מקור: Toledot_vol3_no4.pdf הערת תמלול: המסמך הוא גיליון של כתב העת האנגלי "TOLEDOT: The Journal of Jewish Genealogy", כרך 3, גיליון 4 (קיץ/1981 בערך). קובץ ה-PDF כולל 17 "עמודי סריקה" (page objects), כאשר עמודים 1-2 הם סריקות בודדות (עטיפה קדמית ועמוד תוכן/תמונה), ועמודים 3-17 הם סריקות "ספרד" (spread) הכוללות כל אחת שני עמודי דפוס זה לצד זה (בכיוון קריאה מימין לשמאל בתוך הסריקה: העמוד הימני = מספר עמוד נמוך יותר, העמוד השמאלי = מספר עמוד גבוה יותר). עמוד סריקה 3 הוא כפילות/סריקה חוזרת של עמודים 1-2. כל הטקסט במסמך הוא באנגלית (למעט מילים בודדות בעברית/יידיש בתוך הטקסט האנגלי, ושמות עבריים בטבלת ייחוס משפחה). תומלל כפי שהוא, מילה במילה, ללא תרגום. תוכן רלוונטי במיוחד לפרויקט (בית הקברות היהודי בשכם/נאבלוס): בעמוד המודפס 13 (בתוך עמוד סריקה 9, החצי הימני) מופיע המשפט: "the Jewish cemetery at Shekhem (Nablus) disappeared about fifty years ago" (בית הקברות היהודי בשכם (נאבלוס) נעלם לפני כחמישים שנה בערך) — בתוך רשימת בתי קברות יהודיים עתיקים בארץ ישראל. בעמוד המודפס 17 (עמוד סריקה 11, חצי ימני, הערת שוליים 26) מופיע ציטוט ארכיוני: "on Shekhem: I.S.A., file B/32/39, R.G. 2" — הפניה לתיק בארכיון המדינה (Israel State Archives) העוסק בשכם. ובאותו עמוד גם: "an alphabetical index of all persons enjoying British protection in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus, 1879-1908 (R.G. 123/1, item no. 3)". =================================================================== --- עמוד 1 --- =================================================================== [עמוד עטיפה קדמית. בראש העמוד, טקסט חלקית חתוך: "THE JEWISH GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY INVITES YOU TO PARTICIPATE IN..." (המשך חתוך/לא נראה).] [לוגו גדול: המילה העברית "תולדות" בכתב מעוצב] TOLEDOT the journal of jewish genealogy [מסגרת מלבנית עם הכותרת:] IN THIS ISSUE TO OUR READERS .......................................... 2 DEAR EDITORS ............................................ 3 SUMMER 1981 EVENTS ....................................... 3 THE JEWISH FAMILY FINDER ................................. 5 A NINETEENTH-CENTURY FAMILY FINDER ....................... 8 THE JEWISH FAMILY FINDER: INDEX TO 1979 ANNOUNCEMENTS .... 8 ERETS-ISRAEL AND JEWISH GENEALOGY: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE SOURCES FOR THE LATER OTTOMAN AND MANDATE PERIODS Michael Plotkin 11 IN SEARCH OF MISHPOKHE Ronald M. Landau 22 UPDATE ON MEMORIAL BOOKS ................................. 24 BOOK REVIEW: ARTHUR KURZWEIL'S From Generation to Generation Alan A. Kay 24 JEWISH NAMES: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Benzion C. Kaganoff 26 VOLUME 3, NUMBER 4 =================================================================== --- עמוד 2 --- =================================================================== [עמוד תמונות משפחתיות, לא ממוספר, כתוב לרוחב (מסובב 90 מעלות ביחס לעטיפה). כיתוב לאורך השוליים השמאליים, קורא מלמטה למעלה:] TWO JEWISH FAMILIES FROM HUNGARY: Left - Ignatz (Joseph) Simon, wife Roza (nee Schlesinger), and his sons Mor (Martin) and Ferencs (Frank). Photo taken in Budapest ca. 1893. Right - Moritz Markstein, wife Johanna (nee M[e]sner), and children Elizabeth (Frank), Samuel, and Joseph. Photo taken in Budapest 1887. Frank Simon and Elizabeth Markstein met in New York City and married in 1910. They are the maternal grandparents of TOLEDOT editor Steven W. Siegel. [שתי תצלומים היסטוריים שחור-לבן של שתי משפחות בלבוש תקופתי, ללא כיתוב נוסף בתוך התמונות עצמן.] =================================================================== --- עמוד 3 --- =================================================================== [עמוד סריקה זה הוא "ספרד" הכולל סריקה חוזרת (כפולה, באיכות/חיתוך שונים במעט) של אותם שני עמודים שכבר תומללו לעיל: החצי השמאלי של הספרד = תוכן זהה לעמוד 2 לעיל (תמונות "Two Jewish Families From Hungary"), החצי הימני של הספרד = תוכן זהה לעמוד 1 לעיל (עטיפה קדמית, תוכן העניינים, כרך 3 גיליון 4). אין תוכן טקסטואלי נוסף מעבר למתומלל כבר לעיל.] =================================================================== --- עמוד 4 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 2 ו-3] --- עמוד מודפס 2 (חצי ימני של הספרד — למעשה החצי המכיל את התוכן שממשיך לעמוד 3) --- [הערה: לפי סדר הקריאה בספרד, החלק שכולל את עמוד הקולופון/"TO OUR READERS" הוא עמוד 2 המודפס.] TOLEDOT: THE JOURNAL OF JEWISH GENEALOGY 155 East 93 Street, Suite 3C New York, NY 10028 Arthur Kurzweil Steven W. Siegel Editor Editor Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Zachary M. Baker Contributing Editor Contributing Editor Subscriptions: $8.00 for one year (four issues) or $14.00 for two years (eight issues) in the U.S. $10.00 per year in Canada and by surface mail overseas. $15.00 per year for foreign air mail delivery. © Toledot Press 1981 ISSN 0146-9568 TOLEDOT is the Hebrew word for "genealogy" or "generations." TOLEDOT disclaims responsibility for errors of fact or opinion made by contributors but does strive for maximum accuracy. Interested persons are invited to submit articles to be considered for publication. Manuscripts will not be returned unless a stamped self-addressed envelope is included. Contributors of published articles will receive ten free copies of the issue in which the article appears. TOLEDOT is indexed in Current Contents/Social & Behavioral Sciences, Social Sciences Citation Index, and Genealogical Periodical Annual Index. [תיבה משמאל:] IF YOU MOVE - Please send us your new address. We are not responsible for non-receipt of an issue if we have an incorrect mailing address on file. [תיבה מימין:] FOR INFORMATION ABOUT BACK ISSUES, PLEASE SEE INSIDE BACK COVER. COPIES OF ALL BACK ISSUES ARE AVAILABLE. [פס שחור מפריד] TO OUR READERS Over three years ago, when we launched TOLEDOT in our living rooms, we had no idea that the only journal in the world devoted to Jewish family history and genealogy would grow at such a furious pace. Hardly a day goes by when subscriptions do not come in -- to the point where we are now an international publication with subscribers throughout the world. Due to the rapid growth of TOLEDOT, we have gotten quite backlogged, as you know. The issues have appeared late recently, and every once in a while we make an error regarding a subscription renewal. The good news is that you will be getting TOLEDOT more regularly from this point on. You will note that we have computerized the subscription list - and included on the label when your subscription is due to expire. If, on occasion, we make an error, please be patient with us. As we have learned from your many letters, TOLEDOT is a popular and well-appreciated journal which is an important aid to your research. We intend to keep on serving you in this way, and hope for your continued support and interest. The reason your editors have been delayed in getting issues to you is that they are both very busy people. Steven Siegel is currently wearing several hats within the Jewish community. His major responsibility is being the archivist of the 92nd Street YM-YWHA. He also serves as secretary of the Jewish Historical Society of New York, is an officer of the Jewish Genealogical Society, and is an active member of his synagogue in New York City. Arthur Kurzweil, author of From Generation to Generation, has been traveling around the country speaking on the subject of Jewish family history and genealogy. Within the last year he has spoken to over 150 Jewish groups from coast to coast. In addition, he is currently writing two more books, both in the area of Judaica. So, while we are busy with our many activities in the Jewish world, we are still devoted to giving you the best Jewish genealogy journal we can. And this current issue, in your hands, is certainly an example of that! We hope you enjoy it. [פס שחור מפריד] 2 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 3 (חצי שמאלי של הספרד) --- DEAR EDITORS: EXCITING MOMENTS My most exciting moment was finding my grandfather's name on the incoming passenger list for the Port of New York. He arrived on the Bohemia on November 25, 1885, and since it was a German ship, LEVENSTEIN became LOEWENSTEIN. He had one piece of luggage and was in the forward compartment. I can't tell you how much I have enjoyed your magazine. Good luck and keep up the good work. E. A. Livingston 104-16 88 Avenue Richmond Hill, NY 11418 My adventure began in a library reading room with a pile of phone books. After three letters to the only HORKHEIMERs (my great-grandmother's maiden name) I found, I began to get wonderful letters, a family tree, and excited phone calls from all corners of the country. I discovered that my family was a lost branch of an international cousinhood of some 1500 descendants of Handle and Hayum Lob Horkheimer (born in 1777). That was for openers. Beginning to meet my new cousins has been more than half the fun. All this is made more gratifying because I grew up believing that I had almost no relatives on my mother's side of the family. Linda Levine 26 Mt. Auburn St. Cambridge, MA 02138 [קישוט מעטרים] SUMMER 1981 EVENTS The Jewish Genealogical Society in New York is planning a Summer Seminar on Jewish Genealogy: Finding Your Jewish Roots in New York, to be held Sunday, July 12 through Thursday, July 16, 1981. The program includes morning guided visits to research facilities, afternoon opportunities to do research, and evening lectures and get-togethers. Jewish genealogists will find this seminar a convenient and exciting way to discover the unique genealogical resources available in New York. A preliminary program and questionnaire are available from the Jewish Genealogical Society by writing to Steven W. Siegel, Seminar Chairman, 155 East 93 Street, #3C, New York, NY 10028. VILNA GAON Elijah ben Solomon Zalman, known as the Vilna Gaon, was born in 1720 in Selets (Seltz), Grodno province. After traveling throughout Poland and Germany, he settled in Vilna where he died in 1797. Considered one of the greatest spiritual and intellectual leaders of Jewry in modern times, the Vilna Gaon is claimed as an ancestor by many Jews of European background, many of whom cannot trace the exact descent. It is known that the Vilna Gaon had at least six children. Selected lines of descent from some of these children are recorded in some of the primary sources for information on descendants of the Gaon. However there is almost no information on even the first few generations of descendants from other of his children who are known to have settled in some of the towns near the Russian-Polish border. We would like to compile information from your readers on descendants of the Gaon for the first one hundred to one hundred fifty years after his birth, and publish these findings in chart form in a future issue of TOLEDOT as a research aid to those who are trying to trace their descent from the Gaon. Lillian Farber Dr. Alex Friedlander 310 E. 70 St. 169 Stratford Rd. New York, NY 10021 Brooklyn, NY 11218 MISHPOKHE Thank you for the beautifully sensitive review of Mishpokhe [vol. 3, no. 1]. You made me feel that I had obtained my goal. [Margaret] Mead used to tell us as students that unless we wrote up our findings so the people themselves could accept the findings and identify with them, we were failures as ethnographers. I don't care who might blast the book now as I'll have your careful review to jazz me up! Bill Mitchell Pleasant Valley Farm Wolcott, VT 05680 The First World Conference on the Jewish Family Heritage will take place in Jerusalem Aug. 16-21, 1981. This international conference is being organized by Moreshet Beit Saba (Society for the Jewish Family Heritage), which is directed by Professor Yizhak Halbrecht. According to the meeting announcement, "the main purpose of this Conference will be to discuss the ways and means of preserving the physical and spiritual Jewish Family Heritage and through it the great Jewish Heritage in general." For further information on the conference, write to Yehuda Ben-David, 17 Kaplan St., Tel Aviv, Israel. TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 3 =================================================================== --- עמוד 5 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 4 ו-5] --- עמוד מודפס 4 (חצי ימני) --- [עמוד מעוצב במסגרת דקורטיבית מלבנית, כתוב לרוחב (מסובב). כותרת בכתב יד מעוצב:] "And these are the generations of Isaac, the son of Abraham" ... Toledot 25:19 It is with great pleasure and pride that we announce the arrival of a new generation: Zachary Winiker Truboff (זכריה וויניקר [?]) BORN: November 11, 1980 WEIGHT: 7 lb. 13 oz. MARRIED: 6/26/77 [עץ ייחוס בכתב יד, שמות באנגלית ולצדם שמות עבריים בסוגריים; חלק מהשמות העבריים בכתב יד קטן ולא ברור לחלוטין — מסומנים [?] היכן שיש ספק:] Linda Winiker ( לינדה וויניקר [?] ) — Norman Winiker (נורמן [?]) — Norman Truboff (נורמן טרובוף [?]) — Charles Truboff (צ'ארלס [?]) Cecelia Fogel Fried (צביה [?]) — Elaine Zagelstein (עליזה[?]) — [שם לא ברור] Lena Morova ( לאה [?] ) Harry Stober (הרשל [?]) Lena Stober (לאה [?]) Cecile Farkas (ציפורה [?]) Morris Fogel (משה [?]) Judah Fogel (יהודה [?]) Hanny Klafter (חנה [?]) Henry Fried (צבי [?]) Lazar Fried (לייזר [?]) Becky Kaslowitz (ריבה [?]) Isaac Kozlowicz (יצחק [?]) Tzvetel Ferstenberg (צבטל [?]) Philip Winekar (פיליפ [?]) Pessie Mishman (פסיה [?]) Isaac Winocur (יצחק [?]) Regina Mund (רגינה [?]) Bernard Zagelstein (דב [?]) Pauline Shafer (פייגא [?]) Norman Truboff (נורמן [?]) Charles Truboff (מוריס [?]) Nathan Trubetzky (נתן [?]) Rachel (רחל) Moshe Mund (משה) Sarah (שרה) Aaron Zagelstein (אהרן) Ida Subritsky (אידה [?]) Harry Schaffer (הרשל [?]) Esther Peston (אסתר) (Heschel Szefaronke) (הרשל [?]) BIRTH ANNOUNCEMENT OF ZACHARY WINIKER TRUBOFF -- COURTESY OF CEIL AND NORMAN WINIKER 4 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 [הערת תמלול: השמות העבריים הכתובים ביד בתוך עץ הייחוס קטנים ולא חדים בסריקה; חלקם [לא קריא] במלואם ומסומנים בסימן שאלה. מבנה עץ הייחוס המדויק (מי בן מי) אינו ברור לגמרי מהתמונה ותומלל כרשימת שמות לפי סדר הופעתם.] --- עמוד מודפס 5 (חצי שמאלי) --- THE JEWISH FAMILY FINDER THANK YOU, JEWISH FAMILY FINDER! I never really expected to find anything of personal interest among the ads of the Jewish Family Finder. I just read them because I'm curious, and like to know what other people are up to. I was certainly shocked one day, then, to read an ad about MY FAMILY. There it was in black-and-white: "Levkoff, Kiev 1880." It was too good to be true; I quickly dashed off a letter to the person who placed the ad, hardly daring to hope I'd get an answer or to believe I had actually found a relative. And then I waited. A short time later, I received not one but TWO letters in reply -- one from the man whose ad I'd answered, and another from his mother. Both letters were full of information. We were, indeed, part of the same family. And then the real fun began. We've been exchanging letters and other information since then, including stories, photographs, family documents, and civil records, and together we have traced our family back at least one generation farther than we had been able to do separately. We've managed to save each other much time and effort in our individual researches by pooling our data. And at least as important, we have added a new dimension -- the present -- to our family history. Although I haven't met my "new" cousins yet, I hope to do so this year. In any event, we will surely continue to share our genealogical research. And I, for one, will keep on reading the Jewish Family Finder. Who knows what familiar name I'll see next? Gratefully, Karen Rossel 44 Dunbow Drive Chappaqua, NY 10514 ***** The editors of TOLEDOT invite its readers to make inquiries about their research to the hundreds of Jewish genealogists who read our journal. For $5.00, we will print your 25-word announcement containing the surnames, towns, or other information that you might wish to include in your inquiry. Your name and address are listed free of charge. For announcements of more than 25 words, an additional 20¢ per word should be added. To avoid inaccuracies, please type or print your announcement. Indicate surnames in CAPITAL letters, as we do in the listings, in order to distinguish them from place names. Send your check along with the wording of your query to: TOLEDOT, 155 East 93 Street, Suite 3C, New York, NY 10028. 80-1 Julian L. BERMAN, M.D., 1216 Jeffrey Ct., Northbrook, IL 60062 --- Looking for descendants of Leo(n) BE(H)RMAN who lived in N.Y.C. Alive in 1934. Worked for a bank. Probably born about 1860 in Kroz, Lithuania or possibly Riga or St. Petersburg. Father Israel, grandfather Smere (Smereyahu). Leo(n)'s siblings: Aige, Elsa, Lotte, Ida (married Dr. MANDELSTAM), Harry; 2 uncles--Max (Austria) & David (St. Petersburg). May have had these children born in 1880s: Ida, Simon, Meyer, Florence, Albert. 80-2 Julien M. BERMAN, 5555 Roswell Rd. N.E., #F-12, Atlanta, GA 30342 --- Seeking information on Label Hazel BERGMAN and his 2 sisters - born around 1820 - wealthy family from Kaliningrad (Koenigsberg), East Prussia. Moved to Rogola, Kovno Gubernia, Lithuania. Wife Zelda WEINBERG. 