Upcoming Programs and Events

September 13, 2009, 2:00 p.m. Exploring the 1940 Census.

NOTE LOCATION: UJA-Federation of New York 130 East 59th Street New York, NY 10022 7th Floor Conference Center

This presentation explores the historical backdrop of the 1940 Population Schedule and highlights new supplemental questions asked of a small sample of the population. A long awaited genealogical gem, researchers will also learn what to look for in preparing for the release of this census in April 2012.

The speaker, Dorothy Dougherty, is currently the Public Programs Specialist for the National Archives at New York City. As lead for public, education and outreach efforts, she has developed and presented numerous programs on the holdings of the National Archives. In her ten years as an archivist with the National Archives, Ms. Dougherty also worked on the development, training and deployment of NARA's online Archival Research Catalog, (ARC). Prior work experience includes that of a Manhattan research consultant, New York State Archives Records Manager, and a historical museum interpreter. Ms. Dougherty received her Masters in History with an Archives Certificate from C.W. Post, Long Island University, NY. She frequently lectures how to research both original and online records of interest to family historians.

 

October 18, 2009, 2:00 p.m. Mapping Madness

NOTE LOCATION: The Abraham Joshua Heschel High School 20 West End Avenue New York, NY 10023 In the Cafeteria Monthly Program:

Ron Arons, will discuss a variety of websites that provide historical maps for genealogical research. Then he will review the basics of both Google and Microsoft's internet-based mapping facilities (maps.google.com and www.bing.com/maps, respectively), and provide additional discussion of the more advanced functionality of both systems. Ron will also introduce other online mapping facilities provided by whitepages.com, Microsoft's MapCruncher, IBM's Many Eyes, and more! Things are constantly in flux on the internet, including information from Microsoft & Google, as you'll see in Ron's presentation. He will keep up to the minute with these changes and discuss them at his presentation. Of course, since Ron is giving this talk, Jewish criminals will make several cameo appearances along the way, whether they want to or not! ;-) Ron Arons began researching his roots a dozen years ago and has spoken at six previous IAJGS conferences. Ron has also given presentations on Jewish genealogy and Jewish criminality at local JGSs, synagogues, JCCs, history conferences, and book fairs across the country and internationally. Last June, after a decade of research, his book The Jews of Sing Sing was published. In January, 2008, he discussed Jewish criminals of NY's Lower East Side on the PBS TV series The Jewish Americans. Ron earned a B.S. in Engineering from Princeton and an MBA from the University of Chicago.

November 15, 2009, 11:00 a.m. ANNUAL "MEMBERS-ONLY" BRUNCH, MEETING and TOUR - Creating the Morgenthau Exhibition: A Family Historian confronts the Twentieth Century

NOTE TIME and LOCATION: Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust 36 Battery Place New York, NY 10280 Event Room

Karen Franklin, will present the topic, coordinate and lead tours of the just-opened exhibition for our members after the presentation. She will describe how a simple genealogy request resulted in her participation in an exciting reinterpretation of the family's role in public service and service to the Jewish community. Karen uncovered fascinating personal stories and documents through two years of research in dozens of archives, libraries and private collections. These discoveries, many of which will not be found in the exhibition-- will be described in this talk.

Karen Franklin, a JGS member, is currently a guest curator at the Museum of Jewish Heritage. A co-chair of the Board of Governors of JewishGen, she is a past president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies and a past chair of the Council of American Jewish Museums. Mrs. Franklin serves on the board of ICOM-US (International Council of Museums), and the International Committee of Memorial Museums of ICOM. She is also a juror for the Obermayer German Jewish History Award.

Karen was the only director of a Jewish museum ever to be elected to the board of the American Association of Museums. A researcher on looted art, she has worked on cases for the Origins Unknown Agency in the Netherlands, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, and the U. S. Treasury Department. In June she spoke at the Holocaust Looted Assets Conference in Prague as a member of the Judaica and Jewish Cultural Property Working Committee.

