UPDATE: UNFORTUNATELY, YAEL COHEN HAS HAD TO CANCEL HER TRIP TO SEATTLE AND WILL NOT SPEAK AT THE CONFERENCE.

Yael Cohen is the Chief Genealogical Researcher at the Institute for Sefardi and Anousim Studies (ISAS) at Netanya Academic College in Israel. She has been researching her own genealogical roots in Puerto Rico, the Canary Islands, Spain and Portugal since 2007.

She made Aliya to Israel in 2011, and in 2014 she helped to create the Genealogical Research Unit at the ISAS.

Yael, who has a background in medicine, uses the Institute’s extensive library of resources along with her own substantial library and genealogical database to help connect individuals to their Sephardic ancestors.

“Re-igniting the Spark:The Genealogical Research Unit at the Institute for Sefardi and Anousim Studies” (Mon-125), 12:30-1:15 P.M.

The Genealogical Research Unit (GRU) at the Institute for Sefardi and Anousim Studies at Netanya Academic College, Israel (the ISAS) was created in 2014 in response to the incredible phenomenon of the descendants of the forced converts (Anousim) in medieval Iberia awakening to their Jewish heritage.

The GRU assists applicants to find potentially Sephardic ancestry, thus also contributing to the body of historical research with our expanding genealogical database of Sephardim/Anousim familial lines.

This presentation will include the history and mission of the ISAS, and its Genealogical Research Unit: the submission and reporting process, a discussion of representative cases, and how our work is contributing to the current body of historical research.

Yael’s own family’s widespread genealogical tangents illustrates the challenges of the GRU’s work and why the work of the Genealogical Research Unit is so personally relevant to her.

Topic: Sephardic research