outside of Los Angeles. He attended Occidental College in Los Angeles, received his medical degree from the University of Rochester's School of Medicine and then trained in family medicine.
How Do You Do Research at NARA
May 15, 2007
Exhibit on Discovering Your Jewish Roots at Temple Israel
March 5 - April 30
Sunday, April 29, 2007 — 9:00 - 4:00PM
The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston celebrated its 25th Anniversary in 2007. We had a full day of great speakers, great food, displays of our accomplishments, and some surprises! A video DVD of Arthur Kurzweil's talk is available to our members.
Holocaust research is an important part of Jewish genealogical research. This lecture will take you through many of the sources of information that identify the fate of individuals caught up in the Holocaust. An attempt was made to eradicate the fact that these people ever existed but, in reality, a wealth of information exists about their lives and their fate. A good amount of this information recently has become readily accessible on the Internet.
Gary Mokotoff is an author, lecturer and leader of Jewish genealogy. He is the first person to receive the Lifetime Achievement Award of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). He is the author of a number of books including the award-winning Where Once We Walked, a gazetteer which provides information about 23,500 towns in central and eastern Europe where Jews lived before the Holocaust, How to Document Victims and Locate Survivors of the Holocaust, and Getting Started in Jewish Genealogy. Mokotoff is also known for his application of computers to genealogy. Among his accomplishments is co-authorship of the Daitch-Mokotoff soundex system; the JewishGen Family Finder, a database of ancestral towns and surnames being researched by some 40,000 Jewish genealogists throughout the world and the Consolidated Jewish Surname Index. He is publisher of Avotaynu, the magazine of Jewish genealogy and past president of IAJGS. He is/was on the Board of Directors of the Federation of Genealogical Societies, Association of Professional Genealogists, JewishGen and the Jewish Book Council.
Antony Polonsky, Sunday, February 4, 2007
Before World War II, Poland was a multicultural nation, with a large population of Jews, mostly concentrated in certain cities and towns. In the eastern part of Poland, large numbers of Ukrainians lived, mostly in the countryside. Economically, politically, and religiously, these two major minority populations had different agendas. Alliances between the various groups shifted during different periods. Due to border changes after World War II, some parts of pre-war Poland are now in Belarus and Ukraine. Most American Jews trace their ancestry to this part of the world.
Professor Polonsky, who teaches Near Eastern and Judaic Studies, is Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies at Brandeis University and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He is the recipient of many awards and chair of the editorial board of POLIN, a scholarly annual journal of Polish-Jewish studies. He is also the author/co-author of numerous books and articles about Jews in Poland.
Film - My Grandfather's House
Sunday, January 7, 2007
Filmmaker Eileen Douglas read the book Hidden History of the Kovno Ghetto, which tells the story of the Lithuanian Jews whom the Nazis forced into the Kovno (Kaunas) ghetto when they occupied the Baltic states in 1941. Eileen's grandfather was from Kovno, and after visiting the Holocaust Museum she began a search for details of her family's experience in Kovno during the Holocaust. This search is portrayed in this film that she made.
Advanced Googling for Genealogists
Michael Marx, Sunday, January 6, 2008
Learn how to take your genealogy research to a new level by making your Google searches more successful. Google is a simple and helpful way to search the internet, but are you getting just what you want or need? When you get a promising looking return, do you know how to get the most out of it? Did you know there are many more very useful things Google can do beyond that simple search screen? These and many more questions will be answered at the program.
Marx of Lexington has been researching his German roots since 2001 and can now trace his ancestors back to the mid- 1600s. Much of his success has come from searching the World Wide Web, and his primary tool has been Google. He is the treasurer of the JGSGB.
Click here to get the Google Cheat Sheet.
Sunday, Feb 3, 2008
Problem solve with our “experts.” Learn how to get started or get over that “brick wall” in your family research. Visit various roundtables, some with computers connected to the Internet for online research.
Included are tables dedicated to the following topics:
- Finding your ancestors using immigration, naturalization, and vital records;
- Getting started with Jewish genealogy (e.g., using the JewishGen and Steve Morse websites);
- Holocaust research (e.g., using the Internet and Transport Books);
- Country-specific research (e.g., Polish, German, Lithuanian);
- Translation of foreign-language documents (e.g., Yiddish, Polish, German, Russian);
Heidi Urich & Tom Weiss Feb 25 - April 14
| This course is jointly sponsored by JGSGB and Hebrew College and will take place at Hebrew College, 160 Herrick Road, Newton Centre. |
Sunday, March 16, 2008
| This event will take place from 1:30-4:30 at Needham Library, 1139 Highland Avenue, Needham 02494 | ||
This film realistically portrays the joys and sorrows of a genealogical search from an initial spark of interest through the process of interviewing family, going to archives, traveling to ancestral lands, visiting important people and places of the past, hiring a researcher, and using sites on the Internet. Part of a series from the British Broadcasting Corporation that followed popular figures as they traced their roots, this film follows the efforts of Stephen Fry, who has starred in many productions, including Jeeves and Wooster. He unlocks his roots and uncovers some engaging secrets. A panel discussion with experienced researchers explaining how they go about their research will follow the film. “This film is one to which everyone can relate,” says Judy Izenberg who helped to select the film for Sunday’s program. “It demonstrates everything a researcher goes through from the technical avenues you explore to the many emotions you feel when discovering the details of your ancestry.” |
| This event will take place from 1:30-4:30 in Reisman Hall at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton. | ||
The presentation will begin with a geographical orientation to Galicia, which no longer exists as a political entity. Western Galicia is now in Poland and Eastern Galicia is now in Ukraine. Wynne will give an overview of the government-mandated self governing system, the Juedische Kultus Gemeinden (Jewish Religious Communities), a uniquely Austrian construct which governed virtually all of Jewish life. She also will discuss the impact of the rigid class structure of Polish society on the Jews of Galicia, daily life and Jewish observance, the enormous role of the Hasidic movement, conditions before and after the 1869 Emancipation of the Jews, education, marriage and the tricky issue of surnames for genealogical research. Wynne has been involved with Jewish genealogy since 1977 as a teacher, lecturer, author and former professional. A founding member of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington, she was the founder of Gesher Galicia in 1993. She has written two books about Jewish genealogical research for Galitzianers, and has contributed to or written numerous articles for Avotaynu and books about genealogy. A clinical social worker, she works as a geriatric and mental health care manager and consultant in the Washington, DC area. |
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| This event will take place from 1:30-4:30 at Vilna Shul, 18 Phillips Street, Boston. | ||
Jews have been part of the American fabric for over 350 years. Their stories directly affected not only the lives of Jewish people in the United States today but also the course of American history. For genealogists, learning about where their families came from and how they lived provides a deeper understanding of their ancestors’ experiences on American soil. Finkelstein, who lives in Framingham, is a teacher, writer, and editor. A former school librarian in the Brookline public schools, he has been teaching children's literature and history courses at Hebrew College for over 26 years. He is the author of 16 books for young readers, including Forged in Freedom: Shaping the Jewish American Experience and Heeding the Call: Jewish Voices in America’s Civil Rights Struggle, both National Jewish Book Award winners. His biography of Edward R. Murrow, With Heroic Truth, won the Golden Kite Honor Award for Nonfiction. He holds degrees from Boston University and Hebrew College. The program is free and open to the public. Validated parking ($10.00) is available in the underground part of the Charles River Plaza garage on Cambridge Street (near Au Bon Pain). For directions, please visit: http://www.vilnashul.com/contact/. The Shul is also close to the Charles/MGH T station on the Red Line |
Batya Unterschatz Thursday, June 19, 2008
| Finding Relatives in Israel An Informal Discussion with Batya Unterschatz |
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| This event will take place at 7 pm at Cary Public Library, Lexington Center | ||
Is it possible that you have yet-unknown family in Israel? Has your family lost contact with relatives in Israel? Have you discovered possible relatives through Yad Vashem's Pages of Testimony but don't know how to contact them? In the aftermath of the Holocaust, the Jewish Agency in Israel set up the “Search Bureau for Missing Relatives” to assist survivors and to help reunite families that had been separated. Over the decades, the Bureau developed into a major resource for genealogists seeking to find family members living in Israel. Batya Unterschatz was the director of the Search Bureau for its last 16 years, helping thousands of people find lost family and friends. She will give a short history of the Search Bureau and then answer questions from the audience about looking for lost relatives. This will not be a lecture, but rather an informal question-and-answer session. Ms. Unterschatz was born in Vilnius, Lithuania, and immigrated to Israel in 1971. She continues assisting people today as a professional researcher. The Cary Public Library, 735 Massachusetts Avenue, is located in Lexington Center where Bedford Street (Route 4-225) and Mass. Avenue meet at the Lexington Battle Green. |
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Sallyann Sack Sunday, September 7, 2008
| This event will take place from 1:30-4:30 at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton. |
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 For 60 years the vast store of Holocaust documents housed in the
International Tracing Service (ITS) were not available to the public.
