Schedule of Upcoming Events

Please note: Meeting times, dates, locations and speakers are subject to change.

Information is regularly updated. 

Our meetings will be in-person AND online whenever possible and safe, and for members who do not live near the Philadelphia area.

 

Our events are USUALLY scheduled on the same day and time each month, e.g., first Monday for Everything Genealogy. However, they might be moved to another week to work around Jewish or national holidays or other events. Our presentations/speakers may vary depending on the speaker’s availability. For the next several months, the schedule is:

  • September 14 JGASGP monthly meeting,  The Steve Schecter Memorial Lecture, with Benjamin Nathans at Main Line Reform

 

Sunday, September 14, 2025 at 2:30 pm

(2 pm for Schmoozing and Mentoring)

Hybrid Meeting – In Person Venue at Main Line Reform, Hausen Auditorium

 

The Steve Schecter Memorial Lecture

 

Speaker: Benjamin Nathans, Alan Charles Kors Associate Professor of History, University of Pennsylvania

Benjamin Nathans is the Alan Charles Kors Associate Professor of History at the University of Pennsylvania.  He teaches and writes about Imperial Russia and the Soviet Union, modern European Jewish history, and the history of human rights. He is the author of the multiple award-winning book Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter With Late Imperial Russia.  His latest book, To the Success of Our Hopeless Cause: The Many Lives of the Soviet Dissident Movement, tells the story of dissent in the USSR from Stalin’s death to the collapse of communism.  Nathans is a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books and the Times Literary Supplement.

 

Topic: Selective Integration: The Evolving Legal Status of Jews in Imperial Russia, 1795-1917

By the middle of the nineteenth century, more Jews lived in the Russian Empire than in any other country in the world. Eager to modernize their relatively backward agrarian kingdom, Russia’s rulers enacted a series of laws designed to integrate “useful” Jews, mimicking the results of emancipation in Western Europe without creating a society of equal citizens. Jewish elites played a surprisingly important role in this process, whose striking consequences became visible well before the revolution that swept away the empire itself.

  

Sunday, October 13, 2025

Zoom Only Meeting

1:30 pm (1 pm for Schmoozing)

 

Speaker: Phyllis Berenson, Director of the JewishGen Ukraine Research Division (Tentative)

 

Topic: Ukraine Genealogy Research in 2025: New Sources and Tips

  

Sunday, November 16, 2025

Hybrid Meeting – In person venue Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel

1:30 pm (1 pm for in-person Schmoozing)

 

Speaker: Sydney Cruice, Professional Genealogist and Speaker

 

Topic: Utilizing Probate Records to Solve Family Mysteries

 

Sunday, December 14, 2025

Zoom Only Meeting

1:30 pm (1 pm for Schmoozing)

 

Speaker: Robinn Magid, President of JRI-Poland (Invited)

 

Topic: Tracing Your Family Roots from the 1700’s to the 1940’s with JRI-Poland