The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) registered two “firsts” when it conferred its Lifetime Achievement Award on Jerusalemite Mathilde Tagger at the 26th annual IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy in Salt Lake City, July 22, 2007. The first non-North American recipient, Tagger also is the first person honored for work on Sephardic genealogy:

“In recognition of her huge impact on the advancement of Sephardic Jewish genealogy

• through her personal research, including translations, transliterations and indexing
• through the publication of her book Guidebook for Sephardic and Oriental Genealogical Sources in Israel, published by Avotaynu
• through her numerous scholarly publications
• through her unstinting assistance to individual researchers.”

We talked to Tagger recently about her efforts in this area. Like many others, she became a genealogist almost by accident. Following the 1986 death of her maternal grandmother, family members asked Tagger to prepare a family tree so that the family history would not be lost to future generations. As she laughingly recalls, in her ignorance Tagger assumed that the task would take about two weeks. Instead, the research lasted four years and took her to Manisa, Turkey, her Gomel grandmother’s birth place, and from there to Livourno, Italy; to Spain; Algeria; Morocco; France; Montevideo, Uruguay; Los Angles; and ultimately Israel. Tagger, born in Tangier, Morocco, emigrated to Israel in March 1949. Her husband was born in Bulgaria, another locus of the Sephardic Diaspora. As far as Tagger knew, her maiden name was Cohen. Only after the death of her mother in 1993 did she learn that it was in fact Cohen Scali, Scali pointing to the fact that the family was from Sicily.

Tagger soon discovered that the usual genealogical resources—census, birth, marriage and death records—were missing in most of the places that her research took her, an experience she learned was common to most Sephardic genealogists. At the same time, she realized that a family history researcher fluent in several languages and knowledgeable about various styles of handwriting could glean considerable information from secondary sources. Tagger speaks, reads and writes French (her mother tongue), Hebrew, English and Ladino; reads and understands Spanish and Portuguese; speaks Bulgarian; and is familiar with basic oral Arabic.

Her Thoughts on Genealogical Research

Tagger also has given considerable thought to the field of Jewish genealogy in general. She recognizes that the discipline of Jewish genealogy and the research conducted in the field share theory, methodology and research tools with an interdisciplinary approach applicable to every part of the Jewish Diaspora, but the historical development of research in the field differs according to the geographical areas in which Jews concentrated. As she sees it, one can identify three different centers of large concentrations of Jews. Each has produced genealogical resources of different and varying levels of quality.

The first large concentration is the Jews in countries where Muslim culture and religion dominated. They are the Jews who inherited the culture of the Babylonian center and consist of Jews from Iraq, Kurdistan, Iran, Yemen and, to some extent, the Jews of Egypt and Syria. Also included are the Jews of the Muslim republics of the former USSR and surrounding areas.

The second large concentration is the Jews of Spain and North Africa, who carried with them to every country in which they settled the legacy of persecutions and expulsions, along with the important cultural traditions of the great centers of Spain and North Africa. Included are those who originated in Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia and Libya, as well as those who lived in other countries under Ottoman rule—Greece, Bulgaria, Turkey, Palestine and some of the Jews from Egypt, Syria and South America.

The third large concentration is that of the Ashkenazic Jews, originally from Europe, but now scattered all over the world.

With the expertise she accumulated, Tagger decided to devote her efforts to advancing the still-nascent field of Sephardic genealogical research, the world of the first two groups described above. She has expert knowledge of the Sephardic Jewish communities throughout the world and their various cultural characteristics. Tagger also maintains excellent and productive relations with central figures of this Diaspora. Her primary focus has been to annotate indexes and bibliographies of all the sources she has encountered in her research. Already accessible on the Internet at <www.sephardicstudies.org/entrance.html> are some 60 files with thousands of names culled from references from the far corners of the Sephardic Diaspora.

In 2006, AVOTAYNU published the Guidebook for Sephardic and Oriental Jewish Sources in Israel, written jointly by Tagger and Yitzchak Kerem. As she tells it, the authors had a twofold purpose. One was to advance Sephardic genealogical research; the second was to make the wider public aware of the wealth of such information available in Israel. The Guidebook received honorable mention for excellence from the Association of Jewish Libraries.

Tagger emphasizes her special appreciation to the Israel Genealogical Society (IGS) for its support in her endeavors. The IGS made it possible for her to establish the world’s first Sephardic Special Interest Group (SIG) in 1997 and, with the backing of the IGS, also found expression in the 1994 IAJGS conference held in Jerusalem, where some 30 percent of the presentations dealt with Sephardic genealogy, a record not surpassed by any other conference. Tagger directed the special projects that the IGS conducted for the 2004 conference and personally chaired more than half of them. As noted above, most of the fruits of Tagger’s research is accessible on the web at <www.sephardicstudies.org/entrance.html>. Other projects connected with Eretz Yisrael that Tagger has organized may be found at <www.isragen.org.il/eiri/index.html>.

Tagger served as chief librarian of the Atmospheric Sciences Department at Hebrew University for 20 years and also worked for 10 years as scientific and technological information counselor at the Ministry of Science and Development. She holds a degree in meteorology from L’Ecole Nationale de Meteorologie in Paris and a master’s degree in library and information sciences from the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Tagger is a founding member of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and the Paul Jacobi Center, and remains deeply involved in the activities of the Israel Genealogical Society, where she exhibits her remarkable abilities to kindle, motivate and coordinate the work of people from diverse backgrounds who willingly and voluntarily join in the various projects under her direction. An energetic, gracious and modest woman, Tagger believes that her award should also go to Dr. Jeffrey Malka, who likewise has contributed a great deal to the furtherance of Sephardic genealogy.