That changed in November 2007. The first group to take advantage of
the new open-door policy were 40 Jewish genealogists who visited the
ITS at Bad Arolsen, Germany, in May 2008 and were given full access to vast
numbers of records relating to Holocaust victims and survivors. All of
these records will ultimately be shared with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington D.C., Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and the NationalInstitute of Remembrance (IPN) in Warsaw. Learn more about the kinds of records that exist and how they may be accessed from members of the research group that visited Bad Arolsen. Sallyann Sack, our guest speaker, has made three trips to the ITS and organized the group that visited in May. She is the editor of Avotaynu (the leading journal for Jewish Genealogy), a past president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, author or editor of seven major reference books on Jewish genealogy, and a recognized pioneer and leader in the world of Jewish genealogy. She will be joined by JGSGB members Tom Weiss and Heidi Urich, who researched the fates of family members during their week at the ITS archive. |
September 24, 2008
| This event will take place from 6:00 - 9:00 pm at NARA, 380 Trapelo Road, Waltham.. | ||
Join fellow JGSGB members at our annual research night at the National Archives and Records Administration on Trapelo Road in Waltham. There will be an orientation session for those who have not recently used the NARA facilities and resources. Learn how to look up census records, Boston passenger arrival records, Canadian border crossings, and New England WWI draft registrations and naturalizations. Help will be available for both beginners and experienced researchers. |
Pamela Weisberger Sunday, October 26, 2008
| This event will take place from 1:30-4:30 at Gann Academy, 333 Forest Street, Waltham. | ||
 Some of the most exciting resources for genealogists are the online databases and microfilms of old newspapers and journals. From the scanned and digitized New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, Washington Post, and Times of London—to regional newspapers and Jewish community journals, following this oft-neglected “paper trail” will enhance your genealogical knowledge. From obituaries, birth, engagement and marriage announcements, to curiosities such as “Yesterday’s Fires,” “news of the Courts,” and articles covering Eastern European towns and businesses, you will be astonished by the unexpected appearances immigrant ancestors make in the pages of these tabloids and broadsheets. Learn techniques for locating people and events meaningful to you, with examples of unexpected insights gained into your relatives’ lives by exploring this under-utilized research tool.Pamela Weisberger is the program chair for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, Research Coordinator for Gesher Galicia, and is active in the Hungarian and Sub-Carpathian JewishGen SIGs. Documenting her family’s history for over twenty years, she has traveled throughout Eastern Europe visiting ancestral towns and villages and conducting research in Polish, Ukrainian and Hungarian archives. A special area of interest has been late 19th to early 20th century city directories, newspapers and court records. She has also produced the documentaries “I Remember Jewish Drohobycz” and “Genealogy Anyone? Twenty-Five Years in the Life of the JGSLA,” and coordinated the IAJGS Conference’s 2006-2008 film festivals. She holds a B.A. in English from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.S. in Broadcasting from Boston University. |
Carol Clingan and Paul Auerbach Sunday, November 16, 2008
| This event will take place from 1:30-4:30 at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton. | ||
  Two experienced researchers will partner for a presentation of sources available for American research and a case study of the success in using them. Carol Clingan will give an overview of the databases offered by Ancestry.com. She will also briefly introduce some other research sources including the Steve Morse One-Step pages. Paul Auerbach will present a case study of how he used these sources and a chance remark by a family member to identify a previously unknown great-grandfather and, ultimately contacted an entire missing branch of his family. |
Omer Bartov Sunday, November 23, 2008
| This event is jointly sponsored by JGSGB and Hebrew College and takes place at Hebrew College. | ||
 Once home to a vibrant Jewish community, former Eastern Galicia is now part of Ukraine, where all traces of a Jewish past are being eradicated in the name of a fiercely aggressive Ukrainian nationalism. This region was once part of Poland and also part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, where multi-ethnic communities co-existed before WWII.
Omer Bartov, an international authority on genocide, traces the destruction of the region’s Jewish communities under Nazi and Soviet rule, and explores the contemporary politics of memory in Ukraine. He is the Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European History at Brown University. His lecture draws on his most recent book, Erased: Vanishing Traces of Jewish Galicia in Present-Day Ukraine (Princeton, 2007). This is the 2nd Annual Genealogy Lecture jointly sponsored by JGSGB and Hebrew College. It will take place at Hebrew College, 160 Herrick Road, Newton Center on Sunday, November 23, 2008, at 3 pm in Berenson Hall. |
Steve Denker and Alex Woodle Sunday, December 7, 2008
| This event will take place from 1:30-4:30 at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton. | ||
Two dramatic stories of digging into lost histories and reuniting long separated families will be featured.
Experienced society researchers Stephen Denker of Brookline and Alexander Woodle of Groton will present their stories of successful family research:
In the first presentation, Stephen Denker reports on seven years of research, worldwide travel and internet chats. By tracing his American family’s manufacturing business and life in Cuba early in the twentieth century, Denker unravels their genealogical history and reconnects cousins who were apart for over seventy years. In the summer of 2007, Denker spent two weeks in Havana completing his research and visiting the family’s home and factory. In the second presentation, Alexander Woodle reports on his research that also resulted in re-tying the genealogical thread, this time after 250 years. Woodle’s quest started with discovering a familiar surname in Austria and Romania in a search of international telephone directories. JewishGen and Familysearch database resources provided evidence of relationship. Then Woodle contacted a family in Romania, and utilizing the latest tool of genea-technology, dispatched a DNA kit. Last May, Woodle traveled to Central Europe to visit his distant cousins. Both presentations exhibit another important facet of genealogical research: the importance of the historical context. Denker describes the circumstances of Jewish immigration to Cuba. Woodle’s review of Jewish history in Central Europe yields clues to the dispersal of his family from 18th century Bohemia to Banat (now partially in Romania) in the southern reaches of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. |
Lithuanian Records Project
Joel Ratner, Sunday, January 4
Joel Ratner has been responsible for the LitvakSIG Vital Records Translation Project since 2004. This project's goal is to translate records that the Mormon Church microfilmed as part of its worldwide ancestry endeavors. Joel Ratner was also the Vilna District coordinator for the LitvakSIG Research Group from 1998 to 2006. LitvakSIG can be accessed at www.litvaksig.org.
Problem Solving with Experts in Jewish Genealogy
Sunday, February 1
Included are tables dedicated to the following topics:
- Immigration, Naturalization and Vital Records
- Getting started with Jewish genealogy (e.g., using the JewishGen and Steve Morse websites)
- Holocaust research (e.g., using the Internet and Transport Books)
- Austria-Czech Roundtable
- Galicia Roundtable
- German Roundtable
- Lithuania Vital Records
- Moldova/Bessarabia Roundtable
- Polish Roundtable
- Ukraine Roundtable
- Translation of foreign-language documents (e.g., Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, German, Russian)
Genealogical reference materials will be available for perusal. So bring in your research questions and your foreign documents for translation.
If you want help at the meeting in obtaining information about a relative, please try to have at least their name and their date and place of birth.
Film - Who Do You Think You Are, Natasha Kaplinsky
Sunday, March 1
This film is from the BBC family history documentary series that follows celebrities as they trace their roots. The subject of this particular episode is Natasha Kaplinsky, a BBC newscaster, whose paternal line descends from Poland by way of South Africa.
The film portrays the ups and downs of a genealogical search from an initial curiosity about why her family never spoke of this Eastern European background, through the process of interviewing family, going to archives, and visiting people and places in Poland. As is not atypical in family history research, surprises pop up, and there is an appreciation of the impact world events have on individuals, and how they reverberate through the generations. In Kaplinsky’s case, one example is that she learns that her great-uncle survived the Holocaust as a member of the Bielsky Brothers resistance in the forests of Poland (the subject of the newly-released movie, Defiance !).
After the film showing, experienced researchers will field questions about research methods.
Genealogical Research in Israel
Michael Goldstein, Sunday, April 19
Jewish genealogists around the globe seek information about their ancestors, yet few realize that one of the greatest sources for research lies in Israel. It is not generally known that Israeli archives and internet sites have amassed collections of historical and contemporary information about Jews from around the world, including Poland, Russia, Spain and China. Furthermore, recent advances have been made in facilitating access to this data and finding Israeli family.
