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Why Did Our Jewish Ancestors Leave a Great Place Like the Pale?

Jews had lived in what would become the Pale of Western Russia for centuries. In many ways they flourished there, creating diverse institutions and with a huge increase in population from about 1 million at the beginning of the 19th century to more than 5 million by the end of the 19th century. Then, between 1881 and 1914, more than 2 million left all that they had known for the West. This talk discusses how the Pale came to be, life in it, and why this mass migration occurred. It breaks the 120-year history of the Pale into periods of creation, confinement, repression, enlightenment, pogroms, and chaos. There is much more to the story than the horrific pogroms at the turn of the 20th century.

Hal Bookbinder is a retired information systems professional who continues to instruct business courses at the university level. He has been actively researching his genealogy for more than three decades, identifying more than 4,000 relatives and tracing two lines to the mid-1700s in modern Ukraine. Hal has written and spoken on border changes, migration, citizenship, safe computing, and unique research techniques. He is a past president of the JGS of Los Angeles and of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies. Hal publishes a series of monthly articles on safe computing which are freely available at http://www.tinyurl.com/SafeComputingArticles. He and his wife, Marci, were raised in the Catskills of New York State and now live in the Los Angeles area.

Jun 12, 2022 01:00 PM in Pacific Time (US and Canada)