Patrick Monson and Professor Thom Edlund, Cataloging

I am from Bountiful, Utah. I am majoring in Family History-Genealogy. During the 2011 Spring Term, I worked at the Estonian Historical Archives in Tartu, Estonia, and the Estonian Jewish Museum in Tallinn, Estonia. At the Archives, my major responsibility was to translate Hebrew documents into Estonian. I also transliterated Yiddish documents. At the Museum, I gave tours to visitors (mostly Jewish tourists from the U.S. and Israel), teaching them about the history and culture of Estonia’s Jews. At both the Archives and Museum, I composed a Guide to Estonian Jewish Genealogical Research, which is available at the Museum’s website, http://www.eja.pri.ee. I focused on researching the Blumberg family, a Jewish family from Estonia, to learn how to research Estonian Jews. I will continue to work on the guide for the coming weeks and months as I finish my Bachelor’s degree. I am excited that Avotaynu, a Jewish genealogical publishing company, suggested the possibility of publishing the guide.

The experience affected me personally in many ways. I learned that preparation pays off; taking courses relating to Jewish, East European, and German family history and history helped me work efficiently and productively. At the same time, there were many things that I could not have done by myself. I learned that teamwork and cooperation can lead to results more quickly than can working alone, and the results are usually better. I was able to acquire much material and knowledge that will help me to complete my Bachelor’s degree in family history, emphasizing Jewish and East European research.

Regarding my professional goals, I want to become a professor of Modern Hebrew. As I continue to study and teach Hebrew, I will be able to make connections between the Hebrew language and Jewish history and culture, which are intimately intertwined. Because about eighty-five percent of Jews lived in Eastern Europe until the 1900s, Jewish history permeates Eastern Europe, including Estonia. This internship helped me to understand Jewish history and culture in a way that I could not have without travelling to Estonia.

A two-week trip through Holland, France, and Spain also contributed to this understanding. European museums, archives, and other institutions house many documents and artifacts relating to Jewish history and culture, which developed and thrived in Europe for the last several centuries. Most of today’s Jewish population has since transferred to other parts of the world, especially Israel and the U.S., but Jewish culture and the Hebrew language bear many traces of Europe even today. It was here that the Jewish people preserved the Hebrew language and revived it only within the last century and a half. I am very thankful for the opportunity I had to study and research in Europe, and I will use the experience as a springboard to further my educational goals and to teach others.