This presentation will offer general guidelines about contacting and accessing Israeli archives. Interesting case studies will be shared on how family mysteries were solved by accessing some lesser-known Israeli archives. Archives to be discussed include shtetl tax rolls, migration records from Galicia to New York, ketubot from the world over, Polish vital records, Yad Vashem resources, and even data on assets owned by ancestors who never left Russia.
Michael Goldstein, the featured speaker, is a Jerusalem-based genealogist who carries out worldwide Jewish research and guides North Americans in locating and connecting with their Israeli family. He is the current president of the Israel Genealogical Society, as well as a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists.
Everyday Jewish Life in the Russian Empire
ChaeRan Freeze, Sunday, May 3
ChaeRan Freeze's talk will examine everyday Jewish life in tsarist Russia as a site of interaction with modernity, where Jews confronted the unfamiliar and negotiated their environment in strategic and creative ways. She will present several fascinating archival documents from the former Soviet Union and rabbinical responsa that reveal the daily struggles of ordinary Jews as they confronted changes in the areas of family life, religion, sexuality, and health. The discussion will also reveal how to find new sources for genealogy that go beyond vital records and census materials, and highlight the rich diversity of the Jewish experience in the Russian Empire.
ChaeRan Freeze is an Associate Professor in the Near Eastern and Judaic Studies Department and Women's and Gender Studies program at Brandeis University. She has focused her research on the history and culture of the Jews in Russia, Jewish family history, and women's and gender studies. She is the author of Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Imperial Russia, which received the Salo Baron Award for the Best First Book in Jewish Studies. She also edited Polin: Jewish Women in Eastern Europe with Paula Hyman and Antony Polonsky. She is currently finishing her book, Everyday Jewish Life in Imperial Russia, 1825-1914: Select Documents (coauthored with Jay Harris, 2010) and working on her second monograph, Sex and the Shtetl: Gender, Family, and Jewish Sexuality in Tsarist Russia.
Advanced Googling for Genealogists: The Many Features of Google Beyond Search
Michael Marx, Sunday, June 14
Last year Mr. Marx presented advanced search techniques that make Google searches more relevant and more efficient. His current talk continues the “advanced Googling” theme and introduces other features and tools Google offers to aid your genealogy research. For example, he will demonstrate how to find photographs and images of your ancestral town, get maps for towns and regions of interest, connect with other researchers with similar interests, find unique resource materials which can be downloaded, and some of the new tools and finding aids coming out of Google Labs that allow you to customize Google to your specific interests. Marx has been researching his German roots since 2001 and can now trace his ancestors back to the mid- 1600. Much of his success has come from searching the World Wide Web, and his primary tool has been Google. He is the treasurer of the JGSGB.
The Ellis Island Experience
Vincent Cannato, Sunday, September 13
Were immigrants’ names changed at Ellis Island? Professor Vincent J. Cannato will discuss whether this is fact or fiction at the kick-off meeting for this season’s programs. Professor Cannato’s presentation on the Ellis Island immigration experience will pay special attention to the experiences of Jewish immigrants.
Professor Cannato will discuss why such an inspection station was created in 1892 on a small island in New York Harbor and how America’s immigration law evolved during this period. He will explain the inspection process and the reasons that some immigrants were excluded. Copies of Professor Cannato’s new book, “American Passage: The History of Ellis Island,” will be available for sale and signing following his talk.
Vincent Cannato teaches history at the University of Massachusetts, Boston and is the author of The Ungovernable City: John Lindsay and His Struggle to Save New York. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and The Washington Post.
DNA for Genealogy
Jay Sage, Sunday, Oct 18
Jay Sage will discuss how genetic testing can be used for genealogical research. The cost of DNA testing has fallen at such a remarkable pace that companies are now offering tests at prices that individuals can afford. The talk will begin with just enough of an overview of the biochemical basis of human genetics to allow understanding of how DNA testing is used for genealogy and what can and cannot be learned from it. He will then describe how the testing is done, how much it costs, and how to interpret the reported results.
Besides being a passionate genealogist who has used DNA testing in his own research, Jay had a fleeting personal connection with early DNA research, having spent a summer in graduate school working on a biochemistry project in the laboratory of Walter Gilbert -- his physics professor turned biochemist -- who later received the Nobel Prize for advances in DNA sequencing.
Culture Wars: Litvaks vs. Galizianers in Eastern Europe
Zvi Gitelman, Thursday, November 12
Eastern Europe, home to 80% of American Jews, was an area of diverse religious practices, political ideologies, Yiddish pronunciation, foods, customs, and dress. Some of this diversity carried over to America, but it has faded in the post-immigrant generations. This talk will explore the differences among Eastern European Jews and the stereotypes to which they gave rise, illustrating the richness and vitality of a civilization that continues to inform Jewish life in Europe, the Americas and Israel.Professor Zvi Gitelman is the Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan where he has won major teaching awards. Professor Gitelman also served as Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University. He is the author of Ethnicity or Religion? The Evolution of Jewish Identities, and A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union since 1881. He has written or edited 14 books and written over 100 articles.
A Century of Ambivalence: Jews, Soviets and Russians
Zvi Gitelman, Sunday, November 15
During the course of a century or more, Russian Jewry experienced pogroms, two World Wars, two revolutions, purges, Communism, the Holocaust and Stalin's anti-Semitism, but also experienced unprecedented social, political and vocational mobility. Who were these Russian Jews? Prior to the 19th century, they were Polish, Lithuanian and Eastern European Jews until the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was carved up by its more powerful neighbors. In 1900, 5.2 million Jews lived in the Soviet Empire; today, they number about 500,000.
Professor Zvi Gitelman is the Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of Political Science at the University of Michigan where he has won major teaching awards. Professor Gitelman also served as Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and Director of the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University. He is the author of Ethnicity or Religion? The Evolution of Jewish Identities, and A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union since 1881. He has written or edited 14 books and written over 100 articles.
Finding Your Ancestors in Polish Records
Fay Bussgang, Sunday, Dec 6
Fay Bussgang will describe what records exist in Poland for genealogical research, what they look like, and how you can access them.
More American Jews have roots in Poland than in any other country. The Poles kept very good track of their citizens through metrical records (birth, marriage, and death records), population registers, and other documents. While many of these records were destroyed during the war, a surprising number has survived and can be found in Polish Archives, even for the localities no longer in Poland. Many of these records are now accessible through the Internet.
Ms. Bussgang has authored over 20 articles published in genealogical journals, as well as the “Russian Poland” section of the Avotaynu Guide to Jewish Genealogy. She and her Polish-born husband, Julian, have done extensive genealogical research during twelve trips to Poland. They have also translated two volumes of war-time accounts of child survivors still living in Poland. Ms. Bussgang served as co-president of the JGS of Greater Boston 1998–2000.
Jacob’s Cane
Elisa New, Sunday, Dec 13
The JGSGB co-sponsored a lecture with Hebrew College by Elisa New on her recently published memoir - Jacob’s Cane: A Jewish Family’s Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore, A Memoir in Five Generations (Basic Books 2009).
Elisa New, a Professor of English at Harvard University, traces the paths of her ancestors and captures the rich texture of life on several continents as her family searches to establish itself in the tobacco trade. She discovers an immigrant world profoundly affected by modern German culture, from the Enlightenment through the Holocaust.
Forensic Genealogy: Uncovering Hoaxes, Confirming Truths
Sharon Sergeant, January 17
This program discusses how the genealogical research methods and skills—that we are used to thinking of for creating family trees and family histories—are also used in "detective" situations: uncovering frauds and hoaxes, or establishing historical truths. The speaker uses examples from two cases she worked on that were widely reported in the press: "Misha the Wolf Girl" and "Angel at the Fence.”
Sharon Sergeant received international acclaim for exposing the Misha Defonseca “Jewish hidden child aided by wolves” and Herman Rosenblat "apple over the fence" Holocaust frauds. As an adjunct professor at Boston University Sharon Sergeant created the Problem Solving Techniques and Technology module in the genealogical professional development program. She combines technology and the Genealogy Proof Standard methods to research both modern and antiquarian records. Sharon has published in the Association of Professional Genealogists Quarterly, the National Genealogical Society Quarterly, and the PI magazine. Sharon has served as Program Director for local and regional genealogical societies.
Who Do You think You Are; Zoë Wanamaker
Film at Needham Library, February 7
This film is from the BBC family history documentary series that follows celebrities as they trace their roots.
