At an ever-increasing pace, creators of genealogically useful databases are posting them on the Internet—and scattering them in a variety of different locations. Some may be found on the website of a Jewish genealogical society; others are on JewishGen; still […]
About Sallyann Sack-Pikus
Announcing Avotaynu Online!
We are pleased to announce the founding of Avotaynu Online, an exciting new venture intended to stimulate collaboration among genealogists and historians in all its forms, with a particular focus on Jewish genealogy. This includes coverage of conferences and meetings, DNA […]
Genealogical Resources at the U.S. National Archives
Despite the plethora of online genealogical resources available today, not all information is online, and sometimes essential and valuable bits of data still can be found only in archives and libraries. The U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) and […]
Book Review: Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia, by Benjamin Nathans
Beyond the Pale: The Jewish Encounter with Late Imperial Russia, by Benjamin Nathans, Berkeley: University of California Press, 2002. xvii + 424 pp. $26.95. At a recent genealogy society meeting, someone commented that her ancestor had lived in St. Petersburg […]
Contemporary Topics in Genealogy: A Conversation with Professor Thomas Jones
Professor Thomas W. Jones, CG, CGL, FASG, was a recent guest on Tracing Your Family Roots, a cable television show hosted by Arline Sachs and Sallyann Amdur Sack-Pikus (www.tracingroots.nova.edu). The discussion, largely reproduced here, focuses on some major issues in […]
The Value of Creating a Family Name Website
Why create a genealogy website? All genealogists researching an uncommon family name should make use of modern communication medium and display their research on a public website. This is our emphatic conclusion two-plus years after publishing the Amdur family website […]
Projects Undertaken by Jewish Genealogical Societies
Most genealogy societies undertake projects of one sort or another—and try to publicize them. The problem is that we genealogists tend to suffer from stimulus overload and cannot always remember what we have read or heard about this or that […]
Just How Were Passenger Manifests Created?
As is well known, vast numbers of Jews left Eastern Europe around the turn of the 20th century, destined primarily for the United States—but also for South Africa, Palestine, Argentina, and elsewhere. The ships that carried them also brought passenger […]
Jewish Labor Committee’s Holocaust-Era Archives
Unknown to most genealogists, Jewish Labor Committee documents in the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives in New York University’s Tamimet Library represent a remarkable cache of genealogically rich Holocaust-era records. Estelle Guzik devotes two lines to the collection in her […]
Gleanings from a Week in Israel
On the surface, Jerusalem seemed relatively calm the first week in December. It was unseasonably warm; flowers were blooming, and the rebuilding of the famous Hurva Synagogue in the Old City (destroyed by the Jordanians during the War […]
What We Learned in Bad Arolsen, by Sallyann Sack, Editor and Gary Mokotoff, Publisher
Jewish genealogists have known of the International Tracing Service (ITS) in Bad Arolsen, Germany, ever since Daniel Rottenberg and Arthur Kurzweil published their seminal “to-do” books more than 30 years ago.1 But we did not know much, because the institution […]
Susan King Steps Down as JewishGen Director; Warren Blatt Assumes Leadership
JewishGen, the preeminent Jewish genealogical website <www.jewishgen.org>, has had a change in leadership. Susan E. King, the ebullient founder and director of JewishGen, relinquished the reins effective March 31, 2008. Warren Blatt, JewishGen’s vice-president and editor-in-chief since 2004, has taken […]
No Good Deed Goes Unpunished
The well-known saying, “No good deed goes unpunished,” may fairly be applied now to the monumental accomplishment of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum (USHMM) in bringing the records of the International Tracing Service (ITS) of the International Committee of the […]
Israel Report, Spring 2007
No traces of the Second Lebanese War were apparent in early March, neither down by the Port of Haifa, nor anywhere in the stunning vistas surrounding Tzippori, an archeological park in the lower Galilee. Tzippori is the place where Rabbi […]
Collaborative Trees
Until recently, we genealogists began by building our own individual family trees. We started with our parents, siblings, children, spouses and continued to fill in as much as we could. When we reached a branch where we did not know […]