May 1, 2011 at 1:30pm at the Farmington Community Library, Conference Room A (Main Branch)

Three JGS of Michigan members, each relating his or her start and subsequent research in Jewish genealogical pursuits. Come and hear them recount their research experiences, sharing their individual successes and tips.

Jonathan Haber
Jon will discuss what he has accomplished researching his grandmother’s 9 siblings and their descendents.

Richard Jaeger
Richard has discovered a large number of relatives he didn’t know a thing about through a large collection of photographs given to him.

Alexandra Goldberg
Alexandra will talk about her breakthrough in finding the missing link affirming her descendancy from a Rabbinical family with possible roots going back to King David.

At this event, we will be holding a vote of the membership on proposed amendments to the JGSMI Constitution and By-Laws. Each member in good standing who attends should sign an attendance sheet before entering the meeting room. A member of the Constitution and Bylaws committee or an alternate will advise the membership of the modifications and call for a vote.

A summary of the proposed changes are below. You can read the entire amendment here.

1. Article V of the Constitution authorizes the President of the Society to appoint from two currently to four Members at Large and as approved by majority vote of the Board of Directors.
2. Article VI of the Constitution states that no member shall be elected consecutively more than three times to the office of President unless approved by the majority vote of the Board of Directors.
3. Article II Section 5 of the Bylaws specifies the duties of the library committee and states that the library of the Society will be at a designated location instead of a specific location in order not to have to amend the bylaws each time the location of the library is changed.
4. Article III of the Bylaws describes the current duties of the members at large and further adds duties as assigned by the President.

Refreshments will be served.

Sunday, May 22, 2011
11:00 am Preglow, 12:00 pm Film
Berman Center for the Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Center
part of the Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival

JGSMI invites you to our popular annual fundraiser event. This year we are co-sponsoring Winston Churchill: Walking With Destiny at the Lenore Marwil Jewish Film Festival. The movie starts at noon and we will be having a preglow for fundraiser ticket buyers only at 11:00 am.

The newest production from the Moriah Films Division of the Simon Wiesenthal Center focuses on the years 1940 and 1941, when the Swastika flew over continental Europe. Only England with her back to the wall, under Winston Churchill, remained defiant.

httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsOzPMrqVxE

Walking With Destiny highlights Churchill’s years in the political wilderness, his early opposition to Adolf Hitler and Nazism, and his support for Jews under threat by the Nazi regime. As historian John Lukacs explains, Churchill may not have won the War in 1940, but without him, the War most certainly would have been lost.

Sir Martin Gilbert, historical consultant for the film and Churchill’s official biographer, adds that had Churchill’s warnings about Nazi Germany’s racial policies towards Jews been heeded in the early 1930’s, the Holocaust may never have occurred.

The film examines why Winston Churchill’s legacy continues to be relevant in the 21st Century and explores why his leadership remains inspirational to current day political leaders and diplomats.

The new Berman Center for the Performing Arts at the Jewish Community Center in West Bloomfield

Please Note
You may skip the form below and simply mail us a check amounting to $18 a ticket, thereby avoiding the Eventbrite fees.

Make your check payable to and mail to:
Jewish Genealogical Society of Michigan
P.O. Box 251693
W. Bloomfield, MI 48325

Sunday, June 26, 2011 at 11:00 am,
Holocaust Memorial Center

State of the Art: Restitution and Resolutions

Special Guest Karen Franklin will discuss genealogical research techniques used to unite Nazi-era art with its rightful owners.

She will present an overview of looted art issues in US and European Jewish museums, and demonstrate how the international Jewish genealogical community is helping to solve ongoing European cases. Franklin will share some of the genealogical research she used to help solve prominent cases in the Netherlands, Germany and Ukraine.

Karen is guest curator of the exhibition, The Morgenthaus: A Legacy of Service, currently on display at the Museum of Jewish Heritage – a Living Memorial to the Holocaust in Manhattan. A co-chair of the Board of Governors of JewishGen.org, she is a past president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies and a past chair of the Council of American Jewish Museums. Karen serves on the board the International Committee of Memorial Museums of ICOM (International Council of Museums) and many other boards. A researcher on looted art, she has worked on cases for the Origins Unknown Agency in the Netherlands, the Commission for Looted Art in Europe, and the U. S. Treasury Department. She was recently appointed to the Advisory Council of the European Shoah Legacy Institute.

If any member of JGSMI would like to nominate themselves or another member for any of the above positions, please contact John Kovacs at 248-851-3481 or elections@jgsmi.org prior to June 17, 2011.

Dietary laws observed.

