CLIMBING THE FAMILY TREE
Whether you’re a professional genealogist or simply attempting to put together a family tree, the 26th annual International Conference on Jewish Genealogy has something for everyone, with lectures, tours, events, performances and hands-on computer workshops. Presented by the Jewish Genealogical Society, the event, which is being held from August 13 through 18 in New York City at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, features some 280 programs in 23 subject categories led by an impressive list of authors, professors and other experts in the field. The program includes a wide range of topics, such as basics on utilizing the Internet in researching family history, the history of immigration in North America, genealogical resources for researching Jews with tuberculosis, the migration of Jews to Eastern and Central Europe, finding relatives in Israel, methods used in discovering unknown family surnames and non-European research in such locations as India and China. A number of presentations will be focused on Sephardic history, which has, in the past, often been neglected at genealogy conferences. Walking tours of New York’s Lower East Side and performances of klezmer and Yiddish music are also included.
The roster of presenters features Jeffrey Malka, author of “Sephardic Genealogy: Discovering your Sephardic Ancestors and their World” (Avotaynu, 2002); Zalmen Mlotek, executive director of the Folksbiene Yiddish Theatre; Dmitriy Margulis, founder of the United Association of East European Jewry, and Mark Halpern, president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia.
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