Sep 11	The Jews of Poland and Russia: Myth and Reality	Antony Polonsky
This event will start at 1:30 pm at Gann Academy 333 Forest St., Waltham.

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.

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Oct 16	“Vienna's Jewish Community: History, Destruction & Genealogical Reconstruction”	Thomas Fischer Weiss
This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel (Adelson Community Hall), 385 Ward Street, Newton.

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.

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These events will take place at Temple Emanuel (Adelson Community Hall), 385 Ward Street, Newton.
11:30 am	Gesher Galicia Regional Meeting	Gesher Galicia SIG
Gesher Galicia Regional Meeting:  Introducing the All Galicia Database, Cadastral Maps, Voter & Landowner Records The Gesher Galicia SIG will hold a regional meeting for its members and anyone with an interest in learning about their Galician roots and new resources for research. JGSGB members are welcome. Many families from Russia, Bohemia, and Hungary passed through Galicia and appear in its records. The All Galicia search engine includes vital records and civil records from the former Austro-Hungarian province, which today is part of eastern Poland and western Ukraine. Cadastral maps, landowner, and voter records may be the only documented evidence of a family in a particular shtetl and are a relevant alternative source of genealogical information. Everyone is welcome to attend this program... even if you’re not a Galitzianer! Lunch will be available following the meeting for those who plan to stay for the JGSGB program. Lunch reservations must be made in advance by November 9th by writing to .  Lunch will be kosher and cost $15.

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2:00 pm “Chutes & Ladders: Innovative Approaches to Genealogy” Pamela Weisberger 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. Tell A Friend About This Talk

Dec 11	"Drafted into the Tsar’s Army: Russian Expectations, Jewish Experiences"	Yohanan Petrovsky-Shtern
This event will start at 3:00 pm at Hebrew College, 160 Herrick Road,, Newton.

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.  Register at www.hebrewcollege.edu/events .  For more information, contact Steffi Bobbin at  sbobbin@hebrewcollege.edu  or 617-559-8640. 

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.

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Jan 22      Flyer in Russian	“Jews and Revolution in Russia and the Soviet Union”	Rochelle Ruthchild
This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel (Adelson Hall), 385 Ward Street, Newton.

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.

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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.”

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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
This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton.

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.

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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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March 25 Help Day: Research and Translation Assistance JGSGB Volunteers This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton.

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.

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This event will start at 1:30 pm

Jonathan Brent, the director of YIVO, will speak on April 22, 2012 about YIVO's history and resources available for Jewish genealogical research.  He will include information about the Simon Dubnow archives at YIVO.   Simon Dubnow is known as the father of historical research of Eastern European Jewry. 

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May 6	“Introducing Children to Jewish Genealogy”	Arnon Hershkovitz
This event will start at 1:30 pm at Congregation Bethel-Atereth Israel at 561 Ward Street, Newton Center.

Genealogy research today has two major advantages which makes it easily communicable to children: First, thanks to many kinds of sources and resources, 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've found a manifest from 1897 on the Internet!") and until its often surprising findings ("I've found a 3th cousin of mine who lives just a few blocks from me!"); and secondly, much of it is done on the Internet, which is today's younger generation's playground. This talk will present some concepts and ideas that will help communicating the genealogy research and the family tradition to kids. In particular, it will discuss four main topics: 1) How to engage your own younger generation in your genealogy research and their family heritage; 2) How to spread the word of your genealogy research through the extended family's children; 3) How to promote genealogy to groups of children within your community.

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.

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May 20	“Organizing & preparing manuscripts for self-publishing - what to include & how to do it”	Stephen Denker
This event will run from 1:30 - 4:30 pm at the Meeting Room at the Coolidge Corner Branch Library,  31 Pleasant St., Brookline, MA 02446

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A JGSGB workshop on 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.

June 10	“Archives of the Joint Distribution Committee: A Resource for Genealogists” followed by Spotlight with Heidi Urich on HIAS Records	Linda Levi
This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel (Adelson Community Hall), 385 Ward Street, Newton.

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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.