Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain Blog

MyHeritage offers 153 death-related collections, containing a total of 548,923,579 records. Normally, most of these collections are free to search, but require a paid MyHeritage Data or Complete plan to access them. But during this limited-time offer, users will be able to take full advantage of all the records in these collections for free.  

From Ton Tielen and David Mendoza: Meeting on Sunday 1st November 2020 Sarina Roffé, a respected expert on genealogy and Sephardic history, and the author of Branching Out from Sepharad , provides an overview of Sephardic Jewish life in Aleppo and a century of life in Brooklyn, New York. Aleppo was a major Jewish community in the eastern Mediterranean and included both indigenous Arabic-speaking Jews and members of the Iberian Sephardic diaspora. Topic: Syrian Jews from Aleppo to Brooklyn Sunday November, 2020 07:00 PM London. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE CLOCKS WILL JUST HAVE GONE BACK IN NORTH AMERICA. This is 8pm in Amsterdam/Paris, 9pm in Jerusalem and 2pm in New York. Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/83883522460 Can you help us? Our supporters on Patreon contribute towards covering our costs. If you can make a small monthly donation, it would be much appreciated. https://www.patreon.com/sephardi If you can't get into the Zoom meeting, there is an overflow on Face...

Our next meeting in the JGSGB Virtual Meeting Programme is an extra meeting from the JGSGB Eastern European Special Interest Group (EE SIG) by Zoom. This is the first of three speakers on Eastern European ancestral tourism in November, as well as an Anglo Special Interest Group meeting and a South East Essex Regional Group workshop open to all. Lots more details about those meetings will follow in the coming weeks. Here is the information for the next meeting: •       Date: Sunday Nov 1st 2020 •       Time: 14:00 London (note, 09:00 New York, 06:00 San Francisco, as the US clocks change early Sun Nov 1st) •       Title: “Polish Ancestral Tourism – Wolf Hunting in Womja” •       Speaker: Leigh Dworkin •       Description: This talk details ancestral tourism in Warsaw and Lomza (pronounced “Womja”), Poland with minimum budget and embarrassingly little planning … It descri...

Harif Lockdown Lectures: Shanghai Express: Baghdadi Jews in China With Maisie Meyer  Tuesday 27 October 19:30 UK time 11.30 PT/ 14.30 ET/ 20.30 Europe/ 21: 30 Israel Dr Maisie Meyer, author of From the rivers of Babylon to the Whangpoo , will take us on an exciting journey aboard the Shanghai Express. A small number of adventurous Baghdadi Jewish merchants in the mid-19th century accomplished spectacular feats to make Shanghai a leading financial centre.   Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/87438050579?pwd=cTN0amxJMkZ2NTJxNWN0b3doTk1YQT09   Find your local number: https://us02web.zoom.us/u/klfkC4fDs Please note that there is no registration but only participants identified by name will be admitted and allowed to ask questions. Numbers on ZOOM are limited but the event will be livestreamed to the Harif Facebook page. A recording will be uploaded to the Harif website. Questions may sent in advance to info@harif.org [If you're viewing this post vi...

From Daniel Horowitz: I’m happy to announce the publication of three important Welsh historical record collections on MyHeritage: Wales, Parish Births and Baptisms ; Wales, Parish Marriages and Banns ; and Wales, Parish Deaths and Burials . The collections consist of 14.8 million indexed historical records and cover over 450 years of Welsh history. These collections are the only source of genealogical information in Wales before the 19th century, making them an invaluable resource for anyone researching their Welsh heritage. High quality scans of the original documents will be added very soon. Please find the official blog post here with some sample records from this collection.     

From Ton Tielen and David Mendoza: A frequently overlooked part of modern Jewish history, the Holocaust and expulsion of Jews from Arab countries, is this week's topic, looking at the experience of Libyan Jews. The Holocaust and post-War politics in Libya led the destruction of an ancient Jewish community. We are delighted to be teaming with Sephardic Horizons. Judith Roumani of Sephardic Horizons will introduce our three speakers who will each give a 15-minute talk on their subject. Vivienne Roumani-Denn, "Libyan Jews in the Fascist Internment Camp of Giado" Danielle Willard-Kyle "'Not within the Mandate: Libyan Jewish Refugees in Italian Displaced Persons Camps" David Meghnagi "Libyan Jewish Refugees and 1967” Topic: Libyan Jews in the Maelstrom of Modern History: Sunday October 25, 2020 07:00 PM London. PLEASE NOTE THAT THE CLOCKS HAVE GONE BACK, THIS IS GMT. Please check your time zone. We believe this is 8pm in Amsterdam/Paris, 9pm in Jerusalem a...

