A Practical Guide to Jewish Cemeteries, by Nolan Menachemson. Hardcover, 248 pages + vii. Bergenfield, NJ: Avotaynu, 2007. As becomes apparent from the pages of this tome (pun intended), there is richness even in death. This is the most concise […]
Book Review: History of the Jewish Community of Schneidemühl 1641 to the Holocaust
History of the Jewish Community of Schneidemühl 1641 to the Holocaust, by Peter Simonstein Cullman. Hardcover, 390 pages + x. Bergenfield, New Jersey: Avotaynu, 2007. The title of the book really says it all. Peter Cullman has meticulously studied five […]
How to Locate a Hard-to-Find Library Holding
My genealogical efforts center around two activities, research into my family history and the compilation of an exhaustive bibliography on the Jews of Posen, today Poznań, Poland. In the course of researching both, I frequently look for such printed items […]
Immigrants to Argentina Listed as Baron de Hirsch Colonists
In 1881, after the murder of Czar Alexander II, the new Czar, Alexander III, appointed Count Nikolai Pavlovich Ignatiev as interior minister and charged him with solving the so-called “Jewish problem.” Accordingly, Ignatiev initiated a policy to persecute Jews and […]
IAJGS 2006: Strategies for Assigning Surnames to Early JRI-Poland Records
Jewish genealogists who trace family to the early 19th century frequently encounter difficulty trying to follow the trail back to the time when their ancestors did not use hereditary family names. Researchers who find records without surnames often cannot determine […]
Bene Israel of India
The Bene Israel of India is one of the world’s oldest known Jewish communities. This article briefly describes the group’s historical tradition, its current status, the origin of its family names and a project to develop a communal family tree […]
The Jews of Modern Egypt and Their Records, by Yves Fedida
In 1807, two years after the Ottoman Sublime Porte anointed Mohamed Ali as viceroy of Egypt, the Jewish population of Egypt numbered only 6,000. Jewish migration to Egypt grew dramatically from the mid-19th century onward, reaching a peak of 90,000 […]
East European Archival Internet Sites
The following article has been adapted from a presentation given at the IAJGS conference in Salt Lake City in July 2007—Ed The archival websites described here provide the greatest amount of detail on genealogical records and their locations. Many other […]
Finding the Genealogy Tree in the Sherwood Family Forest
The old saying goes “You cannot see the forest for the trees.” But for genealogists, the reverse is more likely. One finds genealogical material so overgrown with historical weeds that the tree must be uprooted in order to see its […]
Jewish History as Reflected in the Documents of the State Archives of Odessa Region
A variant of this article appears on the Internet at http://www.rtrfoundation.org/Odessa.html The State Archives of the Odessa Region (GAOO), one of the large-scale archives in southern Ukraine, holds 13,110 fonds (collections) with 2.2 million files, the majority in Cyrillic. Others […]
DNA and Jewish Genealogy Join Forces
The application of DNA to genealogy has made great strides since its beginnings in 2000. The benefits of joining DNA and classical paper-trail methodologies are becoming evident. This article is about an advanced genealogy project currently underway that had its […]
U.S. Update: Spring 2007
by Diane Goldman To read an article or news release excerpted in U.S. Update, order the issue of the publication in which it appeared from the appropriate JGS. A list of Jewish Genealogical Societies can be found at www.jewishgen.org/jgs. A […]
Ask the Experts: Spring 2007
by Randy Daitch & Eileen Polakoff My great-grandmother’s maiden name was Lena Asher. I have managed to accumulate copies of many records for her, but all indicate that her place of birth was “Galicia,” “Austria” or “Poland”— with no town […]
From Our Mailbox: Spring 2007
Exhibit on the Jews of Poznan, 1793–1939 For the first time since before 1939, an exhibition was held January 13, 2007, to March 15, 2007, on the life of the Jews in the city of Poznań, Poland, in the Poznań […]
Book Review: Jewish Remnants in Spain: Wanderings in a Lost World
Jewish Remnants in Spain: Wanderings in a Lost World. By Sidney David Markman. Large format, softcover, 236 pp. Published by Scribe Publishers, Meza, Arizona, 2003. Out of Print. Used copies are available at http://www.amazon.com/Jewish-Remnants-Spain-Wanderings-World/dp/0972723706 In the town of Trujillo, Spain, home of […]
Jewish Ancestors? A Guide to Jewish Genealogy In the United Kingdom, by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain
Jewish Ancestors? A Guide to Jewish Genealogy in the United Kingdom. Published by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain; contributing editor Rosemary Wenzerul, 2006. Paperback, 144 pages. Because my paternal grandfather and grandmother were born in London’s East End […]
Book Review: Bibliographie zur deutsch-jüdischen Familienforschung und zur neueren Regional- und Lokalgeschichte der Juden, by Angelika Ellmann-Krüger and Dietrich Ellmann
Bibliographie zur deutsch-jüdischen Familienforschung und zur neueren Regional- und Lokalgeschichte der Juden (Bibliography on German-Jewish family research and on the recent regional and local history of the Jews) by Angelika Ellmann-Krüger and Dietrich Ellmann, (Berlin: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2006), ISBN 978-3-05447-8. […]
Bushkando Muestros Nonos i Nonas: Family History Research on Sephardic Jewry Through the Ladino Language Archives of the Jewish Community of Salonika
Several years ago, Andreas Sefiha, then president of the Jewish community of Salonika, remarked in an interview with a Greek newspaper, “Many people come to us (the offices of the community) and ask for information about their families or lost […]
Constructing a Town-Wide Genealogy: Jewish Mattersdorf, Hungary, 1698–1939
On November 16, 1707, 18-year-old Jakob stood in front of a three-member beit din (rabbinical court) to testify about an unfortunate joke that he had made four years earlier. On the first day of Sukkot in 1703, Jakob, the son […]
Costa Fascination: One of England’s Oldest Jewish Families
Genealogy, the research and study of family history, is such a fascinating subject, so fascinating that it has been linked with addiction—not alcohol, gambling or drugs, but the sheer pleasure of finding new facts that lead on to more searching […]
Finding Immigrant Ancestors in Historical Newspapers
The following article has been adapted and updated from a presentation given at the IAJGS conference in New York City in August 2006— Ed. Jewish genealogists tracking ancestors who emigrated to the United States generally are amazed to discover how […]
IAJGS 2007 Salt Lake City, Here We Come!
Jewish genealogists from around the world will be heading to Salt Lake City, Utah, to attend the 27th IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy from July 15–20, 2007. Co-chairs Hal Bookbinder (Los Angeles, California) and Michael Brenner (Las Vegas, Nevada) […]
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 […]
Some Issues in Ashkenazic Name Searches
During the symposium that inaugurated the International Institute of Jewish Genealogy in September 2006 in Jerusalem, one lecture particularly attracted my attention, that given by Professor H. Daniel Wagner of the Weizmann Institute of Science. During his presentation, Wagner enumerated […]
The Ties that Bind: Jewish Kinship Networks and Modernization in Darbenai and its Diaspora
From the outset of work on this project, I have developed a very large bank of data on which to base my conclusions concerning Jewish life and family networks and in the shtetl of Darbenai, Lithuania and its Diaspora during […]