Alexander Beider
Dr. Beider has been studying the etymology and geographic distribuion of Jewish names from Eastern and Central Europe for nearly ten years. His contribution to Jewish onomastics include two major works: A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire (1993) and A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland (1996), one monograph Jewish Surnames in Prague (1995), as well as several articles published in the USA, Poland, Russia and Israel. A Moscow-born scholar, he currently lives in France.
Dr. Gittleman currently is the Provost and Senior Vice President
at Tufts University, where he has served as a professor
of German, and is currently the holder of the Alice and Nathan
Gantcher Chair in Judaic Studies. He is the recipient of two
Fulbright awards and the author of several books on German
literature, East European Jewish literature, and the American
immigrant experience. Born in New Jersey to immigrant parents,
Gittleman holds an M.A. from Columbia University and an Ph.D from
the University of Michigan. For 20 years he has taught summer
seminars on the rise of Nazism.
Stephen Birmingham
Acclaimed novelist and social historian, Stephen Birmingham
has written more than 25 works of fiction and non-fiction,
including the classics Our Crowd, The Grandees,
The Rest of Us, and The Auerbach Will.
Mr. Birmingham lectures frequently on such topics related
to America's aristocracy or Jewish elite.
Warren Blatt
Warren Blatt is the chair of the 15th
Summer Seminar on Jewish Genealogy. He is the author of the
JewishGen FAQ ("Frequently Asked
Questions") and JGFF online search
engine. He is a board member of the
Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater
Boston, and is assistant editor of their newsletter,
Mass-Pocha. He has been assistant editor of
Landsmen,
and has also written articles for
Avotaynu
and other JGS publications.
Michael J. Bohnen
For the past 23 years, Michael Bohnen has practiced corporate
law at the Boston law firm of Nutter, McClennen & Fish, LLP.
He has also lectured and published in the area of corporate law.
A graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, he is
listed in The Best Lawyers in America.
Mr. Bohnen is immediate past Chairman of the Board of Combined
Jewish Philanthropies of Greater Boston. He currently serves as
Vice Chair of the National Jewish Community Relations Advisory
Council, Chairman of Boston's Jewish Continuity Commission and
Chairman of the New Jewish High School.
Hal Bookbinder
Mr. Bookbinder is a writer for RootsKey, the
newsletter of the JGS of Los Angeles. He has chaired the
1990 Summer Seminar, been a president of the JGS of Los Angeles,
and is currently treasurer of the
AJGS.
In his own research, he has identified over 3,000 relatives
around the world. He and his wife, Marci, live in Agoura,
California.
Harry D. Boonin
Mr. Boonin is the co-author of The Davidows:
The Experiences of an Immigrant Family. The story of his
own family, the book is the result of extensive research with
Russian source materials, as the town of origin has no Yizkor
book and the family has no rabbinical lineage. He lives in
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
Gabriel Braunstein
Mr. Braunstein, a native of Argentina, has a Ph.D. in
Physics from The Technion, Israel Institute of Technology.
He is currently the treasurer and a founding member of the JGS
of Rochester, NY. Mr. Braunstein's expertise is the immigration
patterns of Jews to Argentina.
Jeffrey K. Cymbler
Mr. Cymbler is a professional genealogist with an
extensive knowledge of Polish genealogical records. He has
successfully traced his own family back to the early 18th
century in Poland. He has been Vice President of the JGS of
New York, cochaired the Eleventh Summer Seminar on
Jewish Genealogy, and is currently a member of the Executive
Committee of the JGS of NY. His article, "Polish-Jewish
Genealogical Research - A Primer," appeared in
Avotaynu.
He lives and practices law in NY.
Fred Davis
Fred Davis is President of the Jewish
Genealogical Society of Greater Boston. He has coordinated
the JGSGB volunteer project to catalog the genealogical resources
of the American Jewish
Historical Society. He has served on the Board of the Jewish
Community Relations Council of Greater Boston, and the Board of
his temple. Since 1978, Mr. Davis has been a professional in the
field of energy conservation, and is President of his own
company. Mr. Davis credits his father with laying the foundation
of their family history by documenting interviews with family
members thirty years ago. Fred lives in Medfield, MA, with wife
Lucinda, and sons Avner and Leon.
David Curtis Dearborn
Reference librarian of the New
England Historic Genealogical Society's research library and
consultant to the Enquiries Service, Dearborn is also an adjunct
professor of history at Northeastern University and genealogist
for the Massachusetts Society of Colonial Wars. The author of
numerous articles in genealogical journals and publications,
Dearborn is a contributing editor to The American
Genealogist.
