2022 Morris (z”l) and Betty (z”l) Starkman Annual Genealogy Lecture and Election of Officers

Please join us for a virtual annual meeting and election on Sunday, June 26, 2022 at 11:00 AM
Cost: Free

Eliyahu HaNavi Synagogue. Jewish Quarter, Old City, Jerusalem, Israel by Adam Fagen is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.
The Eliyahu HaNavi Synagogue is the oldest of the Four Sephardic Synagogues.

Sephardic History in Israel

If you’ve read the book or watched the Netflix series The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem, you may be curious about the history of Sephardic Jewry in the state of Israel from the times of the Ottoman Empire.

Join us as we welcome Michael Waas, historian, anthropologist, researcher and co-founder of Hollander Waas Jewish Heritage Services. He will talk on the history of Sephardim in Israel, their interactions with Zionism and the complicated history of Sephardim in the state and pre-state of Israel.

About the Speaker:

Ever since he was a young child, Michael Waas has been interested in history and the world around him. Following a conversation in high school with his cousin about family lore that the famous union leader Samuel Gompers was a cousin, he began his journey into genealogical and historical research. That beginning led him to the path where he is today: Michael is a Heritage Professional, based in New York, specializing in historic preservation and multidisciplinary research into the Portuguese Jews and Ottoman Jewry.

He received his BA in Anthropology with a specialization in Historical Archaeology from New College of Florida, and the subject of his Senior Thesis was “The Archaeology of Ethnogenesis of the Seminole People of Florida,” under the direction of Dr. Uzi Baram. Michael recently completed his MA in Jewish History at the University of Haifa under the direction of Dr. Ido Shahar and Dr. Shai Srugo. The title of his thesis was “Istorya i oy: A comparative study on the Development of Jewish Heritage of Three Jewish Communities of the former Ottoman Empire.” In addition, he has been volunteering with AvotaynuDNA since 2016, where he is the anthropologist and historian of the research.

Michael is a member of the Association of Professional Genealogists, the Society for Sephardic Studies, the Association for Jewish Studies, and the European Association for Jewish Studies. He plans to pursue his PhD in the near future.

Proposed Slate 2022-2023: