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Honorary Genealogy Advisory Committee
Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Alfassi
Rabbi Dr. Yitzhak Alfassi was born in Tel Aviv in 1929. His father, Rabbi Israel Alfassi, was among the first industrialists in Tel Aviv and one of the most honored Gur Hasidim. Dr. Alfassi authored 78 books on the history of Hasidism, Zionism and Eretz Yisrael. He edited 178 journals, books and anthologies, and published 158 research papers on the history of Eretz Yisrael, 601 articles and 1148 biographies. Articles he wrote appear in both the Hebrew Encyclopedia and Encyclopedia Judaica. He served as an officer in the Israeli Army and was Chairman of the Cultural Committee of the General Staff. He also received seven awards, including the prestigious Prime Minister’s Award. Dr. Alfassi serves as the voluntary Rabbi at the Komemiyut Avraham Synangogue, which was founded by Chief Rabbi Rabbi Shlomo Goren, and delivers daily and weekly lectures. He is a Senior Lecturer at Bar Ilan University and also lectures at the Hashahar College in Tel Aviv. He is chairman of the Testing Committee for candidates who wish to convert to Judaism.
Schelly Talalay Dardashti
Journalist Schelly Talalay Dardashti is president of the five-branch Jewish Family Research Association Israel (JFRA Israel). She writes "Tracing the Tribe," the only Jewish genealogy blog, in conjunction with JTA. Formerly, she was the Jewish genealogy columnist ("It's All Relative") for the Jerusalem Post. She writes for Jewish media in the United States, contributes to general/genealogy magazines/journals, teaches online Jewish genealogy classes, speaks/teaches/conducts workshops internationally and, since 1989, has been researching the DARDASHTI and TALALAY families. Memberships: Belarus SIG and Sefard Forum (JewishGen), American Jewish Press Association (AJPA), Association of Professional Genealogists (APG). Email:jewish.genealogy@yahoo.com
David Einsiedler
David Einsiedler has devoted his retirement years to rabbinic
genealogical
research and is a member of the Jewish Genealogical Society
of Los Angeles.
He is a native of pre-war Poland and lives in Reseda, California.
Werner L. Frank
Since retiring in 1998 as an executive in the computer software industry, Werner L. Frank has been researching his family's history in the United States and Europe, amassing a genealogical database of over 30,000 names. Frank authored an 800-year history of his family showing his descent from Rabbi Jakob Weil, the Marhari"v (Legacy: The Saga of a German-Jewish Family over Time and Circumstance, published by Avotaynu Foundation, Bergenfield, N.J in 2003).
Frank is a member of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Los Angeles. He is a coordinator of GERSIG (German Special Interest Group of Jewish Genealogy Inc.) and has written for Avotaynu, Stammbaum and Maajan.
He is the current editor of Stammbaum.
Dr. Yehuda Klausner
Dr. Yehuda Klausner is a Civil Engineer with BSc, CE, Ma from the Technion - Israel Insitute of Technology and PhD from Princeton University. He served as Professor of CE at Wayne State University, Detroit and The Negev Institute for Arid Zone Research, Beer-Sheva and since 1970 as a practicing CE and Consultant, specializing in industrial structures and soil and foundation engineering. He published many professional papers and a book on Continuum Mechanics of Soils. He was recruited recently as Professor of CE at the new Department of Civil Engineering, Ben-Gurion University, Beer-Sheva.
In 1982 he became interested in the genealogy of his family and from there in the genealogy of related and other families and now his database comprises several families, especially Rabbinic families, that he is researching.
E-mail: yklaus@netvision.net.il
Dr.Zeeva Levy
Dr.Zeeva Levy is the Director of the National Centre of Scientific and Technological Information, Tel-Aviv, Israel. She has taught for many years in various academic institutes and professional organizations, such as: The College of Management, The Israeli Institute for management, and The Institute for Productivity.
Dr. Levy genealogical research includes families in Latvia, Belarus and Israel. She is a descendant of the Don Yechia family, one of the ancient families descended from King
David. She is the Convener of the Ludza ( Lutzin) Latvia Web site and has twice received British Council Awards for research in UK universities. She is a Lieutenant Colonel in the Israel Defense Forces and head of the section at the EDP Centre.
Education: Ph.D. Information Systems. London School of Economics and
Political Science, London, UK.
M.Sc. Information Systems. Leon Recanati Graduate School of Business
Administration, Tel Aviv University, Israel.
