Tuesday and Wednesday, August 14-15 – Middlesex County
The American Jewish Experience Lecture Series, presented by the Jewish Historical Society of Central Jersey, continues for its 21st consecutive year with a presentation by Dr. Nathan Reiss entitled, "Exploring My Family's Roots in Germany."
Dr. Reiss has traveled to Germany a number of times to collect genealogical information about his ancestors and to explore the environment in which they lived. He was born in New York, shortly after his parents immigrated to the U.S. from Nazi Germany. Because his family spoke mostly German at home, he has a good command of the language and has been able to use German archives, converse with local people, visit Jewish cemeteries, etc. Over the years he has exchanged information with numerous German archivists and historians pertaining to Jewish life there.
The lecture will be held on Tuesday, August 14th, at 10:00 a.m. at Jewish Family Services, 52 Concordia Shopping Center, Monroe Township.
Nathan Reiss was born in New York City and grew up in the Bronx. He graduated from Stuyvesant High School and from the City College of New York, with a B.S. degree in Meteorology. After graduation he entered the U.S. Air Force, serving as a Weather Officer in Florida, and in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam conflict. He then served as commander of a military weather unit in Mobile, Alabama.
Following his military service, he received an M.S. degree from Texas A&M University and a Ph.D. degree from New York University, both in meteorology. He then joined the faculty of the Department of Meteorology at Rutgers University, where he served as a Professor, as Graduate Program Director and, for ten years, as Department Chair. He retired in 1997. After his retirement, he served for five years as President of Congregation Etz Ahaim in Highland Park, and for more than ten years as President of the Jewish Historical Society of Central Jersey. In his retirement, he spent much of his time on researching his family's history. In 2005 he published a book of over 1,000 pages documenting his family's history.
The lecture will be repeated on Wednesday, August 15th, at 10:30 a.m. at the Highland Park Conservative Temple, 201 South 3rd Avenue, Highland Park. Both lectures are open to the public. A donation of $2.00 is requested at the door. For more information call the JHSCJ office at 732-249-4894 or email at INFO.JHSCJ@gmail.com. 
