SFBAJGS - Calendar of Genealogical Events

Past Programs

Sunday, October 25, 2026 SFBAJGS Live Presentation   Topic: Ask the Mavens In-Person Genealogy Question & Answer Session Join us for a welcoming, in-person genealogy assistance session with experienced researchers knowledgeable in a wide range of genealogical topics. This meeting is free, and everyone (including non-members) is welcome, from beginners to experienced researchers. Time and Place: 1:30 pm, Pacific Time Oakland Family Search Center 4766 Lincoln Ave (near Highway 13), Oakland, CA The Center is on your right as you enter the Temple grounds. It is located downstairs in the Visitors Center.  Ample parking is available. Bring your genealogy questions, research challenges, and documents you would like help interpreting or analyzing. A panel of experienced researchers will brainstorm with you and offer suggestions, resources, and next steps to help you solve your family history mysteries and brick walls. Wi-Fi access is available and laptops are welcome. Expect: Expert insights to help guide your research Interactive question-and-answer discussions Practical suggestions for your next steps toward breaking through research roadblocks A chance to connect with fellow genealogists At the Meeting: Present what you know, what research you've already done, and where the roadblock sits. Pre-registration is strongly encouraged. If possible, please include the genealogy question you would like to have answered. Questions submitted in advance will be addressed first by the Mavens. To register, please email your name and question to: info@GenResearch.net. All questions are welcome, especially from beginners.

Sunday, November 15, 2026 SFBAJGS Presentation LIVE Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time Congregation Beth Ami, 4676 Mayette Avenue, Santa Rosa Topic: Finding Your Jewish Ancestors in Greater Hungary: Resources and Tips Speaker: Vivian Kahn Before the end of World War I, greater Hungary was three times larger than Hungary is today. With over 2 million records already on-line and more added regularly, the JewishGen Hungary Database is widely recognized as one of the best resources for researching Jewish families from this vast area, which includes the present Hungarian republic, Slovakia, Transylvania (now in Romania and Ukraine), Transcarpathian Ukraine, and other parts of Europe. There are also a wide variety of other web sites that can help you to grow your family tree. This presentation will highlight what’s available from JewishGen as well as other less familiar on-line resources that can help you to expand your Hungarian research horizons. Although many of these are in Hungarian, armed with a list of basic genealogical terms and an understanding of their organization and contents, you can use these resources even if you don’t speak Hungarian. Vivian will also provide you with tips for travel to Hungary and other areas once part of greater Hungary where your ancestors may have lived before immigrating. Vivian Kahn directs JewishGen’s Hungarian Research Division. She has presented workshops on Jewish genealogy and, especially, Hungarian Jewish family research, at IAJGS annual conferences, for Jewish genealogy societies, and in Sighetu, Romania, during a May 2015 gathering of the community’s Jewish descendants. Since beginning researching her own family from pre-Trianon Hungary more than 25 years ago, she has identified and used a wide range of archival, print, and on-line resources to research families from Hungary, Moravia, Slovakia, Romania, and Galicia and has made research trips to Hungary, Slovakia, and Romania. She has also done extensive research on her husband’s British, Dutch, and early American roots. Vivian has written articles on Hungarian Jewish family research for publications including Avotaynuand Jewish Genealogy, the Journal of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy. She was recognized with the IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2023 and was JewishGen’s Volunteer of the Year in 2021. A native of New York, NY, Vivian now lives in Sonoma County, California. She is a professional genealogy consultant and previously worked as an urban planning and development consultant. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Monday, December 14, 2026 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 4:30 pm until 6:00 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Don’t Trust Everything You Find on the Internet Speaker: Banai Lynn Feldstein Ah, the Internet, the World Wide Web, the information superhighway (made out of a series of tubes!) The Internet has revolutionized genealogy research, but it has also accelerated the spread of bad information. From automated record matching algorithms to copied-and-pasted family trees, incorrect data spreads fast. Drawing on years of online research and tech experience, Banai will show how to critically evaluate online hints, watch for indexing mistakes, and verify records and family members before attaching them to your own family tree. Banai Lynn Feldstein is a professional genealogist specializing in Jewish and Eastern European research and the President of the Utah Jewish Historical Society. As a web developer, she bridges the gap between genealogy and technology through her platforms GeneaSearch and CSI: Crowd Sourced Indexing, a free tool for streamlining record transcription. