The LitvakSIG Nominating Task Force recommends the nomination to the
LitvakSIG Board of the following candidates for three year terms: Judy
Baston and Jody Tzucker.

At the end of this message you will see each nominee's biographical
statement providing information about what they can contribute to the
Board.

Beginning June 25, 2018, any LitvakSIG members in good standing who were
not recommended by the Nominating Task Force may nominate themselves or any
other additional candidates for election as Directors. They may do so by
submitting names and supporting biographical materials to the secretary of
LitvakSIG, Barry Halpern <barry.halpern@...> by electronic transmission
not later than July 9, 2018 at 11:59 PM, Eastern Time.

All names will be placed on the ballot in alphabetical order. Voting will
take place primarily by e-mail during the weeks before the IAJGS Conference
on Jewish Genealogy in Warsaw, Poland in August 2018. LitvakSIG members
who do not vote before the meeting will be able to vote in person at the
beginning of the LitvakSIG Annual Meeting, Tuesday, August 7, 2018 during
the conference.

Details on the election procedures and distribution of email ballots will
be posted shortly by the Election Task Force.

Submitted by the 2018 Nominating Task Force


JUDY BASTON

Since 1999, I've served as Moderator of the LitvakSIG Discussion Group and
the Coordinator of LitvakSIG's Lida District Research Group. I served on
LitvakSIG's Board >from 1999 until 2016, when I was 'termed out" for at
least a year. During my time on the LitvakSIG Board, I served as a
LitvakSIG Vice President for several years.

When Carol Hoffman nominated me to run for the LitvakSIG Board this year,
I decided to say "yes" because I really want to continue to contribute
to LitvakSIG, especially to bring my two decades of experience with this
organization - and the institutional and historical memory that goes with
it - to LitvakSIG's current deliberations and activities. In many ways,
things are different for LitvakSIG and Litvak research now than in
earlier years. But LitvakSIG's commitment to finding and translating
the records of our Litvak families - wherever they may be, and whatever
kinds of records they may be - has only grown stronger, and I want
to be part of that continued growth.

I hope that being moderator of the LitvakSIG discussion group has enabled
me to retain a sense of the questions that Litvak researchers have, and
what their interests are -- >from those who have been researching for
decades, to those just beginning their research. I will try to bring this
sense to board deliberations if I am elected.

For the Lida District Research Group, I have coordinated fundraising and
translation of lists containing more than 100,000 individuals. I cooperate
with the Belarus SIG on records that are in archives in Belarus. For the last
five years, I have also coordinated LitvakSIG's Oshmiany District Research
Group. I coordinate a Lida District / Oshmiany District Birds of a Feather
meeting at International Conferences, highlighting resources available
through LitvakSIG as well as other groups and sites on the Internet.

My mother was born in Lomza Gubernia, Poland, and I also serve on the
Executive Committee and Board of Directors of Jewish Records
Indexing-Poland and moderate the JRI-Poland discussion group as well
as the Bialystok and Lodz discussion groups. I hope that being an active
part of JRI-Poland and other genealogical groups provides me with both
a sense of the similarities and differences between these groups and
LitvakSIG, and with ideas that I can share with other LitvakSIG board
members.

Since 1992, when I retired >from 20 years of editorial and public affairs
work with the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal
Employees, I've been involved with the Jewish Community Library in San
Francisco, working three days a week as volunteer staff, coordinating a
genealogy workshop, and serving for six years as President of Friends
of the Jewish Community Library. At the International Conference on
Jewish Genealogy in Jerusalem in 2015, I was honored to have been
awarded the IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award.


JODY TZUCKER

My interest in family history research began as a small child living
in the middle of the Bible Belt, one of a few Jewish families living in a
small Indiana town. Both my mother's and my father's families were located
in southwest Ohio in the greater Cincinnati area. My maternal grandmother
lived in Cincinnati and we traveled there often for visits. As I got older,
I was shipped out for summer vacations with cousins on both sides of the
family, and was fascinated with figuring out how these multitudes of Jews
were related to me. I had never seen so many Jewish people in one place!
And it seemed everyone was related to me.

As luck would have it, I grew up bilingual by happenstance. My best
friend's mother was a German war bride, and only talked to us in German.
As we got older she gave us actual language lessons. This led me to pursue
translation education which later took me to Germany and Spain where I
studied Spanish, Russian and French at a school affiliated with the
University of Erlangen, Germany, and the University of Barcelona. I returned
to the US, got married, had my children, and my training sat idle for many
years. I returned to school as an adult, went to Indiana University where
I got a degree in Geography and Anthropology.

I have served on the boards of many civic and religious organizations
over the years, including Beth-el Zedeck Congregation, its Sisterhood
and Foundation Board of Directors; my neighborhood associations
in various capacities; and have volunteered for the public radio station,
the public library, sports leagues and parent-teacher organizations. I
retired in 2003 as the Travel Manager for the NCAA National Office in
Indianapolis.

My Litvak research centers on my maternal great grandparents who were

from Suwalki. My great grandmother was born in 1845 in Liskiavis, as was her

husband. My paternal grandfather was born in Kaunas in Mosedis around 1895,
but my research there has been hampered by a lack of good records. I do
have a partially documented tree, however.

My genealogical work over the past few years includes indexing of
records for LitvakSIG, and the Sub-Carpathian SIG, translating records for
ViewMate, and serving as an admin for the Face Book group Genealogy
Translations, currently numbering more than 10,000 members. I work with
Russian, Polish, German and Spanish records. I taught myself to read the
Polish records in order to further my own research. In my zeal to uncover
things not yet indexed, lately I have been reading through all of the
supplemental marriage records online at the Polish State Archives for
Wiejsejai, Lazdijai and Sejny, and gleaning lots of previously unknown
information. I have delved into genetic genealogy as well, discovering new
cousins who add to the body of work I have amassed.

I am honored to be considered as a board member for LitvakSIG, and to
contribute to what has been a vital and important player in my family
research.