From Ton Tielen and David Mendoza: Sephardic World meeting on Sunday 18th October 2020 Luca Ascoli shares his knowledge on researching Jewish families in Italy, including sources often unknown to researchers outside Italy. There were several Jewish communities in Italy, including those with ancient roots such as Rome, Portuguese Jews in Livorno and mixed communities in Venice and elsewhere. Italian Jews spread around the world, including families such as Montefiore and Disraeli to London. There were significant Italian Jewish communities around the Mediterranean, including in Tunis and Alexandria. If you are researching an Italian Jewish family and need some help locating their origins, please let us know the details by Friday. Luca may be able to advise. Priority will be given to patrons of this channel. Topic: The Jews of Italy: Sunday October 18, 2020 07:00 PM London (This is 7.00pm British summer time, GMT +1; which is 2.00pm in New York and 9:00pm in Jerusalem) Join Zoom M...

Now that the Jewish festivals of Sukkot and Simchat Torah are behind us, we can move back to our regular meeting time of Sunday at 2pm (UK time) for the rest of October and November. Soon the clocks will be changing and I hope we do not lose too many of our International members with the change as not everyone changes their clocks at the same time or even at all. All meeting times will be shown in UK time using the Gregorian rather than the Julian calendar… Our next meeting in the JGSGB Virtual Meeting Programme is from the JGSGB Dutch and Sephardi Special Interest Group (D&S SIG) by Zoom. Date: Sunday Oct 18th 2020 Time: 14:00 London Title: “The House of Rothschild in Italy and the Jewish Community of Naples” Speaker: Marco Soria Description: The history of the Jewish Community in Naples is quite varied, and one should consider the context in which it developed. Indeed, Jews lived in Naples and in all of Southern Italy continuously up to the beginning of the 16th century. Trac...

"The world’s largest archive of magazines – is in South-East London. An old building in the former military arsenal at Woolwich contains the world’s largest repository of magazines. HyMag – formerly The Hyman Archive – was founded by media industry-insider James Hyman in 2011. It holds the Guinness World Record for ‘Largest Collection of Magazines’ with over 150,000 magazines from the 1850s to modern times. All those magazines you avidly read as kids long before things were made available online and thought were lost forever, or difficult to find on eBay, they’re here in the archive, in South-East London. HyMag is based in Cannon House (which itself was for a while the British Library Book Repository) within the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich. Although it’s not open to the general public — just researchers — they are working on digitising their collection to make it widely available. The digital archive is expected to launch next year. Unfortunately, as with many private o...

Here are the details of a Hidden Treasures event about synagogue archives on Sunday 18th October from 6 – 7.15pm (UK time). Speakers are: Rachel Lichtenstein of the Sandys Row Archives, Lizzie Baker of the Lahav project at the Tyne and Wear Archives and Professor David Newman who will speak as an enthusiastic user of the London Metropolitan Archives. The event will be chaired by Gillian Merron of the Board of Deputies of British Jews. The event will be live-streamed at https://celebratingjewisharchives.org/hidden-treasures-from-the-uks-synagogues and on Twitter and Facebook @seethetreasures. You can also see it live at the Board of Deputies You Tube page.    

Access and use of records held by the New York City Municipal Archives is being threatened by proposed amendments. The New York City Municipal Archives is a key gateway to access records from the 1600s to the present day include birth, marriage, and death records for New York City, and “comprises the largest local government archive in North America … the Archives hold the records depicting the daily work of city government, including paper records … still and moving images, ledgers and docket books, vital records, cartographic materials, blueprints, and sound recordings.” However, existing rules require licensing fees—in addition to reproduction (copy) fees—to use materials these materials. The proposed amendments limit personal use. The changes mandate licensing fees to use these public records for educational, scholarly, non-profit, and media purposes. As proposed, this general statement limits individuals, genealogists, biographers, historians, members of the press, and other resea...

If you shop Amazon Prime Day deals on 13 & 14 October, you can make a difference: simply shop at smile.amazon.co.uk/ch/1022738-0 or with AmazonSmile ON in the Amazon Shopping app, and AmazonSmile donates to Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain.   For everything you purchase excluding P&P and VAT, Amazon donates 0.5% to the Society.   [If you're viewing this post via the summary email and the links don't work, please go to https://jgsgbnews.blogspot.com/]

The popular conception is that Sephardim in Amsterdam and London were rich. Sadly this is not the case. This week we shall discuss impoverished Sephardim - maybe half the community - and how the community leaders managed the situation. There is a wealth of records in the archives dealing with the Sephardic poor, including the support they received from the congregations, including at festivals, and how they were managed and disciplined. One solution was to put poor people on a boat, and send them somewhere else! This is how many of our ancestors reached the places they later called home. Ton has been studying the 'Despacho' records from Amsterdam and London. Topic: The Amsterdam and London Poor Time: Sunday October 11, 2020 07:15 PM London (This is 7.15pm British summer time; GMT +1, which is 2.15pm in New York) Join Zoom Meeting https://us02web.zoom.us/j/ 81632528615   [If you're viewing this post via the summary email and the links don't work, please ...

