Board of Directors
David B. Hoffman, Ph.D., Cornell University, is the co-founder and President of the Jewish Family History Foundation. David also co-founded and is past president of the Litvak Special Interest Group, for which he organized research groups to acquire and translate Lithuanian records for the All Lithuania Database. David is on the Board of Directors of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles. He also coordinates the Ariogala, Lithuania Shtetl Research Group, and has developed systems for indexing inheritance, court, business, and official correspondence files, working with Vitalija Gircyte, Chief Archivist of the Kaunas Regional Archives. David has traced his family back to the mid-1600s in Lithuania and Poland and has devoted the past ten years to the study of the historical, political and economic factors affecting the development of Jewish communities in Eastern Europe (David Hoffman's Friedland Family of Ariogala, Lithuania). For several years he has been studying the 17th and 18th century records of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania. Current research, with Sonia Hoffman and Vitalija Gircyte, includes creating inventories of "Ancient Acts" in the eastern European Archives which contain information about Jewish families and communities from the 16th through the 18th centuries.
David has spoken at International Conferences on Jewish Genealogy in Los Angeles, New York, London and Las Vegas and to genealogy groups in South Africa, Israel, England and around the United States.
Among his published research papers are: “Revision Lists in the New LitvakSIG Online Lithuanian Database,” Roots-Key, Spring 1999; “Official Correspondence in the Kaunas Regional Archives as a Source of Genealogical Data,” Generations, Spring 2000; “Collection of Box Taxes in 19th Century Lithuania” (with Vitalija Gircyte) and “Researching 18th Century Census and Tax Lists from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania” (with Sonia Hoffman), Avotaynu, Vol. XVII, No. 3., Fall 2001; “Genealogists Collaborate to Confirm Family Lore”and "Russian Archival Research: Tracking family in the Russian Empire" (with Sonia Hoffman), Roots-Key, Winter 2003; “Jews in Early Santa Monica,” Roots-Key, Summer/Fall 2003; “Social Action, Yiddish Culture and Zionism: Leo Blass and the Eastern European Influence” (with Sonia Hoffman), Roots-Key, Summer/Fall 2003; "The Grand Duchy of Lithuania Project: Challenges in Researching 18th Century Records," Roots-Key, Winter 2004 (with Sonia Hoffman), "In the Air as the War Begins: A Flyers Letter Home, Introduction," "Milt Gabler, Storekeeper of the Jazz World," "Mary Kasindorf," "Sid Kasindorf and the Nazi U-Boats," Roots-Key, Summer-Fall, 2005.
David is a clinical psychologist and former professor of Community Psychology and Public Health at Florida State University and UCLA. At UCLA he coordinated a program to train physicians, psychologists, and other health care professionals to become effective agents for individual and community change. In his work he studied many diverse communities, and developed programs to train groups in problem-solving skills, especially in disadvantaged communities. He worked in Israel at the Hadassah Wizo Canada Research Institute on Instrumental Enrichment, a diagnostic teaching model used to increase intelligence in populations at all levels around the world. His curriculum vitae includes numerous citations of publications in professional journals and articles written for the public. He served as the editor of several professional journals. As a researcher he received many substantial grants from government agencies, the U.S. Navy and foundations.
Sonia R. Hoffman, B.A., UCLA, is co-founder and Secretary of the Jewish Family History Foundation and is the Coordinator of the Grand Duchy Project. She has served as President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles from 2001 to 2006, and previously served as its Program Vice President. She was the Coordinator of the Bialystok Indexing Project for Jewish Records Indexing - Poland, an internet group which indexes the Jewish vital records held at the Polish State Archives. She helped to organize the Rostov Cousins group, which reunited 500 family members and is editor of the Rostov-on-Don Family History Journal. She has participated in the acquisition and translation of numerous documents from archives in Lithuania, Poland and Russia. Sonia is currently supervising all translation of the 1784 GDL census.
