Our Past 2026 Events
Sunday, January 18, 2026
1:30 PM (1 pm for Schmoozing and Mentoring)
Speaker: Deborah Long, Professional Educator and Author
Deborah Long has been researching her family history and searching for surviving family members for more than 60 years. She started as a ten-year-old, writing to the International Red Cross. Both of her parents were Holocaust survivors and were in some of the worst places imaginable: Auschwitz, Bergen Belsen, Buchenwald and more.
Deborah is a professional educator and speaker, though typically her audiences are licensed professionals who are required to attend real estate continuing education programs. She has written more than 20 books, including a memoir about growing up as a child of survivors titled “First Hitler, Then Your Father, and Now You.” She earned her doctorate in adult education. She is the founder and first president of Triangle JGS of North Carolina (Chapel Hill/Durham/Raleigh).
Topic: Out of the Whirlwind: Resources for Holocaust Research
The daughter of two Holocaust survivors, Deborah Long reviews the best (as well as some of the obscure) resources and methods for determining the fate of those involved in the Holocaust, including survivors and victims. Deborah will use examples from her own research to demonstrate the documents and artifacts she discovered to determine her family’s fate.
Sunday, February 22, 2026 at 1:30 PM (1 pm for Schmoozing and Mentoring)
Zoom Session
Speaker: Risa Daitzman Heywood, Professional Genealogist, Writer, and Speaker
Risa Daitzman Heywood has over 25 years’ experience researching Jewish families, particularly from the Russian Empire. An American living in Lisbon, Portugal, she is a director on the board of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and a member of the Association for Professional Genealogists (APG). Risa holds the Certified Genealogist credential from the Board for Certification of Genealogists.
Topic: Using HIAS’s Philadelphia Records to Trace Your Family’s Immigration Journey
Researchers with family going to or passing through Philadelphia may find important clues about their family’s immigration journey in records created or collected by the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS). Still operating today, HIAS has been assisting refugees since 1884. These Philadelphia records include some of the only surviving immigrant bank records, client entry card files, detainee card files, and landing verification cards. Some case studies will demonstrate how to use these special records to find missing passenger list records, find extended family members, and open new avenues of research
Sunday, March 29, 2026 at 1:00 PM (1 pm for Schmoozing and Mentoring)
Zoom Session
For members only
Day of Learning in memory of Evan Fishman Z”l
The Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia regrets to inform you that our March 29th Day of Learning has been amended due to the illness of one of our instructors, Mr. Arthur Sissman. Arthur leads the online Jewish Genealogy Special Interest Group and is our expert instructor for Artificial Intelligence (AI) uses in Jewish Genealogy. Without knowing his recovery schedule, we have decided to postpone the AI portion of our Day of Learning for members. We wish Arthur refuah shlema, a quick and complete recovery, and hope to reschedule his part of the meeting in a month or two.
We will now have two Half-Days of Learning in memory of Evan Fishman.
The first half-day will be dedicated to Genetic Genealogy with the founders and Chief Genealogists of The Holocaust Reunion Project https://holocaustreunions.org/, Jennifer Mendelsohn and Adina Newman.
This program is for members only. The program will start at 1pm EDT and end at 5pm EDT on Sunday, March 29.
The schedule is:
1:00-1:15 pm – Introduction – Felicia Alexander and Mark Halpern
1:15-2:45 pm – Ashkenazi DNA 101 with Jennefer Mendelsohn
2:45-3:00 pm – Break
3:00-4:30 pm – Best Practices in Using a Chromosome Browser with Adina Newman
4:30-5:00 pm – Wrap up and Next Steps – Jennifer, Adina, Felicia, and Mark
Please attend one or both sessions. The choice is yours. Members will receive the Zoom link a few days before the meeting.
For more about the presenters and the sessions, see below.
