JGSWVO Past Meetings, Programs and other Activities
2007
Programs and speakers at Monthly Meetings
• Bennett Greenspan President and CEO of Family Tree DNA, spoke on “DNA Testing for Jewish Genealogy and History” at Temple Beth Israel, an event sponsored by JGSWVO in conjunction with TBI and the Jewish Federation. The lecture focused on the use of DNA testing to connect Jews with the same surname for genealogy purposes.
2006
Programs and speakers at Monthly Meetings
• Genealogy success stories and research issues. Discussion of the Yad Vashem Names Recovery Campaign and how JGSWVO members can help community members submit new information to memorialize family, friends and neighbors who perished in the Holocaust. Details on 2007 programs, and suggestions for future programs. Annual Election of JGSWVO officers.
• Schelly Talalay Dardashti, journalist for the Jerusalem Post and president of the Jewish Family Research Association Israel (JFRA Israel), spoke about “Making Connections: Every Genealogist's Dream” at a special Tuesday night meeting.
• Photographer Gary Tepfer talked about Roman Vishniac, Russian-American biologist, photographer, linguist, art historian, and philosopher, with emphasis on his pre-war photographic record of Jewish communities in Europe, as seen in the book, A Vanished World. Prints of some of Vishniac’s work were shown and discussed.
• Rabbi Jonathan Seidel spoke about “Changes in Jewish Marriage and Divorce in Eastern Europe in the 19th and early 20th Century”. Included was information on finding records, genetic diseases, frequency of cousin marriages, and changes in dating patterns.
• Film, “There Once Was a Town.” A memorial to Eishyshok, Poland, a small town where 3,500 Jews were brutally murdered in 1941. Fifty-six years after the massacre, a bus load of survivors led by Israeli scholar Yaffa Eliach return “to awaken old memories and confront long-silenced ghosts.”
• One-hour film, “West of Hester Street.” Interweaves the dramatized events of the Galveston Movement with the story of a young Jewish peddler who journeys from Russia to Texas.
• Ron Wixman, Professor of Geography at the University of Oregon, discussed various geopolitical changes in Europe in the 19th century, including Jewish rights and restrictions under different governments, nationalism, the rise of Zionism, and causes of Jewish migration to countries including the U.S., France, and Israel.
• One-hour film, “Echos that Remain.” A poignant, nostalgic study of the Jewish shtetl life before the Holocaust. Combined hundreds of rare archival photos and previously unseen film footage with live action sequences shot on location at the sites of former Jewish communities in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland and Romania.
2005
Programs and speakers at Monthly Meetings
• Sasha and Rafail Levkovsky, from Kiev, spoke about education, customs, languages, climate, geography, etc. of the Ukraine.
• Marion Walter, Professor of Mathematics at the University of Oregon, native of Germany, talked about her Kindertransport experiences and how some of the people who were involved are still finding relatives and friends. She showed selections from a video titled “ The Children Who Cheated the Nazis.”
• Rabbi Jonathan Seidel, a member of the University of Oregon’s Judaic Studies Department, spoke on the Early Modern and Modern history of the Vilna Gubernia, the intersection of the Hasidic and Mitnagdic Worlds and the history of the Polish/Lithuanian town of Postowe. He focused on his father’s lineage, in particular the Zeitl/Seidel/Sjeidl families from 1750 to 1945.
• Reeva Kimble and Renee Gottesman reported on the 25th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy and provided details on the many sessions they attended.
• Richard Sapon–White showed slides and talked about genealogy research and other features of his 6 month stay in Prague, Czech Republic.
• Renee Gottesman presented by program titled “Finding your Ancestors on the Internet: An Overview of Searching New Databases”
• Open discussions of research successes and problems by JGSWVO members titled “You and Your Families: Breakthroughs and Barriers”
Other Activities
• The name and status of EugeneGen: The Eugene Oregon Jewish Genealogy Study Group was changed to JGSWVO: Jewish Genealogical Society of Willamette Valley Oregon. We created and passed by–laws.
• JGSWVO was accepted into the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). Dues and donations to JGSWVO are now tax deductible.
2004
Programs and speakers at Monthly Meetings
• Bob Welch, a Eugene Register–Guard newspaper columnist talked about the research for his book, The Story of Frances Slanger, Forgotten Heroine of Normandy. Book details at: www.bobwelch.net/books/nightingale/index.html
• Ron Wixman, UO geography professor (former Soviet Union, eastern Europe, cultural geography) spoke about Eastern European border changes since the 1700s and how they affected our ancestors.
• Eliezer Froehlich, member and Corvallis genealogist, provided details about Jews in the Civil War in two programs.
• Charlie Fleishman and Reeva Kimble presented information and tips on using links from Steve Morse’s One Step web site.
• Faris Cassell, Eugene author, presented background on her book in progress about Hedwig Berger, a Viennese Jewish woman who died at Maly Trostinets, and her family.
• Polish Inns and Jewish Innkeepers – by Reeva Kimble
• The German Jewish Special Interest Group, GerSIG – by Pam Endzweig
• Mary Bella Beale Brainerd's Jewish Ancestry – by Richard Sapon–White
• Video tape from the Canadian television series, “Past Lives,” featuring the quest for family that first drew Stanley Diamond–President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal and Executive Director of Jewish Records Indexing Poland–into genealogy research. Stanley Diamond's website: www.diamondgen.org
• Video “Delta Jews”, followed by discussion of Jews in the south.
Other Activities
Genealogy Presentations to the local community by members:
• Renee Gottesman – to students at Temple Beth Israel
• Reeva Kimble and Charlie Fleishman – LDS conference on Genealogy
2003
Programs and speakers at Monthly Meetings
• Your grandmother's needlework, your grandfather's tallis: Preserving fabric heirlooms – Reeva Kimble
• The origins of Jewish surnames from eastern Europe. Ron Wixman, a cultural geographer at the University of Oregon
• Discussion on the origin of last names.
• The Hamburg Passenger lists and how to access them. – Eliezer Froehlich
• The features and search options of the EugeneGen web site. Charlie Fleishman
• Immigration into the US via Galveston, Texas in the early 20th century. Janet Mangus
• Plagues and Pogroms as influencing when our ancestors left the old country.
• Other ways to present genealogy information besides charts and family trees.
• Writing memoirs and family history – Arnold Ismach
• “Pauline Wengeroff's Memories of a Jewish Grandmother and Bella Chagall's Burning Lights: Two Early Twentieth Century Memoirs of Eastern European Jewish Family Life. Judith Baskin, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Harold Schnitzer Family Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Oregon.
Other Activities
• Set up a genealogy library at our meeting place that includes books, CDs, and videotapes.
• EugeneGen featured in the monthly newsletters of Temple Beth Israel and in the quarterly Jewish Federation of Lane County newsletter.
• EugeneGen participated in a community fair at Temple Beth Israel, answering genealogy questions and providing reference material.
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