the jewish genealogical society of georgia at the breman
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The 25Tth IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy
Honor Thy Mother (and Grandmother and...)
Next JGSG Meeting: Apr 17 Publishing Your Family History
The meeting is free for Museum members and $5 for non-members. For more information, visit http://www.jgsg.org or contact Gary Palgon at 404.822.6280 or Expert@FamilyTreeExpert.com
Just One Mentoring Session Left
We Can Help You Start Your Family Tree
This program is open to all Breman Members.
"The JGSG Mentoring program provides one-on-one assistance to those interested in researching their family tree. Sessions take place at the Breman Library on the first Thursday of the month (beginning in Oct. 2004) from 10:30am-1:30pm. Appointments not needed."
JGSG Mentor program schedule:
Date Mentor
May 5, 2005 TBA
THE 25TH IAJGS INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON JEWISH GENEALOGY
LAS VEGAS , NEVADA
JULY 10-15, 2005
EARLY REGISTRATION RATES AVAILABLE THROUGH MAY 1!
ONLINE REGISTRATION AVAILABLE AT:
www.jewishgen.org/jgs/jgs-southernnevada/Shelley/home.htm
The Jewish Genealogy Society of Southern Nevada (JGSSN) is proud to be the host society for the 25 th Annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy to be held at the Flamingo Hotel in Las Vegas. We are inviting all who have an interest in finding their family history to join us.
This Conference has several new features to help advance your research efforts. You'll be introduced to new databases and exposed to an array of topics that will only whet your appetite for more. Conference attendees will be able to question a number of experts, and meet with people researching the same family lines or ancestral towns.
Plans for the Conference include activities and events for registrants and their spouses or companions that will appeal to all. The comprehensive Conference will be organized around themes so that registrants can easily attend multiple sessions related to their interests. Subjects will be presented in a variety of formats such as lectures, workshops, hands-on demonstrations, panel discussions, films, book and author talks and author signings. Time will be available to have discussions, ask questions and interact with the presenters. Breakfast with the Expert sessions will be available throughout the Conference.
What you can expect:
| • | A 750+ page Conference syllabus | |
| • | Welcome address at the opening reception by Congresswoman, Shelley Berkeley (D-NV) | |
| • | Presentations throughout the Conference by highly regarded national and international experts on a wide range of geographic regions and genealogical topics. Included in this will be knowledge needed for conducting Jewish genealogy, research talks covering lesser-known communities, the history and culture of Jews in Eastern Europe, Sephardic topics, and online genealogy for research persons, families and shtetls. | |
| • | Some of our more than 70 speakers include: | |
| » | Dr. Alexander Beider author of Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia | |
| » | Dr. John Colleta expert/author of They Came in Ships | |
| » | Dr. Stephen P. Morse creator of "One Step" Ellis Island records search engine and other major genealogical records research engines | |
| » | Miriam Weiner well known for her first-hand unearthing of records in Poland, Moldova, and Ukraine and author of Jewish Roots in Poland, and Jewish Roots in Ukraine and Moldova. | |
| • | Networking opportunities will be offered by attending luncheons with Special Interest Groups (SIGs), or Birds of Feather sessions that focus on specific regions, shtetls etc. | |
| • | Peruse books, software and other articles of interest as shown by our vendors | |
| • | Computer Workshop with access to multiple databases and demonstrations | |
| • | Our closing BANQUET (with kosher and vegetarian entrees available) will feature His Honor Mayor Oscar Goodman of Las Vegas. You dont want to miss the world's happiest mayor. In addition, professional musical entertainment will also be provided. | |
Conference registration rates are: Early Registration (through May 1) $200; Regular Registration (after May 1) $230. Discounts are available for spouse/companion. For more detailed information re: registration, visit our website at:
www.jewishgen.org/jgs/jgs-southernnevada/Shelley/home.htm
Register soon so that you can take advantage of the very good hotel rate of $61 per night. You may extend your stay for 5 days before and/or after for the same rate. Special Tour rates have been made available for conference attendees.
The Jewish Genealogy Society of Southern Nevada was established in 1989, small but determined. The Society has grown from the original 8 members to almost 80. We publish a quarterly newsletter, “Family Legacies” and a monthly “News to Note” handout. As a group, we participate in Jewish community activities such as providing a genealogy booth at the Israel Independence Day celebration, volunteering to assist our local PBS station, and working with the Jewish Federation and the Jewish Community Center. The conference, hosted by JGSSN, is the recipient of a Las Vegas Centennial grant.
A library of research material has been established and is available to our members. It has books, periodicals, CD’s and videos. The Society recently received a grant from the Jewish Federation to purchase additional books for the library. Our active Speaker’s Bureau spreads the good word for our Society. A database of Jewish names from headstones at local cemeteries will soon be available on our website.
Additional information re: the JGSSN can be found on our website at: www.jgssn.org
HONOR THEY MOTHER (AND GRANDMOTHER AND...)
Maybe you think modern women are tough to figure out--but your female ancestors are a real puzzle.
There are the name changes, for one thing. And women tend to hide behind fathers and husbands in genealogical records:Until 1850, censuses name only heads of households--generally, men. Women couldn't witness or enter into (and therefore, sign) legal contracts such as land purchases. You may have seen gravestones that give a veritable biography of the husband but devote a stingy "his wife" inscription to the Mrs.
Enter National Women's History Month, taking place in March.A California education task force started the commemoration as a mere week in 1978. Word spread, and in 1981, women successfully lobbied Congress to take the celebration national. The week was expanded to National Women's History Month in 1987.
The challenges of finding your female ancestors make it easier to focus on the men in your tree. But don't ignore your grandmothers and great-grandmothers--not only are they half your pedigree chart, but their wifely and motherly roles mean they're the primary influence on your family's collective character.
