Event archive - Orange County Jewish Genealogical Society

Ellie Vance: Navigating Metrical Books for the Non-Russian Speaker

11/23/2025

Records were often recorded in Russian and can be tricky to navigate, especially for the non-Russian speakers, however, with the proper tools you can learn to identify ancestral surnames and common vocabulary, and record format. An extensive handout, complete with column heading translations, examples of handwritten key vocabulary, common given names, and resources to help you determine the handwritten forms of your surname are included with the presentation.

Ellie Vance graduated from Brigham Young University with degrees in Russian and Family History and Genealogy. She worked as the Slavic research specialist for the FamilySearch Library and currently works as a technical historical records expert at FamilySearch. Ellie enjoys helping others trace their roots in the former Russian Empire.

The handout

Navigating Russian records for the non-Russian speaker
File Size:	8554 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

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Susan Weinberg: Crossing the Ocean: Sources to ancestral towns

3/23/2025

Using case studies based on Lithuania Latvia, Poland, and Belarus, we explored how to connect a wide variety of records and make use of many search engines. With these tools we crossed the ocean from US records to locate ancestral towns and family within them.

Much as with any journey, we identified where we are going, who we are going to visit, how we will communicate and how we assure we have the right luggage. Or in genealogy parlance, what is our ancestral town, who are the family members who resided there, how do we decipher documents, and how do we assure the people we are searching for are our family? This talk also addressed how to create finding tools to decipher records in Russian handwritten Cyrillic.

Susan Weinberg is an artist, author, researcher, and frequent speaker on genealogy topics. Drawing on her long career in finance, she often applies spreadsheets as an analytic tool in her genealogy research. Her creative work involves storytelling and frequently explores family history themes.

Susan is the immediate past president and treasurer of the Minnesota Jewish Genealogical Society (MNJGS), and vice president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest (JHSUM).

Susan developed the Jewish Identity and Legacy Project, an oral history project with elders, then authored the book We Spoke Jewish: A Legacy in Stories that includes oral history, artwork, and history on three groups of Jewish immigrants who spanned the 1900s. Susan has created and manages websites for several ancestral towns. She writes frequently for publications on genealogy topics and does genealogy research for clients around the world.

The handout

'Crossing the Ocean' handout
File Size:	170 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

Part 1

Part 3

Part 2

Michael Morgenstern: Genealogical Gems in the Forverts (Jewish Daily Forward)

3/26/2023

Founded in 1897, the Forverts was a leading Yiddish language newspaper in the United States throughout the 20th century. Most of this newspaper is available to browse digitally for free through the online Historical Jewish Press database.

This lecture examined hidden genealogical gems within this newspaper, some of which can be found with minimal Yiddish skills. Among these gems are personal inquiries submitted by readers seeking information on their relatives, letters to the editor, and the “Gallery of Missing Husbands.” This lecture also covered the historical and cultural context of the newspaper, which will help evaluate its relevance to a researcher's individual family history.

Michael Morgenstern is a native of Los Angeles, California. After completing an undergraduate degree in history at Loyola Marymount University, he worked as a researcher on TLC’s “Who Do You Think You Are?” history and genealogy show. Since 2014, he has worked as an educator at Holocaust Museum Los Angeles. He has been an avid genealogy researcher since he was 16. He has volunteered genealogy research to Holocaust survivors, focusing on those who do not have any prewar family documents or photographs. Lately, he has translated segments of the “Jewish Daily Forward” from Yiddish to English for JewishGen. Some of his work can be seen at “The Forward: A Gallery of Missing Husbands (1908-1914)”

The handout

Forverts handout
File Size:	130 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

Part 1

Part 2

Hallel Yadin: Using YIVO resources for Jewish genealogical research

2/26/2023

The archives and library of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research constitute the world’s largest collection on Eastern European Jewish history. They include a wealth of sources for genealogical research. In this session, Hallel Yadin reviewed the kinds of documents available at YIVO, including pre-war community records, yizkor books, immigration case files, benevolent society records, and more. She also discussed how to effectively search YIVO’s online catalogs and how to access YIVO’s holdings remotely.

Hallel Yadin is the Archivist & Special Projects Manager at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research.

The handout

YIVO handout
File Size:	52 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

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Phil Goldfarb: Getting the Most out of the JewishGen Discussion Group

11/20/2022

The JewishGen Discussion Group (or the JGDG as Phil likes to call it) is the preeminent "granddaddy" of online Jewish Genealogy forums. And the old man still has a few tricks to teach those young FaceBook upstart whippersnappers. This presentation started from the beginning - What is the JGDG and how can it help you? - and walked us through how to use its features and get the most out of it.

Phil Goldfarb was born and raised in New Jersey and is a 4th generation pharmacist. After pharmacy school, he entered the Army Medical Service Corps where he served as the administrative officer for the Brooke Army Medical Center retiring as a Captain, USAR.

Researching genealogy for 35 years, Phil is the founding and current President of the JGS of Tulsa which he started in 2005. He has lectured extensively on various topics in genealogy, published articles on genealogy in numerous periodicals, and authors a monthly column in the Tulsa Jewish Review. He has written two books titled “A Page of History: Passport Applications 1851-1914” and “A Page of History: Passport Applications Volume II 1915-1925." Phil is a member of the Leadership Team for JewishGen as well as being the Lead Moderator for the JewishGen Discussion Group. He was the Chairman of the 2020 IAJGS Awards Committee and sits on the Board of Directors for several non-profit organizations. In July 2020 he won an Emmy Award as a Producer for the Tulsa Historical Society's documentary titled "L ‘dor V’dor Generation to Generation: A History of Tulsa’s Jewish Community" which has been shown on PBS stations around the U.S.

