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RESEARCH INTO THE ORIGINS AND MIGRATIONS OF THE JEWISH PEOPLE

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Tips for Successful Research Collaboration

Filed Under Collaboration, Methods By Luther Tychonievich on November 7, 2016

Collaboration can improve productivity by combining resources and wisdom to obtain a greater amount of data and construct better-reasoned conclusions. However, collaboration is also a potential source of much anxiety, disagreement, and bad feeling. Significant research has looked at collaborative […]

An Attempt to Map “Jewish Geography”

Filed Under Methods By Madeleine Isenberg on November 7, 2016

If you happen to be Jewish, and at least culturally so, then you are probably already familiar with the concept of “Jewish Geography.” For those who are puzzled by what this is, you can search the internet for various definitions […]

The Role of the Jewish Genealogist In Medical and Genetic Family History

Filed Under DNA Studies, Methods By Stanley M. Diamond on September 1, 2016

Genealogists not only have been documenting their family histories, but have become the repository of vital medical and genetic history for their families. With the advent of widely available genetic testing, the giant leaps in disease identification, the dramatic growth […]

An Analytical Approach to Decoding Jewish Tombstones and Other Artifacts

Filed Under Crowdsourcing, Indexing Projects, Methods By Madeleine Isenberg on July 1, 2016

  Twenty years ago I accidentally discovered my own great-grandmother’s matzeva (tombstone) in a small cemetery in Kezmarok, Slovakia, a town by then devoid of living Jews. This astounding discovery spurred me to examine thousands of other abandoned, unvisited, ignored, […]

MyHeritage Launches Book Matching

Filed Under Collaboration, Crowdsourcing, Indexing Projects, Methods, Online Trees By Gahl Pratt Pardes on May 2, 2016

Books have always been one of the best resources for family history: they are often very organized and well-researched, and many of them were written by contemporaries of our ancestors. But for those of us who have spent countless hours […]

Announcing the Avotaynu DNA Project!

Filed Under DNA Studies, Methods By Adam Brown on December 3, 2015

DNA testing is an unparalleled genealogical resource, yet 15 years after the inception of genetic genealogy many genealogists and family historians remain unclear about its use. As a result, DNA testing is underutilized and potential knowledge goes unrealized. To remedy […]

Public Records Access: One Genealogist Can Make A Difference!

Filed Under Collaboration, Contributing Editors, Methods, United States By Jan Meisels Allen on September 5, 2015

This past Thursday, September 3, 2015, a legal petition was filed at the Supreme Court of the State of New York, County of New York. Brooke Schreier Ganz and ReclaimTheRecords.org [Petitioner] vs. New York City Department of Records and Information […]

The Jewish Surname Process in the Russian Empire and its Effect on Jewish Genealogy

Filed Under DNA Studies, Methods, Surnames By Jeffrey Mark Paull and Jeffrey Briskman on August 21, 2015

Did you ever wonder why your autosomal DNA and Y-DNA genetic match lists contain so many unfamiliar surnames? Did you ever question where the myriad number of bewildering and unexpected surnames, even among your close genetic matches, comes from? If […]

Privacy Issues with Online Trees

Filed Under Collaboration, Conferences, Methods, Online Trees By Randy Schoenberg on July 14, 2015

The right to privacy is a relatively recent legal construction, and one that is still evolving. As genealogists, people whose goal is to learn and write about personal details of other people, we often hear complaints about invasion of privacy. […]

Census: A Primary Genealogy Tool Under Challenge

Filed Under Methods By Jan Meisels Allen on May 17, 2015

The Future of Census Records for Genealogists: Will Privacy and Cost Eliminate Them? Concerns about privacy and cost are threatening the detailed census records that we and prior generations of genealogists have relied upon as an essential tool in our […]

Ethical Wills: A Most Unusual Genealogical Source!