80-3 Julien M. BERMAN, 5555 Roswell Rd. N.E., #F-12, Atlanta, GA 30342 --- Seeking information on or connections with LIPMAN family for Shana Nahauma MILLERKOFSKY of Kreva, Vilna Gubernia, Lithuania and Rostov, Russia. Husband Zaharya MILLERKOVSKY, daughter Sarah (husband LIPMAN and 2nd-Abram RIBICOFF), Mary, son Avram Welvum, and Yankel, whose entire family were killed in the Holocaust. 80-4 M. BOTWINICK, R.R.#2, Box 312A, Absecon, NJ 08201 --- From Boslov: MILLER, SVERDLEKOVSKY, BELFER, STROEKMISEL. Minsk/Radoskoffsky: DAVIDOFF, BOTWINICK. From Latvia (Walk/Kurland): STERN, PARADISEGARTEN. I will research Philadelphia records. 80-5 Sophie CAPLAN, 5 Woonona Rd., Northbridge 2063, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia --- Seeking information about Joseph TOPF (born 1870s Wislica (Waislitz)), wife Yenta, flourmiller, died Treblinka 1942, their children Abraham, Dvora BUCHMAN, Tova WASSER, Herschel and wife Sarah SILBERSTEIN, Max. Also ancestors Herschel (c.1775), Pinchas, Samuel, Eliezer (exiled to Irkutsk, Siberia, 1870s) TOPF, their brothers, children. Also anything on Wislica and Dzialoszyce, Pinczow district, Kielce province, or any other TOPFs or TOPPERs, anywhere. 80-6 Sophie CAPLAN, 5 Woonona Rd., Northbridge 2063, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia --- Seeking information on descendants of Eliezer TOPF (Lazar TOPPER) who were born Irkutsk, Siberia, 1880 onward. Probably Paul, Moshe, Sophie PREISMAN. In fur trade. Later Tientsin, Tokyo (Grisha TOPPER), California, New York. 80-7 Sophie CAPLAN, 5 Woonona Rd., Northbridge 2063, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia --- Seeking ancestors or siblings (and their descendants) of Leo HAUSMANN, son of Moshe and Esther, probably born Dolina, Galicia, c.1810. Leo settled in Nowica near Kalusz, Stanislaw area, c.1849. Will gladly share extensive knowledge Leo's descendants. Would like to hear from any HAUSMANN or HOUSEMAN, anywhere. 80-8 Sophie CAPLAN, 5 Woonona Rd., Northbridge 2063, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia --- Seeking descendants of brothers of Meyer STEIN, born c.1860, Dolina, Galicia, later forester to nobleman at Zawatka. Brothers emigrated U.S.A. 1870s or 1880s. 80-9 Sophie CAPLAN, 5 Woonona Rd., Northbridge 2063, Sydney, N.S.W., Australia --- Seeking information families HALPRIN, REITER, ROSENMAN, NEUHAUSER, BRAVERMAN, SPIEGEL, TANNE, SEEMAN from Dolina, Stryi, Rosniatow, Nowica, Kalusz, Borislaw, Stanislaw, all eastern Galicia. Will share own information. TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 5 =================================================================== --- עמוד 6 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 6 ו-7] --- עמוד מודפס 6 (חצי ימני) --- 80-10 Shaul CEDER, 1481 Egmont Pl., Far Rockaway, NY 11691 --- Seek information on surnames ARONOWICZ, BLEJWAS, CHECINSKI, DANIELEWICZ, FROMM, GOLDSZTEJN, KOPEL (KOPLOW), KOPELMAN, MARMELSZTEJN, PINKUS, ROZENBLAT, ROZENBLUM, WOHLSZTEJN, ZYLWER from Piotrkow; DZIALOSZYNSKI from Lodz; NADELWAJS from Tomaszow Mazowiecki; COHEN, STEPPER from Chigirin/Aleksandrovka; GRYNBAUM, TADEL (TUDEL), STRZYG from Plock; KERR (KERSTEIN) from London. Also information on the CEDERBAUM (later KOPELMAN) printing house of Piotrkow. 80-11 Beryl KROOT COHEN, 30 Hamblet Ave., Portland, ME 04103 --- Searching for descendants of Benyamin KROOT (KRAUT), Ezrena, Lithuania. Louis, Bella and Feiga (Frances) DORAS (DORIS), Dusutes, Lithuania. Israel Baruch BEAN, Zelig KASPER, Lavitz, Poland or Ryplin, Russ-Poland. 80-12 Ruth HINDIN CONRADS, 60105 Stirling Dr., Bend, OR 97701 --- Seeking: BAUM, Trier, Germany. BARUCH, Marienbad, Austria, now Marianske, Czech. GOETZ, Kruttesheim, Prussia. LEVY, Provinz Posen, now Poznan, Poland. LOEB, Prussia. GINDIN, HINDIN, Vilna, Lithuania. 80-13 Julian FALK, 142 Glo Min Dr., Pittsburgh, PA 15241 --- Seeking information family Israel FALK, born Meudt, Germany 1823, wife Johanette ROSENFELD, Singhofen, Ger., mother Fanny FEIST, Meudt, Ger., sons Isaac FALK, Scranton, Pa., Adolf FALK, New York, N.Y. 80-14 Martin J. GLEMBOURTT, 69-15 198 St., Fresh Meadows, NY 11365 --- Seeking families of Maurice and Jennie BERMAN, Philadelphia, children Henry, Dave, Lillian OKEN. Also family of Lachee BLUMOWE in Detroit or Milwaukee area. Son's name Charles (Kalman) BLUMOWE. Father's name Kalman MULLARSCEWICZ, Lomza. Seeking GOLOMB roots for GOLOMBOVITZ, GOLOMBOWICZ, GOLOMBOVITCH from Lomza, Poland. Seek information on Mendel GOLOMBOVITZ, watchmaker, Warsaw. Wife from Kolne. Fled Warsaw World War I. Seeking KANNETs - descendants of my great-grandfather Itchie Leib KANNET, tziza-maker, Czysewa, Poland. 80-15 Kevin C. HINKLE, 1775 Waltham Rd., Columbus, OH 43221 --- Seeking information on Zacharias FRAENKEL = Zecharja ben Beer HALEVY of Vienna. Also information on Rabbi Jacob MIRRELS of Vienna, who married Zecharja's granddaughter. 80-16 John HURST, 3775 Falconer Dr., Soquel, CA 95073 --- Rais Alexandria ZALIVSKAJA b. Vilna married Nikolas MAKAROV approx. 1860. She has two sisters who immigrated to New York approx. 1870. Seeking information regarding sisters. 80-17 Seth JACOBSON, Mevo Petaya 3, IL-97 706 Jerusalem, Israel --- Wanted Anna b. LEVIN from Szczuczyn (Schruzin, Stutzin?), and descendants, emigrated 1905-10 appr. from Scandinavia to U.S.A., married (4 boys?). Brothers Moshe Mauritz, Hirsch. 80-18 Seth JACOBSON, Mevo Petaya 3, IL-97 706 Jerusalem, Israel --- Relatives of Ita Dvora TARSCHYS, Vilna, and husband Avraham Tsemach ASCH (TARSCHYS), Sossli; descendants of Gershon and Kibel PAVLOVSKY of Lazdei. 80-19 Phyllis B. KAPLAN, 1150 Kipling Rd., Elizabeth, NJ 07208 --- Seeking relatives MODEL, Mordecai (Max) or Louis; HILLER, Pessel, Hencha, left Jaroslaw, Austria, 1882. Also WEIXELBAUM (or WEST) related to above. Relatives of Chaim ben Eleukim-Getzel BRODSKY (BEZRUKI), Eli or Getzel VADNOVSKY, all from Brest-Litovsk. 80-20 Joanne SLOSSBERG KELLY, 98 Bourne Blvd., Sayville, NY 11782 --- Seeking information on people who lived in Shaluk, Lithuania. COHENs, GLAZIERs, GATZENs, SHORFERs or SCHLOSSBERGs. Anyone attending 30th anniversary "Soloker Benevolent Association" ball, Nov. 1934 at Beethoven Hall, N.Y.C. 80-21 Rosanne D. LEESON, 1821 Granger Ave., Los Altos, CA 94022 --- Seeking information: Bertha and Morris GOODHART of New York. Bertha, widowed, living Brooklyn, 1900. Children: Lawrence, William, Julius, Arthur, Sadie. 80-22 Rosanne D. LEESON, 1821 Granger Ave., Los Altos, CA 94022 --- Seeking information: Wolf and Sarah DAVIES GREEN, living Brooklyn, 1900. Children: Aimee (b.1892), Dorothy (b.1896). 80-23 Gayle LEVINE, 1232 Hinsdale Pl., Anaheim, CA 92807 --- Seeking: S(C)HMERLER and KLINGER (Solotwina, Galicia), TOBIAS (Drohobycz, Galicia), GAVRONSKY and LANE (Poland or Latvia, Russia), NORDEN and JACOBS (Germany). 80-24 Jacqueline MATHEWS, 3111 Copa de Oro, Los Alamitos, CA 90720 --- Need any information at all on Morris MAGALESKY, who lived in New Orleans in the 1890s, before and after which we lose track of him. Where in Poland/Russia was he from? Would be interested in hearing about or from anyone with the name MAGALESKY. 80-25 Kenneth MEYERSON, B131 Van Cott Hall, Salt Lake City, UT 84112 --- Seeking: MRUK (Minsk), descendants of Haim (Hyman) MRUK. LUKOMNIK (Kruglow). Descendants of Hershel and Boshe KIPNIS (Zhitomir - Berdichev). Any KIPNIS genealogical and etymological information needed. 80-26 Karen GREIM MULLIAN, 1021 Washington Ave., Prospect Park, PA 19076 --- Descendants of, information on EHRLICH, SCHNEIDER, ROTHMAN, ROTHCHILD, Tovrick and Erzhvilki, East Prussia, prior to 1880s; BLOCK and JASNER (JASINOFSKY), Vilna, Lithuania, prior to 1900. 80-27 Sharan NEWMAN, 160 Fallbrook, Newbury Park, CA 91320 --- Looking for information on families ROTHSCHILD, STRAUSS, MAIER, SCHEUER of Heldenbergen, Hesse. Also names ARNOLDI, LISSMAN (LIHSMANN), ROTHENBERG. Any information on towns Lutowisko, Dvernik, Garmsok(?) in Galicia (FENNER, FELD, ARBEIT). 80-28 Michele WINITSKY PALMER, 32 Ellise Rd., Storrs, CT 06268 --- Seeking information on: MEDNIKOV (Kiev). Harry and Blummie BONFIELD (moved from Birmingham to Boston, c.1920), 5 daughters. Buzzi KARP, ran saloon in Denver (1900?), 2 daughters. 80-29 Rabbi Arnold RESNICOFF, 1211 Surrey Cres., Norfolk, VA 23508 --- Herzl RESNICK(sp?), my great-uncle, moved to Los Angeles two generations ago. Searching for any descendants--he had seven children, including Marta, Jake and Morris. Was in garage business. 80-30 Karl Georg ROESSLER, 2145 Anchor St., Anaheim, CA 92802 --- Who knows of descendants or relatives of HEIMANN and SCHREIBER families from Hamburg, Germany, and from the NICKELSBURG, BERLINER, ANKER and MUELLER families originating from Berlin, Germany? 80-31 Jordan RONN, 11 Liberty Bell Cir., Houston, TX 77024 --- Looking for: MARKUS/MARCUS (Seirijai, Lithuania), GORDIN/GORDON (Zeleno-Pole, Ukraine), GALANTY, ROTENFELD, DWORSKY and information about Seirijai and Lazdijai, Lithuania. 6 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 7 (חצי שמאלי) --- 80-32 Charles Behrend SONNEBORN, 809 Caddington Ave., Silver Spring, MD 20901 --- Searching Hesse-Darmstadt to U.S.A. 1850-1865. All descendants SONNEBORN, BACHARACH, BAMBERGER, BAUER, DITTENHOFFER, GROSS, HIRSCH, LICHTENSTEIN, LOWENSTEIN, MANSBACH, PRAGER, PRICE, ROSENTHAL, STERN. Also (N.Y.) LEIPZIGER, Moses, Louis, Marcus, Sophie SAKS; OPPENHEIM, Charles, Marjory; LAUTERBACH, Edward, Morton, Lucille SOLOMON; KLINGER. All information appreciated. Will gladly share. 80-33 Betty PROVIZER STARKMAN, 1260 Stuyvesant Rd., Birmingham, MI 48010 --- Seeking information: PROVISOR, PROVIZER, PROWIZOR, PREVEZER--Mogielnica, Warszawa Guberna, Poland--Israel, U.S., England. SAMET DAVIDOWICH--Ilza (Drilge) near Radom, Poland, U.S., Canada, Brazil. BODENSTEIN--Tomaszow Lubelski, Poland. 80-34 Betty PROVIZER STARKMAN, 1260 Stuyvesant Rd., Birmingham, MI 48010 --- Seeking information: BAILEN, BEILAN, Chemnitn, Lublin, Poland, kin to Irving BERLIN, who was Israel BAILEN. STARKMAN, Iwansk (near Lodz), Poland, U.S., Canada. 80-35 Martha E. STONE, 139 Sumner St., Newton Centre, MA 02159 --- Seeking information on Hartogs VAN PRAAGH, Caroline VAN HILDEN, from Prague, moved to Holland around 1830s. Also seeking descendants of Samuel GOMPERS, my fourth cousin, founder of American Federation of Labor. Looking for information concerning Jewish migration to Cape Verde Islands in Atlantic, off West Africa, following Inquisition. 80-36 Rabbi Robert TABAK, 7000 Lincoln Dr., Philadelphia, PA 19119 --- Seeking relatives/descendants: 1) Shlomo-Shimon TABAK, d.1917, Ciechanowiec (Bialystok dist.), Poland; POGORELSKY family, same area. 2) MARKS family, Oxford, England (1850) and Cincinnati; DECKER (Kirchheimbolanden, Germany); LOESOMAN/LESSERMAN (Pfungstadt, Ger.); Aaron KAHN family, St. Joseph, Mo. (late 19th century). 80-37 Harold TRIGOBOFF, 1272 Greenbriar Lane, N. Bellmore, NY 11710 --- Seeking information about Leopold EHRLICH, wife Lena HARTSTEIN from Austria-Hungary, arrived N.Y. about 1891 with children, Sarah & David. A HARTSTEIN owned a grocery store at 1347 Sedwick, Chicago, Ill. Abe & Blanche RAYOR nee HARTSTEIN, Harry, Belle SCHWARTZ and daughter Annette Irene, born June 1, 1931, all of Calif. Also SPITZER of N.Y. related to HARTSTEIN or EHRLICH. 80-38 Marietta WELLMAN, P.O. Box 802, Alturas, CA 96101 --- Seeking information: grandparents Royal COOK (died N.Y.C. 1937) and Sarah MINTZER COOK. Immigrated Russia 1889-1900. His children Fannie, Bertha, Harry; theirs Benjamin, Bernard, Simon, Samuel. 80-39 Michael F. WOLFF, 65 E. 96 St., New York, NY 10028 --- Seeking descendants of Morris, Jacob, Isaac FELDBERG, who left Podhajce 1890-1900. Also information on SURAWITZ family from Radzilow, Poland, and Jacob SIROVICH, York, Pa. 80-40 Janette FERDINAND WOODS, 4823 N. Lawndale, Chicago, IL 60625 --- Looking for information and families of Isriel FERDINAND b.12/1894, Jacob FERDINAND b.11/1893 and Anna FERDINAND b. 10/1896. All born in Elizabeth, New Jersey. Moved to California (Los Angeles) 1906. Parents Benjamin/Bernard (1849-1932) and Rosa FERDINAND (1870-1906). 80-41 Janette FERDINAND WOODS, 4823 N. Lawndale, Chicago, IL 60625 --- Looking for any information regarding Louis GROZOV/GROZOW/KRAZOFF (1890-1918 flu epidemic). Wife Lillian RESTEN (1896-1921). One daughter born Chicago 1919. Came to Chicago from Missouri (?). 80-42 Arye BARKAI, 1777 Grand Concourse, #11N, Bronx, NY 10453 --- Seeking: EHRLICH family of Rzeszow, Galicia area; PALLESTER and REINES families of Tarnow, Galicia; information on Jewish communities of Salzgitter, northern Germany and Ingolheim, Germany. 80-43 Randy DAITCH, 29301 Stellamar Dr., Southfield, MI 48075 --- Looking for any DAITCH, DAITZ, DEITCH, DEITZ, DIETCH, DIETZ, DEITSCH, DEUTSCH, DEUTZ, DUITCH, DUITZ, DATCH, DATZ, DITCH, DYTCH, TAITCH, TAITZ, TEITCH, TEUTSCH, TIETCH, TIETZ, TUITCH, TUITZ, or similar sounding name, whose ancestors were Chassidim living in Vilna and Kovno gubernias and southeast Courland, in the towns of Breslav, Perebrode (Przebrodzie), Voronka, Biljewgi (Bildziugi), Mior (Miory), Drujsk, Druya, Krasnagorki, Dubona, Pohost (Pogost), Dvinsk, and Griva. 80-44 Randy DAITCH, 29301 Stellamar Dr., Southfield, MI 48075 --- Looking for descendants of Rabbi Mordechai MELTZER of Lida, whose real surname was KLATZKI. Also looking for any KLATZKO, KLACHKO, KLIATZKO, KLIACHKO, KLATZKIN, KLACHKIN, KLACHKOVSKY or MELTZER from Lida, Lipnishok, Aishishok, Voronova, Yashun, or Vilna, and any MIRKIN from Belitza, SOLTZ from Lida or Vilna, and BASKIN from Dvinsk. 80-45 Randy DAITCH, 29301 Stellamar Dr., Southfield, MI 48075 --- Looking for relatives of my great-grandfather, Binyomin BARABACHIK (BARABEICHECK, BARABEITZIK) and his wife Rochel-Leah (Rabbi Mordechai MELTZER's great-granddaughter) whose children Motel (Max SILVER), Maisha (Morris SILVER), Shaina-Chava (Eva TODD), and Sara-Rivka (Sarah DAITCH) were born in or near Lida or Lipnishok and whose descendants include relatives living in Detroit, MI and London, England. 80-46 Randy DAITCH, 29301 Stellamar Dr., Southfield, MI 48075 --- Looking for information about the "yichus" of Yehuda Yudel ROSENBERG, noted rabbi in Montreal in 1930. Looking for any ROZENBERG from Skaryszew or Bodzentyn, Poland. Also looking for KORNBLUM from Bodzentyn and Warsaw, SZAMPAN (SHAMPAN) from Przasnysz, Chorzele, and London, KOSTRZEWA (KOSCHEVA) from Ciechanow, COSHEVER from London, and CYGIELMAN from Skaryszew. 80-47 Steven LEVINE, 1408 Coeur d'Alene Ave., Coeur d'Alene, ID 83814 --- Seeking information on 19th century MALTZAN rabbinical family from Slutsk in Minsk Province: Yitzhak son of Shmuel son of Abraham. My great-grandfather Rabbi Moishe Yonah MALTZAN from Lithuania. Any relation? Also seeking from Lithuania and Poland: HARRIS, BEEN, SALENSON, BERGINSKY, SARRAH, VIGONSKI, BELSKY. 80-48 Cyndee MEYSTEL, 2857 W. Pratt Blvd., Chicago, IL 60645 --- Seeking descendants of Israel SCHACKET of Boston. Also descendants and relatives of Yitzchok Isaac OSTROPOLSKY (Zhitomer vicinity) and of his son Pesach, died age 31, c. 1890, Russia. 80-49 Cyndee MEYSTEL, 2857 W. Pratt Blvd., Chicago, IL 60645 --- Seeking descendants of Chassia KROIN from Kamien Koshirski, Poland. Daughter of Itcha Volf (Yitzchok Velvel) MESTEL, rabbi and teacher in Stuvechba. Also descendants of Jacob (Yankel) MESTEL of Yiddish theatre fame. TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 7 =================================================================== --- עמוד 7 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 8 ו-9] --- עמוד מודפס 8 (חצי ימני) --- 80-50 Cyndee MEYSTEL, 2857 W. Pratt Blvd., Chicago, IL 60645 --- Seeking relatives of Yosef HURWITZ or GURWICH, born Warsaw, died 1914 near Minsk. DAVIDSONs, HELFANDs, WELLERs, COOPERs. Also any ROMIROWSKY or BRENER especially from Lithuania. 80-51 Elizabeth SHADDIX, P.O.Box 8466, Universal City, CA 91608 --- Seeking information and relatives of Zelda Eva RABINOWITZ (born 1913, New Jersey), daughter of Benjamin RABINOWITZ and Minnie MENKOFSKY. Julius GLADSTEIN (born 1906, New York), son of David GLADSTEIN and Lillie MEYEROWITZ. 80-52 Barry TRACY, Star Route, Dryden, ME 04225 --- Writing a history of the Jews in Polonka, between Slonim and Baranowich, Poland, now Russia. Any information, family histories, copies of old photos most welcome. _________________________ A 19TH-CENTURY FAMILY FINDER The following notice appeared in Hameliz, vol. 33, no. 3 (1893): Persons descended from the Lunts family, either patrilineally or matrilineally, or who have an oral tradition of descent from the gaon, the kabbalist Rabbi Eliyahu ba'al shem Luans of Worms, should send me their address and I'll send them a copy [of my book] because at the end of my book I have published the history of the Lunts family. Thus they will learn about their origins. Scholars and writers who have written scholarly works may send me their books, and I shall reciprocate with mine. Yehuda Leyb Lunts Shavli, Province of Kovne continued on page 10 _________________________ INDEX TO 1979 ANNOUNCEMENTS The following name index was compiled from "The Jewish Family Finder" announcements which appear in the 1979 issues of TOLEDOT (vol. 2, no. 3; vol. 2, no. 4; vol. 3, no. 1). The number which follows an index entry is the number of the announcement in which that name appears. For example, "AARONSON 29" means that the name AARONSON is in ad no. 79-29. Announcements 79-1 to 79-35 are in vol. 2, no. 3; 79-36 to 79-65 are in vol. 2, no. 4; 79-66 to 79-102 are in vol. 3, no. 1. In addition to surnames, this index includes every place name which appears in an announcement. If a town and a country are both mentioned in an ad, then both are noted in the index. If only the town is given in an announcement, then the name of the country is not included in the index. 