Lessons in Jewish DNA: Inspiration >From One Man’s Successes

[JGSGB Announcements List (jgsgb-announce]

Getting the Most Out of JewishGen.org

Meredith Hoffman

Sunday, January 10, 2016    1:30 pm
Temple Emanuel, 385 Ward Street, Newton, MA

Many people use one or two features of JewishGen.org and are not aware of the variety of additional resources and how best to use them. JewishGen is a vast and growing treasure trove for researchers at all levels of experience.  Meredith Hoffman will survey a selection of these valuable and often overlooked resources with abundant real-life examples in the first part of her presentation.

In the second part, she will demonstrate tools to determine how personal names varied across countries and cultures (is Hirsch the same as Gersh?), figure out how surnames were spelled as they moved with your ancestors (how might Zukerman be spelled in Poland? in Galicia?), and pin down the name of your great-grandfather’s town (when they said they came from Poison, what did they really mean?).

Meredith Hoffman is a professional genealogist and popular lecturer who specializes in researching Jewish immigrant ancestors. She particularly enjoys solving difficult Jewish name problems. Meredith is a member of the JGSGB board where she works on special publications and outreach, Syllabus Chair for the New England Regional Genealogical Conference, and JewishGen Town Leader and KehilaLinks coordinator for Berezno, Ukraine. She is a graduate of the Boston University Genealogical Research Program and Stamford University’s Institute for Genealogical and Historical Research, and holds degrees in Linguistics from UC-Berkeley.

Admission is free for members, $5 for non-members.

Research Help - Special Interest Groups

Before lecture, 12:30 pm

 

Bessarabia SIG

Litvak-Baltic SIG

Poland SIG

 

After lecture, around 3:00 pm

 

Belarus SIG

Ukraine SIG 

__________________________________________

Lessons in Jewish DNA: 
Inspiration >From One Man’s Successes

Israel Pickholtz

Sunday, January 31, 2016    1:30 pm
Cong. Beth El-Atereth Israel, 561 Ward Street, Newton, MA

Are you concerned about understanding and interpreting your DNA test results?  DNA results are especially complicated for Jews, who have largely married “within the tribe” for hundreds of years, a practice known as endogamy. In this presentation, Israel Pickholtz will tackle this challenge head on. Since every family is different, rather than taking a “how to” approach, he will demonstrate how he dealt with endogamy in his family and identify general lessons that apply to all DNA research. His goal is to inspire all to say, “I can do this!”

Following the talk, copies of his book, Endogamy: One Family, One People, will be available for purchase and signing.

Israel Pickholtz is a professional genealogist who has been living in Israel since 1973. He has been working on his families’ genealogies since 1994. His flagship work is the single-surname Pikholz Project that aims to identify and reconnect all Pikholz descendants. Pickholtz is a member of the Israel Genealogical Society and the Association of Professional Genealogists.  He has lectured at IAJGS conferences and has written for  Avotaynu and other many genealogy publications.

Admission is free for members, $5 for non-members.

__________________________________________

Upcoming Events

Research Sunday

February 7, 2016 @ 2:00 pm
Sign up for appointments with translators and experts
More info

Foundations of Jewish Genealogical Research

Our award-winning course on how to research your family history will begin on March 1, 2016 and run for 8 weeks on Tuesday evenings at Hebrew College in Newton.  Class is limited to 24 students. Registration is now open.

More info

______________________________________

  JGSGB on Facebook

www.jgsgb.org