 

 

+ Click here to Expand Past Programs

September 16, 2007 - 2:00 PM – JGSNY Meeting - Four Lives of Gregory Meisler: Jew, Warrior and Polish Patriot - Valery Bazarov

This biography of a Polish officer, reconstructed from scratch, highlights a relatively unknown page of Jewish life in Poland between the two wars, as well as the treatment of Jewish prisoners of war in Nazi camps. Enlisted in the Polish armed forces a year before Polish independence, Gregory Meisler learned how to be a Jew and an officer in the anti-Semitic Army. He later spent six years as a POW in Stalag VII at Murnau, Germany.

The illustrated case-study presentation will demonstrate how to find important information on the Internet and use such well-known resources as the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington DC and the archives of the Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, along with lesser-known sources such as the Ministry of Defense in Great Britain.

Valery Bazarov joined the staff of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) in 1988, where he now is the director of the HIAS Location and Family History Service. During the 1990s he assisted with the arrival of more than 200,000 Jewish refugees who came from the former Soviet Union to the U.S. under HIAS auspices. Today he helps immigrants of different generations to find family members and friends – often in other countries – with whom they lost contact over the years. He also researches HIAS history and presents his findings in lectures and publications.

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History will be open from 12:30 to 1:45 PM on September 16 for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computer resources.

JGSNY Members - Free. Non-Members $5.00

October 21, 2007 - 2:00 PM – JGSNY Meeting - Recreating Your Shtetl – Why and How: Creating a Research Group and Website Dedicated to your Ancestral Town - Susana Leistner Bloch

Memorializing and learning about our ancestral hometowns (shtetlach) is key to understanding our past. This program will discuss the methodology and benefits of creating a research group and a cyberspace memorial to the vanished world of our ancestors. The shtetl page, which is easier to design than you think, becomes a record of what remains and is accessible throughout the world. Techniques for reaching out to your landsmen to create newsletters, organize research projects and share information will be demonstrated. Valuable resources for our descendants are created through these groups and publications about Jewish communities that no longer exist.

Susana Leistner Bloch, a Brazilian-born Canadian, has lived in Israel, England and South Africa. She is project coordinator for JewishGen ShtetlLinks and the international support desk and has been a moderator trainer. She coordinates the Kolbuszowa Region Research Group and the Suchostaw Region Research Group, producing two extensive websites of 270 shtetl pages that serve as memorials to destroyed Eastern European communities. Her published articles have appeared in The Galitzianer and East European Genealogist.

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History will be open from 12:30 to 1:45 PM on October 21 for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computer resources.

JGSNY Members - Free. Non-Members $5.00

Gesher Galicia, the special interest group for those with Jewish roots in the former Austrian province of Galicia, will hold its annual regional meeting at 11:30 AM on October 21. The agenda includes a report on the Lviv (Ukraine) Archive research project involving landowner records and cadastral maps from the 19th century, an update on Jewish Records Indexing-Poland, a shtetl trip/cemetery restoration report by Linda Cantor, an update on Daniel Mendelsohn’s Bolechower Jewish Heritage Society by Joan Adler, and a screening of the short film, Past Lives: The Stanley Diamond Story. This program will conclude at 1 PM, to be followed by town and region research groups and birds-of-a-feather networking during lunch (1 to 2 PM). The Gesher Galicia meeting is open to all interested researchers and is free of charge. Pamela Weisberger is the Gesher Galicia research coordinator. More information at http://www.geshergalicia.org

 

November 18, 2007 - 2:00 PM – JGSNY Meeting - “Trick or Treat – Family History Web Searches” Speaker: David Kleiman. Please note: This is a program change from the listing in Dorot.

Explore web research tricks

· Start with the basics.
· Work with "new" or "ignored" resources on well-known genealogy sites.
· Bring the data into your own system for customized and detailed analysis.
· Start from any general search engine (Google for example).
· Learn how to dig deep, follow a thread or a clue, and maybe find family treasure in the most unexpected websites.
· Grab targeted lists from "protected" websites (legally) and set up the information to do your own sorting and selections.
· Combine search results from both free and paid databases into your own analysis tool.

This program has something for everyone - from the newest genealogist or computer user to the experts.

David M. Kleiman has been a family historian for over 35 years and is chair of the NY Computers and Genealogy SIG. He is the developer of both software and on-line databases for genealogists and served on the JGS-NY executive council. David does genealogical consulting for several current publishing projects and is president of Heritage Muse, Inc., an ePublishing company producing digital texts in the humanities and custom, multi-media books for family historians.