Use these Web sites to learn a little about your female ancestors' lives and pick up tips for researching them.
• Cyndi's List--Female Ancestors
http://www.cyndislist.com/female.htm
• Department of Defense National Women's History Month
http://www.defenselink.mil/specials/womenshistory
• History Channel Exhibits: Women's History
http://www.historychannel.com/exhibits/womenhist
• Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front/
National Historical Park
http://www.rosietheriveter.org/
(If you know--or are--a Rosie with a tale to tell, scroll
down and click on Share Your Home Front Story.)
• National Women's History Museum
• National Women's History Project
• What Did You Do in the War, Grandma?
http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WWII_Women/tocCS.html
Reprinted with permission from Family Tree Magazine Email
Update, copyright 2005 F+W Publications Inc. To subscribe to this free weekly e-mail newsletter, go to
http://www.familytreemagazine.com/newsletter.asp. For a free sample copy of the print Family Tree Magazine, America 's #1 family history magazine, go to http://www.familytreemagazine.com/specialoffers.asp?FAMfreeissue
The New York Public Library (NYPL) has put digitized images of nine Jewish yizkor books on its Web site at http://www.nypl.org/research/chss/jws/yizkorbooks_intro.cfm , and announced plans to do the same with the rest of the 700-plus books in its collection.
Many of the books contain photos and necrologies, or lists of Holocaust victims. NYPL's initial posting of yizkor books covers 12 towns.
About Holocaust Memorial Books
A phenomenon for the most part of the late 1950s, the 1960s, and the early 1970s, the yizkor books evoked by the Holocaust were edited, privately printed, and distributed (often free of charge) by committees of survivors of many hundreds of the former Jewish population centers of eastern Europe, and generally they culminate in lists of community members who did not survive the war. Over the centuries, however, traditional yizkor books (or Memorbücher, as they were called in the original Ashkenazi lands of Central Europe ) had expanded beyond commemorating only the victims of persecution to record also the outstanding personages who had adorned the community in good times as well as bad. True to this spirit, the activists in the post-war yizkor book revival sought both to commemorate the dead and to recollect and celebrate, as well, the quality of life of the communities of which they had been a part. Where yizkor books contain lists of names, therefore, these are prefaced by personal memoirs and biographical sketches, and much emphasis is placed, too, on essays that describe local Jewish society in all the diversity represented by its organizations: political, intellectual, artistic, professional, and recreational, as well as philanthropic and spiritual.
Typically, these books were published in Israel or New York , or, occasionally, in Buenos Aires . The essays in these volumes may be all in Hebrew, or all in Yiddish, or some in one language and some in the other. Not infrequently, a brief English-language summary appears at the end; in a few cases, there may be substantial content in English, Hungarian, or other languages. Holocaust memorial books tend to be long, frequently running to 600-900 pages, and they are unindexed. Many of the volumes are extensively illustrated with photographs, although the images, themselves survivors of the Holocaust, have sometimes suffered damage and the quality of reproduction is not always particularly high, in line with the book production values of the time.
The alphabetical index of communities on this website lists all the towns in eastern Europe for which there are yizkor books in the New York Public Library Dorot Jewish Division. Each name links to the corresponding bibliographic record in CATNYP, the on-line catalog of The New York Public Library. Towns are listed according to the form authorized by the Library of Congress. Where a different form is preferred by Zachary M. Baker's Bibliography of Eastern European Memorial (Yizkor) Books, that spelling has been listed as well. Baker's bibliography appears in From a Ruined Garden: the Memorial Books of Polish Jewry, an anthology of literary passages from some sixty yizkor books, edited and translated by Jack Kugelmass and Jonathan Boyarin (second edition, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998).
An ambitious volunteer effort is under way to expand the proportion of this corpus available in English. The resulting data-rich selections in translation are posted on the JewishGen website together with much other pertinent information.
Yizkor books were published in very small quantities and at a time when permanent paper was little used. As a result, these volumes, which were meant to perpetuate the memory of a "vanished world," are often hard to find, and, in some cases, are themselves in danger of vanishing. The yizkor book holdings of the Dorot Jewish Division of The New York Public Library are the most extensive in the United States , with upwards of 90% of the titles listed in Baker's bibliography. In order to preserve and to provide universal access to these extremely important books, the Library, in partnership with the National Yiddish Book Center, has undertaken to digitize the entire collection. In time, digital images of the full text of all of the yizkor books in the collection should be freely available on the Library's website, and copies of these out-of-print titles will also be obtainable as "reprints on demand" from the National Yiddish Book Center. Gaps in the Library's holdings will, it is hoped, be filled with digital images made from copies lent by other libraries or individuals.
For more information on yizkor books and how to find them, visit JewishGen's Yizkor Book Project Web site at http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor . The volunteer-run site contains a database of the 1,200 or so books known to exist, translations from dozens of them and a list of libraries and archives that have yizkor books. The site also has a Necrology Index from the books that have been published. For more information on yizkor books and how to find them, visit JewishGen's Yizkor Book Project Web site at http://www.jewishgen.org/yizkor . The volunteer-run site contains a database of the 1,200 or so books known to exist, translations from dozens of them and a list of libraries and archives that have yizkor books. The site also has a Necrology Index from the books that have been published.
Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia
Calendar of Events
Sun Apr 17 1:30 PM Publishing Your Family History
Thurs May 5 10:30-1:30 Mentoring Program,
Tues May 24 7:30 pm Yale Reisner, Jewish Institute of Warsaw , Poland
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Visit the Breman Jewish Genealogical Society of Georgia web site at www.thebreman.org/jgsg.htm
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