Here's what they have to say:
Zoë Wanamaker was born in New York, but when she was three her father, American actor Sam Wanamaker, fled to the UK to escape the anti-communist McCarthy witch-hunts. Hoping to better understand her father's decision, Zoë heads to Washington DC where she visits the FBI headquarters. Here, under the Freedom of Information Act, Zoë gains access to her father's FBI file, an extraordinary document that reveals the level of scrutiny Sam was under and the very real risk of imprisonment he faced.
Wanting to explore the roots of her father's left-wing politics, Zoë next looks into the life of her father's father Maurice Wanamaker, an émigré Russian Jew. Zoë is moved to discover that, soon after his arrival in Chicago, Maurice suffered a series of personal tragedies and hardships that almost destroyed his American dream.
Finally, Zoë travels to Nikolaev in Ukraine where she discovers the original form of her unusual surname and the reason why her family left for America.
Problem Solving with Experts: A Research Session
February 21
Problem solve with our “experts.” Learn how to get started or get over that “brick wall” in your family research. Visit various roundtables, some with computers connected to the Internet for online research.
Included are tables dedicated to the following topics:
- Immigration, Naturalization and Vital Records
- Getting started with Jewish genealogy (using the JewishGen and Steve Morse websites)
- Holocaust research (using the Internet)
- Austria-Czech Roundtable
- Galicia Roundtable
- Lithuania Roundtable
- Polish Roundtable
- Ukraine Roundtable
- Translation of foreign-language documents (e.g., Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish, German, Russian)
Mapping Madness: Historical Maps (Ron Arons) and Google Earth (Jay Sage)
March 14
Mr. Arons’s presentation will discuss websites that provide a broad range of historical maps, basic and advanced features of Google, and Microsoft's internet-based mapping facilities (maps.google.com and www.bing.com/maps), and lesser known mapping facilities provided by whitepages.com, Microsoft's MapCruncher, and IBM's Many Eyes.
Mr. Sage’s presentation will discuss Google Earth, web-based software and data that provides an amazing high-resolution, three-dimensional model of the Earth based on satellite and aerial photographs, and how it can be used to map one's family history.
Ron Arons has spoken at several international conferences on a variety of genealogy topics. He appeared in the PBS TV series The Jewish Americans to discuss Jewish criminals of New York's Lower East Side and published The Jews of Sing Sing in 2008.
Jay Sage is a former president of the Society, current co-editor of the Society's journal, Mass-Pocha, and has given lectures at international and local conferences.Sephardic Jewry after the Expulsion from Spain (Jonathan Decter) and Tracing Family to 13th Century Spain (Daniel Laby)…
April 25
Sephardic Jewry after the Expulsion from Spain: Professor Jonathan Decter will talk about the Sephardi migration after 1492 - to Portugal, the Ottoman Empire, Europe, and the Americas, including Eastern and Central Europe. He will discuss intellectual and economic connections across the Sephardi Diaspora, and the nature of Sephardi identity.
Jonathan Decter is Associate Professor and the Edmond J. Safra Professor of Sephardic Studies in the Department of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at Brandeis University. His first book, Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christain Europe, won the Salo W. Baron prize for best first book in Judaic Studies, 2007. His research interests include Medieval Hebrew literature, Judeo-Arabic and Sephardic and Middle Eastern Jewry.
Tracing family to 13th century Spain: Dr. Daniel Laby will describe his quest to trace his Laby- De La Caballeria family. Using both modern (DNA) and classical methods (microfilms), he was able to follow the trail from western Massachusetts and New York’s Lower East Side all the way back to the Ottoman Empire and pre-inquisition Spain.
Daniel Laby is an Assistant Clinical Professor of Ophthalmology at Harvard Medical School and is a specialist in Sports Vision working with the Boston Red Sox as well as several other professional and Olympic teams. Predating his medical practice, and of almost equal passion, is his search for his family. Using both modern (DNA analysis) as well as more classical methods (pouring over reels of microfilm), Dr. Laby has traced one branch of his family to pre-inquisition Spain in the 13th century.
Finding your Ancestors in Lithuanian Records
Deena Berton, May 23
Deena Berton will describe what records exist in Lithuania for genealogical research, what they look like, and how you can access them. Ms. Berton will also explain what LitvakSIG does, how it is organized, and give a tour of the new website of LitvakSIG. LitvakSIG is the primary internet resource for Lithuanian-Jewish research, whose mission is to preserve Litvak heritage by discovering, collecting, documenting, and disseminating information about the once vibrant Jewish community of Lithuania before its destruction in the Holocaust. Besides Independent Lithuania (1919-1940), the geographic coverage is the larger Lithuania from the Russian Empire Period (1795-1919, including a number of shtetls now in Belarus and Poland.
Ms. Berton is on the Board of Directors of LitvakSig, and has extensively traveled to Lithuania and been active in acquiring data from local archives.
Jacob’s Cane
Elisa New, June 13
Jacob's Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore; A Memoir in Five Generations.
Drawn to an image of her great-grandfather’s ornately carved cane, scholar Elisa New embarked on a journey to discover the origins of her precious family heirloom. Following the paths of her ancestors, she traveled from Baltimore to the Baltic to London in order to find and understand an immigrant world profoundly affected by modern German culture, from the Enlightenment through the Holocaust.
Elisa New is a professor of English at Harvard. Her quest to uncover her family history is described in her book "Jacob’s Cane: A Jewish Family's Journey from the Four Lands of Lithuania to the Ports of London and Baltimore."
New York Research: Not Everything is Online
Steve Siegel October 3
Although New York genealogical resources are extensive and many can be searched online, locating New York documents in a maze of repositories and websites can be confusing even to a knowledgeable family historian. The 1898 expansion of New York City from Manhattan and The Bronx into a municipality comprising five boroughs and four – later five – counties led to record-keeping challenges that still perplex today's researchers. Two federal court districts have jurisdiction over the city and its suburban counties, and New York's role as the country's major port of entry produced documents that often point to an immigrant's place of origin. Steven Siegel, an experienced genealogist and archivist, and a founder and past president of the New York JGS, will offer practical advice for navigating New York's archival treasures and finding the connections between documents that illustrate a family's history.
Steven Siegel was library director and archivist at the 92nd Street YM-YWHA in Manhattan for 31 years until his recent retirement. He initiated and organized the annual Family History Fair (1990-2005) during New York Archives Week. He is a past president of the Archivists Round Table of Metropolitan New York and the 2004 recipient of the Round Table's Award for Archival Achievement. He is president of the Jewish Historical Society of New York, serves on the Jewish Book Council Board of Directors, and is a member of the Cornell Hillel Board of Trustees and the Cornell University Council. Steve was a founder of the New York JGS and its president from 1985 to 1989, and he continues to serve on the JGS board. He has been doing genealogical research for more than 40 years, with a focus on Jewish genealogy, Jewish archival sources, and New York City local history. Steve was co-founder and co-editor of Toledot: The Journal of Jewish Genealogy (1977-1982) and compiled the Archival Resources volume of Jewish Immigrants of the Nazi Period in the USA (1978).
The Nature and Consequences of Jewish Migration
Zvi Gitelman, Oct 17
Vayis’u Vayahanu [and they traveled and they encamped]: The Nature and Consequences of Jewish Migration
Ever since God spoke his first words to Abraham, lech lecho [go forth], Jews have been a migratory people. Migration and dispersal have influenced Jews’ culture, political behavior and economy. In many times and places, Jews have acculturated and assimilated, overwhelmed by more powerful and attractive cultures. But because of the power of other cultures, other Jews have chosen to isolate themselves from them as far as possible. In between these diametrically opposed reactions to cultural encounters is cultural borrowing, sometimes an exchange and sometimes a one-way process. Words, ideas, food, clothing, art, music and humor are among the items exchanged or adopted. The consequences of migration and dispersal are profound, and with the migration of over a million Jews from the former Soviet Union since 1989, the migratory experience is being relived. This talk explores the determinants and consequences of Jewish migration. The consequences of migration for the "sending" countries and the "receiving countries are examined for the migrants themselves and for the Jewish people as a whole.
Zvi Gitelman is Professor of Political Science, Preston Tisch Professor of Judaic Studies and was Director of the Frankel Center for Judaic Studies and the Center for Russian and East European Studies at the University of Michigan. He has won several teaching awards at Michigan. Gitelman was educated at Columbia University. He is the author or editor of fourteen books and over 100 articles. A second edition of his A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union since 1881 was published in Russian and Japanese. His most recent book is Ethnicity or Religion? The Evolution of Jewish Identities.
Belarus: Jewish History and Cemetery Restoration
Michael Lozman& Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, Nov. 7
Two experts on Belarus join forces to give us an inside look at the history of Jews in Belarus and the work being done on Jewish cemeteries.
Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild, a Research Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University, will talk about the history of Belarus’ Jewish community, noting that there was always a large Jewish population in that area of the world but that Belarus did not come into existence as a separate country until 1991.
Dr. Michael Lozman will then talk about his work in protecting, preserving and restoring Jewish cemeteries that have been destroyed by the invading Nazis and further deteriorated by neglect due to the absence of returning Jews as a result of the Holocaust. He and his team have to date restored ten Jewish cemeteries in Belarus, and have more planned for the future years as well.
Reconnecting Lost Families: Finding Relatives from the Former Soviet Union and the Russian Empire
Aaron Ginsburg and a panel, Dec. 12
Many Jewish-Americans have roots in the Russian Empire, from past waves of emigration. And Boston has a large Russian-American population who arrived in the more recent waves of emigration from the Former Soviet Union. The disconnect in communication between the U.S. and Former Soviet Union for a large part of the twentieth century due to the Cold War played an important role in families losing track of one another.
In this program, US descendants of immigrants from the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union report on finding relatives in the FSU, and a recent Soviet emigre reports on finding descendants of his family who came to the US in the earlier waves of immigration.
Aaron Ginsburg is a first-generation American and founder and president of The Friends of Jewish Dokshitsy. He spearheaded an international effort to help the local government of Dokshitsy, Belarus restore and re-dedicate the town’s Jewish cemetery and recently organized a Dokshitsy shtetl reunion in Rhode Island. He has been involved with cemetery restoration, shtetl and family history since 1995.
Yefim Kogan was born in Kishinev, Moldova and emigrated from Moscow in 1989. Since then, his extensive genealogical research has enabled him to trace part of his family to the mid-eighteenth century and to find relatives in the US who left Russia in 1906. Currently a graduate student at Hebrew College with a focus in Jewish Cultural History in Eastern Europe, he has presented papers on Jewish history in Bessarabia and genealogy at IAJGS conferences and is a volunteer JewishGen Coordinator.
Carol Clingan is a third-generation American whose grandparents came from Belarus and Ukraine. During her nearly twenty years of research, she has traced family back to the early nineteenth century and has discovered family still living in the FSU. She is vice-president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston and co-chair of the JGSGB Program Committee.
Annual Jewish Genealogy Lecture:
No Way In, No Way Out: The Jews of Interwar Poland
Prof. Adam Teller, January 9
Polish Jews between the two World Wars were caught in political and economic cross-winds as they emerged from the confines of the Russian and Austrian Empires into a new world of competing national identities and powerful ideologies.
This program presents the history of the Jews in interwar Poland along two dimensions. The first is political, showing how the very nature of the new Polish nation-state presented enormous challenges for Jews who were struggling to support themselves and find their place in the new state. Jews responded with various strategies: the Zionists wanted acceptance as a national minority, Agudas Yisroel sought recognition as a religious minority, and the Bund demanded rights for the Jews as part of the urban proletariat. Each developed the institutions of modern political parties in the struggle for the Jewish street.
The second dimension is cultural. The extraordinary trilingual culture of Polish Jewry --Yiddish-Polish-Hebrew -- enjoyed an almost unprecedented period of blossoming in these twenty years. Its remarkable achievements encompassed literature, the press, the theater, painting, and the cinema, while surrounded by mounting hostility. This is the story of Polish Jewry's tragic second Golden Age.
Our speaker, Adam Teller, is an Associate Professor of History and Judaic Studies at Brown University. Born in London, Teller completed his undergraduate study at Oxford University and received a Ph.D. in modern Jewish history at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem in 1997. He was on the faculty of the University of Haifa before moving to Brown University this year.
Hands-On Problem Solving in Jewish Genealogy:
Special Help Session for Research and Translation
February 13
Problem solve with others who can help show you the way. Learn how to get started or get over that “brick wall” in your family research. A limited number of computer stations will be available, so bring your own laptops for online research.
Roundtables will be dedicated to the following topics:
- Country and Region-specific research (e.g. Polish, Lithuanian, Galician, Ukrainian, Belarussian, German)
- Finding your ancestors using immigration, naturalization, and vital records
- Getting started with Jewish genealogy (e.g. using the JewishGen and Steve Morse websites)
- Holocaust research (e.g. using the Internet and Transport Books)
- Translation of foreign-language documents (e.g. Yiddish, Russian, German, Polish, Hebrew)
Genealogical reference materials will be available for perusal. So bring in your research questions and your foreign documents for translation.
Splitting and Reconnecting - Finding our Jewish Relatives
in South America
Marc Cutler, March 13 
This is more than the "human interest story" of "Finding Your Relatives in South America." It presents also a historical and cultural overview -- the historical circumstances that caused families to immigrate to North vs South America, the experiences and circumstances whereby families lost touch or tried to stay in touch, the genealogical research methods used to reestablish contact, are the origins in Europe same or different, numbers of immigrants and descendents, how many of us may have relatives in S.A.
Video of Marc Cutler's Opening Remarks
Video Reactions to his talk: First video Second video
A Potpouri of Genealogy Search Tools
Stephen Morse, April 24
The One-Step website started out as an aid for finding passengers in the Ellis Island database. Shortly afterwards it was expanded to help with searching in the 1930 census. Over the years it has continued to evolve and today includes about 200 web-based tools divided into 16 separate categories ranging from genealogical searches to astronomical calculations to last-minute bidding on e-bay. Steve Morse will describe the range of tools available and give the highlights of each one.
Steve Morse has revolutionized two fields. As an electrical engineer, he is known as the architect of the Intel 8086, predecessor of the Pentium processor. In recent years, Steve has mostly focused his energies on using his technical and intellectual abilities to help people research their genealogy. He has become famous for his One-Step websites. Steve is a dynamic speaker who is able to make a technical program most entertaining.
Video of Steve Morse's Opening Remarks
The Genealogical Riches of Massachusetts’ Archives, featuring a panel of local archivists
May 15
Representatives of the Massachusetts Archives, the New England Historic Genealogical Society, the American Jewish Historical Society, and the City of Boston Archives describe the records they hold, discuss how they can be useful in your genealogical research, and explain how you can access them.
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Judith Garner is the Managing Archivist at the American Jewish Historical Society (AJHS) and Managing Archivist of the Society’s Greater Boston and New England collections housed at NEHGS. She has an AB in History from Wellesley College and an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. |
Stephanie Call is Associate Archivist at AJHS and Processing Archivist of the Society’s Greater Boston and New England collections. She has a BA in English from Mount Holyoke College and an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. |
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Autumn Haag until recently was a Reference Archivist at the Massachusetts Archives and is now Librarian/Archivist at Roxbury Community College. She has a BA from McGill University and an MISt from the University of Toronto.
Marie Daly is the Library Director of the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS) and founding President of The Irish Ancestral Research Association (TIARA). She has been involved with genealogical research since 1976 and has helped many visitors to NEHGS find their Jewish ancestors.
Zachary Enright is an Archivist with the City of Boston Archives. He assists patrons in their historical, genealogical, and legal research. He has an MS in Library and Information Science from Simmons College. How to Create a Family History Book
Merle Kastner, June 12
What do you do with all your records, photographs, collection of anecdotes, and your family tree?
Many times people have asked what to do with all their records, documents, photos, little anecdotes, and, above all, the family tree. How do you compile and display it for other family members and for yourself?
In this lecture, Kastner will show how to create inexpensive family books on one's own computer, in very small quantities, using software that most of us already have.
Video of Merle Kastner's Opening Remarks
The Jews of Poland and Russia: Myth and Reality
Antony Polonsky,Sept 11
On the eve of the Second World War, Poland contained the largest Jewish community in Europe. Its Jewish population—close to three-and-a-half million—was second in size only to that of the United States. The third largest Jewish community in the world, with nearly three million Jews, was in the Soviet Union.
The majority of American Jews come from these lands, but what they know of their ancestors' lives— frequently based on myths, misunderstandings, and stereotypes—diminishes the Jewish civilization that emerged there and fails to grasp the extent of what was lost in the passage across the Atlantic. Prof. Polonsky will recreate this lost world in a way that transcends both sentimentalism and the belief that the East European Jewish experience consisted only of persecution and martyrdom.
Antony Polonsky is Albert Abramson Professor of Holocaust Studies, an appointment held jointly at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Brandeis University. He is the author of the newly published three-volume opus, The Jews in Poland and Russia: A History, a socio-political, economic, and religious history of the Jewish communities of eastern Europe from 1350 to the present. Also editor of Polin: Studies in Polish Jewry, Prof. Polonsky has written many scholarly books, taught at universities around the world, and received many awards and honors, including the Knight's Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland.