Ashkenazi DNA 101 with Jennifer Mendelsohn
DNA has the potential to be an essential and exciting genealogical tool. But many Ashkenazi Jewish testers find their DNA results completely overwhelming and unnavigable, largely due to endogamy. In this talk, Jennifer Mendelsohn will help those with Ashkenazi heritage learn how to tame the tangle of our match lists and make them make sense. She will cover why our match lists are so large (hello, endogamy!), why all our matches seem to match each other (endogamy, again!), and how to spot the meaningful matches and separate them from the faux ones. Using real-life examples of DNA success, you’ll learn techniques that will help you work effectively with DNA to smash brick walls.
Jennifer Mendelsohn is a sought-after genealogist who specializes in helping Eastern European Jewish families shattered by the Holocaust reclaim their history. Her journey began in 2013, when she reunited her husband’s grandmother—a Polish Holocaust survivor who had lost her entire immediate family and most of her extended family—with three living first cousins she had never known. Since then she has worked on scores of cases, solving complex family mysteries using a blend of traditional and genetic genealogy. Her sleuthing was featured in the 2019 bestseller Inheritance by Dani Shapiro. She co-founded the Holocaust Reunion Project, which provides free DNA testing and genealogical consultation to help Holocaust survivors find family. Their work has garnered international media attention.
More Than Just Browsing: Best Practices in Using a Chromosome Browser with Adina Newman
In Jewish genetic genealogy, you may have heard that using a chromosome browser is almost always a must. But why? Where can you access it? How does it work? If you have ever had questions related to chromosome browsers, this presentation is for you! Topics will include the purpose of a chromosome browser, how to utilize it at the major commercial testing and third-party sites, when to use it, and best chromosome browser practices in your genealogical research. Applications to real cases—including Holocaust research—will illustrate the practical benefits of using a chromosome browser effectively.
Adina Newman, EdD, the creator of My Family Genie, is a professional genealogist and educator. Her specialties include Jewish genealogy, genetic genealogy, social media, and New England, and she presents on these topics in a variety of venues, from major genealogy conferences to local genealogy societies. Her findings have received international media attention, such as mentions in The Daily Mail, Washington Post, AP News, TODAY, Us Weekly, People, and The Times of Israel, and she has made appearances on several news outlets such as NPR and I24NEWS. She co-founded the Holocaust Reunion Project, a program to raise awareness about the potential of DNA testing within the Holocaust survivor community and provide survivors and their children with free commercial DNA tests and consultations.
Date: Sunday, April 19, 2026
Time: 2:00 PM for Check in, Schmoozing and Mentoring – in-person only)
Hybrid Meeting
2:30 PM official meeting start time
Location: In-Person Location: Rodeph Shalom, 615 N. Broad St. Philadelphia, PA 19123
Speaker: David Brill: Russian Genealogy Maven and JGASGP Member
David is a longtime member of the Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia, and the coordinator of its Russian Interest Group. For over 30 years, David has researched his family history in the countries of the former Russian Empire (especially Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania and Russian Poland). Over the years, his interest in this area led him to become a self-taught translator of prerevolutionary Russian-language genealogical records. Currently, he manages the Rovno District Jewish Records Project for JewishGen’s Ukraine Research Division and is the JewishGen town leader for his ancestral shtetl of Tuchin (Ukraine). In his non-genealogical life, David is a civil engineer with the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration. He lives in Cherry Hill, New Jersey with his wife, Michelle.
Topic: Where Did They Run To? Tracing Ancestors Who Fled Conscription in the Russian Empire
The reign of Tsar Nicholas I (1825-1855) is infamous in Russian Jewish history for the brutal conscription of minor boys. Beginning in 1827, thousands of Jewish boys as young as 9 were recruited into “cantonist” schools to begin a military career that could last as long as 25 years. Thousands of others tried to avoid conscription by hiding from authorities, joining new families, or running away from their homes – in some cases escaping to an entirely different, distant part of the Pale of Settlement. For the genealogist tracing Jewish families, this situation presents unique issues that call for a creative approach. This presentation explores ways to connect the “runaway” to his birth family, using strategies including analyzing revision lists and other 19th century Russian-language documents, multi-generational name comparisons, and genetic genealogy. The presenter will work from examples in his own family research of ancestors who fled their shtetls as children in the 1830’s-1840’s and will show how genealogy was able to piece together the stories of their journeys.