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Yitzhak Berchunsky
ca 1880 |
Welcome to the Orange County Jewish Genealogical Society! The OCJGS is your resource in Orange County, California, for all things related to finding your Jewish roots.
Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned expert, you will find our monthly meetings stimulating and informative. In addition to meetings, hands-on workshops, and special events, members also have access to an excellent library of books and magazines pertinent to Jewish genealogy. The Orange County Jewish Genealogical Society is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit. We are a member of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. Remember the Days of Old; Ask your father and he will tell you, your elders and they will explain to you. (Deut. 32:7)
זכר ימות עולם בינו שנות דור ודור שאל אביך ויגדך זקניך ויאמרו לך פרשת האזינו |
Calendar of EventsWorld-Class Speakers!We have a lineup of truly world class speakers coming to you wherever in the world you are, from wherever in the world they are. We normally meet the 4th Sunday of each month.
Virtual meetings are via Zoom. You must register in advance by clicking the link for the meeting you want to attend. Registration only takes a few seconds. Our physical meetings (when we get back to them) are at: Temple Beth Sholom 2625 N Tustin Ave, Santa Ana, CA 92705 from 1:30 to 3:30 pm Attendance at virtual meetings is free to OCJGS members. If you are not a member, please consider joining. Otherwise, the charge for non-members is $5. Please visit the Membership page to join or pay your $5 fee. NEW PROGRAM FOR THIS DATE!
October 25 at 10:00 AM (Pacific time zone) Risa Daitzman Heywood: The Power of the Catalog: Unindexed records and how to find them 
Risa Daitzman Heywood has been involved with Jewish genealogy for over 25 years. She is Past-President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado, served as co-chair of the original Belarus SIG, travelled to Belarus as a JewishGen ShtetlSchleppers (now defunct) liaison. Risa earned a Certificate in Genealogical Research from Boston University, and is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists and adheres to its Code of Ethics and Professional Practices.
Register in advance for the virtual meeting by clicking this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJAlf-6uqz0tEtx9fZXAP65a4fREQSOGEdcS NEW TIME!
November 22 at 10:00 AM (Pacific time zone) Judy Baston: Jewish Genealogy in Lithuania 
Judy Bastin was awarded the 2015 IAJGS Achievement award in recognition for her tireless work as LitvakSIG board member, moderator of the LitvakSIG Discussion Group, membership of the JRI-Poland Board, Lomza Archive Coordinator, and moderator of the Lodz Area Research Group and BialyGen discussion groups. Judy was also involved in editing/proofreading Yizkor Book translations for Ciechanowiec, Eisiskes, and Ostrow Mazowiecka, and is a sought-after speaker.
Register in advance for the virtual meeting by clicking this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJErf-qvqzgrGNKlHB6cDMwlmZiuWnbY_Y9h NEW DATE AND TIME FOR THIS PRESENTATION!
December 20 at 10:00 AM (Pacific time zone) Lara Diamond: Finding Family in the Old Country: Getting creative when records are scarce 
European borders were fluid, meaning that records for one family can be written in many languages and kept in disparate locations. This talk examines one large family that lived in the area that now spans the Ukraine/Romanian border. They lived there while it was part of Hungary, Czechoslovakia & Romania, Hungary again, Soviet Union and Ukraine. Records from this area were kept in multiple languages and are currently held in several modern countries and different archives within those countries. What ended up being a very large family was reconstructed using a variety of methods, including synagogue records, vital records, census enumerations, Holocaust documents, Yizkor books, DNA and more. This talk will discuss the wide variety of resources used to reconstruct this family over the course of decades, bringing the family back to the 1700s and tracing distant cousins across the world.
Lara Diamond has researched her roots in Eastern Europe using records from the Russian and Austro-Hungarian Empires. She is president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Maryland, has leading roles in JewishGen’s Subcarpathian and Ukraine SIG groups, and runs projects collecting documentation from multiple towns. Her Jewnealogy blog is at https://larasgenealogy.blogspot.com. Register in advance for the virtual meeting by clicking this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJMvdOqvqzwvH9Ag-9kWbDyw-qxPiE4-J8Wh January 24 at 10:00 am (Pacific time zone)
Direct from Paris! Alexander Beider: What's in a name? Unravelling the Mystery of Jewish Migrations Through Onomastics 
Alexander Beider was born in Moscow in 1963. He studied mathematics and theoretical physics at the Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology, from which he received a PhD in applied mathematics (1989). Since 1990, he has lived with his family in Paris, France. In 2000, he received his second PhD in Jewish studies from Sorbonne.
Dr. Beider uses onomastics and linguistics as tools to unravel the history of the Jewish people. He has written the definitive series of reference books dealing with the etymology of Jewish surnames, all published by Avotaynu Inc. His books cover Jewish surnames from the Russian Empire (1993, 2nd revised edition in 2008), Prague (15th-18th centuries) (1994), the Kingdom of Poland (1996), Galicia (2004), Maghreb, Gibraltar, and Malta (2017), and Italy, France and “Portuguese” Communities (2019). His Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names (2001) is considered the new standard work in the domain. Beider is also the designer of the linguistic part of the Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching method of computer-based searches for equivalent surnames. Register in advance for the virtual meeting by clicking this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJYvcu6rqzkuHtxRJ7MSu1jkHGbCnIZjTZk5 February 28 at 10:00 am (Pacific time zone)
Gary Mokotoff & Sallyann Amdur Sack: In conversation... 
And now for something a little different... introducing our Pioneers of Jewish Genealogy series, conversations with the folks who have dedicated their lives and their work to advancing the state of Jewish genealogy.
And what better way to kick off this series than with a conversation with Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack. You know them as the publisher and editor (respectively) of AVOTAYNU, The International Review of Jewish Genealogy. Gary created the JewishGen Family Finder (how many of you remember getting the printout every few months, long before the Internet changed everything). He and Sallyann also co-authored Where Once We Walked, and Gary is co-creator of the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex system. A former president of IAJGS, Gary is an author, lecturer and researcher. Sallyann Amdur Sack-Pikus co-founded the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy. She and Gary co-founded AVOTAYNU, and she participated, along with Gary, in the founding of AJGS (which became IAJGS). She was founding president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington. She has chaired or co-chaired seven of the annual conferences on Jewish genealogy, authored seven books of use to genealogists and has consulted on numerous projects. And she is a happily retired clinical psychologist. Register in advance for the virtual meeting by clicking this link: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJIoc-mtqzosHtN4XB7LYM2PSIWjRnJQvc5l |
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