8 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 [עמודת אינדקס שמות משפחה — עמודה ראשונה, "SURNAMES":] AARONSON 29 ABOVITZ 77 ABRAMS 14, 37 ABROMOWITZ 92 ALEXANDER 36 ALLWEIL 5 ALPERT 32 ARBEIT 55 ARENBERG 84 ARNBERG 84 ARNOLD 37 ARNOLDI 55 ARONBERG 84 ARONSON 29 ARONSTAM 26 ASAF 69 ASOFSKY 69 ASTRIN 40 BACHRACH 24 BAER 95 BAIN 69 BAKER 38 BALTAKCE 77 BARKAI 39, 66 BARLAS 26 BARRABACHIK 1, 70 BARTOW 88 BASS 36 BELLA 78 BENEDICT 29 BERENBAUM 29 BERKMAN 50 BERKOWITZ 40, 50 BERLIN 40 BERMAN 14, 64 BERNSTEIN 94 BERTON 67 BESPRESSVANNI 47 BIBO 23 BICHWIT 25 BILOWITZ 41 BLIT(Z)STEIN 52 BLUE 68 BLUMENTHAL 64 BLUSTEIN 68 BOLKER 72 BOONIN 69 BRANCH 28 BRANDFELD 5 BRAUER 92 BRAVERMAN 29, 49 BRAWER 54 BROMBERG 14 BRONDFIELD 5 BRUMBERG 14 BRUSLINSKA 40 BUKSENBAUM 68 BUNCHAK 42 BUNCHUK 42 BUNDERSKY 42 BUNDORSKY 42 BUNIN 69 BUSHLOWITZ 68 CAHANA 58 CAPLAN 38 CHARLAP 84 CHARNEBRUDDAH 56 CINBERG 38 COHEN 61, 91 COOK 5 CROUKOPEN 50 CZARNILAS 19 DAITCH 1, 70 DAVIDSON 90 DAYAN 61 DELLAR 15 DE VOS 25 DEWOLF 34 DILLER 15 DOBRINER 67 DORF 63 DRACHMAN 56 DRISSMAN 2 DRUCKER 55 DUBINSKY 93 DUBOWY 62 DUBOYS 62 EDELBERG 26 EISENBERG 40 ELENSTYN 28 ENGEL 13 ENGELHEIM 66 ENGELMANN 23 EPHRAIM 95 EPSTIEN 48 FEDER 34 FEINBERG 4 FELD 9, 55, 76 FENNER 55 FEUERVERGER 10 FIDLER 38 FIELD 55 FIERSHTANE 38 FILBERMAN 83 FINCHELSTEIN 66 FINGERHUT 21 FINKELSTEIN 66 FIRESTONE 38 FISHER 36 FIXEL(LE) 91 FLITTER 3 FOSS 39 FRANK 71 FRANKEL 23 FRANKELS 24 FREISTADT 22 FRIEDLAND 6 FRIEDMAN 13 FUTORAN(SKY) 42 GALINSKI 4 GALINSKY 4 GALITZ 68 GALLAND 42 GALLETO 72 GALPERIN 17 GANS-SCHILLER 73 GELLER 32 GELMAN 12 GERBER 23 GERSTMAN 15 GERTZMAN 15 GINSBURG 99 GINZBURG 84 CINBERG 38 [כפי שמופיע, ייתכן שכפילות] GIWOWSKY 29 GLASER 5, 73 GLAZER 5 GLICKMAN 17 GOLD 21 GOLDBERG 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 43, 44, 45, 46, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78 GOLDBERGER 6, 7, 74 GOLDMAN 101 GOLDSCHMIDT 55 GOLDSTEIN 14, 51 GOLDSTICK 79 GOLDWASSER 47 GOODHART 20 GOODMAN 23 GORDON 15 GRANAT(H) 80 GREENE 21 GREENGARD 97 GREENSPAN 77 GREENWALD 15 GROSS 19 GRUNN 21 GUREVITCH 48 HAKOHEN 14 HALPER 16, 17 HARRIS 24, 81 HART 11 HASKEVITCH 40 HECHT 8, 75 HELMAN 12 HEMMERDINGER 20 HESS 64 HIRSCH 23 HOLLANDER 5 HORODESKY 40 HOWARD 48 INGER 34 ISAACS 35 ISENBERG 49 ISERUK 90 ISMACH 57 ISMACK 57 ISRAELHOOK 90 IWAN 17 JABLONSKI 23 JACKSON 23 JAFFE 24 JOACHIMSSEN 20 JOEL 71 KAHAN 13 KALNITZKY 47 KAMINSKY 24 KAPLAN 12 KATCHALSKI 91 KHAIT 2 KIRCHHEIMER 30 KIRSHEN 66 KITAIGORODSKY 61 KITCHEVER 45 KLABANSKY 47 KLATZKO 70 KOFFMAN 82 KOHANSKI 14, 15 [עמוד ממשיך בעמודה נוספת — ראה חלק שני להלן שהמשיך בעמוד סריקה 8, חצי ימני = עמוד מודפס 9] 9 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 9 (חצי שמאלי) --- [המשך אינדקס השמות מעמוד 8, בטורים] KOHN 7, 15, 58 KOHNER 23 KOLEKANDT 15 KOMANSKY 38 KORN 39 KOVARI 16 KOWITZER 17 KRAUS 23 KRELLENSTEIN 28 KREMENITZ 63 KROCH 5 KROCZ 5 KRUGER 12 KRUPKAN 50 KRUPKIN 50 KUKUK 5 KUPFERSTEIN 16, 17 KURTZ 33 KURZWEIL 18 KUSHER 13 KUVIN 54 KWASS 31 LANDIS 64 LANDMAN 49 LANDOW 36 LASS 19 LASTMAN 82, 83 LAUTMAN 102 LEBOWITZ 31 LEDIGER 38 LEE 102 LEESON 20 LEIBOWITZ 31, 66 LERMAN 98, 99 LERNER 50 LESSMAN 55 LEVENSON 50 LEVENSTEIN 84 LEVI 28 LEVIN 14, 41, 49 LEVINE 94 LEVINSON 95 LEVINTER 62 LEVITT 101 LEVOW 22 LEVY 20, 24, 28, 101 LEWI 28 LEWINTER 62 LIFSHITZ 64 LINZER 6, 74 LIPAVSKY 13 LIPCHUK 98, 99 LIPSCHUTZ 21 LISANSKY 22 LISHENSKY 22 LIS(S) 22 LISSMAN 55 LIVATICK 50 LIVINGSTON 84 LOEWENBAUM 23 LOEWENTHAL 58 LOVINS(KY) 51 LOWENSOHN 101 LOWENSTEIN 23, 24 LUBARTOWSKY 102 LUNGEN 33 MAIER 23 MALAT 94 MALKIN 40 MANDEL 32 MANGOLD 35 MARCUS 63 MARROW 85 MASLOV 52 MAYEROV 72 MAZINTER 96 MEIZLISH 26 MELTZER 70 MEST 86 MEYER 85 MICHAELIS 58 MICHALOVITZ 13 MICHEL 25 MILLER 32 MIMON 47 MINC 19 MINTZ 19 MOFSOWITZ 101 MORDECAI 53 MORGENTHAU 73 MOSER 23, 87 MOSIER 87 MOSSOVITZ 101 MUNCHIK 40 MURCHISON 53 MYERS 14 NALOS 73 NATHANSON 24 NEMZER 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93 NEUMANN 16 NEUSTADTER 11 NEVIADEMSKY 54 NEVINS 54 NEWMAN 55 NISBERG 94 NISSENSON 88 NOVITZ 99 NUDEL 26 NUDENBERG 54 NUSINOV(A) 40 OCHS 41 OFECHEWITZ 101 OGUS 48 OKONOWSKI 97 ORENS 29 ORKIN 26 OSHEROFF 72 OSHEROV 72 OSHLAG 29 OSHRIN 26 OTTENSTEIN 27 PADZENSKY 49 PALATNIK 33 PAPERNIK 68 PARIS 2 PARMET(T) 65 PASTERNAK 39 PEARLMAN 28 PELTENE 79 PEPPERMAN 57 PERELMAN 28 PERLMAN 28 PERRES 68 PETERSON 95 PHILLIPS 35 PICK 73 PLAM 56, 57 PLOTKA 89 POLISH 96 POLISKY 49 POMERANTZ 29 POTASIEWICZ 5 POTTES 24 PRAEGER 64 PRESS 89 PRILUCKI 26 PRU---NSKY 94 RACHAMOVICH 28 RANDWIT 14 RAPHAEL 36 RAPPAPORT 31 RESEFSKY 42 REZEWSKI 42 RHEINSTEIN 84 RHINESTEIN 84 RICHTER 58 RINTEL 64 RITT 101 ROSENBAUM 26 ROSENBERG 50 ROSENFIELD 97 ROSENHOLTZ 47 ROSENSTOCK 81 ROSH 16 ROTHENBURG 55 ROTHSCHILD 55 RUBANOWICH 40 RUBIENS 74 SAFRAN 47 SAKINOFSKY 50 SALIT 59 SALOMON(SEN) 64 SAMUEL 34 SAMUELS 24, 25 SANDERS 29 SARKANY 9, 76 SATENSPIEL 78 SCHAEFER 6, 7, 8, 9, 74, 75, 76 SCHALIT 59 SCHIFF 5, 101 SCHILLER 73 SCHILT(D) 25 SCHLEESTEIN 23 SCHNEIDER 26, 34 SCHNITLINGER 81 SCHNOENERSCHNEIDER 26 SCIALLITO 59 SEAMON 60 SEIDENBERG 64 SELAVAN 61 SEMPLINER 30 SERLES 5 SEVEDWELOW 50 SHALET(TE) 59 SHAL(L)IT 59 SHALYT 59 SHAMIRSKY 93 SHAPIRO 28, 36 SHARFSTEIN 40 SHEFTALL 32 SHEFTEL(OWITZ) 32 SHELOVITSKY 32 SHELOWITZ 32 SHELUPSKI 32 SHEPARD 98, 99 SHERESHEVSKY 96 SHKLONBERG 14 SHOR 24 SHULMAN 38 SIDERSKY 24 SIEGEL 29 SILVER 1 SINBERG 38 SINGER 47 SISKIND 14 SKVIRSKY 60 SMOLENSKY 49 SMOLER 48 SOEDWELOW 50 SOLARSH 102 SOLARZ 102 SOLOMON 10, 43, 44, 45, 46 SOROKER 64 SPATZ 42 SPECTOR 31, 61 SPECTOROV 40 SPISZMAN 100 SQUIRSKY 60 STAMPF 73 STARK 62 STEARNS 32 STEIN 73 STEINAU 85 STEINBERG 19, 83 STENGER 34 STERNBERG 15 STERNLIEB 63 STEVENS 101 STILLER 42 STOLOFF 2 STOLOW 2 STONE 84 STRAUSS 55 SYKES 33 SZALIT 59 SZAPIERA 28 SZELOWICKAJA 32 SZPAJZMAN 100 SZYFF 5 TABLINSKY 88 TAKCE 77 TEITEL 5 TEPPER 41 THEODOR 67 TISHUBIN 40 TITIEVSKY 61 TSINNES 24 TUCHMAN 28 TZEENBERG 38 UNGAR 34 UNGER 34 VANNI 47 VEL(I)KOVSKY 72 VICTORS 35 VINEBERG 15 VOSS 26 WAICHTSHANDLER 83 WECHSLER 63 WEINER 17 WEINRIEB 102 WEINSTEIN 15 WEXLER 61, 63 WINKELMAN 12 WISE 64 WISHNOVER 36 WITASKIS 22 WOLADARSKY 61 WOLITZER 68 WRAY 71 YANOWITZ 94 YARCONI 97 YISMACH 47 YOSELOF 101 ZAMELSON 84 ZANG 65 ZELVIN 47 ZEUGSCHMIDT 85 ZINBERG 38 ZUKE 57 ZWICKLER 24 PLACE NAMES Alabama 89 Amdur 24 Amsterdam 25, 34 Antwerp 75 Augustów 28, 47 Auschwitz 45 Austria 21, 29 Austro-Hungary 78 Baden 20 Baltimore 37, 101 Bavaria 11, 23 Bay Minette 89 Bazaliya 52 Benerekowitz 43, 44 Berdichev 52, 64 Berezen 68 Berlin 42 Bessarabia 64 Beylorussia 94 Bialystok 19, 28, 48, 90, 91 Bielsk 90 Bobrika 5 Bobroisk 82 Bobroysk 2 Bobruisk 68 Boramel 52 Borgóprund 18 Boromla 52 Boslov 22 Boston (U.K.) 35 Boston (U.S.) 32, 50 Brest-Litovsk 26, 29, 48 Brody 59, 68 Bromberg 3 Brooklyn 78 Budapest 8, 15, 75 Bukovina 63 Buzysk 68 Calveria 14 Canada 15, 65, 86, 97 Carlsbad 66 Chernogov 38 Chernovtsy 63 Chernowitz 63 Chicago 32, 39, 72, 81, 99 Chortkov 55 Cleveland 10 Connecticut 19 Copenhagen 64 Courland 29, 38 Cracow 21, 81 Czechoslovakia 73 Czestochowa 5 Darmstadt 29, 55 Dayton 92 Debrecen 16 Des Moines 84 D'movka 57 Dobrynin 56 Dobrzyn nad Wisla 56 Domacheva 26 Dombrowa 5 Drogichin nad Bugem 68 Dubrowa 54 Dushniza 14 Dwernik 55 Dwinsk 59 Eichstätten 20 England 35, 53, 81, 86, 97 Erzvilkas 96 Etna 10 Felshtin 54 Ferrara 59 Finland 47 France 65, 87 Frauenberg 87 Freiburg 20 Friedrichstadt 13 Galicia 5, 21, 34, 39, 55, 57, 62, 63, 66 Geistingen 11 Genoa 59 Georgia 90, 91 Germany 3, 25, 30, 37, 65, 85, 97 Grajewo 28 Grätz 23 Grembov 29 Griskabudis 4 Grodno 24, 25, 54, 84, 94 Hajdudorog 13 Hamburg 64 Hesse 55 Hodonin 73 Holland 25, 34, 86 Horodok 12 Horshowitz 73 Hungary 7, 9, 10, 16, 18, 30, 43, 45, 76, 78 Husiatyn 33 Ibenhausen 37 Iowa 58, 84 Israel 44, 97 Ivankov 93 Jamaica 53 Jasionowka 27 Jassy 63 Jaunjelgava 13 Josefow nad Wistula 100 Juniata 87 Kalvarya 15 Kamenets Podolski 17, 33 Khust 13 Kiev 42, 49, 51, 52, 57, 60, 61, 72 Kingston 23 Kismen 10, 43, 44 Kitchever 45 Kivertsy 52 Kodna 26 Kolki 52 Kolodno 89 Korno 94 Korostyshev 42 Koslow 54 Kosov 12 Kourland 29, 38 Koverzitz 69 Kovno 4, 38, 41 Krakow 21, 81 Krasne 66 Kremenitz 89 Kupin 38 Kupjel 52 Kursenai 13 Kuttenplan 23 Latvia 26, 79, 92 Lazdei 14 Lazdijai 24 Lekhivitz 57 Lemberg 57 Leningrad 38 Libau 26, 59 Lichtenstadt 23 Lida 70 Linkava 38 Lithuania 4, 26, 38, 84, 96, 97, 101 Litovische 55 Lobositz 73 Lodz 82, 102 Lomza 13, 28, 47, 86 London 35 Los Angeles 58 Louisville 85 Lublin 100 Luboshov 98, 99 Luck 26 Ludmir 5 Lukashifke 61 Lutsk 41, 52 L'vov 2 Lyszowicz 5 Makeyevka 42 Malin 54 Mannheim 30 Mantua 59 Máramaros 30 Massachusetts 39 Mátészalka 18 Matzkewitz 69 Meretz 24 Merxheim 25 Milwaukee 31, 58 Minsk 41, 99, 102 Miskolcz 16 Mizoch 52 Mizocz 3 Mlawa 56 Mlinov 52 Mobile 85 Moscow 60 Munkacs 43, 44 Naputchna 54 Nashville 85 Neshviez 29 Neustadt 24 New York 7, 8, 11, 16, 20, 21, 23, 29, 42, 55, 60, 71, 72, 75, 76, 83, 88, 89, 91, 95 Nezhin 40 Nikoleyev 38 Notic 52 Nyírbátor 18 Obrigheim 23 Odessa 12, 15, 52, 57 Ohio 92 Olesko 59 Oleszyce 34 Orle 90 Ostelenka 86 Ostroviec 82 Ottenstein 27 Padua 59 Pakroy 38 Panevezys 38, 101 Peltene 79 Pennsylvania 37, 85, 87 Petrikov 13 Philadelphia 37 Pienkowicz 5 Pine Bluff 19 Pinsk 98, 99 Pittsburgh 14, 46 Podkamen 68 Pogar 72 Poland 5, 12, 13, 19, 25, 27, 28, 29, 33, 38, 47, 49, 55, 56, 57, 68, 80, 82, 83, 86, 90, 91, 95, 100, 102 Ponevyezh 59 Portugal 65 Posen 3, 23, 24, 64 Prague 73 Priluki 40 Prussia 29, 67 Pruzhany 94 Przasnysz 101 Przemyslany 5 Radomsk 5 Radomyshl 93 Radziwillow 57 Rajgród 28 Ranczyna 66 Rhubsevitz 33 Riga 2, 59, 101 Romania 10, 63, 66 Rovno 52 Rozhishche 52 Russia 2, 3, 12, 17, 29, 31, 33, 47, 49, 50, 57, 65, 82, 84, 86, 94, 102 Rzhishchev 49 Saaz 73 St. Louis 85 Sakee 4 Sakiai 4 San Francisco 11 Scandinavia 65 Schaki 84 Schirwindt 24 Schneidemuhl 58 Schossenreith 23 Schuschin 28 Sedlitz 102 Semiatich 68 Seretec 62 Serheia 14 Serijai 24 Shedlitz 12 Shirvint 2 Sienawa 66 Slutzk 69 Sluzewo 25, 95 Sofiyevka 52 Sokolow 66 Solan 73 Soroki 52 Spain 65 Stavishte 61 Steinau 85 Sterwitz 59 Stettin 55 Sulzbach 11 Suvalk 12, 14 Suwalki 12, 14 Swinach 26 Switzerland 21 Szczuczyn 28 Szdzary 5 Szerencs 7, 16 Szjetzy 38 Szydlowiec 82 Tarascha 51 Taraschcha 60 Targowicza 52 Tarnopol 62, 63 Tarnow 5 Teofepole 38 Teplice 73 Timkowitz 69 Tirgu Neamz 66 Tissa 23 Transylvania 18 Trembowla 59 Trochenbrod 52 Truvitz 52 Tysmienica 80 Ukraine 3, 5, 22, 38, 40, 42, 51, 52, 55, 57, 77, 89, 93 Ungvár 10 U.S.S.R. 42 Ustilla 5 Venice 59 Ventspils 79 Vevia 48 Vienna 5, 81 Vijon 12 Vilkamere 15 Vilna 2, 41, 47, 48, 49, 88 Vinnitsa 33, 52 Vishnevitz 89 Vishula 95 Vitebsk 59 Volhynia 57 Volkovysk 84 Volochisk 52 Volynia 5, 52 Wallachisk 31 Warsaw 28, 29, 82, 101, 102 Weksna 24 Werbelov 24 Wollenska 31 Wurttemberg 37 Yashenovke 27 Yonkers 6, 74 Zabolotov 34 Zagaare 26 Zalosce 62 Zambrów 28, 47 Zbarazh 59, 68 Zborow 59 Zerkow 64 Zhitomir 22, 38, 42, 52 Zidugira 15 Zincov 17 Zlodczew 59 Zobkowice 19 _________________________ continued from page 8 Hameliz (The Advocate) was the first Hebrew newspaper to be published in Russia. It was founded in Odessa in 1860 by Alexander Zederbaum, with permission of the Czar. In 1871 it was transferred to St. Petersburg where it was published until 1904. It was a weekly from 1860 to 1883, a semi-weekly from 1883 to 1886, and a daily from 1886 to 1904. In the course of time it became a semi-official organ of the Hovevei Zion (Lovers of Zion). While a notice such the one I translated above was rare, Hameliz (and other Hebrew and Yiddish newspapers of the 19th century) are very important sources for family and community history. Names of subscribers and their addresses were regularly published, and people from all over the world subscribed. Thus, one finds news of shekhita examinations in Omaha, Nebraska, of the comings and goings of rabbis and shokhetim [ritual slaughterers], of the controversies between the yeshivas of Kovne and Slabodke, of Hebrew-speaking groups and pre-Herzlian Zionist groups, etc. in their pages. Submitted by Ida Cohen Selavan, Ph.D., Director, Nonformal Academy of Jewish Studies, Pittsburgh, PA. 10 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 =================================================================== --- עמוד 8 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 10 ו-11] [הערה: החצי הימני של הספרד (עמ' 10) כולל את המשך אינדקס השמות/מקומות מהעמוד הקודם, שכבר תומלל לעיל בשלמותו יחד עם עמוד 9. תוכן זה תומלל כבר לעיל ואינו חוזר כאן פרט לכיתוב "continued from page 8" ותוכן פסקאות Hameliz שכבר הועתקו לעיל.] --- עמוד מודפס 11 (חצי שמאלי) --- ERETS-ISRAEL AND JEWISH GENEALOGY An Introduction to the Sources for the Later Ottoman and Mandate Periods Michael Plotkin A sizeable Jewish population was present in Erets-Israel many years before the establishment of the state of Israel,1 and in the course of the growth and development of this branch of Jewry a large body of source material relating to genealogy and family history came into being. So far, however, only very limited use has been made of this material, due in no small measure to the lack of readily obtainable information regarding the availability and the utility of the pertinent sources. General works, such as Dan Rottenberg's Finding Our Fathers and Daniel Cohen's introductory manual addressed to Israeli archivists, barely acknowledge the existence of this corner of the field.2 Nevertheless, the volume, variety, and quality of the sources tell a different story, and it is the purpose of the article offered here to attempt to dispel some of the obscurity which surrounds them by classifying and describing the most valuable ones. The article deals with the Erets-Israel dimension of Jewish genealogy under the following headings: I. Census records. II. Registration of births. III. Registration of marriages and divorces and related records. IV. Registration of deaths / Cemeteries / Burial societies and burial records / Published collections of epitaphs. V. Biographical encyclopedias and similar works. VI. Registers of new immigrants compiled by the Jewish Agency. VII. Applications for naturalized Palestine citizenship. VIII. Changes of name. IX. Records of foreign consulates. X. Published genealogies and family histories. XI. Pinkas Ha-Bogrim (Register of the adult members of Knesset Yisrael). XII. Court records on estates and inheritance. XIII. Published works on the history of towns, settlements, associations, institutions, etc., as sources for biographical information. XIV. Yizkor (Memorial) literature. XV. Miscellaneous sources. Michael Plotkin, who was born and raised in New York City, is a senior adviser to researchers at the Israel State Archives, a free-lance genealogist, and a Hebrew-English translator. Address: Kiryat Telz-Stone 107/B, D.N. Harei Yehuda 90 840, Israel. In the following article, abbreviations used frequently are I.S.A. (=Israel State Archives) and R.G. (=Record Group). Published works in English, or dual-language works with an identical English and Hebrew text (regardless of whether the parallel texts were published together in a single volume or in separate English and Hebrew editions), are identified by means of an asterisk [*] appended to the title of a work; all other published works cited are in Hebrew. In cases where the titles of Hebrew works have not been transliterated but appear as English titles, these have been taken from an English title-page or are translations by the writer. I. Census Records During the period beginning with the 1830s and ending with May 1948, more than twenty censuses of population involving Jews in Erets-Israel were taken, though not all the records created in the course of these censuses have survived. Some of the censuses were carried out by the Ottoman administration, some by the British Mandate Government of Palestine, and others at the initiative of private individuals or institutions. Sir Moses Montefiore, who visited Erets-Israel seven times and took an abiding interest in the welfare of the Jews living there, sponsored five censuses, taken in the years 1839, 1849, 1855, 1866, and 1875. The original records of these censuses are at Jews' College, London, and microfilm copies are available at the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts (Jewish National and University Library), Jerusalem. A number of historical works contain lists of Jews drawn up on the basis of one or more of the Montefiore censuses: 1. An extensive list of the Jews in Safed, Haifa, Acre, Shefaram, and Sidon, derived from the records of the 1839 census, was published as an appendix (pp. 453-473) to an article written by Joseph Meisel entitled "The Jewish Settlement in Eretz-Israel in 1839," in Safed Volume, vol. 1, edited by Itzhak Ben-Zvi and Meir Benayahu (Jerusalem 1962). 