Watch a video of Professor Polonsky's opening remarks.
“Vienna's Jewish Community: History, Destruction
& Genealogical Reconstruction”
Thomas Fischer Weiss, Oct. 16
The first part of this talk briefly describes the turbulent history of the Jews of Vienna from their first appearance in the 10th century until the 20th century. The second part of the talk focuses on the reconstruction of Viennese families based on extensive genealogical records available in Vienna: vital, residence, cemetery, Holocaust, military, city directories, newspapers, and obituaries, and how to access these resources.
Tom is Professor Emeritus of the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He has visited the homelands of his ancestors in Bohemia, Vienna, and Galicia and is compiling a detailed family history. An early version of his family history has been donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
“Chutes & Ladders: Innovative Approaches to Genealogy”
Pamela Weisberger, Nov. 13
Pamela Weisberger will present an interactive lecture, "Chutes and Ladders: Innovative Approaches to Genealogy," using imaginative strategies, social networking websites and unusual databases. Climb ladders and scale brick walls by cleverly manipulating Google, Facebook, Geni, Fundrace, PrivateEye, ProQuest and Zabasearch. Locate M.I.A. relatives using real estate and bank records. Go directly to jail to uncover a family scandal. Get out your detective's notepad and practice your powers of deduction to complete your ancestral jigsaw puzzle. Clues abound if you know where to look!
Pamela Weisberger is the program chair for the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles, Research Coordinator for Gesher Galicia, and is active in the Hungarian and Sub-Carpathian JewishGen SIGs. Documenting her family’s history for over twenty years, she has traveled throughout Eastern Europe visiting ancestral towns and villages and conducting research in Polish, Ukrainian and Hungarian archives. A special area of interest has been late 19th to early 20th century city directories, newspapers and court records. She has also produced the documentaries “I Remember Jewish Drohobycz” and “Genealogy Anyone? Twenty-Five Years in the Life of the JGSLA,” and coordinated the IAJGS Conference’s 2006-2008 film festivals. She holds a B.A. in English from Washington University in St. Louis and an M.S. in Broadcasting from Boston University.
Handouts from Pam's talk: Chutes and Ladders, Gesher Galicia Cadastral Map.
"Drafted into the Tsar’s Army: Russian Expectations, Jewish Experiences"
Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern, Dec. 11
5th Annual Jewish Genealogy Lecture
Sponsored by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston and Hebrew College
Many of us have family stories about ancestors who emigrated to escape conscription into the Russian army. Why did Tsar Nicholas I target the Jews for military service? What was the fate of conscripted Jewish men and boys? Why did the Russians consider this policy to be “good for the Jews”? Learn about the broader European context and the legal, military, social, religious, and cultural dimensions of this policy.
Our speaker, Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern is the Crown Family Professor of Jewish Studies at Northwestern University in Illinois and an authority on the history of Russian Jews. His books include Jews in the Russian Army, 1827 – 1917: Drafted Into Modernity. He holds a Ph.D. from Brandeis University (2001), a Ph.D. from Moscow University (1988), and a Masters from Kiev University.
The lecture is free and open to the public. Reservations are required as seating is limited.
The program is made possible with the generous support of Harvey Krueger of New York, who is also supporting a comprehensive introductory course on Jewish genealogy at Hebrew College taught by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston. See course.jgsgb.org.
Refreshments will be served following the lecture.
| Jan 22
Flyer in Russian |
“Jews and Revolution in Russia and the Soviet Union” | Rochelle Ruthchild |
For two centuries, the majority of the world’s Jewish population was centered in the Russian Empire. Why were Jews among the leaders of the revolutionary movements of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries? Leon Trotsky (Lev Bronstein), Lev Kamenev (Rozenfeld), and Grigorii Zinoviev (Gershon Apfelbaum) were prominent Bolsheviks, serving alongside Lenin in the early days of Soviet power. Yet by the end of the Soviet Union, Jews had abandoned revolutionary dreams and emigrated in large numbers. What factors explain these population shifts and changes?
Rochelle Goldberg Ruthchild is a Research Associate at the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. She writes on women, gender, and Jewish history in Russia and the Soviet Union. Her book, Equality and Revolution: Women’s Rights in the Russian Empire, 1905-1917 (University of Pittsburgh Press, June 2010) won Honorable Mention for the Reginald Zelnik Prize of the American Association for Slavic, East European and Eurasian History (ASEEES), for an outstanding monograph published on Russia, Eastern Europe or Eurasia in the field of history, and Honorable Mention for the Heldt Prize of the Association for Women in Slavic Studies (AWSS), for the best book in Slavic/Eastern European/Eurasian women's studies.
Spotlight - Muriel Gillick on "Taking Family History Public: The Research Behind Her Published Family Story". Muriel Gillick has written a book entitled "Once They Had a Country". It is the account of her parents' experiences as Kindertransport children from Germany. They were sent to a country in continental Europe.
Muriel R. Gillick is a geriatrician, palliative care physician, and writer. She sees patients at Harvard Vanguard Medical Associates, a multi-specialty group practice in Boston and surrounding communities, and she is also a Clinical Professor at Harvard Medical School. Her scholarly work focuses on ethical issues near the end of life and is conducted at the Department of Population Medicine, Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Institute/Harvard Medical School.
As an undergraduate history major at Swarthmore College, she developed what would prove to be a life-long interest in German history, World War II, and the refugee experience. Her forte is writing stories based on real people and putting the narrative into a broader context. She used the same technique in her four previous books on medical themes written for a general audience as in “Once They Had a Country.”| Feb 26
Flyer in Russian |
“Internal Jewish Migration to Agricultural Colonies in the Russian Empire” with Alan Shuchat, and Spotlight with Paul Adams on Preserving Oral History Recordings and Audio Files |
Alan will describe the Jewish agricultural colonies that were founded in the Russian Empire in the 18th century, mostly in what is now Ukraine. He will discuss the reasons that the tsarist government had for establishing these colonies and resettling Jews there, how he discovered that his family came from one of the colonies, and the fate of the colonies. He will include maps and photos, and some sources where you can learn more about the colonies.
Alan Shuchat has been researching his family's history for several decades and has been able to trace his father's family back to around 1800. He has been active in several genealogy SIGs and helped with transliterations of three databases that are available through JewishGen. He participates in JGSGB's annual February meeting, helping attendees with Ukraine research and translations. His father's family (SHUKHAT, VINOKUR) came from Talnoye (Talne), Balta, Pogrebishche, and Simferopol in Ukraine. His mother's family (KURIS, ZILBERMAN) came from Mogilev-Podolskiy, Kremenets, and Berdichev in Ukraine, and Soroki in Moldova. Alan is professor of mathematics at Wellesley College and lives with his wife Alix Ginsburg in Newton.
Spotlight: “Preserving Your Audio and Visual Family History”, with Paul Adams.
Paul Adams is an audio & video preservation engineer from Boston. His company, Mass Productions, specializes in restoring and converting antiquated sound and video recordings to modern digital formats (www.massproductions.net).
Paul is a descendant of John Adams, 2nd president of the United States. Born and raised on Cape Cod, he began his career with music and audio as a professional disc jockey and radio broadcaster at WQRC FM. He moved to Boston to pursue a career in Information Technology and digital media duplication. Paul combined his skills to preserve his own family and friends’ recorded histories, which eventually led him to establish his business serving Boston residents as well as prestigious institutions.
Paul has rescued and restored audio recordings for the Boston Conservatory as well as the taped performances of renowned violinist Roman Totenberg held by the Longy School of Music. Over the next year, Paul will be very busy preserving audiotapes over 50 years old for the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA and the Jewish Public Library in Montreal.
Paul will discuss how film, video, and audio recordings have become historical documents as important as the written word. While we have attempted to preserve human history for thousands of years with cave drawings, tablets, scrolls, books, and still photos, an audio or video recording provides a quite special form of immortality, particularly in preserving family histories. Over the last decade, however, methods and formats for capturing picture and sound have become antiquated so quickly that we now are left with an assorted collection of important recordings on multiple formats for which playback equipment is no longer sold, existing equipment breaks down, and the recording can become damaged or even thrown away due to the inability to play it back. Paul will provide insights into and examples of the growing field of digital restoration and preservation of such recordings, and tips on what you can do to preserve your oral and visual heritage.
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Problem-solve with others who can help show you the way. Learn how to get started or get over that “brick wall” in your family research. Members will be able to consult with those more experienced for help with their family research.
A limited number of computer stations will be available, or bring your own laptops for online research.
