Philly 2009: IAJGS award winners

At tonight's conference banquet, the annual International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) awards were announced.

The award committee was chaired by Marc Manson (Michigan), and committee members Daniel Horowitz (Israel), Phyllis Kramer (Florida), Kahlile Mehr (Utah) and Gary Mokotoff (New Jersey).

Outstanding Programming or Project that

Advances the Objectives of Jewish Genealogy

The Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston, for its genealogy course. Accepted by president Heidi Urich.

Outstanding Publication by a

Member Organization of IAJGS

The New York Genealogical Society, for its Dorot quarterly journal which has been published for 30 years. Joy Rich is editor, and the award was accepted by president Linda Cantor.

Outstanding Contribution to Jewish Genealogy

via the Internet, Print or Electronic Product

Harry Boonin of Philadelphia for his two books, The Jewish Quarter of Philadelphia and Life and Times of Kesher Israel. He also received a special award from the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Philadelphia, conference co-host, for his work.

Lifetime Achievement Award

Joyce Field was honored for her tireless efforts on behalf of JewishGen's Jewish Online Worldwide Burial Register, Holocaust Database, Yizkor Book Database and content acquisition.

The Malcolm H. Stern Grant

The Stern Grant committee was chaired by SallyAnn Sack (Maryland), with Saul Isroff (UK) and Rochelle Kaplan (Utah). A $2,500 grant was awarded to Shamir of Latvia for its project: "The guide to Jewish materials stored in the Latvian Historical Archive.

Although the award was not announced publicly at the banquet, society voting delegates received the information in their information packets at the business meeting.

Its main purpose is to prepare a comprehensive overview of existing materials about the Latvian Jewish community in the Latvian State Archive for a guide that will benefit Jewish genealogists and others.

The archive holds unique materials from the 16th century which have never been catalogued and never made available to the public. Only a few archive workers are aware of the amount of that information.

Shamir is a non-profit organization in Riga, Latvia. It's main goal is to commemorate the memory of Latvian Jews. Its activities are also aimed at genealogical issues, such as renovation if the Jaunjelgava Jewish cemetery to recover more than 300 names of Jews buried there; Latvian synagogues and rabbis (1918-1940), and the current project is the Latvian Jewish Encyclopedia. tracing the history and fate of Latvian Jewry from 1561 to today.