Projects

I’ve initiated a number of research projects, primarily into topics in American Jewish history, and along the way, I’ve created a number of tools to enable me to compile and share my findings.  Here are some of the highlights:

Homestead Hebrews

A deep look into the former Jewish community of Homestead, PA, the most famous steel town in the U.S. Combining intensive research with innovative technology, this project demonstrates possibilities in rediscovering “lost” history.

Homestead Hebrew Data

I created this custom software platform to manage the ten of thousands of records I’ve collected about Homestead’s thousands of former Jewish residents and businessmen.

Homestead Hebrew Maps

Using historical city directories and Sanborn maps, this interactive map visualizes the changing residential patterns of the Jewish community in Homestead from 1890-1945.

Signature Tablecloths

I’m collecting examples of signature tablecloths, mid-20th century fundraisers in which individuals donated to have names embroidered on a tablecloth used at the organization’s dinners.

Census Studies

A trio of studies, in which I close-read individual enumeration districts within the U.S. federal census, reveals surprising discoveries about the reliability of the census itself.

Jewish Roots in Ukraine

In April 2022 I organized a workshop, featuring top Jewish genealogists, that raised $30,000 from more than 500 registrants to benefit Ukrainians.

Chinese Laundrymen

I spent 7 years collecting every trace I could find of Homestead’s Chinese laundrymen in order to explain why these men could never form a community as other immigrants did.

Pinkas Project

A collaborative effort I launched to build an online catalog of records from immigrant Jewish communal organizations. These little-known records are beautiful to look at and invaluable for family and local historians.

Treelines.com

Winner of the RootsTech Developer Challenge, Treelines is an innovative web application I created to help genealogists write and share the stories that we uncover in our trees.

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