His areas of special interest include northern New England
families, Essex county, MA, migration patterns; and urban and
20th century genealogy. A Fellow of the American Association
of Genealogists, Dearborn's other professional memberships
include the National Genealogical Society, the Society of
Genealogists (London) and the New Hampshire Society of
Genealogists. A Massachusetts native, Dearborn was educated at
University of Massachusetts, Boston (B.A.), Northeastern
University (M.A.), and Simmons College (M.L.L.S.).
Dick Eastman
Mr. Eastman is the director of the New England Computer
Genealogists and belongs to the
New England Historic Genealogical
Society, the National Genealogical Society and the
American-Canadian Genealogical Society. A computer professional
for over 25 years, he manages two on-line genealogy areas on
CompuServe and is also a frequent author and lecturer on
computer-related topics. He is the author of YOUR ROOTS:
Total Genealogy Planning On Your Computer. He has also
written extensively for genealogy and computer publications.
Michael Feldberg
Michael Feldberg, Ph. D. has served as Executive Director of the
American Jewish Historical
Society in Waltham, MA since 1991. Prior to that
time he served as President of The Boston-Fenway Program, Inc.,
a consortium of Boston's major cultural institutions. He has
also served as Director of the Institute for the Humanities and
Criminal Justice and chair of the Criminal Justice Program at
Boston University, has taught history at the John Jay College of
Criminal Justice of the City University of New York and the
University of Massachusetts-Boston, and criminal justice at
Boston University. He also serves on the faculty of the
Humanities and Professions Program at Brandeis University.
Dr. Feldberg received his undergraduate degree from Cornell
University and his doctorate in history from the University of
Rochester. He is the author or editor of six books and numerous
articles, book reviews and encyclopedia entries in American
ethnic and immigrant history, in criminal justice and in
medicine.
Karen Speigel Franklin
Ms. Franklin is the director of family research at the Leo Baeck
Institute in New York and the director of the Judaica
Museum at the Hebrew Home for the Aged in Riverdale, New York.
She is a member of the advisory board of the German Jewish
genealogical journal Stammbaum. Her main interest area is
Southern Germany.
Judith R. Frazin
Ms. Frazin is the author of two editions of
A Translation Guide to 19th-Century Polish Language
Documents (Birth, Marriage, and Death Records) and has
developed two unique forms for recording genealogical
information. A genealogist for 26 years, she has been president
of the JGS of Illinois, was program chairperson for the 1984
national seminar on Jewish Genealogy, and wrote a genealogical
column for the newspaper The Jewish Post and Opinion.
ChaeRan Y. Freeze
ChaeRan Freeze was born in Seoul, Korea, but grew up in Ethiopia
and Kenya. She received a B.A. at the University of California,
Irvine and is presently completing her doctorate at Brandeis
University in modern Jewish history, with a specialization in
Russian-Jewish history. She became interested in Jewish genealogy
through her dissertation research on Jewish divorces in Imperial
Russia. After spending a year working in the archives of the
former Soviet Union and reading hundreds of files on Jewish
families, she became completely engrossed in the lives of people
she was studying. She will be a Harry Starr Fellow at the
Center for Judaic Studies at Harvard next year.
John Garrard
John Garrard is Professor of Russian Literature at the
University of Arizona. His most recent book (co-authored with
Dr. Carol Garrard) is The Bones of Berdichev: The Life and
Fate of Vasily Grossman (Simon & Schuster, 1996), which will
be on sale at the Summer Seminar. He is also the author
of "The Nazi Holocaust in the Soviet Union: Interpreting
Newly Opened Russian Archives" (published in the December
1995 issue of "East European Jewish Affairs").
During the summer of 1996 Professor Garrard will be a visiting
scholar at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in
England.
Sol Gittleman
Ted Gostin
Mr. Gostin, as a professional genealogist, has extensive
experience with Russian directories and has published a volume
of his own family history. He is a past president of the JGS of
Los Angeles and has taught Jewish genealogy at the University
of Judaism, the Board of Jewish Education, and at elderhostels.
An active member of the Association of Professional Genealogists
and the Committee of Professional Jewish Genealogists, Mr. Gostin
is currently working on two genealogical reference books.
Walter Hickey
Mr. Hickey has worked for the
National Archives and Records
Administration for six years. He spent four years at the
New England Region office in Waltham, MA, and the past two years
at the Pittsfield Region office in Pittsfield, MA. He was
formerly a special collections librarian at Pollard Memorial
Library in Lowell, MA, and holds a B.A. in History.