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at the Center for Jewish History will be open from 12:30 to 1:45 PM for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computer resources.

JGSNY Members - Free. Non-Members $5.00

Tuesday, December 25, 2007 – Brunch at 11:30 AM (reservations required), Program at 12:45 PM (open to JGS members) - Annual Membership Brunch and 30th Anniversary Celebration at the 92nd Street Y, 1395 Lexington Avenue, New York - “Write Your Family History NOW!” - Speaker: Mike Karsen

Help celebrate our 30th Anniversary by attending our Members’ Brunch.The day will provide an opportunity to get together with old and new friends, and reminisce about another great year for JGS and especially about the special events and accomplishments over the past three decades. The cost is $18 for members and $25 for non-members. Reserve early as seats are limited. Invitations will be mailed shortly. The annual business meeting will be held at 12:45 PM, followed by a special program, both open to all JGS members at no charge. Our guest speaker is Mike Karsen on the topic of “Write Your Family History Now.” It will be of interest to genealogists at every level of family history research. You may email Brunch Co-Chair Edie Ewenstein at Edie@jgsny.org. with your questions. We look forward to seeing you on December 25th.

We genealogists are very good at doing research and collecting many facts about our families. For any of a number of reasons, however, most of us delay publishing the results of this research. Learn how you can publish your findings in a book that varies from a simple 32 pages to one that contains detailed biographies and places your family in historical context. Your goal should be to organize your findings and share them with your family as soon as possible.

A professional genealogy speaker/instructor and researcher based in Chicago, Mike Karsen is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, the Genealogical Speakers Guild, and the National Genealogical Society. He speaks on genealogy topics locally and nationally, teaches classes in genealogy, and is on the faculty of the Newberry Library and Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies. Mike has presented at state, national, and international conferences. He is the author of the JewishGen website “Guide to Jewish Genealogy in Chicagoland” and of numerous articles on genealogy, and is President of the JGS of Illinois.

January 20, 2008 - 2:00 PM - JGSNY Meeting - State of the Art: Researching and Restitution

Speaker: Karen S. Franklin - This program will demonstrate how Jewish genealogical research has been utilized to help solve looted art cases in New York, the Netherlands, Israel and Ukraine. Case studies for the Leo Baeck Institute and research for the Origins Unknown Agency will be highlighted. The cases vary from a potentially multi-million dollar restitution settlement for the Larsen family, to the return of a doll and furniture to a family who fled Germany to Palestine in the mid-1930s. Each study illustrates the specific research techniques and the general legal and ethical issues regarding looted art. Karen Franklin will also describe how the Council of American Jewish Museums ’ Resolution on Nazi-Era Looted Art, which she co-authored, affects the Jewish community and claims for Jewish objects. She will examine how individuals who may wish to research or claim art may do so.

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will be open 12:30 to 1:45 pm for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers. Admission: Free to JGS members, $5 for others

February 17, 2008 - 2:00 PM - JGSNY Meeting - Arthur Szyk: An Artist’s Self-Portrait in Documents

Speaker: Rhoda Miller - A case study of the life of political cartoonist, illuminist, and illustrator Arthur Szyk (1894-1951) will be presented through the use of genealogy documents. Szyk is noted for his extraordinarily detailed art involving Jewish themes, anti-Nazi cartoons, advertising, and illustrations in which he typically includes self-portraiture as well as characterizations of his family. While Szyk was a ubiquitous artist during the WW II era, this is the first time his life has been examined in the context of his involvement with bureaucratic systems during his most prolific periods. The detail of his self-portrait through documents is revealed through genealogical research strategies that intertwine rabbinic research, Polish records, the Holocaust, American immigration and naturalization, as well as FBI investigation. His Jewish, anti-Nazi, and Zionist themes are explored as an expression of his personal and artistic life.

