Program Description:
What does Carol Clingan’s groundbreaking spreadsheet of historical details on 574 Massachusetts synagogues look like when it is turned into an interactive map? See what resulted when the JGSGB board asked a member with cartographic interests to try her hand at it. Find out how her learning process (in collaboration with the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map and Education Center) can help you use maps in your research, and how her effort resulted in a useful tool for genealogists, especially those with an interest in Massachusetts Jewish communities.

Bios:

Gilda Bruckman is the co-creator and curator of the JGSGB Ukraine SIG’s map of members and their ancestral Ukrainian towns. Creating a Google map to trace an ancestral branch for her grandmother’s 10 siblings enabled Gilda to see how visualizing geography could lead to discoveries about family members’ relationships and their changing economic status. Gilda was the co-owner of New Words Bookstore in Cambridge and currently tutors students in writing at Cambridge College.

Carol Clingan, who is a JGSGB board member, head of the Massachusetts Synagogues and Their Records, Past and Present and a Chelsea native, has worked tirelessly to preserve and re-home historical Jewish artifacts, ritual objects, and architectural structures. She also serves on the Wyner Family Jewish Heritage Center’s Advisory Council as well as being a board member of a number of other charitable organizations.

Ian Spangler, a cultural and economic geographer, is the Assistant Curator of Digital Participatory Georap at the Leventhal Map and Education Center at the Boston Public Library.  His interests include digital mapping, housing studies, and race & landscape in the U.S. He is the 2024 recipient of the “Transportation Dreams” Cartography Challenge Award.