B.Sc. Economics. Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel.
Professor Arthur Menton
Arthur F. Menton has had a long and distinguished
career as engineer, writer, executive, and university
professor. He has applied his scientific and
operations research background to many of the major
concerns confronting contemporary society: foreign and
military policy, transportation, urban and regional
planning, resource analysis and allocation, and
ecological strategies. His engineering and physics
endeavors included space exploration, weapons systems
development, infrared technology, ultra-high vacuum
techniques, and structural analysis. Prof. Menton has
been in the management of several corporations and has
been actively involved in civic and religious affairs.
He received a Bachelor's and Master's of Mechanical
Engineering from City College of New York. After doing
research in solid state physics at Columbia
University, he pursued further graduate study at the
University of Pennsylvania and then studied for his
doctorate in Management Science at New York
University. He has taught at Cooper Union, State
University of New York, Polytechnic Institute of
Brooklyn and Long Island University. Through it all,
he has published extensively. His insightful essays
have won him awards for writing and editing and they
have been praised for their originality, penetrating
wit and candid style. Research into the genealogy of
the Charlap/Don Yahya family has led him into an
investigation of the Davidic lineage. This has
resulted in two books: THE BOOK OF DESTINY: TOLEDOT
CHARLAP and ANCILLA TO TOLEDOT CHARLAP.
Dr. Perets Mett
Perets Mett received a Ph.D. in Nuclear Physics at the University of Surrey.
He is currently engaged in constructing a descendants' tree for Rabbi
Yisroel Rottenberg, Av Beit Din of Magnuszew and Ger. This tree includes
numerous rabbinic personalities, including all Gerrer rebbes.
Gary Mokotoff
Gary Mokotoff is the first person to receive the Lifetime
Achievement Award from the International Association of
Jewish Genealogical Societies. He is a past president of
the IAJGS and co-owner of Avotaynu, Inc, renowned publisher
of works on Jewish genealogy. He is an author, lecturer
and teacher of Jewish genealogy and Eastern European research.
He is on the Board of Directors of the Federation Genealogical
Societies and Association of Professional Genealogists. www.avotaynu.com
Daniel Polakovic
Daniel Polakovic was born in Bratislava (formerly Pressburg), Slovak
Republic. He has a MA in Jewish and Cuneiform Studies from Charles
University in Prague. He is a historian and bibliographer of the Jewish
Museum in Prague. He publishes mainly in Judaica Bohemiae (Prague). He is
the author of Dov Chazak, a catalogue of Hebraica and Judaica books and
manuscripts of Bratislava's synagogue genizah. He has published the book A guide to the Boskovice (Boskowitz) synagogue (2002) as well as articles on the history of Moravian Jewry.
Rabbi David Shapiro
Rabbi David Shapiro attended major Yeshivot in the U.S. and Israel, namely the Yeshiva of Staten Island, Beth Medrash Elyon (Monsey, N.Y.), and Yeshivat Kamenitz (Jerusalem). He continued his studies in several kollelim, and received semicha from a prominent Jerusalem rabbi. For the past twenty five years he has been transcribing, editing, annotating and cataloguing rabbinical Hebrew manuscripts for publication, primarily for Torah research institutes including Machon Yerushalayim, Machon Ofeq, and Machon Mishnas Rebbe Aharon. He prepared (in collaboration with the late Rabbi Shmuel Gorr) a genealogical chart of the family of Rabbi Nachman of Breslav. It was published by the Breslov Research Institute as an appendix to Until the Mashiach, on Rabbi Nachman’s life, which Rabbi Shapiro edited. Since 1995 he has been an active participant on Jewishgen and the various SIGs, and has assisted in preparing the RAVSIG web page.
Rabbi Meir Wunder
Rabbi Meir Wunder was born in Haifa, Israel in 1934. He graduated from the Ponivesz
Yeshiva and Kollel, Bnei Brak. He was ordained as teacher, rabbi and rabbinic
attorney. He was the Director of Libraries in Israel’s Dan Region and
the South. For thirty years he was in charge of the Department of Legal Deposits
in the Jewish National and University Libraries. He is the author of The Encyclopedia
of the Galicia Sages (7 Volumes), bibliographies spreading over several decades,
books and research studies. He is a professional travel guide to Eastern Europe,
and a member of the Names Committee of the Jerusalem Municipality.
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