This site has been constructed primarily to aid  genealogists researching their Jewish roots in Chicagoland. We are blessed to have the JewishGen® website, which serves the global Jewish community and should be the primary source for Jewish genealogists.  

"Guide to Jewish Genealogy in Chicagoland" has been constructed as a community resource. Please help to keep this site up-to-date by sending us additions/corrections.  For an explanation of how to use this site, click Help.

The site went into beta testing in March 2004 and became generally available later that year. The original idea for it came after Mike Karsen attended the International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in London in July 2001. The conference organizers distributed a booklet titled A Beginner's Guide to Jewish Genealogy in Great Britain. Mike thought it would be a great idea to have a similar book for Chicago and started to write one. He soon learned that resource books had been written for New York by Estelle M. Gusik and for Boston by Warren Blatt. Mike consulted with both of them and learned that it was a long and difficult project to get the book written and published. He also reviewed their books and thanks them for ideas for the Chicago book.

After about a year, Mike realized that genealogy resources are changing at an accelerating rate, and the Internet was beginning to offer some new resources that are very important to genealogical research. The book project thus evolved into an online resource now called "Guide to Jewish Genealogy in Chicagoland." He also included many resources which were not physically in Chicagoland but were accessible to Chicago researchers because of the ubiquity of the Internet. These locations have been included in the section called "Beyond Chicagoland."

We hope this site helps individuals with a Jewish Chicago connection to research their ancestors. Of course the ultimate goal is share the results of this research with family.

This site has been made available with the following disclaimers.