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will be open 12:30 to 1:45 pm for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers. Admission: Free to JGS members, $5 for others

March 16, 2008 - 2:00 PM - JGSNY Meeting - Identical Strangers: Jewish Adoptees Fill in the Blanks to the Past

Speakers: Elyse Schein and Paula Bernstein

Elyse Schein, a writer and filmmaker, had always known she was adopted, but it wasn't until her mid-thirties that she searched for her biological mother. When Elyse contacted Louise Wise Services, the prestigious Jewish adoption agency in Manhattan, she was shocked to discover she had an identical twin sister. Paula Bernstein, a married freelance writer and mother, also knew she was adopted, but had no inclination to find her birth mother. When she answered a call from the adoption agency one spring afternoon, Paula's life suddenly divided into two starkly different periods: the time before and the time after she learned the truth. After their reunion, Paula and Elyse set out to answer the haunting questions surrounding their origins and their separation. As they investigate their birth mother's past, Paula and Elyse move closer toward solving the puzzle of their lives. This program is based on Bernstein and Schein's experiences researching Identical Strangers: A Memoir of Twins Separated and Reunited, which was published by Random House in October 2007. Bernstein and Schein will discuss how, as Jewish adoptees, they researched their biological roots using the Internet and the New York Public Library Genealogy Division.

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will be open 12:30 to 1:45 pm for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

Admission: Free to JGS members, $5 for others

April 13, 2008 - 2:00 PM - JGSNY Meeting - The Jewish Calendar Demystified -- and -- Searching the New York State Census with Fewer Tears

Speaker: Stephen P. Morse

This program will be held at The Abraham Joshua Heschel High School, 20 West End Avenue (at 60th Street).

The Jewish calendar is important to genealogists because Jewish vital records use the Jewish dates. This includes not only birth, marriage, and death certificates, but tombstone inscriptions as well. The Jewish calendar is both a solar and lunar calendar, with the months being syn­chronized to the moon and years to the sun. As such, the rules governing the calendar can be a bit daunting. This talk presents the calendar in an easy-to-understand – and sometimes tongue-in-cheek – fashion. The aim is not to make you an expert in computing Jewish dates (we have programs that do that) but rather to give you an appreciation for what's involved in such calcu­lations. Topics covered include the 19-year calendar cycle, the origin of time, errors in the Jewish and secular calendars, andthe use of Hebrew letters to represent dates on tombstones.

There were several state censuses taken in New York starting from 1790. The most valuable for genealogical purposes are the 1905, 1915, and 1925 censuses because that was a time of large influx of immigration. There were numerous assorted aids for navigating through those censuses, but they were often hard to use, covered only specific years or boroughs, and were not available at all libraries. The One-Step website rectifies that situation by putting a universal finding aid on line that covers all the boroughs of New York City in each of the three census years. This presentation describes the One-Step approach and contrasts it to the previous methods.

Stephen P. Morse is the creator of the One-Step Website for which he has received both the Outstanding Contribution Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, and the Award of Merit from the National Genealogical Society. He has also received the first ever Excellence Award from the Association of Professional Genealogists. In his other life Morse is a computer professional with a doctorate degree in electrical engineering. He has held various research, development, and teaching posi­tions, authored numerous technical papers, written four textbooks, and holds four patents. He is best known as the architect of the Intel 8086 (the granddaddy of today's Pentium processor), which sparked the PC revolution 25 years ago.

 

Travel to the Abraham Joshua Heschel High School, 20 West End Avenue (at 60th Street) Subway · 59th St / Columbus Circle A, B, C, D or #1 Exit at Broadway and 60th St, walk west 3 blocks towards West End Ave (11th Ave) or ·  W 72nd St #1, 2 or 3, then M57 bus – corner of W 72nd and Broadway (in front of Urban Outfitters) to West End Ave and 60th St (across the street from the school) Buses M31 – get off at W 57th St and 11th Ave (walk 3 blocks north) M57 – get off at West End Ave and 60th St (in front of the school) M11 – get off at W 60th St and Amsterdam Ave (walk one block west)

May 18 , 2008 - 2:00 PM - JGSNY Meeting - Fusgeyers: Jewish Immigrants Who Walked to Freedom in the Early 1900s

