Given names have a much longer history than surnames in Jewish history and often contain significant family history due to naming patterns. So how do you work back to their original name to find them in their ancestral town and how do you identify the names they took in the country to which they immigrated? Then how do you use that information to build out your tree? Could that name be hiding in plain sight? Join Susan in an exploration of the nuances of Jewish given names, how to find them, trace them, and use them to expand your genealogy. She will present sources of information and methods in a variety of cases to make sense of this often-puzzling subject!

Susan Weinberg is an artist, author, researcher, and frequent speaker on genealogy topics. Drawing on her long career in finance, she often applies spreadsheets as an analytic tool in her genealogy research. Her creative artwork often involves storytelling and frequently explores family history themes. Susan is the president of the Minnesota Jewish Genealogical Society (MNJGS) and serves on the board of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) and the Jewish Historical Society of the Upper Midwest (JHSUM). She developed the Jewish Identity and Legacy Project, an oral history project with elders, then authored the book We Spoke Jewish: A Legacy in Stories that includes oral history, artwork, and history on three groups of Jewish immigrants who spanned the 1900s. Susan has created and manages websites for several ancestral towns. She writes frequently for publications on genealogy topics and does genealogy research for clients around the world.