Dear fellow JGS of Canada (Toronto) members. I am pleased to announce that Board Member and Chair of the Cemetery Committee, Allen Halberstadt, has been recognized by IAJGS for his work in photographing, documenting and uploading data to the Jewish Worldwide Burial Records indexing project (JOWBR). Allen wins the Salute Award for his remarkable efforts to personally record over 40,000 burials and assisting his committee to get another 30,000+ burials into the JOWBR database. A pleasant unintended consequence of this fine work was to cleanup the records of many of the synagogues, landsmanshaften, and benevolent societies who provide plots to their membership. Allen is frequently called upon for advice in helping families who are searching for long lost relatives whom they know are buried in Toronto. Mazel Tov Allen for a superb job!!
This is the beginning of a new year and a new Board. We re-structured the Board so that every member is responsible for a committee. We are in the process of developing a 25 year plan that will allow us to identify the areas where we can best offer value to you our members. The Board is committed to the development of tools and programs that will allow for a more collaborative approach that is member-centred and interactive. To that end we have recently put up a blog which you can login to at www.jgstoronto.blogspot.com. Michael Keleman has done a terrific job of building the blog and is presently its moderator. For those of you who have never blogged, it is a very valuable vehicle for you to collaborate with like-minded researchers, within and without the environs of our membership. Along that line, Neil Richler, our longstanding Membership Chair has put up a Facebook page. You do not have to be a member of Facebook to post questions and hopefully get answers to getting past your roadblocks. The Facebook page address is http://www.facebook.com/jgstoronto.
One of the key projects that is intended to tap the talents of our members is the formal establishment of our Speakers Bureau. A number of our members are sharing their knowledge and teaching the skills that they have learned over the years to a wide variety of groups that include: Bernard Betel Centre (effective use of the computer in genealogy), Prosserman Centre (2 programs in March - Beginner genealogy and a Guide to Writing a Family Memoir, Jewish Russian Community Centre, How to Produce a Family Tree?, Miles Nadal Centre, Beginner Genealogy, Temple Har Zion, Finding Family in Unexpected Places - A Personal Journey. All of these programs are led by JGS members. We are looking for more speakers and hope that you might take up the challenge. So call me on the JGS phone line, 647-247-6414, and I'll be sure to get back to you.
This August the Book Committe plans to run a program at the Ashkenaz Festival that is held at Harbourfront. We are joining author Lil Blume who wrote Letters & Pictures From the Old Suitcase, in presenting a panel discussion with several of our authors who contributed to Tracing Our Roots Telling Our Stories. This will be an interactive, audience partcipation session that will describe the motivations for writing a family/personal memoir and the how to's of getting your intellectual work published. Lil will be delivering a JGS sponsored writing workshop on March 4th to be held at the Edithvale Community Centre, 1:00 to 4:00 pm. See our Calendar for costs and reservations.
Tracing Our Roots Telling Our Stories has gone through 3 printings. We hope to surpass the 500 mark in sales very soon.
Lastly, I would like to make mention of our intention to establish a Mentoring Program. This is an area that we feel needs to be improved. So we are looking for a chairperson to head the committee, as well as volunteers to act as mentors to our newbies.
I welcome any thoughts or suggestions that would help us improve service to our members. Please call me If you have ideas that you would like to share. I can be reached on the JGS phoneline by email at
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Respectfully yours,
Harvey Glasner
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