2. Lists of the 19th-century members of the "Deutsch-Holländische Gemeinde" (Kolel Hod in Jerusalem), derived mainly from the censuses of 1855 and 1875, have been published by Mordechai Eliav in his Love of Zion and Men of Hod: German Jewry and the Settlement of Erets-Israel in the 19th Century (Tel Aviv 1971), pp. 380-385. TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 11 =================================================================== --- עמוד 9 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 12 ו-13] --- עמוד מודפס 12 (חצי ימני) --- 3. Lists of Jews who lived in Peki'in and Shefaram appear in two articles on the Jewish population of these localities written by Itzhak Ben-Zvi, Collected Works of Itzhak Ben-Zvi, vol. 2 (Tel Aviv 1936), pp. 13-108. For a discussion of the three censuses taken at Hebron in 1855, 1866, and 1875, see Oded Avissar (ed.), Sefer Hevron (Jerusalem 1970), pp. 77-82.3 The official Ottoman censuses appear to have become institutionalized beginning with the 1870s and were taken at irregular intervals until the end of Ottoman rule in Erets-Israel in 1918. The extant records of these - in the form of over 400 large-size "Nefus" registers - are at the I.S.A. in Jerusalem, and microfilm copies have been ordered by the Genealogical Society of Utah [Mormon Genealogical Library]. Another Nefus register, compiled in 1908 and listing members of the Yemenite Jewish community, is at the archives of the Council of the Yemenite Community in Jerusalem.4 For details on the Nefus registers (which also contain partial listings of births, deaths, marriages, divorces, men of conscription age, and changes of address), see P.A. Alsberg, "The Israel State Archives as a Source for the History of Palestine During the Period of Ottoman Rule"*, in Moshe Maoz (ed.), Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period* (Jerusalem 1975), pp. 533-544; Adar Arnon, "Population Censuses in Jerusalem in the Later Ottoman Period," Cathedra, no. 6, Dec. 1977, pp. 95-107; and the unpublished catalogs at the I.S.A. compiled by Yitzhak Schreiber and Adar Arnon (both in Hebrew) and by Rhoda Cohen (in English). During the thirty years of British rule in Erets-Israel (1918-1948), quite a few censuses were taken but the only records which survive, so far as is known, are those of the Jerusalem census of early 1947 conducted by the local Council of the Hebrew Community, and the records of the local census taken in Jerusalem in 1948. The latter census was conceived at the beginning of 1948 and was carried out by the Home Guard in the besieged city in the spring of that year. The records of both these censuses are at the I.S.A., under R.G. 42 (Jerusalem Committee and Military Governor), in a total of 60 boxes.5 Below is a list of censuses the records of which are either lost or were destroyed:6 1. A census carried out by the Egyptian occupation authorities in 1833.7 2. An Ottoman census taken in 1851.8 3. The census taken by Gottlieb Schumacher in northern Erets-Israel in 1886.9 4. Census of the Jews in Jaffa, 1905, taken by Ze'ev Smilansky.10 5. Census of the Jews of Erets-Israel, 1916-1919, carried out by the Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization.11 6. The first countrywide census taken by the Government of Palestine in 1922.12 7. A local census taken in Tel Aviv in 1925 by the municipality.13 8. The second and last countrywide census taken by the Government of Palestine in 1931.14 The records of this census were destroyed shortly after its completion.15 9. Census of the Jews of Haifa conducted in 1938 by the local Council of the Hebrew Community.16 10. Census of the Jews of Tel Aviv conducted in 1938 by the local Council of the Hebrew Community.17 11. Census of the Jews of Jerusalem carried out in 1939 by the Statistical Department of the Jewish Agency.18 12. Census of the Jews of Safed and Tiberias carried out in 1942 by the Statistical Department of the Jewish Agency.19 II. Registration of Births During the later Ottoman period, births were registered at regional Nefus offices and the surviving Ottoman birth registers are part of the collection of Nefus registers at the I.S.A. In May 1918, the British military administration issued Public Health Ordinance No. 1 which prescribed the compulsory notification of births to the Public Health Office and ordered that a register of births be kept at that Office. In 1924 birth certificates were introduced by the Department of Health and around the same time arrangements were made for the registration of births which had occurred prior to 1918. Birth registers from the Mandate period are at present in the custody of the Ministry of the Interior, Jerusalem.20 III. Registration of Marriages and Divorces and Related Records From the late 19th century until the end of Ottoman rule, marriages and divorces were recorded in the Nefus registers. Presumably, rabbis who performed marriages and rabbinical courts before which divorces were effected, also kept records of their own during this period and earlier. However, the whereabouts of these records - if indeed they survive - remain to be discovered. Perhaps some of the marriage contracts and copies of marriage certificates which are at the archives of the Council of the Yemenite Community in Jerusalem date from Ottoman times.21 In September 1919, the British military administration issued an ordinance requiring the registration of marriages and divorces. This enactment, along with a body of administrative precedents which arose to supplement its deficiencies, and a number of important decisions handed down by Palestine's Supreme Court, regulated the registration of marriages and divorces until the end of the Mandate period. In practice, what occurred was that District Commissioners issued books containing blank copies of marriage 12 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 13 (חצי שמאלי) --- and divorce certificates in sets of four to rabbis and rabbinical courts. After being filled out by the registering rabbi or court, two copies of a set were given to the couple (or the ex-couple), one was sent to the District Commissioner, and one was retained by the registering authority. Frequently, however, problems arose regarding the legal competency of certain rabbis or rabbinical courts. Thus, the privilege enjoyed by rabbinical courts affiliated with the Agudat Israel organization to preside over divorce cases was revoked by the government in the later 1930s, although rabbis of that organization were permitted to perform marriages throughout the Mandate period. There were also cases of rabbis who performed marriages and rabbinical courts which arranged divorces without the authorization of the District Commissioner.22 The location of copies of marriage and divorce certificates today is roughly as follows: the bulk is held by local Religious Councils around the country, another portion is held by the Ministry of Religious Affairs in Jerusalem, and a third portion - certificates from Tel Aviv and the surrounding area dating from the 1920s, '30s, and '40s - is at the I.S.A. in boxes M/1492-M/1501. Related records in the form of files - dealing mainly with divorce cases and "halitzah" (release from the obligation of levirate marriage) - were created in the rabbinical courts and many of these have already been transferred to the I.S.A. The records of the rabbinical courts of Tel Aviv-Jaffa and Petah-Tikvah are under Record Groups 121 and 132 respectively, while the records of the Rabbinical High Court of Appeal are under R.G. 98 (State of Israel, Ministry of Religious Affairs). IV. Registration of Deaths / Cemeteries / Burial Societies and Burial Records / Published Collections of Epitaphs A. Registration of Deaths During the last half-century or so of Ottoman rule, deaths were recorded in the Nefus registers. During the Mandate period the notification of deaths was compulsory (under the Public Health Ordinances) and death registers were maintained by the Department of Health. Death certificates were introduced in 1924 and arrangements were made for the registration of deaths which had occurred prior to 1918. Like the birth registers from the Mandate period, death registers are held by the Ministry of the Interior, Jerusalem.23 B. Cemeteries Shortly after the state of Israel was founded there were approximately 120 Jewish burial grounds in the country.24 Most of these were of relative- ly recent origin, having grown up alongside the host of new settlements which were established by successive waves of Zionist immigration. The Nes-Ziyyonah cemetery, for example, was founded in 1891, eight years after the establishment of the colony.25 The older cemeteries in Erets-Israel were located in the traditional centers of Jewish population, "the four holy cities" of Jerusalem, Safed, Tiberias, and Hebron. Prior to 1948 Jerusalem had two Jewish cemeteries. The more famous of the pair was the hoary cemetery on the Mount of Olives overlooking the city, which served not only the permanent inhabitants of Jerusalem but also Jews from all over the world who came to Erets-Israel in their old age with the intention of securing a last resting place in that particularly hallowed spot of ground. The Mount of Olives cemetery was divided up into sections under the care of the various burial societies, each generally serving a particular community of Jews. The second cemetery, which has graves going back to the 18th century if not earlier, was known as the Samboski cemetery and is located on the southern slope of Mount Zion. Most of the people who were buried there were poor Sephardi Jews whose families were without the means to pay for the funeral. During the period of Jordanian rule (1948-1967), both cemeteries suffered extensive damage, some of which has subsequently been repaired. The Jewish cemetery in Safed has graves and tombstones going back to the 16th century; the cemetery at Tiberias was founded in the 1740s; the centuries-old cemetery at Hebron suffered depredations during the 1930s and '40s when a Jewish community was no longer in existence in the city and the cemetery was virtually obliterated under Jordanian rule; the Jewish cemetery at Shekhem (Nablus) disappeared about fifty years ago. A Jewish cemetery was opened in the Ajami quarter of Jaffa in 1840. Before that date deceased members of the embryonic Jewish community of the town were transported to Jerusalem for burial. At the beginning of the 20th century, a cholera epidemic struck Jaffa and the Ottoman authorities ordered that the dead be buried outside the limits of the town, as a public health measure. Accordingly, the Jewish victims of the disease were laid to rest in a new burial ground to the north of Jaffa. After the epidemic had run its course, the Jews of Jaffa continued to use this new cemetery for by that time the Ajami cemetery had been filled to near-capacity. Not long afterwards, Tel Aviv was established nearby, and this new cemetery of Jaffa began to be used by the inhabitants of Tel Aviv as well. Years later it became known as the old cemetery of Tel Aviv. In 1932 a second cemetery serving the Tel Aviv area was opened at Nahalat Yitzhak and a third one was opened at Kiryat Shaul in 1949. In Bnei-Brak a local cemetery was established in 1947.26 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 13 [הערת תמלול חשובה: משפט המפתח בעמוד זה, בפסקה האחרונה של הטור הימני: "the Jewish cemetery at Shekhem (Nablus) disappeared about fifty years ago." — כלומר, נכון לזמן כתיבת המאמר (1981), בית הקברות היהודי בשכם (נאבלוס) נעלם בערך בשנות ה-1930.] =================================================================== --- עמוד 10 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 14 ו-15] --- עמוד מודפס 14 (חצי ימני) --- C. Burial Societies and Burial Records Aside from arranging funerals and burying the dead, burial societies (hevrot kaddisha) were responsible for the general upkeep of cemeteries and sometimes exercised a measure of supervision over the erection of tombstones. In some cases, the society held ownership of the plot of land used for burial. From the middle of the 19th century onwards, the history of burial societies in Erets-Israel reveals a complex pattern of proliferation and permutation. In Jerusalem the Sephardi burial society managed to maintain a monopoly until 1856, when Ashkenazi Jews bought a plot of land of their own on the Mount of Olives and established a separate burial society. Prior to that time, Ashkenazi Jews were buried in the Sephardi section of the cemetery. In succeeding decades the process of fission in Jerusalem continued as other groups sought to assert their community identity, though the rise in the number of burial societies serving the city's Jews was probably not steady. Along with the creation of new societies, others appear to have lapsed. In the early 1920s, a government commission headed by Gad Frumkin, and charged with examining the ritual slaughter and burial affairs of the Jewish communities, found that Jerusalem had more than a dozen burial societies. The largest was that of the Perushim, which served Ashkenazi Jews who were not members of any of the Hassidic communities. In addition, there were burial societies affiliated with each of the organized Hassidic groups and separate societies serving the Sephardi community, the Yemenite Jews, and the Georgians. Dissatisfaction with the multiplicity of burial societies in the city - whose number reached 28 during the Mandate period when many Oriental and Sephardi communities established societies of their own - was one of the principal factors which led to the creation of the Burial Society of the Jerusalem Jewish Community in the 1930s. This society, which enjoyed the support of the Va'ad Leumi (the National Council of the Jews of Erets-Israel), served Jews of whatever origin or rite. By the 1950s, the number of burial societies in Jerusalem had declined to five: a united society serving Jews of Sephardi, Oriental, or Balkan origin, two Ashkenazi societies (Perushim and Hassidim), a new Yemenite society, and the Burial Society of the Jerusalem Jewish Community.27 In the early 20th century, the number of burial societies in Safed may have exceeded that of Jerusalem - there were 15 alone for the Ashkenazi communities. In 1920, when the Jewish community of Safed was in the process of recovering from the ravages and disruption caused by the First World War, a single, amalgamated Ashkenazi society was formed and this society continued to function into the period of Jewish statehood.28 In pre-1948 Tiberias (though for how far back this holds is not clear), there were two burial societies, one for Sephardi Jews and one for Ashkenazi Jews. In 1948 the two were united and a decade later the practice of burying members of these communities in separate sections of the cemetery was discontinued. In 19th-century Hebron there were also two burial societies, one for the Sephardi community and one for the Ashkenazi Jews (the latter mainly Habad Hassidim). In Jaffa the earliest burial society was operated by Sephardi Jews. A second, Ashkenazi society was formed at the end of the 19th century but before long it merged with the original Sephardi society. This new, united society served the Jaffa-Tel Aviv area and continues to function today.29 The Zikhron Jacob burial society was founded in 1885; the Petah-Tikvah society in 1889; the Rehovot society in 1891; the Netanya society in 1925; the Ra'anana society in 1929; the Bnei-Brak society in 1947.30 Old Records of Burial Societies The first official enactment in Erets-Israel requiring burial societies to maintain a register of burials appears to be the Public Health Ordinance of 1940. However, the practice of keeping records of this type is probably as old as burial societies themselves, although the method of recording and preserving burial information may vary from one society to another and may undergo change over time. The burial society of Tel Aviv-Jaffa, for example, has (among others) the following records: for the period 1840-1902, a register of burials arranged alphabetically by name of deceased; beginning with 1903, chronological registers of burials, burial registers arranged alphabetically, and registers arranged according to the layout of the cemeteries; from 1949, files containing copies of the epitaphs inscribed on tombstones. Below is a list indicating the present-day location of the old records of a number of burial societies.31 While not pretending to be anywheres near comprehensive, it nevertheless points to a general conclusion that extant records of this kind are distributed among existing burial societies, archival institutions, bodies representing Jews of a particular origin, and private individuals. 1. Burial registers dating from 1842 onwards and relating to the Samboski cemetery in Jerusalem are in the hands of the Parnas family (Jerusalem), which for generations performed the functions of a burial society with respect to that cemetery.32 2. At the archives of the Council of the Yemenite Community in Jerusalem there are records relating to members of that community who are buried on the Mount of Olives. 