Hal is a retired information systems professional and university instructor. He has been researching his genealogy for more than three decades, identifying over 4,000 relatives and tracing two lines to the mid-1700s in modern Ukraine. Hal is a past president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS). He publishes a series of monthly articles on safe computing which are freely available at https://www.tinyurl.com/SafeComputingArticles. He and his wife, Marci, were raised in the Catskills during the height of the “Borsht Belt”. After attending New York University and a four-year stint in the US Air Force, they settled in the Los Angeles area. In 2018, he made a journey to Ukraine, visiting various areas of the former Volhynia and Podolia where his family had lived for hundreds of years.

During the active years of Ellis Island, 83,000 ship arrivals were recorded. Between 1880 and 1914 about two million Jewish immigrants arrived from Europe, with most passing through Ellis Island. Until the age of flight, immigrants arrived by sea, first on sailing ships and after the middle of the 19th Century, on steamships. This presentation focuses on the ships on which our ancestors traveled, discussing the shift from sail to steam and the governmental regulations which made ship travel safer and more humane. It will address the experience of our ancestors in getting to the port of embarkation, being processed for passage, and their shipboard experience, as well as the cost and duration of the voyage. Finally, it will address several stubborn myths related to our ancestors' immigration.