Michael Honey
Born in the Czech Republic, is a Holocaust survivor. He entered
the camps in 1942 at age 13 and survived Theresienstadt,
Auschwitz-Birkenau (where he was Mengele's runner), and
Mauthausen. His father and one brother escaped to England in
1939 and two other brothers escaped to Palestine. After World
War II, he caught up on his missed schooling, learned English,
and was then sent by the youth movement Habonim to the new state
of Israel on a youth leadership course, where he learned Hebrew.
He then returned to England, graduated university in engineering,
and worked in the chemical industry, building plants and
refineries. His interest in genealogy stems from a meeting with
his brother Mordche in Israel, one month before he died, at which
they discussed their children and Mordche gave him a family tree
diagram.
Saul Issroff
Born in South Africa, Issroff is a 'Litvak' now living in London.
He is one of the founding members of the JGS of Great Britain.
His special interests are Lithuanian and South African Jewish
history, archival resources, and travel.
Anne Joseph
Ms. Joseph, a native of England, has lived in Montreal,
Quebec, Canada, since 1959. Her husband has traced his Canadian
Jewish family from the earliest settlers in 1760 through ten
generations. Anne has combined her love of history with her
husband's family lore into Heritage of a Patriarch,
published in 1995. She has also written a book on Judaism and
ghost-written the memoirs of a Holocaust survivor.
Bruce Kahn
Dr. Kahn is the author of the resource guide "Jewish
Genealogy on the Information Super Highway." He is
President and founder of the
JGS of Rochester, New York; author of the JGS of Rochester
World Wide Web pages; Vice President of the
Federation of Eastern European
Family History Societies; and former Assistant Editor of
Landsmen (the journal of
the Suwalk / Lomza SIG).
By day, he is a senior research scientist at the Eastman
Kodak Company.
Alice Kane
Boston-native Alice (Yee) Kane is a 17-year "veteran"
at the Boston Public Library,
serving many years in the Microtext Department. Beginning and
advanced researchers have benefited from her experience with
genealogical and newspaper resources on microfilm. She is a
current member of the nearby New
England Historic Genealogical Society and does occasional
client research in both libraries. Mrs. Kane grew up in Boston's
South End and now lives in the Jamaica Plain area of Boston.
Susan E. King
Ms. King is the founder and president of
JewishGen, Inc.,
a non-profit corporation formed to continue the Jewish genealogy
discussion group on the Internet. She has been president of the
JGS of Houston and a leader in genealogical activities on
computer bulletin boards and the Internet for over 10 years.
She holds a B.A. in Communications, has worked in marketing
communications, computer graphics applications, and is currently
manager of sales and marketing for an international travel
management company.
Peter Lande
Mr. Lande was born in Germany and came to the US in 1937.
He is currently retired from the US Diplomatic Service.
His genealogical specialties are German records and Holocaust
records, including records of survivors.
Frank Leister
Frank Leister, B.S. is founder and president of Leister
Productions, Inc., and the author of Reunion, family tree
software for Macintosh and Windows. He is a resident of
Mechanicsburg, PA and has lectured at many regional and
national genealogical meetings. He graduated from Susquehanna
University and specializes in the art of human-computer interface
design.
Dov Levin
Dr. Levin is head of the Oral History division at the
Institute of Contemporary Jewry of Hebrew University
in Jerusalem. Born in Kaunas (Kovno), Lithuania, in 1925,
he was in the Kovno ghetto and then fought as a partisan in the
Vilna area during World War II. He emigrated to Palestine, where
he was a member of a kibbutz and took part in the War of
Independence. Levin holds master's and doctoral degrees in
history and sociology from Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and has
written 12 books and approximately 350 articles on contemporary
Jewish issues.
Julie Unger McCullough
McCullough is a Ph.D. candidate in American History at the
University of Maryland, working on an oral history study of a
folk music organization in the Washington, D.C., area. She is
also the proprietor of "Your Story: Oral and Family Histories,"
a small business she started about a year ago.
Joseph Maciora
In addition to his career as a reference librarian in the
Boston Public Library's
Social Sciences Department, Mr. Maciora is an active Polish
genealogist and a founding member of the Polish Genealogical
Society of Connecticut. He has published several Polish
genealogical volumes and articles and is a frequent contributor
to Pathways and Passages. His genealogical interests
include Poland (1761 to present), Eastern Europe, and his home
state of Connecticut (1700 to present).
