Colorado: Jewish genealogy workshop, April 26

Colorado residents have an opportunity to attend the seventh annual Introduction to Jewish Genealogy Workshop presented by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado (JGSCO), on Sunday, April 26.

This event, which will run from 1-5pm at B'nai Havurah, is aimed at beginning family historians or those not aware of recent advances in the field, such as DNA, documenting Holocaust victims and survivors and tracing name changes. The hands-on workshop will cover Internet databases, unique Jewish resources and organization information.

Leading the workshop is Ellen Shindelman Kowitt, who facilitated the Jewish Family Tree Initiative in Boulder this year and lectured at Limmud Colorado. A former director of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and past president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington, DC. she was the first JewishGen ShtetlSchlepper group leader for ancestral trips to Ukraine. She is also a contributor to the International Jewish Graveyard Rabbit.

JGSCO president Rita Jo Tensley says, “Researching Jewish ancestry is a challenge with many languages, countries, and Jewish traditions to navigate. Many records exist, and it’s reasonable to find them if you know where to look."

The fee is $18, including a book - “Getting Started in Jewish Genealogy” by Gary Mokotoff and Warren Blatt - and other materials, and a 2009 JGSCO membership. For information, email Kowitt.

JGSCO is the only Jewish genealogy society in Colorado, and with the exception of Salt Lake City, Utah (nine hours away), there is no other JGS in Wyoming, New Mexico, Kansas, Iowa, Nebraska, the Dakotas, Montana, Idaho, Oklahoma or western Texas.

Founded in 1995, the non-profit society seeks to attain its objectives by providing the community with resources to research Jewish family history, documenting and maintaining the history of the Jewish people, assisting individuals with connecting to their Jewish families, and providing a forum and environment for networking and support.

JGSCO received the 2003 IAJGS Malcolm Stern Grant for creating the online surname indexing project of 1904-1954 patient records of the Jewish Consumptives Relief Society housed at the University of Denver's Beck Archives .

It received Rose Community Foundation partial funding in 2008-2009 to create the recently completed Jewish Family Tree Initiative (JFTI), deemed a successful program for increasing membership and raising awareness in the Jewish community.

The society has indexed all Jewish gravestones in Colorado and uploaded the data to JOWBR at JewishGen. Currently, it is creating an index to late-1800s mohel (ritual circumciser) records and indexing Intermountain Jewish News obituaries.