3. The Burial Society of the Jerusalem Jewish Community has records beginning with 1939, when the society began operating. 4. The Central Archives for the History of 14 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 15 (חצי שמאלי) --- the Jewish People, Jerusalem, holds a burial register of Ashkenazi Jews compiled in Safed, 1839-1887.33 5. The Ashkenazi burial society in Safed has records going back to 1920. (Sephardi records for Safed appear to be lost.) 6. The united burial society in Tiberias has records on Ashkenazi Jews going back to 1856. Pre-1948 records relating to Sephardi Jews are probably in the custody of the organized Sephardi community there. 7. The Zikhron Jacob society has records going back to the 1880s. 8. The Petah-Tikvah society has records going back to 1889. 9. The Rehovot society has records from 1891 onwards. 10. A burial register from Rishon Le-Ziyyon covering the period 1899-1947 is at the municipal archives of that city.34 11. The Haifa burial society has records going back to 1912. 12. The Kfar Saba society has records beginning with 1917. 13. The Ra'anana society has records beginning with 1929. 14. The Netanya society has records from 1930 onwards. 15. The Bnei-Brak society (Zikhron Meir) has records from 1947 onwards. D. Published Collections of Epitaphs The major works are the following: --Oscher Leib Brisk, Helkat Mehokek, 12 parts (Jerusalem 1905); collection of epitaphs from the Mount of Olives cemetery, supplemented by information derived from burial registers. Most of the entries date from the 19th century. --Pinhas Ben Zvi Grajewsky, Avnei Zikkaron, 15 parts (Jerusalem 1928-1932); most of the series consists of tombstone epitaphs and entries originally recorded in burial registers, 19th-20th centuries. Among the cemeteries covered by the series are Jaffa, Petah-Tikvah, Rishon Le-Ziyyon, Mount of Olives (Habad section), Rehovot, Mazkeret-Batia, Zikhron Jacob. --Zvi Kroll and Zadok Linman, The Old Cemetery in Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv 1940); an annotated, alphabetized list of people who were buried in the old cemetery from 1902 to 1939, based on epitaphs, burial registers, and questionnaires filled out by families of the deceased. A new, multi-volumed work on the Mount of Olives cemetery, by Benjamin Kluger of Jerusalem, has been completed in manuscript and the compiler is now negotiating to have it published.35 V. Biographical Encyclopedias and Similar Works The major works are: --Aryeh Leib Frumkin, Toledot Hakhmei Yerushalayim, revised and enlarged edition edited by Eli- ezer Rivlin, 3 vols. (Jerusalem 1928-1930, reprinted 1969); an encyclopedic survey covering the period 1490-1870. Despite the title (History of the Sages of Jerusalem), it also deals with Safed and Tiberias and with people who were not strictly sages or rabbinical figures. --Sefer Ha-Ishim (Tel Aviv 1937); the first Hebrew "Who's Who" type of work published in Erets-Israel. It also contains a "Who Was Who" section. --M.D. Gaon, Yehudei Ha-Mizrah Be-Erets-Yisrael, vol. 2 (Jerusalem 1938); on Sephardi and Oriental Jews. --David Tidhar, Encyclopedia of Pioneers and Builders of the Yishuv, 19 vols. (Tel Aviv 1947-1971); contains 9000 entries. --Yitzhak Raphael and Geulah Bath Yehudah, Encyclopedia of Religious Zionism, 4 vols. (Jerusalem 1958-1971); the fifth and final alphabetical volume remains to be published. --G. Kressel, Cyclopedia of Modern Hebrew Literature, 2 vols. (Merhavia 1965-1967). --Jacob Gelis, Encyclopedia of the Sages of Eretz Israel, 3 vols. (Jerusalem 1974-1978); covers the last thousand years. VI. Registers of New Immigrants Compiled by the Jewish Agency The Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem holds large quantities of material on Jewish immigration to Erets-Israel, but most of it is neither catalogued nor arranged in a manner that will facilitate searches for information on ordinary individuals (as is true of archival material in general). However, a major exception to this rule - which for that reason deserves mention here - are the registers of new immigrants compiled by the Jewish Agency's Department of Immigration beginning with the end of 1919. Names of immigrants in the registers are ordinarily grouped together under the names of the vessels which brought most of them to the shores of Erets-Israel, and are alphabetized for each vessel. In addition to age, category of immigrant, name of vessel, and date of arrival, the registers sometimes provide information on the nationality of the immigrant and on relatives residing in Erets-Israel. The overall arrangement of the registers is chronological but there is no general name index. VII. Applications for Naturalized Palestine Citizenship Between 1925 and 1948, more than 100,000 applications of this type were submitted to the Government of Palestine, under the Palestine Citizenship Order of 1925.36 The vast majority of applicants were immigrant Jews. The particulars which applicants were required to furnish included date and place of birth, marital status, nationality, occupation; wife's first name and TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 15 =================================================================== --- עמוד 11 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 16 ו-17] --- עמוד מודפס 16 (חצי ימני) --- maiden name, wife's date and place of birth, wife's nationality before marriage (in the case of a married man); children's names, dates and places of birth. Also required were photographs of the applicant and his wife. At the Department of Migration, where such applications were handled, additional information was recorded by clerks: date of applicant's entry into Erets-Israel and details of the passport used to enter the country (e.g., German passport no. --- issued at --- on ---). By the time the processing of the application was completed, a thin file had taken shape, an estimated 30-40,000 of which survive, held by the I.S.A. Access to these files is by means of an alphabetical name index (original at the Ministry of the Interior in Jerusalem, microfilm copy at the I.S.A.). In cases where the files are no longer extant, the index itself assumes importance as a genealogical source, since it encompasses the full range of 100,000 applicants and lists year and place of birth. VIII. Changes of Name Jews bearing new Hebrew last names were a noticeable group in Erets-Israel by the time of the First World War,37 but nothing is known about any official Ottoman regulations which may have governed changes of name, nor has any evidence come to light in the surviving records of the Ottoman administration to show that the government exercised any sort of control over changes of name or kept any systematic record of them. It seems safe to guess, therefore, that most Jews, if not all, who adopted new names during that period, did so unofficially. A clearly-defined legal procedure for effecting a change of name was instituted in Erets-Israel in 1921, in response to a request made to the Government of Palestine by the Zionist Commission.38 By the time British rule in the country had ended, some 20,000 individuals (including children of adult applicants) had formally applied for a change of name, practically all of them Jews.39 The procedure for changing a name - whether first, last, or both - involved the submission of an application to the Department of Migration and the payment of a small fee.40 As a matter of course, all applications were approved and the adoption of a new name was finalized by the publication of the new name alongside the old one in both the English and the Hebrew editions of the Palestine Gazette*, the official journal of the Government of Palestine. Together with the names, the Gazette* also listed place of residence and, beginning with the 1930s, nationality. Publication of lists of name-changes in the Gazette* occurred anywheres from three to fifteen times a year, at irregular intervals. Altogether, there are probably over 300 separate lists of this kind scattered throughout the 1500 issues of the Gazette* which appeared over the period 1921-1948. Lists published prior to 1924 are unalphabetized; those from 1924 through 1934 are individually alphabetized by new name; the remainder, beginning with the March 21, 1935 issue of the Gazette*, are individually alphabetized by old name. This arrangement, no doubt, is a serious obstacle in the way of onomastic inquiries, but a solution to the problem may be in sight if a project which is at present being planned in Israel reaches fruition: the compilation of a comprehensive alphabetical index to the name-changes in the Gazette*, by means of which a new name could easily be traced on the basis of a former name and vice versa. In the meantime, the following observations may be of some help in dealing with difficulties arising from a change, or a suspected change, of name. 1. An examination by the writer of a list of name-changes chosen at random (Gazette*, March 21, 1935) yielded the following data41 - 69 people changed only their last name, 36 changed both first and last names, and 6 changed only their first name; of the people who changed their last name, 75 adopted a Hebrew name and 18 a non-Hebrew name; of the 75 people who adopted a Hebrew last name, 25 adopted a name beginning with Ben- or Bar-. Of all the people who changed their names (first, last, or both), 33 appear in the list as solitary individuals and 75 could be identified as kin of one sort or another (husband and wife, nuclear family, siblings, etc.); of the 33 solitary individuals, 30 were men and 3 were women. Finally, of all the people who changed their names, only 10 percent were Sephardi or Oriental Jews, which is a considerably lower proportion than their numbers in the general Jewish population at the time.42 2. For what it is worth, it is the writer's impression that there is a negative correlation between degree of identification with the Jewish religion and readiness to adopt a Hebrew family name. In other words, the option of discarding an inherited non-Hebrew name in favor of a Hebrew one would have been less likely to have appealed to observant Jews than to non-observant Jews. 3. Name-changes frequently conform to patterns that can be easily discerned, for example: a) the combination of the prefix Ben- or Bar- (meaning "son of") with the father's first name, e.g., Itzhak Shimshelevich, son of Zvi Shimshelevich, who changed his name to Itzhak Ben-Zvi; b) the retention of prominent elements of the original sound pattern, e.g., Jacob Zakrosnitzy--Jacob Zakay; c) the retention of the meaning of the original name, e.g., Menahem Klein--Menahem Katan.43 4. It should be borne in mind that as common as name-changes were during the Mandate period, the phenomenon only began to attain truly widespread proportions after the establishment of the state of Israel. In 1952, for instance, more than 6500 people changed their names,44 a 16 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 17 (חצי שמאלי) --- rate which, relative to the total Jewish population of Israel at the time (1,400,000), was about double what it had been during the years of the Mandate. And more recent figures indicate that the rate, if anything, has accelerated even further. An estimated 200,000 Israelis changed their names in the decade of the 1970s.45 IX. Records of Foreign Consulates The importance of these records for genealogical research stems from the fact that during the later Ottoman period large numbers of Jews in Erets-Israel were either citizens of, or enjoyed the protection of, European countries or the United States. Generally, the foreign powers maintained a ranking consulate in Jerusalem and subordinate branches or agents in Jaffa and Haifa. The bulk of the records of the British consulate is at the I.S.A., the remainder at the Public Record Office in London. The records of the German consulate are also at the I.S.A. and microfilm copies of selected German consulate records with a high genealogical value have been ordered by the Genealogical Society of Utah. Practically all of the records of the Austrian consulate are at the Austrian National Archives; only a few of the Austrian files are at the I.S.A. American consulate records are at the National Archives in Washington and a microfilm copy of the series of consular dispatches is available at Yad Ben-Zvi in Jerusalem. The records of the French consulate should be at the National Archives in Paris. The Hebrew University's Institute of Asian and African Studies has a complete microfilm copy of British consular dispatches as well as copies of French, Italian, and Austrian consular documents. In the mid-1930s, the records of the Imperial Russian consulate were the subject of negotiations involving the Soviet ambassador in London, the British Foreign Office, the Government of Palestine, and Yacub Farradj of Jerusalem. Farradj, who had formerly been the chief dragoman of the consulate, had custody of the surviving records of the consulate which the Soviet Union wished to acquire, but he refused to hand them over on the terms proposed by the Soviets - free of charge. The fate of these records since then is a mystery. The following items from the records of the British consulate at the I.S.A. are meant to illustrate one of the many varieties of genealogical material which consular records are likely to contain: a) an alphabetized list of all persons enjoying the protection of the British consulate at Jerusalem, 1856, giving particulars on religion, occupation, date of settlement, nationality, and number of dependents (R.G. 123/1, item no. 6); b) an alphabetical index of all persons enjoying British protection in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus, 1879-1908 (R.G. 123/1, item no. 3). On the records of the British consulate, see P. A. Alsberg, "The Israel State Archives as a Source for the History of Palestine During the Period of Ottoman Rule"* [cited in I. Census Records]. The same article also discusses the records of the German consulate but for those records one should also consult the catalog published by the I.S.A., The German Consulates in Palestine (1842-1939)* (Jerusalem 1976). On the records of the Austrian consulate, see Alex Carmel, "Documentary Material in Austrian and German Archives Relating to Palestine During the Period of Ottoman Rule"*, in Maoz (ed.), Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period*, pp. 568-577. On the records of the American consulate, see Nathan M. Kaganoff (ed.), Guide to America-Holy Land Studies*, vol. 1, American Presence* (New York 1980), pp. 98-103; and Milton O. Gustafson, "Records in the National Archives Relating to America and the Holy Land"*, in Moshe David (ed.), With Eyes Toward Zion: Scholars Colloquium on America-Holy Land Studies* (New York 1977), pp. 129-152. On the Imperial Russian consulate records, see I.S.A., file Y/71/35, R.G. 2. X. Published Genealogies and Family Histories The number of published genealogies and family histories whose setting in whole or in significant part is Erets-Israel is probably not very large. In the absence of any bibliography on works of this particular type, the most that can be said by way of generalization is that over the last 40 or 50 years these works have come to form a distinct category of Jewish literature and there may be as many as a few hundred of them, depending upon the criteria of classification. Below is a list of selected titles:46 --Yitzhak David A. L. Levin, Sefer Ha-Yahas Le-Mishpahat Beit Avotai (Jerusalem 1929); on the family of the author. --Haim Hamburger, Three Worlds, 3 parts (Jerusalem 1939-1948); on the family of the author. --Abraham Felman, Pioneers of Hebrew Citrus Culture in Erets-Israel (The Felman Family) (Tel Aviv 1940). --Zvi Shimshi, Genealogy of the Shimshi, Ben-Zvi, Reuveni, Klugai, Maisler, Slouschz, Carmon, Kabak, Kaufman, Lieberman, and Related Families (Jerusalem 1940); the author was the father of Itzhak Ben-Zvi. --Mordechai Salomon, Three Generations in the Yishuv (Jerusalem 1942); on the Zoref-Salomon family. --M. S. Slonim, History of the Family of the Rabbi of Lyady (Tel Aviv 1946); on the descendants of Shneur Zalman of Lyady, founder of Habad Hassidism. --Meir Benayahu, "A Group of Documents on Jerusalem in the 18th and 19th Centuries," in Yerushalayim, vol. 1, no. 2, Tevet-Adar 1948, pp. 74-88; part of the article deals with the history of the TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 17 [הערת תמלול חשובה נוספת: בסעיף (b) לעיל מופיעה הפניה ל"index of all persons enjoying British protection in Jerusalem, Hebron, and Nablus, 1879-1908" — אינדקס אנשים תחת חסות בריטית, כולל שכם/נאבלוס, בארכיון המדינה (R.G. 123/1, item no. 3).] =================================================================== --- עמוד 12 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 18 ו-19] --- עמוד מודפס 18 (חצי ימני) --- Benveniste family. --M. D. Gaon, 9 Generations of the Azriel Family in Jerusalem (Jerusalem 1950). --Zvi Harkavy, Le-Heker Mishpahot, 2nd ed. (Jerusalem 1953); contains a section on the history of the Harkavy