Sonia has published articles in Avotaynu: “Researching 18th Century Census and Tax Lists from the Grand Duchy of Lithuania,” Fall 2001, and “18th Century Records from the Former Commonwealth of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania and the Kingdom of Poland,” Fall 2003 (with David Hoffman). She has written many articles for Roots-Key, the research journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society Los Angeles, including: “Chaim Friedman: Lost at Sea,” Fall 2001; “Exploring the Ariogala (Lithuania) Cemetery,” Spring 2002; “18th Century Records of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth,” Spring 2003; “Migrating West” and “Leo Blass and the Eastern European Influence,” Summer/Fall special issue on the Jewish Presence in Los Angeles, and “Tracking Families in the Russian Empire” (with David Hoffman), Winter 2003;"The Grand Duchy of Lithuania Project: Challenges in Researching 18th Century Records," Winter 2004 (with David Hoffman); and "What's in a Name: Mine, That Is," Spring, 2005. Sonia's Ariogala (Eyrogola), Lithuania Headstones, and Kelme, Lithuania Jewish Cemetery Headstone Inscriptions, appear on the Jewish Family History website, June 2004.
She has spoken on genealogy to many community groups in Los Angeles, and to genealogical societies in Los Angeles, San Diego, Johannesburg, South Africa, and Jerusalem, Israel. She participated on a panel on "Publishing a Family Newsletter, Gathering and Sharing your Family History" at the 18th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Los Angeles, in 1998 and spoke at the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Washington, D.C. on “18th Century Records of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania/Kingdom of Poland” in 2003 and at the 25th IAJGS Conference on Jewish Genealogy, in Las Vegas in 2005: "An Analysis of 18th Century Census Records for the Grand Duchy of Lithuania" (with David Hoffman, available on CD from JewishGen). She has conducted research on her family, which lived in Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston, Poland, and Litvak roots in Volhynia, the southern most part of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania.
N. Biederman, is a Syracuse University alum and serves as co-president and Chief Financial Officer of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles. She previously served the Society as Recording Secretary and is a copy editor for its research journal, Roots-Key. She is Co-coordinator of the Kamen Kashirskiy Research Group and assists with data entry for the Dachau Indexing and related projects for JewishGen. She has assumed leadership roles in several philanthropic and educational non-profit organizations. She progressed through a fifteen-year commercial banking career culminating in responsibilities as an executive officer of an independent, commercial bank. She was responsible for all phases of daily operation including accounting and investments, regulatory reporting, bank operations and systems, human resources, purchasing and facilities. Today she holds an administrative position with a nationally affiliated financial services recruitment and consulting firm where she is responsible for finance and systems, hardware and software.
Nancy Collier Holden, B.A., University of Wisconsin, M.S., Pepperdine University in Supervision and Administration, and advanced graduate work in Clinical Psychology and Human Development. A former Administrator and Special Education teacher at the Los Angeles Child Guidance Clinic Children’s School and Administrator of the Florence Crittendon, San Francisco; SETA program, retired.
Since her retirement, Nancy has been a volunteer at the National Archives Regional Branch-Laguna Niguel, and a lecturer on Jewish Genealogy, Native American Genealogy, and Eastern European Genealogy. She is the President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles and is a Past President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Orange County; Past Editor of Shorashim, the JGS Orange County Newsletter; the current Editor of the Svensionys Yizkor Book; the Webmaster for seven Shtetlinks websites for towns in Belarus and the Ukraine; Nancy is also the current Editor of Roots-Key, the journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles.
“I grew up in New York City. I have lived in California since 1952. I have been working on my family history for 19 years and traveled for many years in the United States collecting stories, visiting cemeteries and viewing photographs as a way of filling in my family lines. I have traced my father’s line back to the 1400s; my mother’s line to the 1700s, working through the Grodno Archives, Lithuanian Archives, Latvian Archives and Odessa Archives. In the course of this search, I have had to learn to read Hebrew, Rashi script, and rudimentary Cyrillic. I have attended IAJGS conferences in Los Angeles, Boston, Salt Lake City and Washington D.C.”