Sunday, October 17, 2010 at 1:00 pm

My mother was an only child. That’s what she told everyone, sometimes within minutes of meeting them. When I heard that my mother had been hiding the existence of a sister, I was bewildered. A sister? I was certain that she had no siblings, just as I knew that her name was Beth, that she had no middle name, and that she had raised her children to, above all, tell the truth.

Part memoir, part detective story, part history, Annie’s Ghosts revolves around three main characters (my mom, her sister and me as narrator/detective/son), several important secondary ones (my grandparents, my father and several relatives whom I found in the course of reporting on the book), as well as Eloise, the vast county mental hospital where my secret aunt was confined—despite her initial protestations—all of her adult life.

As I try to understand my mom’s reasons for hiding her sister’s existence, readers have a front-row seat to the reality of growing up poor in America during the 1920s and 1930s, at a time when the nation’s “asylums” had a population of 400,000 and growing. They will travel the many corridors and buildings of Eloise Hospital, a place little known outside Detroit but which housed so many mentally ill and homeless people during the Depression that it become one of the largest institutions of its kind in the nation, with 10,000 residents, 75 buildings, its own police and fire forces, even its own dairy.

Through personal letters and photographs, official records and archival documents, as well as dozens of interviews, readers will revisit my mother’s world in the 1930s and 1940s in search of how and why the secret was born. The easy answer—shame and stigma—is the one that I often heard as I pursued the story. But when it comes to secrets, there are no easy answers, and shame is only where the story begins, not ends.

Whenever the secret threatened to make its way to the surface, Mom did whatever she could to push it back underground. Just as Annie was a prisoner of her condition and of the hospital that became her home, my mother became a virtual prisoner of the secret she chose to keep. Why? Why did she want the secret to remain so deeply buried?

Employing my skills as a journalist while struggling to maintain my empathy as a son, I piece together the story of my mother’s motivations, my aunt’s unknown life, and the times in which they lived. My search takes me to imperial Russia and Depression-era Detroit, through the Holocaust in Ukraine and the Philippine war zone, and back to the hospitals where Annie and many others languished in anonymity.

For me, it was the quest of a lifetime.

Excerpt taken from http://steveluxenberg.com/content/book.asp?id=story

Location: Holocaust Memorial Center, Farmington Hills. Register below.

Monday, November 8, 2010 at 8:00 p.m. at the West Bloomfield JCC

Join us as we co-sponsor Jake Ehrenreich, author of A Jew Grows in Brooklyn: The Curious Reflections of a First-Generation American, at the 59th Annual Jewish Book Fair this November.

“Barnum” and “Dancin’” star Jake Ehrenreich takes readers on a poignant journey through the past as he tells childhood stories, coming-of-age lessons and tales from the lives of his immigrant, Holocaust survivor parents.

A companion to his popular Broadway musical comedy, A Jew Grows in Brooklyn is filled with memories of baseball, popcorn and realizing the American dream. A documentary about Ehrenreich’s life is in the works for release later this year.

Co-sponsored by the Birmingham Temple, Institute for Retired Professionals (IRP), the Jewish Genealogical Society of Michigan and ORT America-Michigan Region

About the Author

Brownsville Memoir-Growing up in Brooklyn, in the shadow of the Shoah.

When Jake Ehrenreich was growing up in Brownsville in the 1960s, he wanted nothing more than to be an American. But his Yiddish-speaking parents, who failed to understand the game of baseball or make sense of rock music, made it difficult for him to feel part of the mainstream culture. In his new one-man show, “A Jew Grows in Brooklyn,” directed by Jon Huberth, Ehrenreich explores how his family history, dominated by the shadow of the Holocaust, shaped the man he turned out to be.

Ehrenreich, 50, has appeared on Broadway in “Dancin,” “Barnum” and “They’re Playing Our Song.” He has also performed Yiddish music in two Off-Broadway productions, “Songs of Paradise” and “The Golden Land.”

His father’s Hasidic family had been one of the wealthiest in Poland, but during the war both he and his wife ended up in a work camp in Siberia, where one of their daughters was born. After spending time in a displaced persons camp, the family came to America, where they tried to give their children a life free from the taint of victimhood.

But it was not to be. Ehrenreich and his two sisters grew up feeling, as he put it, that existence was “tenuous” and that the “world could end at any moment.” Yet he also shares many wonderful memories of his youth, from playing stoop ball to attending Shea Stadium to vacationing in the Catskills, where Ehrenreich began performing in a band at the tender age of 12. Indeed, Ehrenreich tells much of his life story through music; he is backed by four instrumentalists, playing songs ranging from “Brooklyn Roads” to “Doo Wah Diddy.” One striking moment in the show occurs when Ehrenreich recalls learning that almost all of his favorite composers were Jewish like him.