family. --Abraham Livai, Sons of Jonah: The History of a Family in Israel for 100 Years (1859-1959) (Tel Aviv n.d.); on the descendants of Jonah Friedland. --Eliyahu Porush, Zikhronot Rishonim (Jerusalem 1963); a section of the book is about the family of the author. --Yosef Yoel Rivlin, "The Rivlin Family in Eretz Israel," in Yosef Y. Rivlin: Memorial Volume (Ramat-Gan 1964), pp. 47-77. --A. R. Malachi, "The Berlin Family and the Yishuv," in A. R. Malachi, Studies in the History of the Old Yishuv (Tel Aviv 1971), pp. 253-262. --Joseph Malamud, Bi-Sdot Yizrael (Kfar Giladi n.d.); on the author's family (published c.1970). --Shimon Kushnir, Men of Basalt: The Sturmans (Tel Aviv 1975). --Nathan Efrati, The Role of the Eliachar Family in Jerusalem (Jerusalem 1975). --Yitzhak Alfasi (compiler), Genealogy of the Eliash Family (Jerusalem 1975). --Abraham Ben-Yaacob, Jerusalem Within Its Walls: The History of the Meyuhas Family (Jerusalem 1976). XI. Pinkas Ha-Bogrim (Register of the Adult Members of Knesset Yisrael) Under the Jewish Community Regulations of 1927, the Va'ad Leumi was required to maintain a register of the Jews in Erets-Israel who were at least eighteen years of age and who were members of "Knesset Yisrael," the official Jewish community which incorporated about 95 percent of the Jews in the country. The small percentage of Jews who did not belong to Knesset Yisrael were almost without exception members or supporters of the Agudat Israel organization or ultra-orthodox elements. Sets of the Pinkas Ha-Bogrim were compiled periodically beginning with 1928/29. Entries in a set are grouped together by neighborhood or settlement and give year of birth and generally the first name of the father. A partial collection of the Pinkas is at the Central Zionist Archives and supplementary sections can be found at the Public Relations Department of the Ministry of Religious Affairs, Jerusalem. One volume of the Pinkas, compiled on the basis of the Jerusalem population census of 1939, has been published: Pinkas Ha-Bogrim Shel Knesset Yisrael Bi-Rushalayim (Jerusalem 1942). XII. Court Records on Estates and Inheritance Under the legal system created by the Mandate administration, jurisdiction in matters involving estates and inheritance and in which the parties were Jews was shared by the district courts and the rabbinical courts organized within the framework of the Chief Rabbinate. District courts dealt with the probate of a will, the issue of a certificate of succession, and the issue of letters of administration. The rabbinical courts had exclusive jurisdiction to confirm a will and had concurrent jurisdiction in suits regarding succession, wills, legacies, and all related matters, provided that all the parties to the action consented to its jurisdiction.47 The surviving records of the district courts on estates and inheritance are at the I.S.A.: Jerusalem (1934-48), boxes B/801-856; Tel Aviv-Jaffa (1937-48), boxes B/1371-1497; Haifa (1937-48), boxes B/3449-3473. Some of the records of the rabbinical courts are also at the I.S.A., as mentioned above in the section on marriage and divorce records. XIII. Published Works on the History of Towns, Settlements, Associations, Institutions, etc., as Sources for Biographical Information Works of these types abound, ranging from unpretentious jubilee publications to scholarly treatises. But regardless of the level of sophistication, they often contain valuable biographical information or photographs. Here are a few examples: --D. Kimhi (ed.), Jubilee Volume of the Teachers Federation (1903-1928) (Jerusalem 1929). --David Idelovitch (ed.), Rishon Le-Ziyyon, 1882-1941 (Rishon Le-Ziyyon 1941). --Kovez 'Ha-Shomer', 3rd ed. (Tel Aviv 1947); on the association of Jewish watchmen founded by pioneers of the second aliya. --G. Kressel, The Borochov Neighborhood (Givataim 1961). --B. Z. Michaeli, Dor Ha-Hagana Be-Herzeliya (Tel Aviv 1979); on Hagana activists in Herzliya. XIV. Yizkor (Memorial) Literature The great majority of works in this category were written to perpetuate the memory of people who died a violent or untimely death. No bibliography of Yizkor works exists for the period before Israel's War of Independence, but a large collection is at the Hagana Archives in Tel Aviv. Below are some examples: --A. Z. Rabbinowitz (ed.), Yizkor (Jaffa 1912); on eight Jewish workers murdered by Arabs during the period 1890-1911. --I. L. Goldberg, Benjamin Goldberg (Tel Aviv 1932); on the author's son, who was killed in the 1929 Disturbances. --Leib and Ita Grushkevich, Ben Yakir (Kiryat Motzkin 1959); on Aaron Grushkevich, killed in aerial combat off the coast of England, Nov. 1943. Written by the parents. 18 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 19 (חצי שמאלי) --- --Zikhram La-Nazach (Tel Aviv 1959); on members of the Irgun Zvai Leumi. XV. Miscellaneous Sources 1. Records of Kolelim The Kolel, which united Jews of like origin, was one of the most common forms of association in 19th-century Erets-Israel. Its major purpose was the distribution of funds raised abroad to its members in Erets-Israel. At least five archival institutions in Israel hold records of Kolelim: the Central Zionist Archives, the Historical Archives of the Jerusalem Municipality, the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, the Archives and Manuscript Department of the Jewish National and University Library, and Yad Ben-Zvi. On the records of Kolel America, see Kaganoff (ed.), Guide to America-Holy Land Studies*, pp. 62-64. 2. The Works of Pinhas Ben Zvi Grajewsky Grajewsky (1873-1941) wrote or compiled at least 225 pamphlets and books on the history of the Jews in Erets-Israel in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Aside from the epitaphs he published in the Avnei Zikkaron series listed above, his works include historical sketches of families, biographical compilations (Daughters of Zion and Jerusalem, for example), photograph albums, and collections of documents. However, Grajewsky's works are difficult to use because of the haphazard manner in which they were put together and published. An annotated bibliography of his abundant output would go a long way towards unraveling the entanglements but none exists. For an introduction to Grajewsky, see M. Sharon and Y. Baeck (eds.), From Ancient Archives: Documents and Sources from the Writings of Pinhas Ben Zvi Grajewsky (Jerusalem 1977), pp. 1-4, and Kressel's Cyclopedia of Modern Hebrew Literature. 3. Anshei Ha-Aliya Ha-Sheniya: Album (Tel Aviv n.d.); published c.1970 by the Committee for the Census of the Second Aliya. An alphabetical list of 3500 men and women who came to Erets-Israel in the decade preceding the First World War. The volume gives only the barest biographical particulars but contains many photographs. A related work is Nahman Tamir (ed.), Anshei Ha-Aliya Ha-Sheniya: Pirkei Zikhronot, 5 vols. (Tel Aviv 1970-1972), which contains personal recollections written by several hundred members of the same group. 4. Obituary advertisements and death notices in the Jewish press (Hebrew, Ladino, Yiddish, English, etc.), frequently give information on the place of burial and on members of the extended family of the deceased. 5. Records of immigrant associations and landsmannschaften. 6. Personnel records of large employers The personnel records of the largest employer during the Mandate period - the Government of Palestine - are at the I.S.A., in boxes MG/101-361 (Civil Service Commission) and among the records of the respective departments of the administration. 7. The early records of the Jewish Agency's Search Bureau for Missing Relatives The Search Bureau, which has its offices in Jerusalem, was set up in Erets-Israel in 1945. From 1945 to 1947 it published a newspaper called La-Karov Ve-La-Rahok. 8. Lists of individuals eligible to vote for the second Elected Assembly (Asefat Ha-Nivharim) of the Jews of Erets-Israel (1925) are at the Central Zionist Archives, under R.G. J1. The lists give the first name of the father but no date of birth. Lists for the first Elected Assembly (1920) are apparently lost.48 9. The letters of the "Pekidim and Amarcalim of Amsterdam" The "Pekidim and Amarcalim" was the name of an organization founded in the early 19th century to collect and distribute funds for the welfare of Jews in Erets-Israel. Fifteen volumes of office copies of outgoing letters (1825-1866) written by officials and agents of the organization are at Yad Ben-Zvi and the earliest portion has been published in three annotated and indexed volumes under the title Letters of the Pekidim and Amarcalim of Amsterdam: vol. 1 (1825/26-1826/27), eds. Joseph Joel Rivlin and Benjamin Rivlin (Jerusalem 1965); vol. 2 (1827/28), same eds. (Jerusalem 1970); vol. 3 (1828/29), ed. Benjamin Rivlin, intro. by Israel Bartal (Jerusalem 1978). 10. A "List of the Ashkenazi Jews in Erets-Israel, 1720-1777" (150 names) is given on pp. 206-210 of Y. Barnai, "The Ashkenazi Community in Erets-Israel, 1720-1777," Shalem, vol. 2 (Jerusalem 1976). 11. A list of 650 Jewish families who lived in Tiberias during the century preceding the establishment of the state of Israel appears in Avissar (ed.), Sefer Teveria, pp. 476-477. 12. Eliezer Ben-Yehuda's journal Hashkafa (vol. 5, 1904, nos. 24 and 26) has a list of Ashkenazi families who lived in Hebron at that time. The list includes details on the occupation of the father and the number of children in each family. 13. Pinkas Ketovot Shel Toshvei Rehavia (Jerusalem 1936), published by the Rehavia Neighborhood Committee in Jerusalem, lists the names of 1000 residents of the neighborhood in alphabetical order and also gives information on occupation, place of work, and address. A photocopy of the booklet is at Yad Ben-Zvi. TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 19 =================================================================== --- עמוד 13 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 20 ו-21] --- עמוד מודפס 20 (חצי ימני) --- 14. Abraham Ya'ari's Sheluhei Erets-Yisrael (Jerusalem 1951) is a detailed historical account of the emissaries who were sent out from Erets-Israel to raise funds abroad. The narrative ends with the 19th century. 15. Joseph Joel Rivlin, "The Gaon of Vilna and His Pupils and the Settlement of Erets-Israel," in vol. 2 (pp. 111-162) of Y. L. Ha-Cohen Maimon (ed.), Sefer Ha-Gra, 2 vols. (Jerusalem 1954). 16. Y. Y. Gruenwald, "Hungarian Rabbis Who Immigrated to Erets-Israel, 1685-1895," Sinai, vol. 26 (1950), pp. 221-235. 17. Shulamit Laskov, The Biluim (Jerusalem 1979). 18. Abraham Almaliah, Ha-Rishonim Le-Ziyyon (Jerusalem 1970); on the Sephardi Chief Rabbis of Erets-Israel during the last 500 years. The end of this introduction to the Erets-Israel dimension of Jewish genealogy is an appropriate place to emphasize that many important sources not even hinted at here no doubt exist in Israel's numerous libraries and archives. The major libraries for the history of Erets-Israel are the Jewish National and University Library, the library of the Central Zionist Archives, and the Yad Ben-Zvi library. For an introduction to Israel's network of archives, see P. A. Alsberg (ed.), Guide to the Archives in Israel* (Jerusalem 1973). NOTES 1. Between 1850 and 1914, about 85,000 Jewish immigrants came to Erets-Israel; on the eve of the First World War, the Jewish population of Erets-Israel was approximately 90,000 - Roberto Bachi, The Population of Israel* (Jerusalem 1977), pp. 79, 32. 2. Finding Our Fathers: A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy* (New York 1977); Genealogy: Selected Bibliography, Specimens of Tables and Genealogical Sources (Jerusalem 1975). 3. I am grateful to Prof. Usiel Schmelz of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, for the clarification of a number of points in connection with the Montefiore censuses. 4. N. Druyan, "The First Yemenite Quarters in Jerusalem, 1892-1914," Cathedra, no. 13, Oct. 1979, pp. 95-129 (see p. 120). 5. On the 1948 census, see Kovez Heil Mishmar Ha-Am Bi-Rushalayim (Jerusalem 1964), pp. 150-153. 6. After compiling what appeared to be a comprehensive list of the censuses of population that were taken in later Ottoman and Mandate Erets-Israel, the writer made inquiries at archival institutions in Israel in order to determine what records were extant. Trade, industrial, labor, and agricultural censuses were not investigated, nor were follow-ups made in the case of a number of mini-censuses. 7. Mordechai Abir, "Local Leadership and Early Reforms in Palestine, 1800-1834"*, in Maoz (ed.), Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period*, pp. 284-310 (see p. 285). 8. Y. Ben-Arieh, "The Population of the Large Towns in Palestine During the First 80 Years of the 19th Century According to Western Sources"*, in Maoz (ed.), Studies on Palestine During the Ottoman Period*, pp. 49-69, passim. 9. G. Schumacher, "Population List of the Liva of Akka"*, Palestine Exploration Fund, Quarterly Statement for 1887*, pp. 169-191. 10. A. Druyanow (ed.), Sefer Tel Aviv, vol. 1 (Tel Aviv 1936), pp. 55-57. 11. Palestine Office of the Zionist Organization, Enumeration of the Jews of Erets-Israel, 2 vols. (Jaffa 1918-1919). 12. J. B. Barron, Report and General Abstracts of the Census of 1922* (Jerusalem 1923). 13. Bachi, Population of Israel*, p. 403. 14. E. Mills, Census of Palestine, 1931*, 3 vols. (Jerusalem and Alexandria 1932-1933). 15. I.S.A., file S/62/34, box M/1226, R.G. 11 (Government of Palestine, Dept. of Migration). 16. O. Eisenberg, Census of the Jewish Population in Haifa, 1938 (Haifa 1940). 17. Municipality of Tel Aviv, Yearbook for 1938, p. 4. 18. David Gurevich, The Jewish Population of Jerusalem* (Jerusalem 1940). 19. David Gurevich et al., The Jewish Population of Palestine (Jerusalem 1944), pp. 249-265. 20. P. A. Alsberg, "Registration of Births, Deaths, and Marriages in Palestine and Israel"*, Archivum*, vol. 9, 1959, pp. 114-118; Senior Medical Officer, Govt. of Palestine, "Note on the Preparation of Vital Statistics in Palestine" (1931), I.S.A., file 80/98, box M/1646, R.G. 10 (Govt. of Palestine, Dept. of Health); Govt. of Palestine, Annual Report of the Department of Health for the Year 1925*, p. 12. 21. I.S.A., State Archives registry file 971-138. 22. P. A. Alsberg, article cited in note 20; memorandum on personal status in Palestine by the Commissioner for Migration and Statistics (1943), I.S.A., file J/85/45, R.G. 2 (Govt. of Palestine, Chief Secretary's Office); Erwin E. Scheftelowitz, The Jewish Law of Family and Inheritance and Its Application in Palestine* (Tel Aviv n.d.). 23. See the sources cited in note 20. 24. Memorandum on the burial situation in Israel by J. L. Bialer, undated, I.S.A., file 108/4, box G/4753, R.G. 98 (State of Israel, Ministry of Religious Affairs). 25. Moshe Smilansky, Nes-Ziyyonah, 1883-1953 (Tel Aviv 1953), p. 215. 26. On Jerusalem's cemeteries, see Y. Ben-Arieh, A City Reflected in Its Times: New Jerusalem - the Beginnings (Jerusalem 1979), pp. 42-50, and Danny Zirlin, "The Cemeteries on Mount Zion," 20 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 21 (חצי שמאלי) --- term paper submitted to Prof. Y. Ben-Arieh, Dept. of Geography, Hebrew University; on Safed: Ze'ev Vilnay, Encyclopedia Ariel (Tel Aviv 1979), cols. 6381-6385 ("Safed"); on Tiberias: Oded Avissar (ed.), Sefer Teveriah (Jerusalem 1973), pp. 225-226; on Hebron: Oded Avissar, Sefer Hevron (Jerusalem 1970), pp. 398, 509, 512-513; on Shekhem: I.S.A., file B/32/39, R.G. 2; on Jaffa and Tel Aviv: Yalkut Ha-Hevrah Kaddisha, Tel Aviv-Yaffo Ve-Ha-Mahoz (Tel Aviv 1955), and Zvi Kroll and Zadok Linman, The Old Cemetery in Tel Aviv (Tel Aviv 1940); on Bnei-Brak: I.S.A., State Archives registry file 971-23. 27. Pp. 116-119 of Yehoshua Kaniel, "Organizational and Economic Contentions between Communities in Jerusalem in the 19th Century," in M. Friedman et al. (eds.), Chapters in the History of the Jewish Community in Jerusalem, vol. 2 (Jerusalem 1976); "Report of the Commission Appointed to Enquire into the Slaughtering and Burial Affairs of the Jewish Communities in Palestine" (Jan. 1923), Public Record Office, London, C.O. 733/42, file 7631; J. L. Bialer, memo cited in note 24; Council of the Sephardi Community, Al Homotayih Yerushalayim (Jerusalem 1957), pp. 36-38; Gad Frumkin, Judge in Jerusalem (Tel Aviv 1955), pp. 95-97, 250-251, 426-440; unsigned and undated (mid-1950s?) note on burial societies in Israel, I.S.A., file 108/4, box G/4753, R.G. 98. 28. I.S.A., State Archives registry file 971-14. 29. On Tiberias: I.S.A., State Archives registry file 971-12; on Hebron: Avissar (ed.), Sefer Hevron, pp. 176-185, passim; on Jaffa and Tel Aviv: Yalkut Ha-Hevra Kaddisha. 30. I.S.A., State Archives registry files 971-/17, 22, 24, 8, 19, 23. 31. Most of the information in the list (and including that given for the Tel Aviv-Jaffa society) was derived from a survey of the records of selected burial societies carried out by the I.S.A. 20 years ago: State Archives registry files 971-/5, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 22, 23, 24, 26, 29, 45, 120. 32. Joshua Ben-Hananiah, "Burial Taxes and Burial Difficulties in Jerusalem," Yerushalayim, vol. 1, no. 1, Tishrei-Kislev 1947, pp. 43-45; D. Zirlin, paper cited in note 26. 33. Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Newsletter*, no. 2, 1972. 34. Inquiry at that institution made by the writer. 35. On Kluger see Yediot Aharonot, Sept. 28, 1979. 36. Annual figures for the years 1925-1946 are listed in Le-Zirei Asefat Ha-Nivharim, no. 5, Nov. 1947. 37. Collected Works of Eliezer Ben-Yehuda, vol. 1 (Jerusalem 1941), pp. 54-55 in memoirs section. 38. I.S.A., file Imm/28, box M/1180, R.G. 11 (Govt. of Palestine, Dept. of Migration); Govt. of Palestine, Official Gazette*, April 1, 1921, p. 10. 39. For annual figures see: Govt. of Palestine, Dept. of Migration, Annual Report*, 1935, p. 29, and Annual Report*, 1938, p. 45; and Le-Zirei Asefat Ha-Nivharim, no. 5, Nov. 1947, p. 6. The discrepancies between the government figures and the Va'ad Leumi figures are difficult to explain, but whatever the explanation it appears that the latter correspond more closely to the actual number of name-changes published in the Gazette*. 40. Only a handful of these applications survive; see I.S.A., file Nat/3/1234, box M/1193, R.G. 11. 41. Not all the figures jibe, due to the fact that some of the names defied categorization in one or more instances. 42. In view of the fact that many Sephardi and Oriental Jews had Hebrew names to begin with, this lower proportion is hardly surprising. 43. For a penetrating analysis of the techniques employed in selecting Hebrew names - based on a large sample of name-changes registered shortly after the establishment of the state of Israel - see a serialized article by Mordechai Kosover, "Changes of Names in the State of Israel," in Bitzaron, vol. 26 (1951/52), no. 149, pp. 1-12, no. 150, pp. 96-102, no. 151, pp. 181-191; and vol. 27 (1952/53), no. 157, pp. 42-46, no. 159, pp. 199-210. 44. Divrei Ha-Knesset, vol. 14, p. 1543. 45. Conversation with Mr. Ron, head of the Dept. of Population Registration, Ministry of the Interior, Jerusalem. Annual statistics on changes of name in Israel have not been published. The only other official figures which the writer was able to find were: 11,500 for the first year of statehood (I.S.A., list dated May 3, 1949, in file 356, box G/2239, R.G. 73 (State of Israel, Ministry of the Interior)), and 17,000 for the period up to August 1949 (cited in Kosover's study, Bitzaron, no. 149, p. 12), both of which look exceptionally high; and 2000 for the first four months of 1953 (Divrei Ha-Knesset, vol. 14, p. 1543). 46. For information on genealogies and family histories in manuscript, inquiries should be made to the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, and Prof. Y. Halbrecht's "Society for Jewish Documentation and the Preservation of the Jewish Heritage" (Petah Tikvah), which solicit material of this nature. 47. Scheftelowitz, Jewish Law of Family and Inheritance*, pp. 153, 161-163. 48. For the third (1931) and fourth (1944) Assemblies, the Pinkas Ha-Bogrim served as the list of eligible voters. [קישוט: איור ציור פרפר שחור-לבן] TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 21 [הערת תמלול חשובה נוספת: בהערה 26 בעמוד זה מופיע ציטוט ארכיוני מדויק: "on Shekhem: I.S.A., file B/32/39, R.G. 2" — כלומר בארכיון המדינה (Israel State Archives) קיים תיק ספציפי על שכם, בקבוצת הרישום (Record Group) 2, מספר תיק B/32/39.] =================================================================== --- עמוד 14 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 22 ו-23] --- עמוד מודפס 22 (חצי ימני) --- IN SEARCH OF MISHPOKHE Ronald M. Landau As a youth living in San Francisco during World War II, I vividly remember the afternoon my grandfather, Isidore (Itcha) Landau, sat in the livingroom chair cursing Hitler in Yiddish, while huge tears ran down his face, to be blotted by an already wet handkerchief. "Pa, what's the matter?", I asked. "That damned Hitler--my entire family--gone--to the ovens," and the floodgates of the eyes were opened once again. "Pa," as we called my grandfather, had several brothers and sisters living in Poland, in Lodz or Warsaw. The only one of the family who had come to the U.S., besides Pa, was his brother, Max, who lived in New York City. I was later to find out that another brother, Wolf (Volef), escaped the coming Holocaust in the late 1930s and settled in Caracas, Venezuela. I remember Pa writing (in Yiddish) frequently to Volef. How I remember Pa's envy of his brother when Volef made aliyah to Eretz Yisroel in 1948. ("Eretz Yisroel, Kind, our country--our very own country!") But it meant little to me as a fully assimilated American youth. The next memorable event occurred in the early to mid-1950s when I was visiting Pa one day. "Kind--look what Volef sent," followed by several words of praise (I assume) in Yiddish which, as usual, were lost on me. Very carefully, with a reverence that I had never before seen, Pa unwrapped a talis [prayer shawl]. And then, even more carefully, he unwrapped a pair of tefillin [phylacteries]. "Look Kind. Talis and tefillin. From Volef--from Eretz Yisrael!" These weren't ersatz. No, they were the real thing. From Eretz Yisroel. Authentic! Pa died in 1961. I do not know what became of his beloved talis and tefillin, for by then I was married and living in New Jersey. The years passed. In April 1978, my father died, and it was my responsibility, as only child, to clean out my widowed father's apartment. Having only a week in San Francisco for both the funeral and this rather formidable task, I merely disposed of as much as possible. However, because of the short time available, I packed papers and photos away and shipped them to New Jersey. About a month later, I watched the rerun of "Roots" and thought to myself, "If a black man Ronald M. Landau is a Publications Engineer for Lockheed Electronics in Plainfield, NJ. He feels that his greatest genealogical handicap is his inability to understand Hebrew, Polish, and Yiddish. He would like to see the development of genealogical dictionaries in English/foreign language and foreign language/English for the benefit of all genealogists. Address: 6 Eardley Road, Edison, NJ 08817. can trace his heritage back through slavery to Africa, then surely I can do the same through the Holocaust, which is so much more recent." Thus began my interest in genealogy. The following Shabbat, in a friendly discussion with my rabbi following kiddush, I announced my intention to trace my family. He said he had a book which might help. A week later he presented me with a copy of Dan Rottenberg's Finding Our Fathers, and I was off and running. If "Roots" was the bug that bit me, Finding Our Fathers was the venom that sealed my fate. I was hooked on a new hobby that was simultaneously frustrating in its dead ends and encouraging in its successes. Several months later, while planning my son's Bar Mitzvah for late March 1979, my family and I decided that part of the Bar Mitzvah would be at the site of the Holiest of Holies, at the Kotel Hama'aravi, in Jerusalem. It didn't take long for my genealogical thoughts to seize the opportunity to search for Wolf Landau's family. Not knowing how to proceed, I wrote a short letter to HIAS [Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society] in New York City, asking for their help. Their response was a search form to be filled out. This was difficult since I did not know the names of any of Wolf's family. However, I did the best I could. Late December brought a response: Wolf Landau had died in 1951, which was no surprise since Pa was born in 1870. I immediately wrote again, thanking HIAS for the information and asking if they could locate his family. By March, there was no response, so I phoned HIAS in New York and spoke with a woman who gave me the source of their information: the HIAS office on Rehov Kaplan in Tel Aviv. We arrived in Tel Aviv on Sunday, 25 March 1979. Early the next morning, map in hand, I took off on foot to find Rehov Kaplan. Fortunately, the HIAS office manager spoke English. He gave me a photocopy of the information they had received from their contact, The Jewish Agency to Locate Missing Relatives, at Yeshiahu Press No. 6 in the Mea Shearim section of Jerusalem. The next day, I boarded a sherute [jitney] for Jerusalem, and got out in Zion Square about forty-five minutes later, bound for Yeshiahu Press. Mea Shearim is predominantly Hassidic, and I must admit to feeling somewhat ill at ease in my typically American clothing, camera at my side, and no knowledge of Hebrew. However, once more good fortune was mine, for the lady in the office of The Jewish Agency spoke English. I was soon disappointed, though, when her microfiche records only verified what information I had from HIAS: that Wolf Landau died in 1951. She suggested that I try the Tel Aviv Hevra Ka- 22 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 23 (חצי שמאלי) --- disha [burial society] at 33 Rehov Mohilever in Tel Aviv, since Wolf's last known address was, according to her records, 65 Rehov Yitzak Sadeh (another clue) in Tel Aviv. Back in Tel Aviv, I proceeded to the Hevra Kadisha, where my feelings of helplessness were soon put aside by an English-speaking gentleman who searched some rather large ledger books for the years 1950 through 1953. No success. I was heartbroken and discouraged. I didn't know where to turn or what to do next. The following day, Wednesday, was spent with friends preparing for the next day's Bar Mitzvah ceremony at the Kotel. Thursday was Bar Mitzvah day, Friday Erev Shabbat, Saturday Shabbat, Sunday was spent visiting friends and arranging for tickets for a day trip to Eilat on Monday. While on the plane, my thoughts turned to locating Wolf's family. I was perplexed. There had to be a way! And then, as we were approaching Eilat, it hit me: Get a death certificate. I had found that these records in the U.S. often gave the name of the informant, and most often, it's the next-of-kin. As enjoyable as was the trip to Eilat, I could not wait to return to Tel Aviv, for Tuesday was to be our last day in Israel. Wednesday morning, bright and early, back to the States. I got up early, fired with enthusiasm, and headed for the Tel Aviv Municipal Building, only to be informed that such records were kept at the Migdal Shalom Tower (the Middle East's tallest building). I walked the two miles and found my way to the crowded 14th floor offices where I was told I would find such records. The man at the information booth directed me to a long queue, but after fifteen minutes of non-motion, I asked again at the booth and was directed to an office. Again, good fortune: the man spoke English. He checked the records, but explained that 1951 was too far back for the records of that office, and if I filled out the form he handed me, it would be submitted to the archives in Jerusalem for a search. Since I could not even read it (the form was in Hebrew), he suggested I have someone help me on my return to the States, and then send it to the Israeli Consulate in New York City. Back home, I ran a photocopy of the form as a worksheet (I didn't want to make mistakes on the only original I had) and prevailed upon my rabbi for some help. And help he did. Having a Hebrew-language typewriter, he filled out the form to the best of our ability, both in Hebrew and in English. Remember that photocopy of the search form which the man at HIAS-Tel Aviv gave me? It contained a registration number for Wolf Landau which was asked for on the form being filled out by my rabbi. Next day, the form was off to the Consulate's office. It took about a month, but when the death certificate finally came toward the end of May, I was in for a surprise. When it was translated from the Hebrew, I found out that Wolf Landau died not in 1951, but in 1961. I knew it was the right certificate, for my great-grandfather was named Moshe, and the certificate confirmed Wolf's father's name as Moshe. By now it was early June. I photocopied the death certificate and sent it, along with a modest contribution, to the Tel Aviv Hevra Kadisha, with a letter requesting that they once again check their books. Months passed, and I despaired. When a dear friend and neighbor left for Israel just before Rosh Hashana, I gave him a copy of the letter and asked him to personally deliver it to the Hevra Kadisha. Fate interceded: Two days after he departed, the reply came from the Hevra Kadisha giving the names of two daughters of Wolf Landau, Rachel and Ofira, in the Tel Aviv area, and one son, Joseph, in Jerusalem. Because this was 1961 information, I felt it wise to check the Tel Aviv and Jerusalem phone books for correct addresses. I would have to visit the Israeli Consulate in New York. Meantime, my friend returned from Israel with a duplicate of the letter which I had received from the Hevra Kadisha a few days earlier. The following Shabbat, we were talking about the letter and I mentioned my need for the phone books to verify the addresses. He replied, "I have them at home." That evening I noted the addresses, and several days later three identical letters were sent to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. The reply from Rachel came in about three weeks. Rachel and Ofira, Wolf's daughters, are alive and well, and living outside Tel Aviv. However, Wolf's son, Joseph, had died eleven years earlier. I now hope to visit Israel again in a year or two to meet Rachel and Ofira. But, as if finding two cousins wasn't good enough, Rachel doubled my joy by writing that we have two more mutual cousins, John Landau, living in New York, and his sister, Bronia, living in Miami, Florida. No addresses or phone numbers were given. I thought about going through the New York phone books for all five boroughs, but rejected the thought in favor of writing Rachel for the information. Fate interceded once again. Before I could even compose a letter in my mind, that evening, the evening of the very same day I got Rachel's letter from Tel Aviv, John called from Brooklyn. Rachel had written him and sent him a copy of my letter to her with my name, address, and phone number. He was just as interested in contacting me as I was in contacting him! John and I have visited at each other's homes and have become very close. For over twenty years, we have lived so close to one another (less than an hour's drive between us) and each has not known of the other's existence. John and his sister are the children of Abram Landau, one of Pa's brothers for whom Pa was crying that day way back in my memory. Although John's parents and his first wife perished in the Holocaust, John and his sister somehow managed to escape the War- TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 23 =================================================================== --- עמוד 15 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 24 ו-25] --- עמוד מודפס 24 (חצי ימני) --- saw Ghetto. John was with the Polish resistance until he was captured and sent to a prisoners-of-war camp in Germany (he was disguised as a gentile) until liberated at the end of hostilities. Ultimately, he and Bronia came to the U.S. in the late 1940s. Thus, by doggedly pursuing vague memories and slim leads, this amateur genealogist has expanded his family by four cousins, three of whom I have yet to meet. How sweet is the fruit of joyous reunion after the tears of despair! [קישוט: שורת סמלים דקורטיביים] UPDATE ON MEMORIAL BOOKS The previous issue of TOLEDOT - vol. 3, nos. 2-3 - was devoted exclusively to Memorial Books. In the bibliography in that issue, cross-references ("see under") were made to the series Arim ve'Imahot be'Yisrael. This series appears as entry no. 448 in the bibliography. In Zachary Baker's article, "Memorial Books as Sources for Family History," reference was made (p. 5) to Shefa Press in Jerusalem as a possible source of Memorial Books. The reader's attention was drawn also to a short article, "Source for Memorial Books," that appeared in TOLEDOT vol. 2, no. 2, p. 11. We recently received the following communication from Shefa Press (19 Heleni Hamalka St., P.O.B. 7782, Jerusalem, Israel): "We have raised our fees slightly, and now charge $10, including surface postage, per book, plus the price of the book (prices vary wildly, from free to $75!). For books of more than one volume there is an extra charge of $2.00 for each volume after the first, to cover postage. "Those interested in obtaining Memorial Books are asked to send $2.00 with their enquiry to cover our expenses in searching for the book. If we do obtain the book, this fee will be deducted from the $10.00 charge. "We can locate only books published in Israel (though we can sometimes obtain publication details on books published abroad), so people who know that the books they are seeking were not published here need not enquire. "Since this is not the only work we do, there are apt to be delays in our locating and forwarding books. Patience! "We do not have any books 'in stock.' "As you can well imagine, we are beginning to amass a fairly lengthy list of books that we have or have not succeeded in locating. We hope that this will begin to streamline our service; it should also provide an important source of information for anyone interested in Memorial Books. "We are pleased to be able to provide this service to so many of your readers." 