Jewish Genealogical Society of the Conejo Valley and Ventura County Meeting at Temple Adat Elohim

The Program: Branching Out from Sepharad – Solving a Converso Mystery

Sarina Roffé, author of Branching Out From Sepharad, outlines the history of Jews in Spain, the 1492 expulsion, their history in Syria, and their immigration
to the Americas. She will discuss the ancestry and significance of the Kassin rabbinic dynasty, which dates to the 12th century, and the 50-year leadership
of Chief Rabbi Jacob S. Kassin, who led the Syrian Jewish community in Brooklyn. At the same time, she solves a Converso mystery. Rabbi Kassin’s ancestors
arrived in Aleppo in 1540. Sarina solves the mystery of the time gap from 1492 to 1540.

Speaker: Sarina Roffé is a professional genealogist, editor of DOROT, and founder of the Sephardic Heritage Project. She is responsible for the translation and databasing of marriage and brit milah records on JewishGen. While on the Board of Governors of JewishGen, she acquired several databases of Sephardic records, including cemetery records from Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, and Argentina. She serves on the IAJGS Board of Directors and presents often at IAJGS conferences and has completed over a dozen genealogies. She is Cochair of the Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative, the first organization to document Brooklyn’s Jewish past.