SHARING YOUR VIEWS

Jewish research: points to consider While your magazine’s article ‘Seeking Jewish Records’ (FT December 2021, page 65) provided extremely useful information about a wide range of online resources, the searcher should never neglect to consult the consolidated information available in traditional publications.

A guide to the principal sources of genealogical information was first issued by the London Jewish Museum in the fateful month of January 1933. Several more books and extended articles have appeared subsequently, the most recent and comprehensive being Rosemary Wenzerul Tracing Your Jewish Ancestors (Pen and Sword Family History, 2nd. edition, 2014). This also contains a wide range of websites which provide an extensive coverage of both historical and genealogical material, plus contact details for a wide range of major institutions located both in Britain and abroad.

One point which should be emphasised when dealing with older communal records is that no law compelling the use of the national language was enacted in the United Kingdom. The greater part of the vital records of the old established London synagogues have been published in translation, sometimes to dates well beyond 1837, but this is not the case with other series of administrative documents, including those relating to synagogue membership and charitable disbursements. The intermittent use of Hebrew characters continued, in some instances, through to the midnineteenth century.