The Jewish Genealogical Society of Bergen County will be having its next
meeting on Sunday, May 18, 2003. Anna Olswanger will talk about "Jewish
Ethical Wills: >from Family History to Fiction". The main meeting starts at
2PM and is held at the JCC on the Palisades in Tenafly. The JCC of the
Palisades is located at 401 East Clinton Avenue in Tenafly. Their phone
number is 201-569-7900.

Meetings start with a schmooze session at 12:30 at the offices of Avotaynu
in Bergenfield. Avotaynu has a 400-book library about Jewish genealogy and
the Holocaust which you can browse. The purpose of the schmooze session is
to ask questions about that can advance your personal research. Do you have
any brick walls that are slowing your research? Perhaps other members of
JGSBCNJ can help you. If you are interested in attending the schmooze
session, please call the offices of Avotaynu (201-387-7200) a few days
before to insure that that there has not been change in plans.

If you need directions, go to our homepage at
http://erosenbaum.netfirms.com/jgsbc/

* * * About Anna Olswanger * * *
Anna Olswanger is the author of a series of short stories based on her
family history, including "Chicken Bone Man," which won the 1997 F. Scott
Fitzgerald Short Story Award and "Shlemiel Crooks," which won the 1998
Society of Children's Book Writers & Illustrators Magazine Merit Award.
Anna is the editor and publisher of her own award-winning family history
magazine The Olschwanger Journal and currently teaches writing workshops for
the Johns Hopkins University Center for Training and Education in Baltimore,
and the Stony Brook University Medical Center. She is the Website Director
for the UJA Federation of Bergen County & North Hudson. Anna graduated Phi
Beta Kappa >from Rhodes College in Memphis and earned her M.A. in Creative
Writing >from the University of Memphis. Samples of her writing are online
at http://www.olswanger.com.

* * * Upcoming meetings * * *

June 8, 2003: A roundtable discussion on different genealogy software
programs.

July, 2003: No meeting due to the 23rd annual IAJGS International Conference
on Jewish Genealogy, which will be held July 20-25 in Washington, DC.

September 14: John Celardo, an archivist at the National Archives, will talk
about census records, passenger lists manifests, and naturalization records.

October 12: Cemetery documentation project. Come and help us document the
graves at a Bergen County Jewish cemetery.

November 9: Genealogy on the Cutting Edge: A presentation on the use of DNA
testing for genealogical research.

December 14, 2003: Karen Franklin will speak on German Jewish Genealogy.

* * * Membership* * *
January marked the beginning of our new membership year. If you are not
already a member for 2003, please consider joining. If you have been a
member in the past, please renew your membership. Membership in the JGS of
Bergen County entitles you to submit questions to our 'ask the experts'
column of our newsletter, "The Gatherers". In addition, members can borrow
selected books and tapes >from our 400 book library. Please start your
membership by mailing a tax deductible check for $20 ($25 for couples) to

JGS of Bergen County
c/o Edward Rosenbaum
135 Chestnut Ridge Road
Montvale, NJ 07645

Or if you wish to pay by credit card, please go to
http://erosenbaum.netfirms.com/jgsbc/, and click on "Membership information".
* * *

Sincerely,
Edward L. Rosenbaum
President
JGS of Bergen County, NJ

About the JGS of Bergen county

We are an organization of Jewish genealogists who are enjoying the growing
pastime of tracing our families' roots back to the Old Country and
collecting records of our family, some of them hundreds of years old. The
Jewish Genealogical Society of Bergen County is one of over 70 member
organizations of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical
Societies.