Speaker: Jill Culiner

When Moldavia and Walachia united to become Romania in 1858, the new constitution granted citizenship to Christians only. Jews became foreigners in their own country. Forbidden to be market traders, artisans, innkeepers, evicted from villages, twenty thousand were soon on the streets and starving. In 1899, 78 unemployed Jewish artisans from Romania and Bessarabia decided to cross Europe on foot, then continue, by ship, to America. To raise money they would give theatrical performances in Yiddish. Although the authorities forced this group of Fusgeyers (wanderers) to continue on by train at the Austro-Hungarian border, they attracted much admiration. Soon thousands of Jewish men and women were forming Fusgeyer groups, training in long-distance walking, and leaving for North America in the search for freedom and respect. When they arrived, they worked as peddlers in mining towns or founded Jewish farming communities. One hundred years later, Jill Culiner crossed Romania on foot, looking for lost Jewish communities, searching through European archives, then tracing the immigrant trail from Vienna to Liverpool and across America

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute will be open 12:30 to 1:45 pm for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

Admission: Free to JGS members, $5 for other

June 22, 2008 - Searching Online Historical Directories – and – A New Tool for Shoah Research

Speaker: Logan Kleinwaks

Many pre-World War 2 business, address and organizational directories from Eastern and Central Europe have been made available online as part of library digitization programs. They can potentially help genealogists discover relatives or places where relatives lived. The website www.kalter.org/search makes it feasible to search 22,000 pages of these directories – an important resource that should not be missed by researchers of families from Romania, Poland, or Galicia. Logan Joseph Kleinwaks will explain how to search these directories by focusing on real examples, with a complete walk-through from software installation to refining searches based on search results.

Logan will also describe www.ShoahConnect.org, his website that provides tools for working with one of the most important Jewish genealogical sources, the more than two million Pages of Testimony documenting Shoah [Holocaust] victims on www.YadVashem.org. By using this web­site to associate an e-mail address with Pages of Testimony, a researcher can potentially make contact with submitters and relatives of victims. More than 8,000 such associations have al­ready been made by nearly 500 users. ShoahConnect also makes it easier to manage searches at www.YadVashem.org that return many results from the vast database.

Logan Kleinwaks is the Coordinator of the JewishGen Danzig/Gdansk SIG [Special Interest Group] and creator of the genealogy websites www.ShoahConnect.org, for reuniting families separated by the Shoah, the Search Engine for Online Historical Diretories at www.kalter.org/search, and www.FamilyTreeRegistry.org. His broader genealogical interests include the photographic documentation of Jewish cemeteries, improving Internet access to genealogical information, and privacy. A hobbyist genealogist living near Washington DC, he has a research background in physics and recently started the Book Wish Foundation (www.bookwish.org), a nonprofit providing books, reading glasses, libraries, and school supplies for Darfur refugees and villagers in eastern Chad.

>> The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at CJH will be open 12:30 to 1:45 PM for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

Note: This program will be held in the Kovno Room on the second floor,
not in the Auditorium.

Sept 14, 2008 - The Pages in Between: Unearthing the Hidden Legacy of Two Families, One Home

When reporter Erin Einhorn found the family in Poland that hid her mother from the Nazis during World War II, she thought she’d created a made-for-TV-reunion for two families thrown together by history. A man who knew her mother as a child threw his arms around her and – tears streaming down his face – told her the little girl had been a sister to him. But when Erin is asked to fulfill a decades-old promise involving the house that her family still owned, she must search through centuries of dusty records, maneuver an outdated, convoluted legal system, and prove the death of a great-grandfather born in 1868 to right the wrongs of the past.

In this special presentation to the Jewish Genealogical Society, she tells what she discovered in ghetto records, property and social service agency archives, and in troves of birth, marriage and death records that had been harboring family secrets for decades. In a year spent living in the country where her mother was born, she found the only known photo of her grandmother and shocking news about how she may have died. She learned that her mother’s only memory of Poland was provably false. And she discovered, as with most family stories, that memory is not always the same as truth.

Speaker: Erin Einhorn is the author of The Pages In Between (Simon & Schuster, September 2008) and a reporter for the New York Daily News, covering the New York City public school system and education-related issues. She has written for the Philadelphia Daily News, The Philadelphia Inquirer and Fortune and is a contributor to public radio’s This American Life.