24 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 25 (חצי שמאלי) --- BOOK REVIEW Alan A. Kay From Generation to Generation: How to Trace Your Jewish Genealogy and Personal History. By Arthur Kurzweil. Special Foreword by Elie Wiesel. New York: William Morrow and Co., Inc., 1980. 320 pp. 50 black and white photographs. $12.95. "For years," Arthur Kurzweil writes, "I had the fantasy of walking the same streets in Poland that my great-grandfather walked as a child and as a young married man. I wanted to see the shops which were once ours; I wondered if the Jewish cemetery still existed...." Eventually, Kurzweil made the trip to Poland and visited his great-grandfather's town. His moving account of that visit is one of the pleasures, among many, in this richly-woven text on Jewish genealogical investigation. But, we do not need to walk the streets of our shtetl or even to engage in genealogical research to enjoy Kurzweil's book: because From Generation to Generation is more than a textbook; it is a window to the world of Jewish history. We can look through that window and learn about families in the Bible, Jews in Columbus' Spain, lost survivors of the Holocaust. Or, we can step through that window and live Jewish history by searching for our own. And this step is, ultimately, the one Kurzweil wants us to take. For myself, I have found that learning about my family had drawn me farther and farther into Jewish Tradition. The more I learn about my ancestors, the more I learn about Jewish history, and therefore, Jewish learning. The more facts I have about the lives of my ancestors, the more I learn to respect them and feel grateful to them for their decisions. It matters little, on one level, whether they were religious or not. I respect them for surviving as Jews and for being able to live and raise children, who eventually raised me. I have learned much about courage when I begin to understand what it was like to make the decision to journey to America. I continue to learn about faith and belief as I discover the obstacles set before my ancestors in Jewish history. We may not have the price of a ticket to our ancestors' shtetls, but we have Kurzweil's book, through which we learn that we can "travel" in Alan A. Kay holds a doctorate in English Education from New York University and teaches at New York City Community College (Brooklyn), City University of New York. His article on teaching genealogy to teenagers appeared in the Summer 1979 issue of TOLEDOT. Address: 777 Oak Place, East Meadow, NY 11554. TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 25 =================================================================== --- עמוד 16 --- =================================================================== [ספרד הכולל עמודי דפוס מודפסים 26 ו-27] --- עמוד מודפס 26 (חצי ימני) --- our imaginations to those birthplaces of our ancestors, aided by the facts, the photographs, the stories which have survived. "Our Jewish libraries," Kurzweil tells us, "are filled with a wealth of information about the Jewish communities which are no longer here. It is up to us to discover those communities, to enter them in our minds, to relive those experiences, and to connect with our past." Kurzweil has been researching his family history for more than ten years, carrying on a proud and ancient tradition among Jews. Jewish interest in the family goes back to Biblical times. The Bible itself, Kurzweil points out, is filled with genealogies. In the Jewish Tradition, afterall, the central institution is the family, and teaching is basically a "process" between parent and child: "Thou shalt teach them diligently unto thy children." Kurzweil's advice to the Jewish genealogist reads simply, but its meaning will echo in the chambers of our fading memories. "Begin now. Don't wait until tomorrow." Kurzweil follows his discussion of Why? with one on How?, the greater part of the book. And he starts that section with candid answers to the most frequently asked questions by beginning genealogists. Where do I start? There is a place, Kurzweil advises, "where each of us can begin--and that is with ourselves. Get a big looseleaf notebook to use exclusively for your family history. Begin by writing down everything that you know." There are three pages of oral history questions and topics, not exclusive and not ends in themselves: "Each of these questions has the potential to begin a long, in-depth discussion about the topic at hand." Kurzweil cautions the researcher not to be merely a collector of names and dates: stories and legends breathe life into those names and dates. When we leave the livingroom and kitchen, we discover more sources than we ever imagined: census records and city directories; Jewish historical societies and landsmannschaften; YIVO and the Leo Baeck Institute; the Mormon Church and the American Jewish Archives. We can obtain a copy of the passenger list of the ship which brought our ancestors to America and a photograph of that ship; a death certificate and a will. We can study the writing on a Jewish tombstone and learn about tombstone rubbing; read a pre-Holocaust European phone book and the Mauthausen Death Books; write to the International Tracing Service and to Yad Vashem, Israel's memorial to the Six Million. There is more. Included is a section on names: how Sephardic and Askenazic Jews give names; who names for fathers - patronymics - and who for mothers - matronymics; a discussion on the genealogical significance of Torah curtains and ceremonial objects; instructions on how to keep a Jewish history workbook; readings on Jewish genealogy. As a practical guide for the Jewish genealogist, From Generation to Generation has no equal. But, again, Kurzweil's book is more than a book of directions and information. His words never let you forget that genealogy is a human pursuit. The total experience of your immigrant ancestors, including their homes in the Old Country, their decision to travel to America, their journey aboard a steamship, their arrival in the United States or wherever else they landed, and their lives in their new home, all should have meaning for you. Most importantly, there are many ways in which you can learn about and document those journeys and those lives, to begin to see the experiences of your family as Jewish history, and to see yourself as a part of it as well. Enter Jewish history through the lives of your ancestors and make your own personal connection with your past and your people. Elie Wiesel wrote a Special Foreword to the book, a Haskamah, or approbation, itself a tradition in Jewish literature. Wiesel's words reaffirm Kurzweil's plea for genealogical engagement. To retrace the history of a Jewish name, Wiesel writes, "is thus to embark on an adventure in which the destiny of a single word becomes one with that of a community; it is to undertake a passionate and enriching quest for all those who may live in your name." Begin now. [פס שחור מפריד] TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 25 [הערת תמלול: מספור העמוד המודפס בתחתית התמונה חוזר על "25" (ככל הנראה שגיאת דפוס בגיליון המקורי — טקסט זה הוא בפועל עמוד 26 בסדר הקריאה); העמוד הבא ("JEWISH NAMES") ממוספר "26" בבירור.] [פינה מעוטרת] JEWISH NAMES: QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS Benzion C. Kaganoff As a continuing feature of TOLEDOT, Rabbi Benzion C. Kaganoff is writing a column on Jewish names. Rabbi Kaganoff is the author of A Dictionary of Jewish Names and Their History (Schocken Books, 1977, paperback 1980; reviewed in TOLEDOT, vol. 1, no. 2), and serves as rabbi of Congregation Ezras Israel in Chicago. We invite our readers to send in their questions on the subject of Jewish names. Please include whatever information you know about the geographical origin of the family whose name is being submitted for comment. Not every question will necessarily be answered in this column. ***** QUESTION: What information do you have on the family name CHOTINER? --- Lawrence Chotiner, Los Angeles, CA. ANSWER: Chotiner is a name of geographic origin and indicates one who came from Chotin (Khotin), Bessarabia. Beginning with the 15th century, the community was an important custom station on the border of Poland and Moldavia on the main commercial route between Turkey and Poland. The residence of Jews is mentioned for the first time in 1741. Your ancestor who assumed the name of Chotiner either lived there or traded there. The town became part of Russia in 1812. ***** QUESTION: All we know about our family is that they came from somewhere in Russia. Can you throw some light on the meaning of the name MARIASCHIN? --- David Mariaschin, Atlanta, GA. ANSWER: The name Mariaschin is a remarkable example of how Jews borrowed names from another language and culture and adapted them to their needs without regard for their origin. The female baptismal name Maria assumes the pet form Mariascha among Russians. This name became popular among Russian Jews, and there are many who think it is a Jewish name. Mariaschin means literally "one descended from Mariascha." The name is a matronymic. ***** QUESTION: What is the meaning of our family name PASMANTER? --- Gertrude Pasmanter, San Francisco, CA. ANSWER: Pasmanter is the German-Yiddish form for the French passementier, a lacemaker. This name was assumed by your ancestor who worked with trimming for dresses such as beaded lace, tinsel, etc. This was a very common profession among Jews in the late 18th and early 19th century. ***** QUESTION: What is the origin of our family name PASSAMANECK? --- Mrs. Roy Lev, Houston, TX. ANSWER: Passamaneck is a developed form of Pasmanik. Pasmanik means "a leather worker" in Polish, Ukrainian, and White Russian. Your name, therefore, indicates the occupation of the bearer. ***** QUESTION: My family came from Baden in Germany. I wonder what my name SUNDHEIMER means. --- Stephen Sundheimer, New York, NY. ANSWER: Sundheimer denotes that your ancestor came from the village of Sundheim, which is in South Baden, and is located in the southwest corner of Germany, in the area bounded in the west by France and in the south by Switzerland. There is no longer such a community - the village has since been incorporated into the town of Kehl which is located just across the Rhine from Strasbourg in Alsace. Jews lived in that area all through the Middle Ages and suffered many persecutions and two major expulsions - in 1470 and in 1614. As a result of these expulsions, some Jews fled to other German communities and others crossed the river to Alsace. In addition economic problems caused many Jews to emigrate to America in the 19th century. Since I do not know where your immediate ancestors came from, I cannot be sure as to whether they came to America from some community in Germany or from some community in Alsace. I can verify that the name Sundheimer was adopted as a family name on January 13, 1809 when a special law required Jews to adopt permanent family names. 26 TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 --- עמוד מודפס 27 (חצי שמאלי) --- BACK ISSUES OF TOLEDOT COST FOR EACH IS NOTED BELOW SEND YOUR ORDER TODAY TO: TOLEDOT 155 East 93 Street, Suite 3C New York, NY 10028 VOLUME 1, NUMBER 1, SUMMER 1977 - $2.50 Immigration Records at the Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center In Search of the Berlowitz Family (German Sources) Book Review: Dan Rottenberg, Finding Our Fathers: A Guidebook to Jewish Genealogy Gesellschaft fuer Juedische Familienforschung (Association for Jewish Family Research) A Conversation with Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern VOLUME 1, NUMBER 2, FALL 1977 - $2.50 Editorial: Why and How to Do Jewish Genealogy Naturalization Records: An Important Genealogical Source A Conversation with Rabbi Stern (Part Two) Forum: Dan Rottenberg's Finding Our Fathers Book Review: Neil Rosenstein, The Unbroken Chain Our Younger Readers Jewish Names: Two New Books Reviewed-- Benzion C. Kaganoff, A Dictionary of Jewish Names and Their History; Robert Singerman, Jewish and Hebrew Onomastics: A Bibliography Approbations: A Jewish Source The 125th Wedding Anniversary Celebration of Moshe and Leah Singer VOLUME 1, NUMBER 3, WINTER 1977-78 - $2.50 Editorial: Mormons and Jews Who Descends from King David? Hidden Resources: Three Examples The Jewish Family Finder Jewish Names: Questions and Answers Hungarian Jewish Records at the Genealogical Society of Utah Memorial Books for Hungarian Locations VOLUME 1, NUMBER 4, SPRING 1978 - $2.50 Editorial: Uses and Abuses of Jewish Genealogy Two New "How To" Books for the Jewish Researcher: Timothy Field Beard, How to Find Your Family Roots; Yaffa Draznin, The Family Historian's Handbook The Jewish Family Finder A Christian Student of Jewish Genealogy Seek and Ye Shall Find: Two Examples Holocaust Calendar of Polish Jewry Polish Jewish Records at the Genealogical Society of Utah Jewish Names: Questions and Answers Memorial Books for Polish Communities VOLUME 2, NUMBER 1, SUMMER 1978 - $2.50 Jewish Genealogy Without "Jewish" Sources World War I Selective Service Records The Jewish Family Finder Landsmanshaftn and the Jewish Genealogist Post-1900 Census Records German Jewish Records at the Genealogical Society of Utah Jewish Names: Questions and Answers VOLUME 2, NUMBER 2, FALL 1978 - $2.50 Hurdling Foreign Language Obstacles A Classic on Frankfurt's Jews: Alexander Dietz, Stammbuch der Frankfurter Juden The Jewish Family Finder and Index to 1978 Announcements Who Was Brayny Beyli Wigdorow? Local Jewish History and Genealogy: Rhode Island Jewish Names: Questions and Answers VOLUME 2, NUMBER 3, WINTER 1978-79 - $2.50 Holocaust Research: A Source at Yad Vashem The Jewish Family Finder Eastern European "Jewish Geography" In Search of a Sephardic Tradition: Sheby Family Jewish Names: Questions and Answers VOLUME 2, NUMBER 4, SPRING 1979 - $2.50 More Eastern European "Jewish Geography" Genealogical Resources at the Jewish Theological Seminary The Jewish Family Finder Unusual Posters Available from YIVO Jewish Genetic Diseases German-Jewish Genealogical Research: Selected Resources at the Leo Baeck Institute Magnum Opus: First American Jewish Families An Ethical Will: Unusual Genealogical Source Landsmanshaftn: Saving the Records Jewish Names: Questions and Answers VOLUME 3, NUMBER 1, SUMMER 1979 - $2.50 A Dvar Torah about Toledot Book Review: David Kranzler, My Jewish Roots The Jewish Family Finder Discovering Cemeteries in Eastern Europe A Visit to Galicia and Romania Teaching Genealogy A Change of Name ... and Family History Book Review: William E. Mitchell, Mishpokhe: A Study of New York City Jewish Family Clubs VOLUME 3, NUMBERS 2-3, FALL 1979-WINTER 1980 - $5.00 (This is a special double issue.) Memorial Books as Sources for Family History Bibliography of Eastern European Memorial Books: Updated and Revised TOLEDOT/VOL. 3, NO. 4 27 =================================================================== --- עמוד 17 --- =================================================================== [ספרד אחרון - חומר בלתי ממוספר בסוף הגיליון: החלק השמאלי מציג מפה לדוגמה מתוך "ספר זיכרון" (Memorial Book) של קהילת ברז'זני, כדוגמה למקורות המתוארים במאמר על ספרי זיכרון; החלק הימני הוא עמוד העטיפה הקדמית של הגיליון הקודם (כרך 3, גיליונות 2-3), המוצג לצורך פרסום/מכירת גיליונות קודמים.] --- חצי שמאלי: מפה מתוך "BRZEZANY MEMORIAL BOOK" --- [מפת עיר ישנה ומטושטשת של ברז'זני (Brzezany), עם רחובות, מבנים, ושמות מקומות בפולנית/עברית. בפינה השמאלית העליונה, כיתוב בעברית: "מנזר הבנרדינים" ולידו "KLASZTOR BERNARDYNOW". חץ מצפין. בגוף המפה כיתובים כגון "Miasteczko / מיאסטצ'קו" ו-"Adamowka / אדמובקה". בתחתית המפה, כיתוב:] BRZEZANY MEMORIAL BOOK [מקרא ממוספר בתחתית, באנגלית מימין לשמאל ובעברית משמאל לימין:] 1 — THE BIG SYNAGOGUE בית הכנסת הגדול — 1 2 — BEIT HAMIDRASH "HABANUI" בית חמדרש "הבנוי" — 2 3 — STRETINER KLOIS סטרטינער קלויז — 3 4 — ROZLOWER KLOIS רוזלובר קלויז — 4 5 — BEIT HAMIDRASH OF THE "HAZAN" בית חמדרש של "החזן" — 5 6 — TSCHORTKOWER KLOIS צ'ורטקובר קלויז — 6 7 — BEIT HAMIDRASH — RABI JUDEL בית חמדרש של רבי יודל — 7 8 — POTIKER KLOIS פוטיקר קלויז — 8 9 — JAD-CHARUZIM - SYNAGOGUE בית הכנסת "יד חרוצים" — 9 10 — RABI MENDELE - SYNAGOGUE בית הכנסת של רבי מנדלה — 10 11 — JAIR'S KLOIS בית הכנסת יאיר — 11 [הערת תמלול: חלק מהמילים בעברית במקרא מטושטשות מעט בסריקה; תומללו לפי הקריאה הטובה ביותר האפשרית.] --- חצי ימני: עטיפת גיליון קודם (כרך 3, גיליונות 2-3) --- [לוגו "תולדות" בעברית, זהה בעיצובו ללוגו שבעטיפת הגיליון הנוכחי] TOLEDOT the journal of jewish genealogy [מסגרת מלבנית:] IN THIS ISSUE MEMORIAL BOOKS AS SOURCES FOR FAMILY HISTORY BIBLIOGRAPHY OF EASTERN EUROPEAN MEMORIAL BOOKS: UPDATED AND REVISED by Zachary M. Baker YIVO Institute for Jewish Research VOLUME 3, NUMBERS 2-3 FALL 1979-WINTER 1980 =================================================================== [סוף התמלול — 17 עמודי סריקה, המכילים 29 עמודי דפוס ממוספרים (2-27 בתוספת עמודים לא ממוספרים בתחילת ובסוף הגיליון) של כתב העת TOLEDOT, כרך 3, גיליון 4.]