Schedule of Upcoming Events

 

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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.

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There will not be a meeting in August

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Wednesday, September 23, 2026

7:00 PM (doors open at 6:30 PM)

Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, 8339 Old York Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027

 

A Special Event – in Partnership with the Holocaust Awareness Museum and Education Center (HAMEC) and Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel (KI)

 

Lecture by Dr. Robert Watson followed by Panel Discussion with Rabbi Benjamin P. David of KI and Steven Weiner of HAMEC.

Light refreshments to follow

Speaker: Dr. Robert Watson, Historian, Author, Professor, TV Commentator, Community Leader

 

 

Dr. Robert Watson is Distinguished Professor of History, Avron Fogelman Research Professor, and Assistant Director of the Center for Citizenship and Civility at Lynn University in Boca Raton, Florida. Robert is an author, historian, media commentator and community activist. He joined the faculty of Lynn in 2007 after spending 15 years teaching at universities around the country. He has published over 45 books and approximately 200 scholarly articles, essays and chapters on topics in history and politics. His recent books America’s First Crisis, The Nazi Titanic, The Ghost Ship of Brooklyn, George Washington’s Final Battle, Escape, When Washington Burned, and America’s First Plague have received critical acclaim. More at https://www.lynn.edu/campus-directory/people/robert-watson

 

Topic: The Roots of Antisemitism

 

Dr. Robert Watson, a distinguished professor of history, explores the long and tragic history of anti-Semitism—one that spans cultures and countries over the millennia— and reveals the underlying sources of hate, how it has endured over time and the “justifications” behind countless horrors.

 

Panel Discussion to follow

 

Panelists:

Dr. Robert Watson

 

Rabbi Benjamin P. David

 

 

Rabbi Benjamin David grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey. He is the oldest son of Rabbi Jerome and Peggy David. He went to Cherry Hill High School East then Muhlenberg College, where he graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa. He was also on the Muhlenberg track and field team. He attended the Reform seminary, HUC-JIR in NYC, and was ordained in 2004. For seven years, he served as the associate rabbi at Temple Sinai of Roslyn and, more recently, as the senior rabbi of Adath Emanu-El in Mt Laurel. He came to KI in the summer of 2023 and has since contributed extensively to our congregation’s teen program, social justice work, lifelong learning initiatives and Israel engagement. He has led KI groups on trips to Israel, Poland and the south of the United States. A competitive distance runner, he has completed 24 marathons to date. Rabbi David is the editor of two anthologies: Seven Days, Many Voices and The Sacred Struggle, both with the CCAR Press. He is married to Lisa, the Executive Director of Camp Harlam. They have three children: Noa, Elijah and Samuel.

 

Steven Weiner (HAMEC)

 

 

Steve is a Philadelphia native, and a clinical psychologist by training. His Doctoral Dissertation was on family dynamics of Children of Survivors and their families. His mother, Bella Flora was born in Brussels, Belgium in 1929. She was eleven years old when Belgium was invaded and occupied by Nazi Germany in 1940. As restrictions were progressively imposed upon the small Jewish community of Belgium, her father began to prepare for his family to go into hiding.

 

Steve wrote a book about Bella’s experiences as a testament for future generations of his family called Dearest Ones, so that her story of survival during the Shoah would be memorialized for all time. His presentation of the same name is given to schools, churches and synagogues to educate audiences on the history of the Shoah in Belgium as well as Bella’s own remarkable tale of survival as a young girl.

 

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Sunday, October 11, 2026

1:30 PM (1 PM for Schmoozing and Mentoring)

Zoom Meeting

 

Speaker: Karen Franklin, Director of Family Research at the Leo Baeck Institute & Director of Outreach for JewishGen at the Museum of Jewish Heritage

 

 

Karen is Director of Outreach for JewishGen and Director of Family Research at the Leo Baeck Institute. She is a past president of IAJGS, and has served as chair of the Council of American Jewish Museums, the Memorial Museums committee of the International Council of Museums, and played leadership roles in many other professional organizations.

 

Karen is a native of the Philadelphia area and a member of JGASGP.