Frank Mecklenburg
Mr. Mecklenburg is the archivist of the Leo Baeck
Institute in New York and has published widely on the subjects
of emigration and community history. His main interest is the
connection between social history and family history.
William Milhomme
Bill Milhomme is the Reference Supervisor at the Massachusetts
State Archives. He has a B.A. in Political Science and an M.A.T.
in Teaching History. Bill has been providing reference service
to genealogists and family historians for over ten years at the
State Archives.
David Mishkin
Mr. Mishkin owns and operates
"Just Black and
White," a custom processing laboratory in Portland,
Maine, that specializes in photographic copying, enhancements,
and restorations. His business caters to a variety of museums,
historical societies, genealogical groups, and photographers.
Mr. Mishkin has written articles for several photographic
and genealogy publications.
Gary Mokotoff
Mr. Mokotoff is the publisher of
Avotaynu, the
International Review of Jewish Genealogy, and former President
of the Association of
Jewish Genealogical Societies. He is the creator of the
Jewish Genealogical Family Finder and the
Jewish
Genealogical People Finder. He is co-author of
Where We Once Walked: A Guide to the Jewish Communities
Destroyed in the Holocaust.
Richard Panchyk
Richard Panchyk is a writer and editor who has worked on a
variety of projects, including co-authoring a book on CAD
(computer-assisted design) and editing for the Frommer's travel
guide series. His 1994 master's thesis at the University of
Massachusetts was on given names and Hungarian Jews. Since then,
he has published two articles on Austro-Hungarian Jews.
Panchyk's latest project involved the translating, transcribing,
indexing, and editing of the 1850 Obuda, Hungary Census of Jews,
published this year on microfiche by
Avotaynu.
Eileen Polakoff
Ms. Polakoff is a full-time professional genealogist
who specializes in Jewish-American family history.
Her work, based in New York City, has involved tracing families
back to the late 18th-century in Europe and finding long-lost
relatives around the world.
She is the "Ask the Experts" columnist for
Avotaynu
and has lectured on various genealogical topics nationally and
internationally. Her specialties include New York City
1870-present, use of computers for genealogy, and managing a
professional genealogy business.
Yale J. Reisner
Mr. Reisner is director of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation
Genealogy Project at the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland
in Warsaw. This project encompasses genealogical research,
archival cataloguing, and archival preservation. He holds degrees
in East Central European regional studies from Columbia College
and the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and has also studied
at the Jewish Theological Seminary, Hebrew University, and the
U.S. National Archives. He has worked in a variety of archives,
libraries, and Jewish community institutions in the U.S., Russia,
and Lithuania. A genealogist for over 20 years, Mr. Reisner not
only belongs to the New York and Boston JGSs, but was a founding
member of the Moscow JGS.
Jayare Roberts
Jayare Roberts has been on the LDS Extraction Support and Family
History Center Support teams at the Family History Department in
Salt Lake City since 1992, and is currently Senior consultant
working on the Ellis Island automation project. He was
previously a specialist for Ancestral File Expansion and worked
for 12 years in the LDS Family History Library as a reference
consultant. He has also published genealogical book reviews,
essays, articles, library registers, and VIP pedigrees. His
hobbies include travel, lecturing, and publishing. Mr. Roberts
was born and raised in Milwaukee, educated at Louisiana State
and Brigham Young Universities, and holds an M.A. in Library
Science.
Neil Rosenstein, M.D.
Dr. Rosenstein is a world-renowned Jewish genealogist
and author of a number of books on family history and research,
among them The Unbroken Chain, The Margolis Family,
and Latter Day Leaders, Sages and Scholars. He was the
founding president of the JGS of New York. He has extensive
experience as a guest lecturer at genealogical conferences
and is a frequent contributor to lay and scholarly publications.
A native of South Africa, Dr. Rosenstein has a medical practice
in general surgery.
Arline R. Sachs
Dr. Sachs is an Associate Professor of Computer Information
Systems at Northern Virginia Community College and is currently
on sabbatical, organizing the AJGS Jewish
Cemetery Project. She has been active in the JGS of Greater
Washington for the last 14 years in various capacities.
Before becoming involved with the cemetery project, she was
instrumental in setting up databases for the JGSGW including
several which are sold on microfiche through
Avotaynu.
Sallyann Amdur Sack
Founder and first president of the Jewish Genealogical
Society of Greater Washington, DC, Ms. Sack is currently
editor and co-owner of
Avotaynu.