The slides

The PowerPoint slides
File Size:	2723 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

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Aaron Ginsburg: Curing the "I can't find my shtetl" syndrome

10/23/2022

Sometimes it's not easy to find a shtetl using the JewishGen Communities Database (formerly known as the Shtetl Finder) on jewishgen.org. Either your shtetl is not listed, there are too many hits, or not enough information is available. This presentation discussed Shtetl Finder and demonstrated alternate approaches, using examples. Techniques included networking, detailed family histories, immigration and naturalization, military records, JewishGen records, Yad Vashem, and how to find and use detailed online maps for Poland and Austria-Hungary. Having found the shtetl, the examples showed how that may lead to more information.

Aaron Ginsburg was born in Newport, Rhode Island. His research into his family led to the creation of a non-profit organization, The Friends of Jewish Dokshitsy, to help local officials in Belarus restore a Jewish cemetery. Aaron has traveled frequently to Belarus and Ukraine and he has helped several families reunite after 50-100 years. His motto is, “Genealogy can be fun… if you are patient."

The handout

Aaron's handout
File Size:	81 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

Karen Franklin: New strategies in German Jewish genealogy

7/24/2022

Karen Franklin is Director of Family History at Leo Baeck Institute, where she assists genealogists with family research and maintains relations with institutional partners in the genealogical field. She has served as chair of the Council of American Jewish Museums, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, the Memorial Museums Committee of the International Council of Museums (ICOM), and as co-chair of the Board of Governors of JewishGen.org.

A co-founder of the Obermayer German Jewish History Awards, she is currently on the board of the Southern Jewish Historical Society and is co-editor of the Memoirs Section of Southern Jewish History. Karen is the recipient of the 2018 IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award.

The handout

FHF Handout
File Size:	328 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

Part 1

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Marian Smith: Immigrant Correspondence at the National Archives

6/12/2022

Marian Smith presented an overview of three historical eras of US immigration and naturalization records, illustrated with documents of Jewish immigrants.

Using a timeline tool (included in the handout), she demonstrated how plotting an immigrant’s life events can identify what records may exist for that particular immigrant and where these records can be found.

Marian Smith retired in 2018 after thirty years as an Historian for the Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), later US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS). She now speaks to groups on US immigration and nationality records.

Nothing lasts forever, and this recording is no exception.
This recording will be removed six months from now (around January 1)

Note: Marian's handout and presentation assume that you are familiar with some terms:

Entry numbers
NARA ID numbers
File numbers
Publication identifiers

You may want to begin with a trip to the NARA website to familiarize yourself with the way things are organized and accessed: https://www.archives.gov/research

The handout

Immigrant Correspondence at the National Archives
File Size:	697 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3 (Q&A)

Joel Weintraub: Here comes the 1950 US census! What to expect.

12/19/2021

The U.S. 1950 census will become public on April 1, 2022. Joel prepared us for its debut by covering what is a census, who uses the census, census caveats, how the 1950 census was taken, training of enumerators, enumerator instruction manuals, census sampling, 1950 population and housing forms, census questions, post enumeration codes, 1950 undercount, and a summary of the results. Joel concluded with a discussion on his and Steve Morse’s 1950 census locational tools, online right now at the stevemorse.org website. Those 1950 utilities took almost 8 years to produce with the help of under 70 volunteers, involve 230,000 or so searchable 1950 census district definitions with about 79,000 more small community names added, and street indexes for over 2,400 1950 urban areas that correlate with 1950 census district numbers.

Joel Weintraub, a New Yorker by birth, is an emeritus Biology Professor at California State University, Fullerton. He became interested in genealogy over 20 years ago and volunteered for 9 years at the National Archives in southern California. Joel helped produce location tools for the 1900 through 1950 federal censuses, and the NY State censuses for NYC (1905, 1915, 1925) for the Steve Morse “One-Step” website. He has published articles on the U.S. census and the 72-year rule, the name change belief and finding difficult passenger records at Ellis Island and searching NYC census records with the problems of NYC geography. He has a YouTube channel that has his genealogy (and biology) talks at “JDW Talks”.

The handout

Joel's handout
File Size:	148 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

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Part 3

Part 2

Greg Nelson: Procuring Eastern European records for the Family History Library

9/19/2021

FamilySearch microfilm and digital cameras have been filming continuously in Central and Eastern Europe since their initial agreement with Hungary in 1959. Since then, all but 3 countries in East Europe have had camera–capture projects to capture images of records that assist genealogists from around the world. Today there are nearly 30 digital cameras preserving records in archives in the area. These projects include a large number of Jewish records, especially those found in archives in the area of the Pale of Settlement.

This presentation gave us an idea of where records have been digitized, what records have been digitized, how to access the records and indexes, and where FamilySearch and their partners are strategically planning to capture additional records in the next 10 years. It showed us tips and tricks on FamilySearch on how best to access the images and searchable records as well as add our own information to the family tree.

Greg Nelson is the Content Strategy specialist for East Europe, Central Asia, the Middle East, and various US States at FamilySearch. He holds a BA in Russian, MA in Slavic Linguistics and Literature, and a BS in Computer Science. He resides in Stansbury Park, Utah.

The slides

Slides (6 MB)
File Size:	5712 kb
File Type:	pdf

The recorded presentation

Part 1

Part 3

Part 2