SFBAJGS - Calendar of Genealogical Events

Past Programs

Monday, July 20, 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: Creating a Successful Personal Genealogy Website: Considerations and Decisions HANDOUT available til 9/20/2026 Speaker: Sarah Lee Meyer The presentation will cover a gamut of topics from Purpose and Target market to the content needed, hosting, whether to do it yourself or hire it out, and the appearance of site. This does not include having a tree on Ancestry , My Heritage or Family Search. It will also include a tour of some of the SFBAGS personal genealogy websites (non-professional). Sarah Lee Meyer began doing genealogy in 1972 when her mother sent her a copy of a 14 page story about the family roots that her Zeidi had dictated in Yiddish and was typed in English by her mother’s brother. She has had a personal genealogy website for over 20 years. Her current website is https://www.sarahsgenies.com. 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 17, 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: Tracing your Eastern European Jewish Family with JRI-Poland Speaker: Robinn Magid Wondering if you should be interested in the surviving Jewish records in Poland today? Curious about "just how far back" a non-rabbinic family can trace their ancestors in lands now or formerly part of Poland? If your family came from Congress Poland, Russian Poland, Prussia, Galicia, Lithuania or even Western Belarus, it's quite possible that the JRI-Poland website and Database holds something helpful to you. Come join us for 35-40 minutes of presentation and then discussion about the resources and goals of JRI-Poland.org - the premier finding aid for documentary evidence of the Jewish past from about the year 1500 until World War II.  Come learn what JRI-Poland is doing, how you can use it now and what's possible for the future. Robinn Magid is the president of JRI-Poland.org, an award-winning website and database that serves as the premier finding aid for Jewish genealogical documents that survive in the Polish Archives, Libraries and Museums today. Robinn has been a member of SFBA-JGS for over 30 years and has chaired two landmark IAJGS conferences - Warsaw in 2018 and the first IAJGS Virtual Conference in 2020. Robinn lives in Berkeley. She and her husband have 4 adult children and 5 grandchildren whom she teaches about their family tree. 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, September 28, 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: Bringing Jewish History Back to Birzai Speaker: Jonathan Dorfan Ninety five percent of the Jews of Lithuania were murdered in the Holocaust. But in Birzai, they will be remembered, and the Holocaust documented. Jonathan Dorfan, who can trace his ancestry in Birzai back to 1720, and a group of descendants worked with the townspeople to create a memorial to the people, and to the dark history of the years of the Holocaust that must not be forgotten. Mr. Dorfan will cover the origins, design, planning and realization of the Memorial and, likewise, the Holocaust Exhibit. He will also show a powerful video documenting the 2019 dedication of the Memorial.e. Jonathan Dorfan was born in Cape Town, South Africa. He began researching his family roots in the early 1990s. His paternal origins date back to the early 1700s in Birzai and Panevezys, Lithuania. While many Dorfan families emigrated in the period 1890-1910, those that did not fell victim to the brutal murders of the Lithuanian Holocaust. Jonathan has been centrally involved with realizing both the Memorial to the 2400 Jews murdered in Birzai on August 8, 1941 and the standing Holocaust Exhibit that recently opened in the Birzai Regional Museum. From 1976 to 2010, Jonathan worked as an experimental particle physicist at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center, including serving as its third Director. From 2010-2017, he was the inaugural President and CEO of OIST Graduate University, in Okinawa, Japan. 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

 

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