She also co-directed two international genealogical seminars in
Israel and has served on the advisory committee of the Dorot
Genealogy Center at Beth Hatefutsoth in Tel Aviv. Ms. Sack has
co-authored several books, including Where We Once Walked: A
Guide to the Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust
and the recently revised Guide to Jewish Genealogical Research
in Israel.
George Sackheim
George Sackheim, a genealogical researcher for 50 years,
is the author of Scattered Seeds, a two-volume,
1300-page genealogy of theSackheim family over 17 generations,
which includes 33,000 descendants and a gazetteer of over 2,000
places around the world. Formerly an assistant professor
of chemistry at the University of Illinois at Chicago,
coordinator of biological and physical sciences, Michael Reese
Hospital and Medical Center School of Nursing, and an instructor
at Presbyterian St. Luke's Hospital School of Nursing, Sackheim
has written 116 chemistry texts. He lives with his wife Esther
in Illinois.
William Schoeffler
William H. Schoeffler, a native of New York City, is President
and founding chairman of the New England Regional Genealogical
Conference, an event sponsored by 26 genealogical societies.
A nationally recognized speaker and genealogical teacher, he
served as Director of Education for seven years at the
New England Historic Genealogical
Society and has been an ardent genealogist since 1973.
Currently he is arranging tours and cruises for Genealogical
Destinations, a division of Colpitts World Travel.
Mr. Schoeffler is a former president of the Association of
Professional Genealogists and has served on the board of the
Federation of Genealogical Societies. He has taught genealogical
courses for Elderhostel, the Genealogical Institute of Texas, the
Samford University Institute of Genealogy and Historical Research
and the New England Historic Genealogical Society.
Jonathan Shea
Founder and current president of the Polish Genealogical
Society of Connecticut, Mr. Shea is author of Russian Language
Documents from Russian Poland: A Translation Manual for the
Genealogist and co-author of Following the Paper Trail:
A Multilingual Translation Manual for Genealogists.
He has compiled many gravestone inscriptions from cemeteries in
the Northeastern U.S. and Poland, and indexed American and Polish
church registers and civil records. Mr. Shea is a faculty member
in the Department of Modern Languages at Central Connecticut
State University. He is also a professional translator and
interpreter in six languages, with reading knowledge of several
others. He holds master's degrees in Slavic Languages and
Literatures and in Library Science, and is currently working on
a doctorate in Russian. He is also preparing a history of the
Dabrowa Biolastocka area in Eastern Poland.
Rabbi Dr. Chaim Shapiro
Rabbi Shapiro, spiritual leader of Touro Synagogue of Newport,
Rhode Island (the oldest synagogue in continental North America),
supervises the synagogue's extensive tour program. A graduate of
Yeshiva College, he was ordained at the theological seminary of
Yeshiva University, plus he holds a master's degree from the
University of Pittsburgh and a doctoral degree from Boston
University. He has served several previous pulpits and is author
of both A Suggested Guide for Jewish Orthodox Conversions
and A Guide for Judaism for Naval Chaplains.
Ellen Smith
Ellen Smith is curator of the
American Jewish Historical Society,
Waltham, MA, and co-editor, with
Jonathan D. Sarna, of The Jews of Boston (Boston, 1995),
nominated for the National Jewish Book Award. Among her
award-winning exhibitions, essays and catalogs are "On Common
Ground: The Boston Jewish Experience, 1620-1980" (1980);
"Moses Michael Hays and the Establishment of Post-Revolutionary
Boston" (1990); and "The Jews of Boston" (1995). She also serves
on the steering committee of Boston's Vilna Center for Jewish
Heritage and is president of Leventhal-Sidman Jewish Community
Center, Newton and Brookline, MA.
Marian L. Smith
Ms. Smith, as Senior Historian at the Immigration and
Naturalization Service (INS) since 1988, frequently speaks
to genealogical groups. She produced the pamphlet
INS Records, Genealogical Research, and the Freedom of
Information Act, and her article "Interpreting U.S.
Immigration Manifest Annotations" appeared recently in
Avotaynu.
Holly Snyder
Holly Snyder has been the Archivist of the
American Jewish Historical
Society since September 1992.
Previously, she served as Oral History Archivist at the
United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum in Washington, D.C., and was Acting Director of the
Museum's Oral History Department. Ms. Snyder holds Master's
degrees in Library Science and in American History from the
Catholic University of America. She is currently a doctoral
candidate in the History of American Civilization Program at
Brandeis University, working on a comparative study of three
colonial Jewish communities. From time to time, she has also
engaged in her own genealogical research.
