Putting Your Family in Context: The History of Ukraine’s Jews

The historical background on an important corner of European Jewry.

Tammy Hepps will give an overview to the history of the region that has since 1991 comprised the country of Ukraine. She will explain the centuries of competition between powerful empires to dominate this region and the effects of this competition on the ethnic minorities caught in the middle. Within this context she will situate the experiences of your ancestors—both the revolutions in Jewish thought and practice they innovated, as well as the discrimination and violence that led to their mass emigration.

This program is possible through the generous support of the William M. Lowenstein Genealogical Research Endowment Fund of the Jewish Community Foundation.

Registration

“Putting Your Family in Context: The History of Ukraine’s Jews” is a collaboration between the Jewish Genealogy Society of Pittsburgh and the Rauh Jewish Archives at the Heinz History Center. Please register online. The program is free for JGS-Pittsburgh members and $5 for the general public. To become a member of the JGS-Pittsburgh and receive a free membership code for this program, please visit its website.

This program will be recorded and made available to current JGS-Pittsburgh members.

Bio

Tammy Hepps is a historian of the Jewish experience in Western Pennsylvania. She combines in-depth historical research with techniques from technology and genealogy to reconstruct overlooked stories from the past in an engaging way. She has presented her findings around the world, including the Library of Congress and the International Jewish Genealogy Conference in Jerusalem. Her best-known research is into the history of the Jewish community in the former steel-making center of Homestead, PA (see HomesteadHebrews.com). Tammy earned her AB in computer science from Harvard and is a Wexner Heritage Fellow.