From Garri Regev:   The next "Show & Tell" session of IGRA will be on Monday, October 26 at 9 pm Israel time. (Israel will have changed clocks the night before so there will be a 6 hour time difference to the East Coast and a 9 hour difference to the West Coast, but check your area to be certain.) We will be hosting Robin Meltzer and the topic is: "How Not to Read a Jewish Tombstone". There will be valuable information for all attending. Advanced registration is required: https://zoom.us/meeting/register/tJ0sdemhqTkqHtLPC2iH-dMnTaS9aWo0LeBl . You will receive confirmation of your registration with your personal Zoom link to enter the session. We look forward to having you with us! Garri Regev President, IGRA www.genealogy.org.il     [If you're viewing this post via the summary email and the links don't work, please go to https://jgsgbnews.blogspot.com/]

Irish birth and marriage certificates from as far back as 1864 are now available for free online and death certificates between 1878 and 1968 are also available. The records were made available by a joint initiative from the Department of Culture, Heritage, and the Gaeltacht and the Department of Employment Affairs and Social Protection, in 2019. Historical registers of marriages, births and deaths are available to view for free on the website https://www.irishgenealogy.ie/en/ This covers births from 1864 to 1918, deaths from 1878 to 1968, and marriages from 1864 to 1943. The new additions include: deaths in 1967 and 1968, births in 1917 and 1918, and marriages from 1864 to 1869 and 1942 to 1943. The General Register Office is working on updating even more records. Plans are in place to extend the digitization of death certificates by 14 years to 1864, while there are also plans to update almost 20 years of marriage records. Soon, marriages as far back as 1845 will be available t...

"Yearly, in conjunction with International Jewish Genealogy Month , IGRA holds its “Heshvan Event”. In addition to a seminar day with lectures (three in Hebrew and three in English) we take time out to honor our many volunteers. As a volunteer organization each person helping, even in small ways, is important to our success. At this event we particularly mention those who have given generously of their time and two will receive our Mathilde Tagger Prize of Recognition For Volunteering giving them membership in IGRA for the coming year and recognition on our website . The Heshvan Event this year will be on November 8, 2020 from 10:50 am until 18:00 (Israel time). Our theme this year is “The Hidden Child in the Holocaust”. The event is free and there is one registration for the entire day allowing you to stay with us for the whole day or to come and go with the same link. After registration you will receive your individual entry code – which will also be sent to you ag...

Dear All, This is a reminder that booking is now open for the half-day mini-conference which is replacing our usual Annual Conference this year and will be Zoomed into the homes of attendees. There will be no restrictions on the numbers attending so we look forward to welcoming members from around the globe and especially those who would not normally be in a position to join us. There will be a small charge for registration to cover the Society’s costs. This will be £5 for members and £10 for non-members. The charge will cover all persons within a household and using the same electronic device. We hope that next year we will be able to have a live event and have booked the Jewish Museum for the 31st October 2021 in the hope that life will have returned to some semblance of normality. The programme for the mini-conference can be found on our website at https://www.jgsgb.org.uk/ content/jgsgb-mini-conference- 25-october-2020 Conference Registration: register online t...

JGSGB will be at the Family History Federation's Really Useful Family History Show on Saturday 14th November 2020 https://www.fhf-reallyuseful.com/ 'Early Bird' Tickets NOW ON SALE at www.fhf-reallyuseful.com   Early Bird tickets are only £5.00 each - an amazing price which includes a virtual “goody bag”. This one-day virtual Family History Show includes over twenty talks, many exhibitors plus Ask the Experts. The exhibitors will each have access to live booths, so keep popping back to the www.fhf-reallyuseful.com website or go to our Facebook page for regular announcements about who will be exhibiting and making presentations. There will be plenty of talks to choose from and they will be available for 48 hours after the Show, so even if you missed the one you really wanted to listen to, you can watch it later. Many of the talks will provide you with the opportunity to ask questions at the end. If you wish to find out more information about where your ancestor was...