Current Webmaster for:
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Myadel
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Svisloch
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/kobylnik
Thomas Parry, A.B., Harvard College, has been a producer and an executive in the film industry over the past 30 years. With senior positions at United Artists, Paramount, 20th Century Fox and MTM Productions, Tom has been involved in the production of numerous feature films. He also served a six-year stint as an executive in the computer game industry and then as a consultant for an internet start-up. Recently, Tom has worked as a documentary film producer on several high-profile projects slated for PBS. Currently, he is acting as a consultant to a newly-organized film distribution and sales company.
For the past 13 years, Tom has chaired his extended family's 450-member cousins' association, which has reunited branches of a family which immigrated from Lithuania to the U.S., Russia, Israel, Australia and South Africa. Tom dedicated himself to helping his cousins who had been trapped behind the Iron Curtain seventy years ago, immigrate to America. This involved organizing seven branches of the extended family to raise a Family Freedom Fund with the Jewish Free Loan Association, which provided support for expenses involved in resettlement and assimilation. The JFLA of Los Angeles selected this project for an award as a model program. Committed to community service, he has functioned as an elected director of the Harvard Alumni Association for a six-year term. He was recently elected president of the Harvard Gay & Lesbian Caucus, a 3200-member association of Harvard alumni, faculty and staff.
Advisory Board
Vitalija Gircyte, Chief Archivist of the Kaunas Regional Archives, is a 1983 graduate of Vilnius University, where she majored in History, specializing in the archives. After graduation she worked in the Kaunas Archives until 1988. She taught for several years before returning to the Archives in 1994. She started working with requests for records in Kaunas Guberniya, which were at that time not of a genealogical nature. In 1995 when the archives started receiving genealogical requests, Vitalija knew very little about the sources of genealogical information. In an explanation she offered in 1998 of how she began to assist scholars and genealogists conduct research in the Kaunas Regional Archives she said, "I just tried to find out which moments of human life were documented in Kaunas Guberniya, by what institution, and in what records."
Since 1995, Ms. Gircyte has become much more involved in genealogical research and is an expert on the holdings of her archives. She has translated thousands of records for online databases for JewishGen and other nonprofit groups as well as assisting in private research projects. In 1998 she came to the 18th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Los Angeles to present a paper on “Kaunas Archives Resources,” which also was published that Fall in Avotaynu. Vitalija spent more than a year developing a Catalog of the Holdings of the Kaunas Regional Archives, which has been periodically updated and appears online and is available to researchers who visit the Kaunas Regional Archives.
Vitalija worked with David Hoffman to develop a method for cataloging the very extensive court, business and inheritance files in the Kaunas Regional Archives, in such a way that they can be indexed online and located by individual genealogists for full translation. In 2001 she presented a paper in London to the 21st International Conference on Jewish Genealogy with Dr. Hoffman on the “Collection of Box Taxes in 19th Century Lithuania.” A version of this was published in Avotaynu, Volume XVII Number 3, Fall 2001. At the same conference she also presented a paper on, “New Sources of Genealogical Information in the Kaunas Regional Archives.” At the 23rd International Conference in Washington, D.C., she spoke on ”Genealogical Research at the Kaunas Regional Archives: Tracing Human Lives in Official Records.” Vitalija and David Hoffman are currently involved in a comprehensive cataloging of lists, documents, manuscripts and bibliographies which have references to Jewish populations in the Grand Duchy in the 17th and 18th centuries, as the first step in selecting documents to microfilm and include in our database.
Dr. Eric L. Goldstein is Assistant Professor of History and Jewish Studies at Emory University in Atlanta. He received his Ph.D. in modern Jewish history from the University of Michigan in 2000. An expert on the history of American Jews, Dr. Goldstein has taught, written and lectured widely on topics such as Jewish immigration to the United States, American Jewish culture, Jews in American politics, American Zionism, and American Jewish women. His book, The Price of Whiteness: Jews, Race, and American Identity, which will be issued in 2005, examines the struggle of Jewish immigrants during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries to fit into a culture largely defined by the categories of "black" and "white." His current project explores the emergence of a mass-circulation Yiddish print culture in the United States from the 1890s to the 1920s and charts the interrelationship of Yiddish cultural centers in Eastern Europe and America. Professor Goldstein has an extensive curriculum vitae which summarizes his publications, professional affiliations and awards.
