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.
October 14: Jonathan Sarna - When Grant Expelled the Jews
Oct 14
When General Grant Expelled the Jews
Jonathan Sarna
This event will start at 3 pm at Hebrew College,Berenson Hall, 160 Herrick Road, Newton.
Free and Open to the Public
Advance registration is required—Seating is limited. Register here.
For more info, contact info@jgsgb.org or 866-611-5698.
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.
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.
December 9: Douglas Cohen - Jewish Experience of “Russification” in Tsarist Russia, 1825-1894
Yefim Kogan - Jewish Life in Bessarabia Through the Lens of the Shtetl Kaushany
Dec 9
Jewish Experience of 'Russification' in Tsarist Russia 1825-1894
Jewish Life in Bessarabia Through the Lens of the Shtetl Koushany
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.
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.
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.
February 10: Meredith Hoffman - Rescheduled to April 7
Feb 10
"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.
Sunday's meeting is cancelled due to the blizzard.
Meredith Hoffman's talk has been rescheduled to April 7th.
March 17: “Help Day: Research and Translation Assistance”
March 17
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)
April 7: Meredith Hoffman - “Who the Heck is Ida Gerskill? The Challenges of Researching Jewish Names"
April 7
"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.
April 21: Peggy Freedman - Research in Lithuania - Online & On Site
April 21
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.
May 19: David Gitlitz - From Iberia to the Pale: Sephardim in Eastern Europe
May 19
From Iberia to the Pale: Sephardim in Eastern Europe
David Gitlitz
This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton.
In the waning years of the 15th century the Iberian kingdoms forced their Jews to convert to Catholicism or go into exile. Those who left Spain and Portugal in the chaotic 1490s were joined over the next 200 years by a steady trickle of conversos, converted Jews and their descendents, who hoped to escape the traumatic secrecy of crypto-Judiasm in someplace where they could practice their religion openly and safely. The largest segment of the early Sephardic diaspora sought their new homes in the countries of the Mediterranean: Morocco, France, parts of Italy, and Ottoman Turkey. Many in the second, third, and later generations migrated to the commercial centers of Western Europe: Flanders, the Netherlands, England (and the English colonies). While Eastern Europe was never a major magnet for Sephardic immigration, some Spanish and Portuguese Jews and conversos did settle in the countries of the east. This talk will explore why, and when, and by what route they got there, and what has happened to them.
Genealogical detective work in the Iberian world challenges the researcher with some unusual complexities. The second part of this talk will explore the idiosyncrasies of Spanish & Portuguese names, and how the special circumstances of crypto-Judaism established the obfuscation of genealogy as a survival strategy. It will also suggest some approaches to working through these complexities.
June 9: Getting the Most Out of the IAJGS Conference
June 9
SPECIAL JGSGB PANEL: How to Get the Most Out of the Upcoming International Jewish Genealogy Conference
This event will start at 1:30 pm at Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton.
The annual conference of the International Association of Jewish Genealogy Societies will be here in Boston from August 4 to August 9, the first time it will be in Boston since 1996. A large group of JGSGB members has been hard at work for more than a year planning to make this conference the best ever.
Expecting that many of our members will be attending the conference, we are planning a program to give them a head start in getting the most they can out of the conference. This program will feature a panel of conference planners and experienced conference-goers, who will provide an overview of the conference and its programs, workshops and research tools. They will also offer many tips on ways to prepare for the conference and to enjoy and benefit most from it. There will be ample time for questions and answers.
Admission is free for members, $5 for non-members.
Refreshments will be served.
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.
If you have any questions regarding the JGSGB or events,
please call the JGSGB at 866-611-5698 (toll free) — the latest information
will be on a recording. Or check your email for meeting cancellation
information.
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”?
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. 