Filed Under Methods By Dorothy Dellar Kohanski (z"l) on May 2, 2015

Ethical Will “Found in the Briefcase of a Tsaddik”, Warsaw, 1845, described in this article. Courtesy of the National Library of Israel: Ethical wills are the culmination of a person’s spiritual heritage which he or she wishes to leave to […]

5 Steps To Finding and Interpreting Clues in a Family Photograph

Filed Under Methods By Ava Cohn on April 14, 2015

In an ideal world, a genealogist inherits the perfect family photograph — one in which relatives are thoughtfully posed in a well-lighted photography studio. Family members have passed down the photograph in pristine condition with the photographer’s imprint and logo clearly […]

A Brief History and Detailed Listing of the Jews of Tàrrega, Spain, Before and After the Black Death and Pogrom of 1348

Filed Under Academia, España, Indexing Projects, Methods By Maria Jose Surribas Camps on April 9, 2015

Maria Jose Surribas Camps The Jewish community or aljama of Tàrrega, on the Royal Road between Barcelona and Lleida, dates back to 1278 or earlier.[1] What follows is a description of that community from a genealogical perspective, from its earliest […]

Updated: Future Developments in Jewish Family History Research

Filed Under Collaboration, Crowdsourcing, Indexing Projects, Methods, Online Trees By Adam Brown on March 30, 2015

As amply documented by Avotaynu over the last three decades, members of the Jewish genealogical community have made important contributions to the field of online genealogy with innovations such as the Jewish Genealogical Family Finder, the Daitch-Mokotoff Soundex, JewishGen, and […]

5 Steps to Publishing a Family History

Filed Under Methods By Gary Mokotoff on March 25, 2015

So you want to publish your family history, but think you can’t do it yourself, and the costs are too high to produce the few copies needed?   In reality, it may be easy enough to accomplish the task, and a […]

Opinion: “To Define The Terms Is to Win the Argument:” How Genealogical Jargon Hinders Our Research

Filed Under Methods By Luther Tychonievich on March 23, 2015

How Research Happens “To define the terms is to win the argument.” I first heard that saying in my childhood, and it impressed me greatly; how could terms have such a large impact on success? As I have grown I have […]

Jewish Memoirs and Autobiography

Filed Under Methods By BIll Gladstone on October 1, 2010

People with good stories inside of them often find the drive and determination to get those stories out into the world. On the several occasions when I’ve enrolled in creative-writing or memoir-writing workshops, usually with the aim of finishing a particular […]

Using the Hebrew Calendar to Solve Date Discrepancies in Genealogical Records

Filed Under Methods By Avrohom A. Krauss on July 2, 2010

Genealogists concern themselves with names, dates, and places, but they can be located and understood only in terms of the context in which they existed. Accurate dates are indispensible for many reasons—the scheduling of religious observances and the discovery of […]

Genealogical Methodology Used in a Biographical Research Project

Filed Under Methods By Shalom Bronstein on July 1, 2010

  Genealogical methodology, combined with knowledge of the historical context in which a subject lived, are valuable tools when constructing biographies—especially when we know little about the personal lives of our (even otherwise well-known) subjects. Several approaches are useful in […]

Using Facebook as a Genealogy Tool

Filed Under Methods By Arnon Hershkovitz on April 1, 2010

 Ever since I undertook genealogy research more than a decade ago, I have used the Internet extensively as an enormous repository of sources and resources, an important means of communication, and a major facilitator for connecting with relatives, colleagues, and […]

Surprising Revelations

Filed Under Methods By Paul Stitelman on December 1, 2009

I have been interested in genealogy since I was a little boy, when my father would tell stories about the Old Country that he had heard from his father. His family came from the Ukraine, and there were many versions, […]

Sometimes a Simple Letter Can Find a Cousin

Filed Under Methods By Sandra Greenberg on December 1, 2009

     Sometimes we find long-lost relatives through essentially simple, but at the same time, roundabout ways. A case in point is my discovery of a third cousin, the great-granddaughter of Henry Heiman. Henry was the brother of my great-grandmother, […]

Proving One’s Judaism Through the Matrilineal Line

Filed Under Methods By Jan Berlfein Burns on December 1, 2009

When people ask how long I have been interested in genealogy and family history, I answer, “I was born this way.” I cannot remember ever not being interested in my ancestors. When I was in the fourth grade, I wrote […]

Jacobi Absolute Generations Scale

Filed Under Methods By Chanan Rapaport on December 1, 2009

  A major goal of the International Institute for Jewish Genealogy and Paul Jacobi Center is to develop research tools and technologies for the use of Jewish genealogists and social scientists generally. One such tool for which there has long […]

Contemporary Topics in Genealogy: A Conversation with Professor Thomas Jones

Filed Under Methods By Sallyann Sack-Pikus on December 1, 2009

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 […]

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