Roundtables will be dedicated to topics such as:
- Country and region-specific research (e.g., Polish, Lithuanian, Galician, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Romanian, Moldovan, Bessarabian, German)
- Finding your ancestors using immigration, naturalization, and vital records
- Getting started with Jewish genealogy (e.g., using the JewishGen and Steve Morse web sites)
- Holocaust research (e.g., using the Internet, Yizkor books, Yad Vashem)
- Translation of foreign-language documents (Yiddish, Russian, German, French, Polish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Romanian)
(Other topics may be added at a later date.)
Genealogical reference materials will be available for perusal.
Bring in your research questions and your foreign documents for translation.
| April 22
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“YIVO: History and Resources for Genealogy” | Lyudmila Sholokhova |
YIVO Institute for Jewish Research is a world’s foremost center for academic research specializing in history, languages, literature, culture, folklore and religious traditions of Ashkenazi Jewry. It is also well known for its extensive collections of materials documenting the history of destroyed Jewish communities from Eastern Europe, publications about the Jewish Holocaust, anti-Semitism and Jewish immigrant experience in the United States. YIVO’s archival collections and library constitute the single greatest resource for such study in the world, including approximately 24 million letters, manuscripts, photographs, films, sound recordings, art works, and artifacts; as well as the largest collection of Yiddish-language materials in the world. The YIVO Library collections include over 385 thousands volumes of books and periodicals in more than 30 languages, but mainly in Yiddish, Hebrew, English, Russian, German, French, and Polish etc.
The presentation will provide a glimpse into the marvelous history of this renown institution, its founders and scholars. It will also describe its major collections and focus on a wide range of genealogical resources available at the YIVO Institute, such as landsmanshaftn (Jewish mutual-aid societies), various immigrant organizations, important bibliography on Jewish genealogy, etc.
Lyudmila Sholokhova, is head of the YIVO Library in New York City.
| May 6
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“Introducing Children to Jewish Genealogy” | Arnon Hershkovitz |
Dr. Hershkovitz will present some concepts and ideas for introducing children to Jewish genealogy,
including how to engage your own younger generation in your genealogy research and their family heritage, how to spread the word of your genealogy research through your extended family, and how to promote genealogy to groups of children within your community.
Genealogy research today has two major advantages which make it easily communicable to children. First, it is a fascinating process from its very beginning (“I had no idea how to find my great-grandfather’s lost brother”), through its various steps (“And then I found a manifest from 1897 on the Internet!”), to its often surprising findings (“I’ve found a 3rd cousin of mine who lives just a few blocks from me!”). And much of it is done on the Internet, which is today’s younger generation’s playground.
Arnon Hershkovitz, Ph.D., is a passionate genealogist involved in genealogy since 1999. He founded in 2001 and has led the "Israeli Family Roots Forum" - the only online IAJGS member organization, initiated "Wikigenia" - a free online collaborative platform for Jewish Genealogy, and writes a genealogy blog (all of these in Hebrew). He has been involved in instructing genealogy (for both children and adults, including a full 13-week course for gifted children), has been publishing and presenting to various audiences, and organized academic genealogy events. He served as the Head Genealogy Consultant for the Israeli production of "Who Do You Think You Are?". A native Israeli, he's now a post-doc at WPI (Worcester, MA), hence living with his wife and 3 little children in Massachusetts; he holds a Ph.D. in Science Education, an MA in Applied Mathematics, and a BA in Mathematics and Computer Science. You can visit his genealogy website at: genealogy.arnononthe.net/eng.
| May 20
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“Organizing & preparing manuscripts for self-publishing - what to include & how to do it” |
Stephen Denker |
The subject of this JGSGB workshop is how to design and construct a book for self-publishing, including aesthetic considerations and organization of subject matter. Stephen Denker will demonstrate ways to prepare, repair, and enhance documents and other research materials for publication. He will present specific examples to illustrate techniques and options.
Sign up early by email and Stephen will send you copies of slides and other materials before the meeting.
Now formally retired, Stephen Denker is active doing technical and business writing. He and his wife Elayne have been collaboratively researching their family histories for the past ten years. They have published nearly 800 pages of their family histories and genealogy organized into four hard-cover books. They will be sharing their experience and techniques at this meeting.
| June 10
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“Archives of the Joint Distribution Committee: A Resource for Genealogists” followed by Spotlight with Heidi Urich on HIAS Records |
Linda Levi |
Since its inception in 1914, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC, popularly known as “the Joint”) has borne witness to the most pivotal events of 20th-century Jewish history. The holdings of the JDC Archives document the organization’s operations and serve as a record of life in Jewish communities around the world–including eyewitness accounts, correspondence, logs, passenger lists, emigration cards, photographs, and much more. Levi will present examples of rich genealogical records, show how to conduct research at the Archives, and illustrate the new archives website and the treasures that await researchers as the records become more widely available.
Linda Levi is Assistant Executive Vice President of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, where she directs the JDC Global Archives. Ms. Levi is a graduate of New York University and received her MA in Contemporary Jewish Studies from Brandeis University. She lectures extensively about the JDC Archives for Jewish groups around the world.
Spotlight Talk: The Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society, known as HIAS, has been helping Jewish immigrants and refugees since 1881. Learn what records are available and how to obtain them. Heidi Urich has been president of the JGSGB since 2007.
| Sep 9
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Ancestry.com and Jewish Records |
Crista Cowan |
The opening program of the 2012-2013 JGSGB season features Crista Cowan, professional genealogist from Ancestry.com, who will present three sessions on Ancestry.com and its Jewish Records. Ancestry.com is a leading resource for online family history research and a valuable tool in any Jewish genealogist’s toolbox.
Morning session
11:00 am Getting Started With Ancestry.com Whether you’re brand new to genealogy or a long-time subscriber to Ancestry.com, there’s much to learn about this powerful website and what it can help you accomplish in your family history research. Cowan will provide an overview of the site, explain privacy settings for online trees, demonstrate the power of member profiles, and reveal a multitude of free content and tools.
Afternoon sessions
1:30 pm Jewish Records at Ancestry.com Ancestry.com has many resources and unique tools available for Jewish genealogy research. Cowan will survey Ancestry.com’s Jewish record collections, show you how to search them efficiently, and demonstrate effective strategies for finding records from a specific location and time period.
2:45 pm Getting the Most Out of Ancestry.com Cowan will demonstrate tips and tricks to help you realize the
full potential of your Ancestry.com experience, show you how to search more effectively, and introduce you to
Ancestry.com’s content and collaboration tools. She’ll also be available to answer questions.
Crista Cowan has been interested in family history since childhood. She is a professional genealogist who specializes in descendancy research and Jewish immigration. She has been employed at Ancestry.com since 2004, as European Content Acquisition Manager, Indexing Manager, and currently as Community Alliance Manager. As The Barefoot Genealogist, she broadcasts live on Tuesdays and Thursdays at 1:00 pm (Eastern) on http://livestream.com/ancestry.
| Oct 14 | When General Grant Expelled the Jews | Jonathan Sarna |
How safe were Jews in their new home in the United States? Was European anti-Semitism to follow them to America? General Grant’s shocking order to expel the Jews, issued in the midst of the Civil War, galvanized the American Jewish community into action, reminding many who were refugees from European expulsions how insecure they were even in America.
Professor Jonathan Sarna’s study of this pivotal event in American Jewish history sheds light on the experience and treatment of Jews during the Civil War through the late nineteenth century. When General Grant later ran for President, his infamous order made Jews an issue in a presidential contest for the first time and publicly confronted Jews with the question of how to balance their American and Jewish loyalties.
Jonathan D. Sarna is an award-winning historian of American Jewish history. He is the Braun Professor of American Jewish History at Brandeis University, chief historian of the National Museum of American Jewish History, and author or editor of over twenty books.
His acclaimed American Judaism: A History received the 2004 Jewish Book of the Year Award. His latest book, When General Grant Expelled the Jews, published by Schocken Books earlier this year, has received excellent reviews. Copies will be available for purchase and signing following the lecture.
| Nov 4
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Why Did Our Ancestors Leave a Nice Place like the Pale? |
Hal Bookbinder |
Due to a death in his family, our speaker for this Sunday is unable to join us. We are fortunate that one of the preeminent genealogists in the country, Hal Bookbinder, will be in Boston and has offered to step in.
In 1880, fully 80% of our ancestors lived in Poland and the Pale of Jewish Settlement in western Russia. We all know of the pogroms (organized violence) and mass exodus of our ancestors to points west over the next generation. Hal Bookbinder will describe the 120 years of the Pale, from its formation in the late 18th century to its dissolution during the First World War, breaking the life of the Pale into six distinct periods which he designates as "Creation," "Containment," "Repression," "Enlightenment," "Pogroms," and "Chaos." This history will provide some context to our ancestors' lives in the Pale and, of course, their decision to leave everything they had known to make new lives in the West.