He has also extensively researched the history of the Jewish community in Darbenai (Dorbian), Lithuania, from its birth in the 1760s through its destruction in 1941. Using hundreds of documents culled from Lithuanian, Russian, American and Israeli archives, he is writing a scholarly portrait of Lithuanian shtetl life, viewed through the lens of this small community.
Ada Green (formerly Greenblatt) is a graduate of The American University in Washington, D.C. with a degree in history and Judaic Studies. She has been researching her family history since early 1993, and has conducted genealogical research in Israel, Vienna, Ukrainian Galicia, Lithuania, Scotland, and South Africa, as well as in a number of U.S. States. Using 18th century Grand Duchy of Lithuania records, Ada has been able to trace back her grandmother’s paternal line from Krakes and her grandfather’s maternal line from Vandziogala to at least 1784.
Ada is a former member of the Executive Council of the Jewish Genealogical Society, Inc. (New York) and is Chair of its Cemetery Project, which has catalogued the names and cemetery locations of over 10,000 burial societies in the New York metropolitan area. As a separate and independent project she has personally recorded and computer-entered the tombstone data on over 30,000 burials, including 77 landsmanshaftn plots for Lithuanian shtetls (including all known New York area burial societies for the Kaunas and Raseiniai districts) and an almost equal number of landsmanshaftn plots for Eastern Galician shtetls. She has taken five research trips to Lithuania since 1996 and with the assistance of her guide, Regina Kopilevich, has recorded the burials in the Lithuanian Jewish Cemeteries of Kedainiai, Krakes, and Vandziogala.
Ada has written articles for Avotaynu: “Lithuanian Central Civil Register Archives Revisited,” Spring 1998 (Volume XIV, Number 1), “Searching for Mumma Rocha,” Winter 2000 (Volume XVI, Number 4), “Jewish Burial Societies in the New York Metropolitan Area: Some Pointers About Landsmanshaften Plots,” Fall 2001 (Volume XVII, Number 3). Her articles for Dorot include: “Research in Vienna,” Spring 1996 (Volume 17, No. 3), “Pre-War Lithuanian Series in the Afrikaner Yidishe Tzeitung,” Summer 1996 (Volume 17, Number 4). Articles for The Galitzianer include: “Military Records at LDS,” Fall 1994 (Volume 2, Number 1), “Jewish Taxpayers in Nadworna,” Summer 1998 (Volume 5, No. 4). Also for the LitvakSIG On-Line Journal: “SA Landsmannschaften Records,” April 1999.
She has given numerous lectures to Jewish genealogical societies in the US, South Africa and Israel and has spoken at the international genealogical conferences in New York in 1999 and London in 2001. Ada is the LitvakSIG Kaunas uyezd research group coordinator and is the JRI-Poland AGAD Archives town leader for the western Ukrainian shtetl formerly known as Bialy Kamien, Galicia.
Ada is the Website author of the shtetl pages for Seta and Krakes, Lithuania, and Nadvorna, Ukraine:
http://home.att.net/~shat/ (Seta, Lithuania)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/krakes/Krakes.htm (Krakes, Lithuania, created jointly with Trevor Tucker)
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Nadvorna/nadw.htm (Nadvorna, created jointly with David Sotkowitz)
http://www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Nadvornaya/Nadvornaya.html (Nadvorna, Yizkor Book)
http://home.att.net/~landsmanshaft/ (New York landsmanshaftn and other Jewish organizations)
Chaim (Keith) Freedman was born in 1947 in Melbourne, Australia to parents of eastern European origins. He was educated at Mount Scopus College in Melbourne, where he received a traditionally orthodox and secular education. In 1977, he immigrated to Israel.
A noted genealogist, he has lectured at numerous genealogical and historical conferences including The International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem in 1984, 1994 and 2004. He has published his research in Avotaynu, Sharsheret Hadorot, Search, Roots-Key and the Journal of the Australian Jewish Historical Society.