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Sunday, January 10, 2027 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Using Archival Hungarian Newspapers to Fill Out Your Family Tree Speaker: Charlie White This talk will focus on using Hungarian language newspapers from the late 1800s to the mid-1900s to learn more about your family members. Information that can be gleaned includes vital data found in birth, engagement, marriage, and death announcements, data that may not be available from standard vital records. In addition, there are often details on business endeavors, military service, social activities and occasionally even published photographs of family members. Recognizing that most attendees do not understand Hungarian, best methods to understand these archives will be discussed. Examples will be given showing how this information can augment your family tree. Charlie White has been investigating his family genealogy for over three decades and with increased vigor over the past five years. His focus of research is Hungarian genealogy, and he has written a book detailing the history of his family from Munkacs, Hungary (now Mukachevo) which is now in discussion for publication with Yad Vashem. For the past three years he has served on the board of JGS Maryland and has edited the Society newsletter, contributing more than two dozen full-length articles and smaller items. He has attended and spoken at IAJGS meetings and was a speaker at the most recent meeting in Fort Wayne, Indiana. He has used old newspaper archives Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Monday, February 22, 2027 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 4:30 pm until 6:00 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: New Developments in Ukraine Research Speaker: Phyllis Berenson Phyllis Berenson will present an update from her perspective as Director of Ukraine Research for JewishGen. She will discuss new, enhanced, and continually growing resources, as well as search techniques and tips with an emphasis on broadening the researcher's goals beyond the creation of a family tree. Phyllis Gold Berenson has served as Ukraine RD Director since 2019, following ten years as a JewishGen volunteer and Town Leader.  The number of Ukraine records posted on JewishGen has increased by more than 5 million during her tenure as Director.  She serves as Ukraine Town Leader for Mogilev-Podolsky and Shargorod.  As such, she managed the photography and indexing project for the 7,500 grave Mogilev-Podolsky cemetery and is close to completion of the 500-page Yiddish Shargorod Yizkor book project.  She has traveled to Ukraine three times, and hopes to visit again after the war. Phyllis was born in Detroit and graduated from the University of Michigan in Russian language and literature. She obtained her law degree from Golden Gate University in San Francisco, followed by an LL.M (tax) degree. She lives in San Francisco and Sonoma. She has served as president of San Francisco Bay Area Women Tax Lawyers, Inner Sunset Park Neighbors, Symphony Parnassus, and on the Alumni Council of Interlochen Center for the Arts.Her checkered employment history includes social worker, bookstore owner, carpenter's assistant, professional musician, trust, estates and tax lawyer, as well as volunteer symphony orchestra manager. Phyllis juggles her multiple duties as Ukraine Research Division Director while she dreams of retiring from her day job as a trust and estates lawyer.  In the meantime, she is thrilled to finally be able to use her college education in her work for the Ukraine Research Division. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Sunday, March 14, 2027 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Russian Revizskie skazki as a resource in your family research Speaker: Hal Bookbinder “Revizskie skazki” or “revision lists” were censuses instituted by Peter the Great. While most censuses provide information only on living people, Revizskie skazki include information on men who died or moved away since the prior one.  The talk will discuss the ten Revizskie skazki conducted between 1719 and 1867, and show how I was able to successfully use them in my family research. The JewishGen Ukraine Research Division has transcribed, translated, and indexed approximately five million Russian records, including millions of Revizskie skazki and other census entries. I will demonstrate how to efficiently search this amazing resource. Hal is a retired information systems director and university instructor. He has been researching his genealogy for more than three decades, identifying over 4,000 relatives and tracing two lines to the mid-1700s in modern Ukraine. Hal is a past president of the JGSLA and of the IAJGS. He and his wife, Marci, were raised in the Catskills of New York State and now live in the Los Angeles area. In 2018, he made a journey to Ukraine, visiting various areas of the former Volhynia and Podolia in which his family lived for hundreds of years. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Monday, April 12, 2027 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 4:30 pm until 6:00 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: When A Goodman is Hard to Find, Let the GPS be Your Guide Speaker: Emily Garber When answers to our genealogical research questions do not come easily, the elements of Genealogical Proof Standard (GPS) can provide guidelines for evaluating the strength of our research and its conclusions. The GPS requires rigor in our research methodology In this case study, the parents of peddler Alexander Goodman, who first appeared in Lancaster (in the 1850s) and later in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, were unknown. No direct evidence of his origins was found in any USA records. No one record provided the answer. Efforts to solve this case involved utilizing many types of records for numerous people and several families in two countries over four generations. The solution lay in correlating evidence from many records and making the connections that the GPS requires. Now we have a family for Alexander Goodman! Emily H. Garber (M.A., archaeology) is a Jewish family historian and frequent speaker at International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, RootsTech, and NGS conferences. She’s coordinated Jewish genealogy courses for SLIG and GRIP. She holds a Boston University Genealogical Research program certificate. Emily blogs at https://extrayad.blogspot.com/ and has written several articles for Avotaynu and an article on Holocaust research for NGS Magazine. She chairs the Phoenix Jewish Genealogy Group, is Vice President of the IAJGS and on the board of the Arizona Jewish Historical Society. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Sunday, May 16, 2027 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Name Changes HANDOUT Speaker: Avrohom Krauss Names are confusing and ever-changing. Over a lifetime, a typical European Jewish person was known by multiple personal names—both formal and informal—across a variety of languages. A single individual might appear under an official first name in one record, a middle name or nickname in another, and a completely localized variation after immigration. To solve the conundrums posed by these shifting identities, this presentation explains the fundamentals of Jewish name formulation, permutation, and cultural usage. By examining documents from real case studies, we will separate fact from fiction and provide you with the tools to unravel your own family mysteries. Avrohom A. Krauss is a Jewish educator and genealogist who specializes in the reconstruction of Eastern European Jewish family histories using underutilized genealogical resources. He is the creator of the CAHJP Landsmanshaft Inventory at the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People and the Philadelphia Landsmanshaftn Inventory. His articles have appeared in Avotaynu, Gesher Galicia and Dorot. Popular topics include landsmanshaftn, immigration, relief organizations, vital records, the Hebrew calendar, and name changes. He frequently presents at conferences of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies and Jewish genealogical societies in Israel and the United States. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Monday, June 14, 2027 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 4:30 pm until 6:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: Putting the Gene in Genealogy—more DNA insights Speaker: Gil Bardige In this follow-up to the popular talk “Help! I got my DNA Results and I’m Confused,” Gil Bardige will tell us more on how to coordinate DNA results and records to find family and refine your tree, including making international connections with distant cousins who are descended from ancestors who stayed in the Old Country. At the “instruction” of his mother, Gil began his genealogy adventure in 1979 with 54 people in his tree. Today his family tree including Mishpacha (extended family), is over 3200 people tracing 4 branches back to his 5th great grandfathers born about 1740 in Berestechko, Volhynia, Russian Empire. His family arrived in Chicago in the early 20th century.For nearly 20 years Gil has expanded his knowledge of Genetic Genealogy, testing at each of the four major DNA companies, and is Administrator of three Y-DNA projects at Family Tree DNA as a Volunteer. He loves to help people manage their expectations and begin to remove confusion from the DNA results whether it’s, Y-DNA, mtDNA, or Autosomal DNA. He had spoken at dozens of local events, international webinars and conferences, including at last 9 IAJGS Conferences. Most recently he presented at the Center for Jewish History and at JewishGen (both on YouTube).and at NGS 2026. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Sunday, July 18, 2027 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 1:00 pm until 2:30 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: No Sheitel, Sherlock: The Whole Truth About Our Family Photographs Speaker: Ava, aka “Sherlock” Cohn This latest presentation in the “Clued-In” series will set the record straight on the many myths about Jewish family photographs that, despite many years of presenting facts, still flourish on social media and in general genealogy groups. Participants will learn the real reason why our relatives did not smile in their photographs, why first impressions can be misleading, why guessing is not always the best way to answer a Facebook inquiry, why Jewish photographers did not take post mortem photographs, what did photographs really cost and why they were not just for the wealthy, did our ancestors borrow the clothes in their photographs and much more. This presentation aims, in a light-hearted way, to dispel the myths and the bubbe meises so that we can truly see and understand our photographs correctly as our relatives meant for us to do. Known professionally since 2009 as Sherlock Cohn, The Photo Genealogist, Ava has been the go-to expert on Jewish family photographs. She is internationally-known with an ever-growing list of clients from Europe, America, Israel, Australia, Canada, Germany, UK, Japan and other countries. A Brandeis University graduate, her background includes the study of decorative arts, art history, history of photography and costume/theatre history. She has spoken at conferences for the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and on Zoom sessions for JGS groups throughout the U.S. and Canada. In addition to being a popular speaker and writer on the pairing of photography and genealogy, Ava (Sherlock) is a collector of 19th and 20th century photographs of all kinds and the administrator for the Facebook group Antique Photography (1839-1930) reaching over 40,000 members worldwide. A member of several Jewish genealogy groups, she has explored her own roots in Canada, Belarus, Ukraine, Romania and the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Ava’s website is http://www.sherlockcohn.com. In addition, she can be reached at her email: Sherlock.cohn@comcast.net or on her Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/SherlockCohn Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Monday, August 16, 2027 SFBAJGS Presentation ZOOM Free and everyone interested is welcome. Time and Place: 4:30 pm until 6:00 pm, Pacific Time At Your Home Topic: The Krakovsky Documents--Utilization and preservation of the Data Speaker: Joel Spector and Gary Pokrassa Alex Krakovsky, a Ukrainian with a Jewish grandfather, has scanned vital records found in Ukrainian archives, uploaded the scanned files on a wiki page where they can easily be accessed by anyone interested. We will discuss the origin and method of data acquisition from Alex, his friends and the archives, and give an overview of its contents. We will explain how the original vital records are structured. The Ukraine Research Division of JewishGen has a project to transcribe these documents and include them in a searchable database. We will describe this project in detail along with searching techniques. Joel Spector is currently on the Board of the Jewish Genealogical and Archival Society of Greater Philadelphia. He is a past president of the Society and has served as chairperson of its Russian Special Interest Group. Joel is a former Secretary of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS), has been involved in planning several IAJGS Conferences and has served as IAJGS Archivist. Joel is currently a Policy Advisor on the Board of the JewishGen Ukraine Research Division. Joel has been conducting research into his family since receiving a family tree in 1972. He has conducted extensive research in several historic Russian-language encyclopedias and has created an Index to the Russian-language Jewish Encyclopedia. He has recently excerpted all of the Jewish population data from the 1897 Russian Imperial Census and from several Russian-language encyclopedias. Joel has given presentations and workshops on the Russian language, both contemporary and pre-Revolutionary. Gary Pokrassa retired in 2015 from a 46-year career ending as CFO. He is the Data Acquisition Director for the Ukraine Research Division-JewishGen, Treasurer and Director of JRI-Poland, and a board member and VP Programming of JGS of Long Island. He is town leader for 5 shtetls. He has presented at the last six IAJGS conferences from 2020-2025 on Alex Krakovsky and was a panelist on the 2020 Ukraine Research Division Meeting. He has authored an article on the Alex Krakovsky project published in AVOTAYNU Summer 2020 and has given many presentations on Jewish genealogy both advanced and beginner. Register for this meeting. After registering, you will receive a confirmation email containing information about joining the meeting. You do not have to have a Zoom account to attend a Zoom meeting. You will be prompted to download the software, once you have clicked on the link that you have been provided. You may also wish to create an account, but that is not required to participate in a Zoom meeting.

Que sera sera