Location: UJA-Federation, 130 East 59th Street, 7th floor

Oct 19, 2008 - 2pm - Research at the International Tracing Service (ITS) Archives in Bad Arolsen, Germany: Film and Panel Discussion - preceded by Gesher Galicia meeting (11am - 1pm)

In May 2008, 40 genealogists spent a week researching at the ITS archives, the most important repository in the world containing information about individual victims of World War II. Although its stated mission was to document “the fate of the victims of Nazi persecution,” it remained closed to the public for more than 50 years. On Nov. 28, 2007, after years of conflict and debate, ITS opened its doors to researchers. A short video will provide a first-hand look at the vast resources of the ITS and what the on-site research process looks like, followed by a panel discussion in which five trip participants – Valery Bazarov, William Fern, Janet Isenberg, Renee Steinig and Pamela Weisberger – will offer their unique perspectives on their experience. The program will include:

• Description of ITS, the archives, categories of documents and their accessibility to the public
• Gaining access to and researching in the archives
• Obtaining copies of documents
• Discovering new items of individual, personal interest
• Analyzing documents for greater meaning
• How to research the ITS archives yourself
• Community documents as an adjunct to personal research

Gesher Galicia (GG) Regional Meeting, 11 AM to 1 PM, Viennese Research, Cadastral Maps and “Good-Bye Bohorodchany”
   After an update on GG’s newest map and land­owner records project in Lviv, we’ll waltz through the fascinating process of mining Viennese re­sources to discover your Galician relatives, including the IKG’s (Israel­itische Kultusgemeinde Wien) vital records collection, the treasures found in the Gasometer ar­chives and the Austrian National Lib­rary col­lections. Then join Bernard Reiner on his “homecoming” trip with Alex (“Tevye”) Dunai, as he returns to the Bohorodchany burial site where his ancestors were laid to rest more than four centuries ago, reads the megillah in the Great Stanislawow syna­gogue, attends shul in Kolomea on Purim morning, and eats from the “conflicted soil” of his ancestors.

Location: Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street

►► The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at CJH will be open 12:30 to 1:45 PM for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

Nov 16, 2008- Lucille Gudis Memorial Fund all-day seminar -- From Here to Eternity: Jewish Cemetery Research, Preservation and Restoration. Lucille Gudis Memorial Fund All-Day Seminar. Location: UJA-Federation, 130 East 59th Street. Pre-registration required. Kosher lunch will be served. The speakers are:

• Chaim Bruder, Heritage Foundation for Preservation of Jewish Cemeteries

• Joyce Fields, JewishGen Vice President of Research and Data Acqui­sitions

• Ada Green, Chair of JGSNY Cemetery Project

• Abraham Laber, Founder of Jewishdata.com

• Steve Lasky, Founder of Museum of Jewish History

• Norman Weinberg, Executor Coordinator of Poland Jewish Cemeteries Restoration Project

The afternoon program will be open at no charge to JGS members. More details will follow. Save the date.

Dec 25, 2008- Annual JGS Membership Brunch - Warren Shaw will present “Bums, Slummers and Swells: Social Class, Immigration and the Birth of American Popular Culture on the Lower East Side”

• Get together with old and new friends during Hanukkah
• Catered kosher dairy buffet
• Cost: $18 for members, $25 for non-members

Brunch at 11:30 AM. Reservations required. Seating is limited. Program at 1:00 PM is open to JGS members.

Learn about the development of the class structure that we still live under in the U.S. and the beginnings of what we now call Pop Culture, in the Lower East Side of more than a century ago. In the early 19th century the Five Points, a tiny area in the general vicinity of today’s Chinatown, became America's first slum. There immigrants, craftsmen and former slaves united at first only by their poverty and the disdain directed at them by “respectable” New Yorkers developed their own identity, language and entertainment, rather than striving for respectability. Several decades later, Eastern European Jewish immigrants built on this heritage. They nationalized and mass-produced both the popular culture of the Lower East Side and its pro-labor, pro-tenant political activism. These Eastern European Jewish immigrants took the internal culture of the Lower East Side and turned it outward, completing the cultural revolution that began in the 1830s with the collision of craft workers, Irish immigrants and freed slaves. Warren Shaw is a writer, historian, professor and attorney whose career in New York City history stems from his experiences growing up Jewish on Manhattan’s then-impoverished Upper West Side in the 1960s. He has published hundreds of articles and appeared on PBS, WNYC, the History Channel and many other television and radio stations discussing New York, including a year-long feature series on National Public Radio. He is a Senior Counsel in the office of Corporation Counsel of the City of New York.