 

Topic: A Story of Survival in Southern France

 

Among her numerous projects, Karen has spent over a decade tracing the histories of more than 100 refugees assisted by the Lehman family before, during and after the Holocaust, One person survived in hiding in Southern France during the War, but the details of her experience were not determined — that is, until descendants donated her papers to the Leo Baeck Institute. In this lecture, Karen describes how she tracked down descendants of the rescuers, the shocking stories she uncovered, and the resources she used in the search. The research is ongoing.

 

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Sunday, November 15, 2026 (Tentative)

1:30 PM (1 PM for Schmoozing and Mentoring)

Zoom Meeting

 

Speaker: Rebecca Kobrin, author of Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora, is Russell and Bettina Knapp Associate Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University, where she codirects the Institute for Israel and Jewish Studies.

 

 

Rebecca is the Russell and Bettina Knapp Professor of American Jewish History at Columbia University. She works in the fields of immigration history, urban studies, business history, Eastern European history and American Jewish History, specializing in modern Jewish migration. She received her B.A. (1994) from Yale University and her Ph.D. (2002) from the University of Pennsylvania. Her book Jewish Bialystok and Its Diaspora (Indiana University Press, 2010) was awarded the Jordan Schnitzer prize (2012). She is the editor of Chosen Capital: The Jewish Encounter with American Capitalism (Rutgers University Press, 2012), Salo Baron: Using the Past to Shape the Future of Jewish Studies in America (Columbia University Press, 2022), and is co-editor with Adam Teller of Purchasing Power: The Economics of Jewish History (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2015).

 

Topic: A Credit to the Nation: East European Immigrant Bankers and American Finance, 1870-1930

 

What are immigrants to do when business opportunities abound in their new home, but banks refuse essential financial support? How could they make the journey in the first place without helping hands? In this lively history, Rebecca Kobrin chronicles the turn-of-the-twentieth-century Jewish immigrants who stepped up by doing the lending themselves. Arriving from the Russian Empire and settling primarily in New York, they made livelihoods by assisting fellow Jews, so they could purchase passage to the United States and, after arriving, obtain credit that other lenders would not dare provide. Drawing on previously unexamined archival materials in Russian, Yiddish, German, and English, Credit to the Nation traces the novel practices of bankers who not only enabled the flourishing of American Jewry, but also revolutionized the US financial industry.

 

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Sunday, December 13, 2026

Hybrid Meeting

1:30 PM (1 PM for in-person Schmoozing and Mentoring)

Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel, 8339 Old York Road, Elkins Park, PA 19027

 

Speaker: Andrew Zalewski, Historical Research Advisor and Former Vice President of Gesher Galicia

 

 

Dr. Andrew Zalewski is a former professor of medicine at Jefferson University in Philadelphia. He has authored two books on Austrian Galicia: Galician Trails: The Forgotten Story of One Family and Galician Portraits: In Search of Jewish Roots, both of which reconstruct the story of his ancestors within a broader historical context. During his tenure as vice president of Gesher Galicia, he led archival research on Jewish educational access, cultural transformation, and legal rights in Galicia. He currently serves as a historical research advisor for Gesher Galicia and coordinates a multi-year project examining Jewish experiences in the Soviet-occupied region of former eastern Galicia.

 

Topic: NKVD Files: The Intersection of History and Jewish Genealogy

 

When World War II began in September 1939, the Soviet invasion of Poland brought former eastern Galicia—today western Ukraine—under Soviet rule and into the reach of the NKVD, the Soviet internal security agency. This talk brings to light the experiences of Jews swept up in that system: Jewish refugees who had fled German-occupied Poland, longtime local residents targeted for political reasons, and Jews from Austria, Czechoslovakia, Germany, Hungary, and Romania. Drawing on NKVD arrest files now searchable in the Gesher Galicia database, we will explore how these records preserve not only names and dates but also traces of individual lives. Confiscated photographs, letters, and personal documents offer glimpses into people’s journeys, losses, and identities during one of the most turbulent moments in Jewish history.

 

 

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