Stephen Morse Lecture Series and Workshop

Sun 10 Oct, 9 am-4 pm. Robert Loup Jewish Community Center, 350 Dahlia, Denver. Naomi Johnson, 970-330-6556. $40.00. Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado - [website][email][events]

$40.00 covers all lectures, kosher lunch and a year's membership to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Colorado. Steven Morse is a world renown genealogist, creator of the One-Step Website for which he has received both the Outstanding Contribution Award and the Lifetime Achievement Award from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies and the Award of Merit from the National Genealogical Society. His lectures promise to be educational, informative and entertaining.

Deadline to register is October 1st.

October 10th Schedule:
Registration - 9:00 am.

9:30 AM – 10:45 AM “Jewish Calendar Demystified” The Jewish calendar is important to genealogists because Jewish vital records use the Jewish dates. This includes not only birth, marriage, and death certificates, but tombstone inscriptions as well. The Jewish calendar is both a solar and lunar calendar, with the months being synchronized to the moon and years to the sun. As such, the rules governing the calendar can be a bit daunting. This talk presents the calendar in an easy-to-understand -- and sometimes tongue-in-cheek -- fashion. The aim is not to make you an expert in computing Jewish dates (we have programs that do that) but rather to give you an appreciation for what's involved in such calculations. Topics covered include the 19-year calendar cycle, the origin of time, errors in the Jewish and secular calendars, and the use of Hebrew letters to represent dates on tombstones.

11 -12:15 PM “From DNA to Genetic Genealogy: Everything You Wanted to Know but Were Afraid to Ask”

The study of genetics that started with Gregor Mendel's pea experiments in 1865 has now entered the genealogy field with Megan Smolenyak's coining of the term "genetealogy" in 2000. To understand the genealogical aspects requires an understanding of some of the basic concepts. This talk introduces genes, chromosomes, and DNA, and goes on to show how DNA is inherited. That knowledge of inheritance can be used for finding relatives you didn't know you had, learning about your very distant ancestors and the route they traveled, and determining if you are a Jewish high priest (Kohan).

1:00 PM – 2:45 PM “A Potpourri of Genealogical Search Tools”

The One-Step website started out as an aid for finding passengers in the Ellis Island database. Shortly afterwards it was expanded to help with searching in the 1930 census. Over the years it has continued to evolve and today includes about 200 web-based tools divided into 16 separate categories ranging from genealogical searches to astronomical calculations to last-minute bidding on E-bay. This presentation will describe the range of tools available and give the highlights of each one.

3:00 PM – 3:45 PM “A Hodgepodge of Lesser-Known Gems”

This is a sequel to the Potpourri proceeding lecture. There are too many utilities on the One-Step website to be covered in a single talk, so many of them found their way to the cutting room floor when the Potpourri talk was being edited. However several of those are quite useful. This talk describes those gems that you might not otherwise be aware of. They range from problems with genealogical searches to problems with identity theft to problems with DNA.