Location: 92nd Street Y

<Click Here for more information and registration form>

January 18, 2009 - 2:00 PM - JGSNY Meeting: Who Do You Think You Are, Stephen Fry? A Film About a Genealogical Quest

The BBC's wildly successful TV series, Who Do You Think You Are?, follows British personalities as they trace their roots. The subject of this particular episode is Stephen Fry, the English comedian, writer, actor, humorist, novelist, columnist, filmmaker, and television personality -- famous in America for his role in the TV series Jeeves and Wooster. 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, using sites on the Internet, traveling to ancestral lands, visiting significant people and places of the past, and sharing the discoveries with relatives.

The story that pricked Stephen's interest the most was that of his beloved Jewish maternal grandfather, Martin Newman, whose original name was Neumann. By the time of his death, when Stephen was eleven years old, his flamboyance had made an indelible mark on his grandson. Martin had left Surany, a small town in what is now Slovakia, in 1927 with his wife and daughter and settled in Bury St Edmunds, England. Stephen was interested in discovering more about Martin and his family's life prior to their move to East Anglia. And what of the other branches of the Neumann family?

Join us for this fascinating and dramatic presentation. Can't wait to find out what Stephen learns? Check out his story at www.bbc.co.uk/whodoyouthinkyouare/past-stories/stephen-fry.shtml.

Location: Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at CJH will be open 12:30 to 1:45 PM for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

February 15, 2009 - 2:00 PM - JGSNY Meeting: Google Your Family Tree. Speaker: Daniel M. Lynch.

As the Internet's most popular search engine, Google has firmly established itself as an indispensable tool for billions of people worldwide. During the past decade, genealogy and family history research have experienced unprecedented growth due in large part to the electronic availability of family records via the Internet. Dan Lynch, author of the popular new book, Google Your Family Tree: Unlock the Hidden Power of Google, will explain how to use the many powerful features of Google to jumpstart a family history search. What is there to Google beyond learning how to use keywords? Dan will demonstrate its many other capabilities, including Language Tools, Google Books, Google News Archives, Google Images and Videos, Google Alerts, Google Maps, Blog Search, Google Earth, Google Notebook, and Google Toolbar. Dan's book will be available for purchase following his presentation.

Location: Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at CJH will be open 12:30 to 1:45 PM for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

 

March 15, 2009 – 2:00:  Twentieth Century Probate Research: Confirming Relationships and Finding Family

Speaker Debra Braverman 

Don’t miss out on learning about this important genealogical too!!  Probate is the process by which the assets of a person who has died are distributed.  Probate files represent an incredible wealth of little-known and underutilized records.  Whether a person has died with a will or intestate, records are created in order to facilitate the distribution of property.  While probate laws dealing with the process of inheritance differ from state to state, there are numerous similarities, chief of which is that these records are always public.  The paperwork in a twentieth century estate file can offer clues to finding unknown or lost family.  Using these documents together with other research tools can break down brickwalls in searching for family.

Debra is a member of a number of genealogical organizations, including the Association of Professional Genealogists, and JGS (New York), among others.  She is an alumna of the National Institute on Genealogical Research.  Debra lectures both on the local and national level.

Location: Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at CJH will be open 12:30 to 1:45 PM for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

April 19, 2009 – 2:00: Preview of the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy.

29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy. 
Come hear about the place where history changed America and the Jewish people; where we had an opportunity for full unqualified citizenship and unprecedented inclusion into the fabric of our country.  Members of the conference committee will talk about their city, where they were equal under the law and where their voices were heard in setting National policy. Learn the city, where as early as 1783, Jewish Philadelphians from Congregation Mikveh Israel influenced the writers of the US Constitution on the importance of the separation of church and state.

On August 2-7, 2009, the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy will return to the oldest large continuous Jewish community in America.  Here you may access over 150 programs and 30 workshops for professional genealogists and the family historian who is just starting.  There will be 20 special interest groups, 25 informal common interest groups, 8 breakfasts with experts, a chance to hear Father Patrick Desbois, author of Holocaust By Bullets: A Priest’s Journey To Uncover The Truth Behind The Murder Of 1.5 Million Jews, and an invaluable opportunity to network and learn.

