Intro to Jewish Genealogy
Everything You Need to Build Your Family Tree
4 Thursdays at 7:00 p.m. ET
Aug. 7 - 28
All classes will be recorded and sent to registrants.
Make this the year you finally construct your Jewish family tree!
Expert researcher Nolan Altman, the director of data at JewishGen — one of the largest Jewish genealogy databases in the world — has teamed up with My Jewish Learning to help you get started on your journey back in time.
In this new four-part online course, you will cover the following topics:
- Using actual historical documents and photos from Nolan’s family history as a guide, you’ll learn the best ways to start gathering information about your family, through vital records, oral histories, naming patterns, census records and more.
- Headstone inscriptions provide insight into patronymic naming patterns and can be an enormously helpful tool in genealogical research. Nolan will go through an actual case study using headstone inscriptions and will show participants online resources to help find headstone information worldwide. He’ll also explain the meaning of symbols that you will find on stones, and even if you can’t read Hebrew, he'll explain how you can understand the inscriptions.
- It’s not unusual to hear from people that lost relatives and friends due to the Holocaust that there are no records available for them to find. Well, that isn’t always true. With more and more archival files undergoing indexing projects, there are a significant number of resources that you should be aware of. As coordinator for JewishGen’s Holocaust Database, Nolan will show you what is available through the JewishGen site and at other Holocaust resources.
Each registrant will get to keep recordings of each class session so you can refer back to them as you research on your own.
So let’s get you digging!
Have questions about the course? Email [email protected]
Purchases of this course are non-refundable.
About Your Teacher
Nolan Altman is currently JewishGen’s director of data acquisition and coordinator for JewishGen’s Holocaust, JOWBR (Burial Registry), and Memorials & Plaques databases. He is also a past president and current board member for the Jewish Genealogy Society of Long Island (JGSLI) in New York. In 2021, Nolan was recognized by the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) with their Lifetime Achievement Award. In addition, the organization’s volunteer award was renamed in his honor, the “Nolan Altman IAJGS Volunteer of the Year Award.” Nolan continues to write articles and present to social groups and adult education classes on genealogical topics.
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About My Jewish Learning
My Jewish Learning is the internet's leading pluralistic Jewish education resource. We offer thousands of articles, videos, live classes and other resources to help you navigate all aspects of Judaism and Jewish life — from Jewish ritual and practice to texts to history and culture.
My Jewish Learning is geared toward all backgrounds and levels of knowledge and is a part of 70 Faces Media, the largest Jewish digital media organization in North America.