Schedule of Upcoming Events
Please note: Meeting times, dates, locations and speakers are subject to change.
Information is regularly updated.
Due to the Corona virus situation, our meetings this year were conducted on the Zoom. Starting May 15, 2022, our meetings will be in-person AND online whenever possible and safe.
Date: Sunday, December 11, 2022, check in at 11:00 am, program begins at 11:30 am. An in person Special Event honoring founding President Harry Boonin
Location: Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, Elkins Park, PA
This meeting is for registered and pre-paid members only. This Includes a brunch and a special presentation by Music Historian Daniel Goldmark entitled History of Jews in American Popular Music and Rock and Roll.
Daniel Goldmark works on American popular music, film and cartoon music, the history of the music industry, and popular music. He is a professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio where he is the head of Popular Music Department and the Director of the Center for Popular Music Studies. He is the series editor of the Oxford Music/Media Series from Oxford University Press, and is the recipient of a fellowship from the American Council of Learned Societies (ACLS). Goldmark also spent several years working in the animation and music industries.
To make reservations for this event, click here before November 22
Date: Sunday, January 8, 2023 via Zoom
Time: 1:00 PM check in, chat, and schmooze (Optional) Official program starts promptly at 1:30
A joint presentation of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal and the Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia
Speaker: Menachem Kaiser, author, in conversation with Dan Rottenberg
Topic: Book Talk: Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure
Location: ZOOM co-hosted with JGS of Montreal
Menachem Kaiser is a writer living in Brooklyn, NY. His debut memoir, Plunder, won the 2022 Sami Rohr Prize for Jewish Literature and was named a New York Times’ Critics Best Book of the Year.
Dan Rottenberg, a member of JGASGP, is an author, editor and journalist. He is best known to us as the author of Finding Our Fathers: A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy published in 1977. This book was instrumental in the growth of pursuit of Jewish family histories.
Topic: In Conversation with Menachem Kaiser, award winning author of Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure
This book describes the author’s quest to reclaim his family’s apartment building in Poland — and of the astonishing entanglement with Nazi treasure hunters that follows.
Date: Sunday, January 29, 2023 at 1:30 pm via Zoom
Time: 1:00 PM check in, chat, and schmooze (Optional) Official program starts promptly at 1:30
Speakers: Jacky Comforty, Award-winning documentary filmmaker, oral historian and media creator and Martha Bloomfield, Award-winning author, oral historian, and artist
Jacky is an internationally acclaimed, award-winning documentary filmmaker, oral historian and media creator who has worked for over thirty-five years creating films and videos in the United States, Germany, Israel and Bulgaria. He has worked on groundbreaking films in Holocaust Studies. He is the director, editor, producer and distributor of three full-length documentaries and a dozen short videos about the Holocaust.
Martha is an award-winning author, oral historian, artist and independent scholar who has written several books about immigrants, migrants and the formerly homeless. In an effort to help dissipate prejudice and discrimination, she conducts oral histories to discover people’s voices and stories to share within the social historical contexts with other people.
Topic: Book Talk – The Stolen Narrative of The Bulgarian Jews and The Holocaust
The speakers share a complex tapestry of voices and memories previously underrepresented, ignored and denied. It is an alternative perspective that includes stolen, silenced but now reclaimed Jewish narratives based on our peoples’ experiences. It contextualizes and personalizes the history, reconstructs the puzzle, praises those who helped the Jews and shares their exemplary acts of humanity for future generations. It fills a void in the Bulgarian Holocaust literature–specifically first-hand accounts of memory of survivors, eyewitnesses, photographs, official publications, laws and newspaper articles. They will also talk about the importance of oral histories and their journey together to write this ground-breaking book. Jacky will also share an excerpt of the movie he is working on based on their book.
Sunday, February 26, 2023 at 1:30 pm via Zoom
Speaker: Emily Garber, Writer, Speaker and Professional Genealogist
Genealogy researcher, writer and speaker, Emily is an anthropological archaeologist by training and has been researching her family history since 2007. She holds a certificate from Boston University’s Genealogical Research program and owns Extra Yad Genealogical Services. Emily blogs at https://extrayad.blogspot.com/, has written two books and several articles on genealogical research that have appeared in Avotaynu. She serves as chair of the Phoenix Jewish Genealogy Group, and a member of the Board of Directors of both the IAJGS and the Arizona Jewish Historical Society.
Topic: It’s Hard to Say, ‘Good-bye’: Russian Jews Emigration to the United States
There were times when it was more difficult for many Jews to leave the Russian Empire than to enter the United States. What did emigrants have to do to get from their towns of origin to their ports of departure? What were the steps they had to take before leaving their communities? What did the Russian government require of potential emigrants? How and where did emigrants acquire tickets to sail? What routes might our ancestors have taken to get from their homes to ports of departure?
This presentation will answer these general questions and suggest how we can find likely answers for our relatives.
Sunday, May 21, 2023 at 1:30 pm
Hybrid Meeting – In-person venue TBD
Speaker: Tammy Hepps, Local Historian and Genealogist
Tammy is a genealogist and local historian who focuses on topics within American Jewish history, especially small towns and synagogues. Her projects combine research techniques from genealogy and history and draw heavily upon her technology expertise to break new ground in data gathering and interpretation. She is best known for her community reconstitution project focusing on the Jewish community of Homestead, PA, available online at HomesteadHebrews.com. Tammy earned her AB in computer science from Harvard.
Topic: The Ancestor Deep-Dive: How You Can Find Out Everything There Possibly is to Know About Your Ancestor
Too often our research is driven by sources. We look for an ancestor in all the sources we’ve heard about, and we only break new ground when we hear about new ones. How do we assess how comprehensive our search has been? How do we know if we’re even on the right path to get the answers we long for? This presentation will teach a methodology for creating a research plan centered on the discoveries we want to make, not just the sources we think we are limited to.