Diana Sommer
Diana Sommer is the director of Dorot, the Douglas E. Goldman
Jewish Genealogy Center in Beth Hatefutsoth, the Nahum Goldmann
Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv. A native New Yorker,
Diana made aliyah to Israel in 1976 after living in Italy for
five years. She acted as registrar of Beth Hatefutsoth for seven
years before being appointed Dorot director in 1987. Under her
creative leadership, Dorot has grown into a dynamic international
Jewish genealogy center.
Dr. Leonard Spialter
Dr. Spialter, founder and current president of the JGS of Dayton,
Ohio, lectures on computerized storage-retrieval techniques in
Jewish genealogy. His own family database contains over 5000
names. He is currently producing an integrated computerized
information bank on the Dayton Jewish community and he writes
a monthly column on history, statistics, and family
mystery-solving for the Dayton Jewish Chronicle.
Spialter is a consultant on computer systems for small
businesses.
Gene Starn
Mr. Starn is the founder and past president of the
JGS of Greater Orlando (Florida) and the former editor
of ROMSIG NEWS. He is a journalist in both print
and broadcast media. He founded HERITAGE, Florida Jewish
News, in 1976 and continues to write a weekly column as its
editor emeritus.
Lawrence F. Tapper
Mr. Tapper has over 20 years experience at the National
Archives of Canada, where he has served as staff archivist
responsible for Jewish and Mediterranean collections, and now
works as a senior archivist in the Manuscript Division's Social
and Cultural Archives Program. Mr. Tapper is the author of the
publication A Guide to Sources for the Study of Canadian
Jewry and the revised sequel Archival Sources for the
Study of Canadian Jewry, as well as the book
A Biographical Dictionary of Canadian Jewry
19091914. He is also president of the JGS of
Ottawa-Carleton and a contributing editor to
Avotaynu.
Maureen Taylor
Manager of the New England
Historic Genealogical Society's user access services, Taylor
oversees the operation of NEHGS' 200,000 volume library.
Formerly reference librarian for the Rhode Island Historical
Society, Taylor has vast experience as a historical and
photographic researcher and consultant in both the private and
corporate sector. Her publications include: Runaways,
Deserters, And Notorious Villains: Notices From Rhode Island
Newspapers, Vol. I: The Providence Gazette, 1762-1800,
Nature Caught In The Twinkling Of An Eye: The Daguerreotype In
Providence and Working Women: Images Of Women At Work In
Rhode Island, 1880-1925. Taylor holds a B.S. in history from
Rhode Island College, where she is currently working on a
master's degree, and completed the Rhode Island Arts Management
Certificate Program.
Miriam Weiner
Ms. Weiner is the co-author of The Encyclopedia
of Jewish Genealogy, the first board-certified Jewish
genealogist, and former executive director of the American
Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors. She is president of
"Routes to Roots," a customized genealogy research
service offering visits to ancestral towns and on-site research
in the archives of the former Soviet Union and Poland.
Ms. Weiner lectures worldwide and writes a genealogy column that
is syndicated in over 100 Jewish newspapers and magazines.
Formerly, she was a private detective.
Robert Weiss
Mr. Weiss was a charter member of the JGS of Greater
Washington, was president of the 200-member
San Francisco Bay Area JGS for
four years. He is currently president of the
Association of Jewish Genealogical
Societies and editor of ZichronNote, the
journal of the SFBA JGS.
Genealogical projects he has been involved in include:
the AJGS international cemetery
project; compiling a Jewish genealogical resource directory
for the San Francisco Bay Area; cataloging the over 500 yizkor
(memorial) books at the Holocaust Center of Northern California
(HCNC); publishing a name index from the Volkovysk, Belarus
yizkor book; listing the pinkas (register) holdings of the
manuscripts libraries of the Jewish Theological Seminary of
America and the Jewish National and University Library of Israel;
and the initiation of a volunteer project to create a name index
for the 1500 oral and video Holocaust testimonies held at the
HCNC.
Steven Zedeck
Steven A. Zedeck is the founder and coordinator of the
Russian Era Indexing of Poland Project
(REIPP).
Steven has co-authored a book on the Zedeck family history.
He is a Principal Diagnostics Software Engineer for Cascade
Communications Corp. in Westford, Mass., and has a B.S. in
Computer Engineering from Syracuse University in 1978.
Back to 1996 Seminar Home Page