Greetings,

The winning poster or flyer in this year’s Jewish Genealogy Month Annual Poster/Flyer Competition will be unveiled in August at the 29th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Philadelphia. The artist creating the winning entry will receive free registration for that conference. The theme this year will be “From One Generation to the Next: Passing Down our Family History in the Oral Tradition.” Each poster or flyer submitted must reflect this theme. To learn more about the IAJGS Jewish Genealogy Month Poster/Flyer contest, please visit www.iajgs.org/jgmonth.html. Here you will find more details about the contest, the work of last year’s winner, as well as the form needed for submitting materials.


Please submit all work to me at steve725@optonline.net  with the words “Poster/Flyer Competition 2009” in the e-mail’s subject field. All entries must be submitted by April 1, 2009. It should be noted that anyone can create a poster/flyer, but nominations can only come via a member organization of the IAJGS.


Please announce this contest at your next JGS meeting and at each monthly meeting through March, and publicize it in your Society newsletter, in order to remind your members about the contest and encourage them to participate in it.
 

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at the e-mail address above.


We have chosen this year’s theme to recognize that our understanding and appreciation of our precious family history extends beyond the acquisition of documents that give us facts about our ancestors’ lives, e.g. vital documents, ship manifests, census reports. The act of sharing stories and recollections among living family members not only tells us of events experienced first-hand, but it creates a wonderful opportunity for improving communication and furthering the bond between multiple generations within one’s own family. Efforts should be made by each of us to foster and encourage grandparents, parents and their children to sit down with each other, preferably with a tape recorder and some well thought out questions, so that they may ask each other questions about their lives.


Many of us have asked ourselves, “Why didn’t I ask my father or mother (grandmother or grandfather) about our family when they were still alive?” Certainly historical events throughout the world over the centuries have affected the Jewish people as a whole. We stress to our children and grandchildren that they should know about the collective history of the Jewish people, so that they may gain a greater sense of self and a greater identity as a Jew. What better way is there to reinforce our Jewish identity than by learning the history of our beloved family members through the stories that may be told to us by others? Many have participated in and been eyewitnesses to events that have shaped the history of our world, and these are stories that may be lost if they are not passed down to us in time.


The words “oral tradition” imply that a member of a group, typically an elder, sits with the younger members of the family and tells them of the history of their family, their ancestors. Perhaps, if we’re fortunate, they’ll know and pass down stories that their elders passed down to them.


This exercise in intergenerational communication has the potential of strengthening the bonds between the members of different generations. It would be good to see our local genealogical societies organize workshops where generations could sit down together and interview each other, perhaps with more experienced society members going from family group to family group, encouraging them and helping them where they can. Of course, these “helpers” would probably have to have had some experience with interviewing family members, etc. So the thought of having an attractive visual image on a poster or flyer that would stir the imagination of the viewer, that might inspire them to ask questions of their family members about their family history, is an appealing one.


I know that as concerned members and society officers, we wish to build and maintain our memberships. Perhaps oral history workshops will be a good method of encouraging active participation and help strengthen and grow our memberships, especially among our younger generations who currently make up a very small percentage of our membership, who we will have to depend on to sustain our local societies in the future.

 
Best,
Steven Lasky
Committee Chair
steve725@optonline.net