Mr. Freedman edited Jewish Personal Names: Their Origin, Derivation and Diminutive Forms by the late Rabbi Shmuel Gorr, published in 1992 by Avotaynu. He wrote several books about his immediate family, including Our Fathers' Harvest, a history of the Komisaruk and other families involved in Jewish agricultural colonization in the Ukraine, and The Pen and the Blade, a history of the Super family.
Chaim Freedman’s major work, Eliyahu's Branches, The Descendants of the Vilna Gaon and His Family, was published in 1997 by Avotaynu. The book is the culmination of thirty years of research of the Vilna Gaon, and includes 20,000 names with valuable biographical and historical details. He recently has written two articles which appears on this website, 18th Century Links to the Family of the Vilna Gaon, in which he uses the 18th century Grand Duchy census records to explore previously unanswered questions about the children of the Vilna Gaon, identify some additional children, and verify his inferences and The Family of Rabbi Yosef Zundel Salanter in which he uses both the 1884 and 1765 GDL lists to expand our knowledge of Rabbi Yusef Zundel Salanter and his family.
Mr. Freedman's particular expertise in Rabbinical genealogy was published in 2001 in his book Beit Rabbanan, Sources of Rabbinical Genealogy. Much of the content of this book appears on the RavSIG website. He acted as a consultant to Beit Hatefutsot's exhibition on the Vilna Gaon in 1998. He provided material for Beit Hatefutsot's 1983 exhibition The Jewish Agricultural Experience in the Diaspora. His chapters on Hebrew genealogical and Rabbinical sources are included in Avotaynu's definitive 2004 Guide to Jewish Genealogy.
Mr. Freedman has lectured to the Israeli Genealogical Society in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv and to the Jewish Family Research Association in Tel Aviv and Petah Tikvah. His lectures always draw a good and attentive audience who appreciate the opportunity to hear of his activities in genealogical research and learn from his wide experience in using a range of valuable sources. He has participated frequently in the JewishGen Discussion Group and has provided answers and guidelines on innumerable occasions on the Internet. Many of his compositions appear on the Internet:http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Colonies_of_Ukraine/ (Jewish Agricultural Colonies in the Ukraine)
http://www.jewishgen.org/Rabbinic/ (RavSIG)
http://www.jewishgen.org/belarus/index.html (Belarus SIG
http://www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/Lodz/ (Lodz Shtetlinks)
http://community.webshots.com/user/chaimjan (Chaim Freedman's Family Photos and Documents)
Mark W. Halpern, B.S. Engineering, Rutgers University, M.B.A. Finance, Rutgers University. Mark has been researching his family history since 1996. While on a business trip to Poland, Mark visited Bialystok, the town where his mother had been born 86 years earlier. This one-day visit propelled Mark in a search for his family as well as his volunteer efforts to support other Jewish family history researchers.
Mark has been the President of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia since 2003 and was formerly the Vice President, Membership. He is the founder and overall coordinator of BIALYGen, the Bialystok Region Jewish Genealogy Group. Mark is a Board member of Jewish Records Indexing – Poland and is the AGAD Archives Coordinator (the Central Archives of Historical Records in Warsaw). He also coordinates indexing projects for Bialystok, Tykocin, and Eastern Galicia and is responsible for the online order processing system where researchers can order copies of Jewish vital records from the Polish State Archives. Mark also coordinates a project to index the tombstones and restore the one remaining Jewish cemetery in Bialystok.
Mark has spoken at International Conferences on Jewish Genealogy in London, Toronto, Washington, DC., and Israel. He has spoken to genealogy groups in Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York, and Los Angeles about research and vital records in Poland and Galicia. Mark has written many articles for The Galitzianer, the journal of Gesher Galicia and Chronicles, the journal of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia. He has also published "Mania’s Story, a Story of a Holocaust Survivor," for Avotaynu, Vol. XVIII, No. 4, Winter 2002.
Mark is a retired Oil and Chemical Industry executive. He worked on International assignments in Copenhagen, Denmark, Tokyo, Japan, and Hong Kong and has traveled extensively for business and pleasure, always trying to learn more about the Jewish communities in those countries.