Israel: Harold Rhode, Feb. 24

Harold Rhode (from the Washington DC-area) will speak on modern methods of genealogical research at the Petah Tikva branch of the IGS/JFRA society, on Wednesday, February 24 at 8pm.

NOTE: Readers may be confused as to the designation of the IGS/JFRA society. As of January 1, 2010, the Israel Genealogical Society (IGS) and the Jewish Family Research Association (JFRA Israel) have joined forces to cooperate in all aspects of Jewish genealogy in Israel. Both societies are members of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). Michael Goldstein (Jerusalem) is president of both IGS and IAJGS; Ingrid Rockberger (Ra'anana) is JFRA Israel president. JFRA's 400-strong English-language Yahoo group is now named IGS/JFRA. Watch for a separate press release on this recent development.

Tracing the Tribe knows Harold through many annual Jewish genealogy conferences and his close connections to our Philadelphia-area cousins. I first met him years ago at a conference in Salt Lake City where we spoke Farsi together - he's multilingual in Middle Eastern/Near Eastern languages.

Unfortunately, Tracing the Tribe will be in Hong Kong and will miss his visit.

The meeting is in a member's home; advance registration is essential. See below for email contact. If you are in the area, try to attend this program.

Harold has been researching his Litvak family roots for more than 30 years.

Using vital document analysis and rabbinic texts, he's been able to demonstrate that the Jews were mobile and that our Eastern European ancestors actually resided in localities that covered large geographical areas, not single communities.

A past president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Washington, Harold has had numerous articles published in Avotaynu, speaks at Jewish genealogy conferences and is the author of "Jewish Vital Records, Revision Lists and Other Jewish Holdings in the Lithuanian Archive."

A foreign affairs analyst at the US Department of Defense, he holds a PhD (Middle Eastern History) and speaks many languages, among them Farsi, Hebrew, Turkish and others.

For more information on this meeting, send an email.