Barry Finkel to speak at Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois meeting:

“Three Hershberg Mysteries” will be the topic of a presentation by genealogist Barry Finkel at the Sunday, April 28, 2019, meeting of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois. His presentation will begin at 2 p.m. at Temple Beth-El, 3610 Dundee Road, Northbrook, Ill.

The JGSI meeting facilities at Temple Beth-El will open at 12:30 p.m. for those who want to use or borrow genealogy library materials, get help with genealogy websites or ask genealogical questions from genealogy expert volunteers before the main program begins at 2 p.m. For more information phone 312-666-0100.

Barry Finkel’s talk will cover a brief history of his Hershberg family in Chicago and South Bend, Indiana, including discussing two mysteries that he eventually solved, and he will explain the solutions. Then he will discuss one mystery that remains unsolved.

Our speaker is corresponding secretary of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Illinois and often volunteers at the JGSI help desk. He is a retired IT systems administrator who wrote his first computer program in 1966. He started in genealogy in the mid-1960s, then put it aside.  In 1991 one of Barry’s brothers decided to put their genealogy into a computer database, and today the file of his genealogy and his brother’s wife’s genealogy has over 6,400 persons.

At each regular JGSI monthly meeting, the help desk operates from 12:30 to 1:55 p.m. Member volunteers access online databases and answer genealogical questions one-on-one for members and visitors as time allows.

The JGSI library has more than 800 volumes of interest to Jewish family historians. Many are available for borrowing by JGSI members for a limited time. All are available for perusing from 12:30 to 1:55 p.m. at each regular monthly meeting.