Hal Bookbinder directs information technology for the UCLA Health System. He lectures at annual conferences and has published numerous articles on research techniques, Jewish history, and border changes. He has identified over 3,500 relatives in eight lines, primarily from the Ukraine and adjacent areas of Moldova, Belarus, Russia and Poland, and has taken two of these back to the mid-18th century. Bookbinder has served as president of the JGS Los Angeles (JGSLA) and the International Association of JGS’s (IAJGS). He currently serves on the JewishGen Board of Governors as chair of the Strategic Planning Committee and is advisor to the 2013 IAJGS conference in Boston and co-chair of the 2014 conference in Salt Lake City. In 2010, he was honored with the IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award.
Download the handout from the lecture here. (pdf)
| Dec 9
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Jewish Experience of 'Russification' in Tsarist Russia 1825-1894 Jewish Life in Bessarabia Through the Lens of the Shtetl Koushany |
Douglas Cohen Yefim Kogan |
The Tsarist regime inherited half a million Jews in the partitions of Poland in the last quarter of the eighteenth century. In the nineteenth century, it set about trying to integrate this very different community into the Russian population. Using both carrots (education) and sticks (conscription) the regime tried to remake its Jews into Russians. Historians from Simon Dubnow to Michael Stanislawski have described and characterized these efforts. My paper looks at autobiographical literature to follow the lives of six individual Jews and understand how they saw the regime and its laws and how these rules impacted them. Their impressions often differ from the “historical” record.
Douglas M. Cohen is an independent consultant who acts as a chief financial officer, adding value to a series of smaller companies which need an experienced senior financial executive on a part-time basis. Mr. Cohen holds a Masters of Business Administration degree from Stanford University and an undergraduate degree from Harvard College. He also received a Masters degree in Jewish Studies from Hebrew College.
The shtetl Kaushany is a place where my parents and their parents lived for more than 200 years. It is a typical ‘mestechko”, a small town in the Bessarabian province of the Russian Empire. Between the World Wars it was part of Romania; after World War II it was included in the Soviet Union and currently it is in the Republic of Moldova. This paper includes historical and genealogical research as well as cultural, professional and political descriptions of Jewish life in Kaushany. Before World War II, only 1,875 Jews lived in Kaushany, which represented 35% of the total population. In 1924, 165 out of 175 businesses were owned by Jews. Most of the Jews struggled to make ends meet. The town had all the traditional Jewish organizations: synagogues, a cemetery, Khevra-Kadisha and Talmud-Torah, Mikve and Heder, Zionist organizations, a nursing home, and a Jewish Women Society. Today there are no Jews left in Kaushany.
Who will remember all who perished during the Holocaust?
Who will put stones and flowers to a monument of
the Jewish residents of Kaushany?
I will.
Yefim and his family emigrated from the Soviet Union in 1989. During last 20 years he did extensive genealogical and historical research, received a Master’s of Jewish Liberal Studies in 2012 from Hebrew College in Boston. Yefim participated and lectured at a number of Jewish Genealogical conferences, including this year in Paris. In 2011, he organized Bessarabia Special Interest Group at JewishGen.org, participated in numerous projects, and created websites.
| Jan 6
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Do You Have German Roots? A Question For All Ashkenazi Jews |
Michael Marx |
| This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel, Adelson Hall 385 Ward Street, Newton Centre, MA | ||
Jews have been living in Germany since Roman times, and Ashkenazi Jews are descended from these early Jewish communities along the Rhine in Germany. Many Ashkenazi Jews later migrated, largely eastward, forming communities in non German-speaking areas, including Hungary, Poland, Belarus, Russia, Ukraine, Lithuania, Romania and elsewhere between the 11th and 19th centuries. Why, for example, does Yiddish sound so much like German? So you very likely have German roots.
In this program, Mr. Marx will show how the modern country of Germany has evolved, what distinguishes German Jewish genealogy, and how to research German ancestry. Germany has excellent records that are readily accessible, and the majority of German records are now available via the Internet. Come learn about German Jewish genealogy and how you might find your own German Jewish ancestry.
Mr. Marx is a past treasurer and board member of JGSGB. He has been a frequent presenter of genealogical programs at international and regional genealogy conferences and various genealogy societies. He has been researching his German roots since 2001 and can now trace his ancestors back to the mid-1600s. Much of his success has come from searching the World Wide Web. He holds degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, retiring in 2000 after a 33-year career in corporate management and management consulting.
Slides from today's presentation
Websites referenced in today's presentation
Spotlight Talk: My Nathan Family: From Hamburg to London and Back - Cary Aufseeser
Cary will talk about the many internet resources he used in tracing his Nathan family from Hamburg, Germany back to 17th century London.
When Cary Aufseeser first began researching his family in 2002, he didn't even know the names of all his great-grandparents. Today, through extensive use of the internet, he can trace his roots back to the Middle Ages and has found humdreds of distant relatives all over the world.
Cary is a former member of the JGSGB board where he worked on membership development. When not researching his genealogy, Cary is a statistical analyst and programmer.
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Problem-solve with others who can help show you the way. Learn how to get started or get over that “brick wall” in your family research. Members will be able to consult with those more experienced for help with their family research.
A limited number of computer stations will be available, or bring your own laptops for online research.
Roundtables will be dedicated to topics such as:
- Country and region-specific research (e.g., Polish, Lithuanian, Galician, Ukrainian, Belarussian, Romanian, Moldovan, Bessarabian, German)
- Finding your ancestors using immigration, naturalization, and vital records
- Getting started with Jewish genealogy (e.g., using the JewishGen and Steve Morse web sites)
- Holocaust research (e.g., using the Internet, Yizkor books, Yad Vashem)
- Translation of foreign-language documents (Yiddish, Russian, German, French, Polish, Hebrew, Hungarian, Romanian)
Genealogical reference materials will be available for perusal.
Bring in your research questions and your foreign documents for translation.
| April 7
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"Who the Heck is Ida Gerskill? The Challenges of Researching Jewish Names" | Meredith Hoffman |
| This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton. | ||
How can we make sense of our ancestors' names and places as they moved through communities and eras? How do we deal with surnames that changed as they moved from the old country to the new? Can we figure out what name Uncle Louie used when he travelled to America? or who we might look for in the 1920 census when we’re told that great-grandma’s sister Rivkele changed her name but no one knows what she changed it to? And is there a way to sort out the name of the town that has come down in our family lore as something like “Vasakamosevyetz”?
Using an abundance of real examples, Meredith Hoffman explores the pitfalls and difficulties we are confronted with when working with Jewish personal, family, and place names as they morphed through time and space. She provides strategies for puzzling them out using linguistic and commonsense clues and cues and surveys some helpful online resources that can come to our aid.
Meredith Hoffman is a professional genealogist who specializes in researching 19th/early 20th century Jewish immigrant ancestors and particularly enjoys solving difficult Jewish name problems. She is Publicity Chair of the JGSGB and teaches and speaks at regional and national conferences and many local venues. She holds degrees in Linguistics from the University of California, Berkeley, and is a graduate of Boston University’s Genealogical Research Program. She retired from her long career as a technical writer, editor, and publishing consultant to devote most of her time to genealogy research.
Meredith's presentation handout.
| April 21
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Research in Lithuania - Online & On Site | Peggy Freedman |
| This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton. | ||
Between 1880 and 1914, more than 90,000 Jews told US immigration officials that they were immigrating to Massachusetts. Many of them were leaving Lithuania, then a part of Russia. If one of these Lithuanian Jewish immigrants was your ancestor, join us as we explore the tools to use when tracing your Lithuanian family tree.
Peggy Mosinger Freedman will discuss on-line resources available to Jewish genealogical researchers including the LitvakSIG database, the LitvakSIG Research Groups, and the translation process that LitvakSIG uses. Peggy works closely with the archivists in the Kaunas Regional Archives, the Vilnius State Historical Archives, and the Lithuanian Central State Archives. She will discuss how you can best proceed with your research at these repositories.
Peggy Mosinger Freedman has been tracing her family tree since she was a high school student. She is a founding member and past president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia. She is the coordinator of the Vilnius District Research Group for LitvakSIG and is webmaster for JewishGen KehilahLinks pages for Jonava and Pandelys. Peggy currently volunteers with the American Fund for Lithuanian and Latvian Jews, leading heritage tours to Lithuania. In 2013 she is planning her seventh trip to Vilnius and Kaunas.