Participants will be encouraged to do personal research at many convenient repositories and explore unique Jewish heritage sites while experiencing the joy of hamisheh Yiddishkayt.

This presentation about Philadelphia and the conference includes an interactive 45-60 minute presentation about what will make the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy special.  It is a lively forum on details and questions about this exciting meeting.  Lead presenter is Dr. Stephen Schecter, a conference board member, is responsible for compiling a Philadelphia Area Resource Guide and coordinates volunteers.  He will host this program along with other members of the conference committee.  Come prepared with your questions about research sites in Philadelphia and details about the upcoming conference.

Location: Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street

The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at CJH will be open 12:30 to 1:45 PM for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

May 17, 2009 – 2:00 PM – JGSNY Meeting:  Crossing the River:  reconciling present life with the indelible mark left by a childhood in the Kovno Ghetto.

The book, Crossing the River, is both a personal memoir and a valuable historical resource. Against the backdrop of Lithuania's occupation - first by the Red Army, next by the Germans, and then again by the Russians - it is a story reflected through the prism of a sharp-eyed young child, Shalom Eilati. His story starts in the occupied Kovno Ghetto and ends with his flight across the Soviet border, through Poland and Germany and finally, his arrival in Palestine. The adult survivor, while recalling the terrorized child that he was and how he then perceived the adult world, also takes stock of his present life. Throughout the memoir, Eilati attempts to reconcile his present life as a husband, father, scientist, and writer, with the images, feelings, and thoughts from the past that have left an indelible mark on his life and that continue to haunt him.

Shalom Eilati, born in 1933 in Kovno (Kaunas), Lithuania, was the son of Israel Kaplan, a teacher, historian and author, and mother Leah (nee Greenstein), a nurse and poet. In 1941, he and his family were imprisoned in a ghetto created by the occupying Germans. In 1944, at his mother's initiative, he escaped from the ghetto alone. He survived the ghetto (as did his father) and reached Palestine in 1946.  He was a member of Kibbutz Tel-Yosef, earned a Ph.D. in the cultivation of citrus fruits, and became a lecturer in the Faculty of Agriculture at the Hebrew University in Rehovot.  Later he was among the founders of Israel's Environmental Protection Service, and coordinating editor of Cathedra, a quarterly on the history and settlement of Israel.  He is married with three children and five grandchildren, and lives in Jerusalem.

Mr. Eilati will be available for book-signing following the meeting.

Can't wait to learn more about Mr. Shalom Eilati?  Read about his return trip to Kovno in Back to the River.

Location: Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street
The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at CJH will be open 12:30 to 1:45 PM for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

June 14, 2009 – 2:00:   What’s New on JewishGen - Speaker Warren Blatt

Learn about the latest developments at JewishGen, the world’s leading internet site for Jewish genealogy, including JewishGen’s partnership with Ancestry.com, newly released historical records, website enhancements, online data transcription projects, and previews of future developments.

Warren Blatt is the Managing Director of JewishGen (www.jewishgen.org), the primary Internet site for Jewish genealogy, a division of the Museum of Jewish Heritage - A Living Memorial to the Holocaust (www.mjhnyc.org), in New York City.

He is the author of Resources for Jewish Genealogy in the Boston Area (Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, 1996); and co-author (with Gary Mokotoff) of Getting Started in Jewish Genealogy (Avotaynu, 1999). He was the Chair of the 15th International Seminar on Jewish Genealogy. In 2004, he was awarded the IAJGS’ Lifetime Achievement Award in Jerusalem.

Mr. Blatt has over 35 years of research experience with Russian and Polish Jewish records, and is the author of the JewishGen FAQ: Frequently Asked Questions about Jewish Genealogy, and many other JewishGen InfoFiles.

Location: Center for Jewish History, 15 West 16th Street The Ackman & Ziff Family Genealogy Institute at CJH will be open 12:30 to 1:45 PM for networking with other researchers and access to research materials and computers.

 

 

Hold These Dates!!

2009 Sept 13 Oct 18 Nov 15 Dec 20 2010 Jan 17 Feb 21 March 21 April 18 May 16 June 13

 

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