15th Annual International Summer Seminar on Jewish Genealogy July 14-19, 1996 Park Plaza Hotel, Boston The Annual Summer Seminar on Jewish Genealogy is coming to Boston for the first time. This is the premier event in Jewish genealogy -- over 500 people from around the world are expected to attend the week-long conference. The Summer Seminar is held in a different world city each year -- past conferences have been held in London, Salt Lake City, New York, Toronto, Jerusalem and Washington, and in 1997 the conference will be in Paris. The Summer Seminar will feature over 40 speakers from around the world, in four days of lectures and workshops. All aspects of Jewish genealogy and history will be covered. Among the featured speakers are Jayare Roberts, head of the Ellis Island records indexing project at the LDS Family History Library in Salt Lake City; Alexander Beider, author of "A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire"; Yale Reisner, Director of Research and Archives at the Jewish Historic Institute, Warsaw; and many others. The presenters are the foremost experts in Jewish genealogy and history, including professors from acclaimed Boston-area universities, and noted speakers from the U.S., Canada, South America, South Africa, Europe and Israel. Topics range from beginner to expert, and include various aspects of U.S. and Canadian research; immigration and naturalization; British, German, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Lithuanian, Ukrainian and Romanian research; a status report on current LDS (Mormon) microfilming in the former Soviet Union; reports on accessing documents in Eastern European archives; laws and practices in Czarist Russia; Holocaust research, rabbinic and Sephardic research; newly available resources worldwide; translation workshops; computer and Internet use in genealogy; and the history, language, and culture of our ancestors. Lectures will be held in the morning and evening, leaving the bulk of the day open for attendees to go out to do their own research at the many valuable research institutions in the Boston area, including the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston Public Library, Massachusetts Archives, Bostonian Society Library, National Archives New England Region, Brandeis University's Goldfarb Library, American Jewish Historical Society, Hebrew College, and Harvard University Libraries. Shuttle buses will be provided from the Park Plaza Hotel, located at Stuart and Arlington Streets in the Back Bay, to the suburban research sites; the other institutions are all within walking distance or accessible via public transportation from the conference hotel. Vendors will exhibit their wares at the hotel throughout the week, but concentrated on Sunday, the opening day. There will be Judaica book dealers; calligraphers; genealogy publishers; genealogy and database software; photography, preservation and restoration supplies; and other vendors. Demonstrations of many computer software packages for genealogists will be running, for hands-on use, so you can try before you buy. The resource room at the conference hotel will be open all week. It will feature hard-to-find books and reference material, resources brought from around the world. A dozen computer and microfiche workstations will contain the latest CD-ROMs and computer databases, including the International Jewish Cemetery Project; the Jewish Genealogical People Finder; the Litvak prenumerantn database; and the REIPP database of over 50,000 19th-century Polish-Jewish birth, marriage and death records. A partial, tentative list of speakers and presentations includes: * Prof. Dov Levin, expert on Lithuania, Latvia, and Estonia, author of "Pinkas HaKehillot" (Yad Vashem, Jerusalem) * Yale Reisner, Archives Director, Jewish Historic Institute, Warsaw * Susan King, Founder of JewishGen, the computer network for Jewish genealogists * Jayare Roberts, LDS Family History Library, Salt Lake City, on the Ellis Island records indexing project, and report on East European microfilming * Alexander Beider, acclaimed author on Jewish names, on Ashkenazic given names, tendencies and peculiarities, 11th-19th centuries * Jeff Cymbler, on Polish-Jewish research, and cemeteries in Poland * Miriam Weiner, Routes to Roots, certified genealogist, columnist, specialist on Ukraine, Moldova and Belarus * Gary Mokotoff, publisher of "Avotaynu", author of "Where Once We Walked", creator of Jewish Genealogical Family Finder * Dr. Neil Rosenstein, author of "The Unbroken Chain", on rabbinic dynastic origins and their descendants * Jonathan Shea, on translating Russian records * Bruce Kahn, on Internet resources for Jewish Genealogy * Judith Frazin, on how to use an LDS Family History Center, and translating Polish vital records documents * William Schoeffler, on US-Canadian Border Crossing records * Walter Hickey, National Archives Pittsfield, on Naturalization records * Frank Leister, creator of Reunion software * Ted Gostin, on using Russian Business Directories * David Mishkin, on photography topics for genealogists: identification, preservation and restoration * Sil Horowitz and Gene Starn, on digital imaging of photographs and documents * Arline Sachs, on the International Jewish Cemetery Project * Lawrence Tapper, Canadian National Archives * Dr. Michael Feldberg, Executive Director, American Jewish Historical Society * Dick Eastman, Manager, CompuServe Genealogy Forum * Richard Panchyk, on Jewish Marriage and Migration in 19th-Century Austria-Hungary * Harry Boonin, on how to publish your family history * Bob Weiss, President, Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies * Hal Bookbinder and Jack Arbeiter on "The Changing Borders of Eastern Europe" * Sallyann Amdur Sack, editor of "Avotaynu", co-author of "Where Once We Walked", on research in Israel * Maureen Taylor, User Services, New England Historic Genealogical Society * David Dearborn, NEHGS Reference Librarian, on City Directories and Urban Research * Jerome Anderson, NEHGS, on Canadian Census Records * John Whittaker, on CD-ROM databases for genealogists * Nancy Arbeiter, Beginner's Workshop * Ellen Smith, Curator, American Jewish Historical Society * ChaeRan Freeze, on archives in Ukraine; the history of Jewish metrical records, laws and practices in Czarist Russia; and unexpected sources for genealogical research in the Pale of Settlement. * John Garrard, U. of Arizona, author, "The Bones of Berdichev" * Marian Smith, History Office, U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service * Eileen Polakoff, on immigrant case studies * Rabbi Chaim Shapiro, rabbi of the Touro Synagogue (oldest synagogue in the US), on "Sephardic Odyssey: From Granada to Newport" * Karen Franklin and Frank Mecklenburg, on German-Jewish research * Peter Lande, on Holocaust research * Dr. Sol Gittleman, Provost, Tufts University * Stephen Birmingham, author of "The Grandees", "Our Crowd", and "The Rest of Us" A detailed schedule of speakers and topics will be available at a later date. Many of the speakers will be available for consultation. For instance, Alexander Beider is bringing his database of Polish surnames, used in the compilation of his soon-to-be-published "A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland", and there will be sign-ups for individual meetings. In addition to the featured presentation, there will be many additional meetings: Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and Birds-of-a-Feather (BOF). These are gatherings of people with common interests: those interested in a certain town or region, users of a particular software package, adoptees, special research interests, etc. There will be walking tours of Jewish Boston on Sunday and Friday, led by noted historians; and the closing banquet on Thursday evening will feature entertainment and a buffet of foods from our ancestors' homelands. Registration for the Summer Seminar is $115, if received before May 14, and $150 thereafter. The Registration Form was printed in the Fall 1995 issue of "Avotaynu", and in other JGS publications. To receive a copy of the registration form, write to Carol Baker, 7 Wiswall Circle, Wellesley, MA 02181. Phone (617) 237-6369, FAX (617) 237-1039, or e-mail 73663.1637@compuserve.com. For more information, contact the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, P.O. Box 610366, Newton Highlands, MA 02161-0366, or call (617) 283-8003. For the most up-to-date info on the Summer Seminar, visit our World Wide Web pages at "http://www.jewishgen.org/boston/seminar".