“I don’t want to bring people too far into the black hole of the Holocaust,” Ehrenreich said, noting that his show is mostly upbeat and optimistic. “If people in the audience laugh,” he concluded, “it means that they trust me not just to take them to a more serious place, but to bring them out and make them joyous and grateful when they leave.”

For Ehrenreich, his show is ultimately a “celebration.” He quotes Billy Crystal, who quipped that performing a show about his life was like “a visit with my family every night.”

About the Author was taken from http://www.jakeehrenreich.com/about-the-author.html and can be attributed to The Jewish Week.

Sunday, November 14, 2010 at 11:00 am

WANTED! U.S. Criminal Records is your one-stop reference for information sources about criminals from America’s past. WANTED! lists archives, libraries, courts and online sites containing numerous sets of criminal information.

• Prison Records
• Court Records
• Parole Records
• Pardon Records
• Execution Information
• Investigative Reports
• Police Reports

In this 388-page reference book you also get examples of documents you can find online and in repositories across the country. The book also includes a primer on how to conduct genealogical research on criminals, including various tips learned from the author’s vast experience in this field.

WANTED! shows you where to find the piece of the puzzle of a criminals life. It’s the perfect complement to The Jews of Sing Sing, which shows you how to fit such pieces together as well as providing an unprecedented view into the topic of New York Jewish criminal history.

Book description taken from http://www.ronarons.com/wanted.php

Location: Holocaust Memorial Center, Farmington Hills. Register below.

Sunday, December 12, 2010 at 11:00 am, Holocaust Memorial Center

In A Yiddish World Remembered, the story of Jewish life in Eastern Europe is brought to life again by some of the remaining eyewitnesses. Narrated by Academy Award nominated actor Elliott Gould and accompanied by never-before-seen archival films, vintage photographs, and, of course, traditional Klezmer and cantorial music, the documentary takes a realistic and enlightening look at this unique and all-but-vanished way of life.

For those in rural communities, there was often no running water or electricity. For many, anti-Semitism was a part of daily life. But for everyone, crowded conditions and poverty seemed to prevail. Despite these trials, through the eyes of the individuals interviewed, we learn that Jewish communities were close-knit and often even joyous places to live. This television special explores everything from the fascinating language of Yiddish to the Rabbis and Rebbes that often ran the communities to the powerful Jewish movements of Khasidism, Bundism and Zionism.

Information taken from http://www.twocatstv.com/yiddish-world/

Location: Holocaust Memorial Center. Register below.

Sunday, September 12, 2010 at 10:00 am

JGSMI members who attended this important conference in Los Angeles will present on what they learned.

Constitution and By-Laws of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Michigan

In accordance with Article XI: Amendments to the Constitution and By-Laws of the Society, the following articles and sections have been modified and approved by two-thirds of the Board of Directors. The changes are highlighted in yellow and are as follows: Constitution Article V: Section 2; Article VI: Elections Section 5; Bylaws Article II: Committees Section 5; and Article III: Members –at-Large.

Constitution Article V: Officers and Board of Directors

Section 1. The elected officers of the Society shall consist of the President, the Programming Vice-president, Membership Vice-president, the Publicity Vice-president, the Recording Secretary, the Corresponding Secretary and the Treasurer.

Section 2: The Board of Directors shall consist of the officers of the Society, the Librarian, the Newsletter Editor, the two immediate Past-Presidents of the Society, and up to four Members at Large appointed by the President and approved by majority vote of the Board of Directors. In addition, Betty Starkman, the founder of the Society, shall be a lifetime member of the Board with full voting privileges.

Constitution Article VI: Elections

Section 5: The elections shall be held at the Annual Meeting in June of each year. Terms of officers and other members of the Board of Directors shall be for one year subject to re-election. No member shall be elected consecutively more than three times to the office of President unless approved by the majority vote of the Board of Directors.

Bylaws Article II: Committees

Section 5: The duties of the Library Committee are to safeguard all books, periodicals, microfiche, microfilm, videotape, audiotape, and other reference materials owned by the Society at a designated location; to maintain a file of the Society newsletter and to recommend acquisition of genealogical resources for Board of Director approval.

Bylaws Article III: Member(s)-at-Large

The duties of the member(s)-at-large are to foster contact with the membership; to be an official representative of the Society; to be a liaison between the membership and the Board of Directors and to perform duties assigned by the President.

The foregoing amendments will be circulated to the membership and will be subject to ratification by a majority of the membership present at the next meeting of the Society on May 1, 2011