Winter/spring 2024 Lectures Series With Dr. Alexander Beider

 

We are excited to announce an upcoming lecture series featuring the eminent scholar Dr. Alexander Beider! This engaging series promises to be an enlightening journey into the rich tapestry of Jewish history, genealogy, and linguistic heritage.

Dates: 01/31, 02/28, 03/27, 05/01, 05/29, 06/19 and 06/26.

Time: All lectures will take place on Wednesday afternoons, at 2:00 PM ET

Location: Via Zoom – Join us from the comfort of your home!

Registration/Cost: Free with a suggested donation. To register for the January 31st program, please click here. 

Featured Lectures:

• January 31, 2024: Jews of the Land of Israel before the First Aliyah: Their Names & History
• February 28, 2024: Sephardic names in the Ottoman Empire as traces of the history of Judeo-Spanish / Ladino
• March 27th, 2024: Jewish Names in Medieval Spain and Portugal
• May 1st, 2024: Jews of Syria, Iraq, and Egypt: Their Names & History
• May 29th, 2024: Jews of Crimea and Georgia: Their Names & History
• June 19th, 2024: Karaites of Various Countries: Their Names & History
• June 26th, 2024: Romaniote Jews: Their Names & History

About Dr. Alexander Beider: Alexander Beider was born in Moscow in 1963. He studied mathematics and theoretical physics in Moscow Institute of Physics and Technology from which he received a PhD in applied mathematics (1989). Since 1990, he lives with his family in Paris, France. In 2000, he received his second PhD, this time in the domain of Jewish studies, from Sorbonne. Beider uses onomastics and linguistics as tools allowing to unravel the history of the Jewish people. He has written a series of reference books dealing with the etymology of Jewish surnames, all published by Avotaynu Inc. They include: A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Russian Empire (1993, 2nd revised edition in 2008), Jewish Surnames in Prague (15th-18th centuries) (1994), A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from the Kingdom of Poland (1996), A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Galicia (2004), A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Maghreb, Gibraltar, and Malta (2017), and A Dictionary of Jewish Surnames from Italy, France and “Portuguese” Communities (2019). His Dictionary of Ashkenazic Given Names (2001) is the reference study in the domain of traditional Yiddish first names. Origins of Yiddish Dialects (Oxford University Press, 2015) synthesizes scholarship on the subject for the half century since the publication of Max Weinreich’s “History of the Yiddish Language” (1973) and, according to certain critics, represents a comprehensive and convincing revision of its esteemed predecessor, no less than a new standard work in the domain. Beider is also the designer of the linguistic part of the Beider-Morse Phonetic Matching method of computer-based searches for equivalent surnames.