Canadian Jewish Genealogy

Our job is not to draw lines, or to leaf out ancestral trees, but to spin webs of meaning.

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Welcome to our workshop! To start.... a discussion about truth and lies.

source: 35398536 © Mauro Mancini | Dreamstime.com

We are the lucky ones

Tracking down ancestors, as far back as possible, is a huge challenge. But Jewish ancestors provide us with  particular challenges. Why?

1. They lied. For example
2. Language barriers. How many languages did your family speak a few generations ago? Can you translate from Russian to English? Try Google Translate
3. Destroyed records, for example: (in Crakow, ) ( A Brief History of Archives in Jewish Cultures)
4. Names evolved, mostly to help fit peoplefit  into with society - for example. ( To find original surnames, try this tool from  Morse/Beider
5. They were fleeing, and did not want to be found.
6. They had suffered trauma and were reluctant to share this with you.  Not uncommon across many cultures.

What are your challenges?

Consider the diverse and treacherous global journeys, taken by our families. We have beat astonishing odds to arrive right, here, right now.

Research experience teaches us that finding out the truth of our ancestors involves us in a loving struggle between factual evidence and bubbe meisas.

This workshop aims to share with you, useful objective tools (documents, images, maps, newspapers etc.), to help you find traces of your family.

Ebedded into the objective, is a subjective narrative (aka bubbe meisas, aka family stories).  Sometimes the family stories crack the case! 

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Group Discussion : Where would you look to verify the following family lore????

My mother Ruth, was born in 1925, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, rode a camel in Palestine.  More

My great grandfather Fallya Hestrin had family who were gauchos in Argentina. more

My grandfather Daniel Mackler, who immigrated from Bessarabia to Camden, New, Jersey skipped the border to Winnipeg because his family was pressuring him to marry an ugly woman. more

My baba Basheva Rabinovitch refused to apply for the old age pension. She thought that because she arrived in Canada illegally, with an aunt Chane Friedgut, that the Canadian government would send her back to Russia. more

Group Discussion : Where would you look to verify the following family lore????

My mother Ruth, was born in 1925, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, rode a camel in Palestine.  More

My great grandfather Fallya Hestrin had family who were gauchos in Argentina. more

My grandfather Daniel Mackler, who immigrated from Bessarabia to Camden, New, Jersey skipped the border to Winnipeg because his family was pressuring him to marry an ugly woman. more

My baba Basheva Rabinovitch refused to apply for the old age pension. She thought that because she arrived in Canada illegally, with an aunt Chane Friedgut, that the Canadian government would send her back to Russia. more