In the past years, a wealth of 18th and 19th century Jewish genealogical resources have become available for Bohemia, the western half of Czechia (the new name for the Czech Republic, formerly Czechoslovakia). As a result, a large number of […]
The Bohemian Origins of Justice Louis Brandeis
On the 100th anniversary of his appointment as the first Jewish Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court, the Jewish Journal devoted four pages to the towering figure in American legal history, Louis D. Brandeis, recounting his unprecedented advocacy for free speech, […]
Personal Journeys: Leopold Goldstein, Rabbi or Not?
Last July marked what is commonly recognized as the centennial of the start of the First World War. What parts, if any, did my family play during that war? From my research, the only person who seemingly played a noteworthy […]
Personal Journeys: A Leaf in the Genealogy Tree, by Madeleine Isenberg
I’ve been working on my family tree for about 20 years now and helping others find their roots, branches, or leaves in theirs somewhat less than that. My work, while it is something of a hobby, is quite intense. Now […]
Personal Journeys: Searching for Stones, by Madeleine Isenberg
No matter how much you ask people for their help, there are times you just have to do it all yourself. Take my quest which became a hunt for stones, to find more about a distant relative whose name was […]
Jewish Families and the Habsburg Tobacco Monopoly
Tobacco was unknown in Europe before the discovery of America. However, unlike other imports from the Americas that enriched European cuisine and coffers, European society did not uniformly embrace tobacco. At first welcomed as a miracle drug and cherished as a […]
When Jews Could Not Marry: Forbidden Marriages in 18th- and 19th-Century Bohemia
Bohemia now constitutes the western and central part of the Czech Republic and includes Prague. My grandfather, Hugo König (later King), came with his parents to the United States from Bohemia as an infant in the 1860s. My wife, Esther, […]
The Jews of Vienna and Their Moravian Hometowns
The marriage records (1850–90) of Sechshaus/ Fünfhaus, a heavily Jewish neighborhood of Vienna, show that a significant number of Jewish families came to Vienna from several towns of southwestern and central Moravia. Nikolsburg (Mikulov) is the most frequently mentioned town, […]
A 180th Birthday Celebration
In 1828, in the small South Bohemian town of Ckyne, a businessman offered to build a new synagogue for the Jewish community if they would sell him the land on which their shul (synagogue) stood. The community agreed, and the […]
Accessing Archival Sources: Project Bohemia, Moravia, and Silesia Judaica
Genealogical research does not always end with the compilation of a family tree. The desire for a colorfully illustrated tree of life often inspires the dream of putting specific faces to the names one has found, investigating more closely the […]
Czech Archival Sources: History of the Jews in the Czech Lands
The following article is an adaptation of a lecture given at the 28th International Conference on Jewish Genealogy held in Chicago in August, 2008—Ed. The political and social changes that occurred in the Czech Republic after November 1989 opened access […]