Seattle: Jewish genealogy society receives grant

Some time ago, Tracing the Tribe wrote about the grant program offered by Archives.com, and asked which Jewish genealogy group might be the first to receive one.

We are delighted to report that the newest $1,000 grant has been given to the Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State (JGSWS), to allow the group to begin a digitizing project of the 120-year-old Jewish Transcript newspaper.

Anyone with roots in Seattle or other Washington state communities will find a wealth of information on the Jewish community. JGSWS has wanted to work on this digitizing project for many years but did not have the resources to carry it out.

Tracing the Tribe is especially interested to learn about our JASSEN family, which arrived in Seattle around 1923.

The pages of this venerable publication contain community news; birth, marriage and death announcements, life cycle events and historical news. Currently, the issues are in bound volumes held in the Seattle Public Library. The goal is to digitize the pages and make the records searchable online and accessible to interested researchers around the world.

For those researching Sephardic families, this publication will be of great interest as Seattle has one of the largest Sephardic communities in the US, with origins in Rhodes, Saloniki, and Turkey.

According to the Archives.com blog post:

Archives is pleased to contribute to this project which will clearly have a positive impact on anyone researching their family history in Washington State.

JGSWS President Nancy Adelson notes, "Because of this grant, Jewish Genealogical Society of Washington State will be able to start an important project that we've wanted to do for over seven years... Thank you so much for choosing us and our project! I can't tell you how much this means to the members of JGSWS and how it will help make Jewish genealogical research a bit easier."

For more information on JGSWS, view its website.

Is there a project that your group wishes to accomplish related to family history or preservation? Learn more and apply for a grant here.

Grant: Student genealogy grant recipient named

The recipient of the 2011 Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Student Genealogy Grant was announced by Denise Levenick.

College sophomore Anthony Ray (Palmdale, California) will receive a $500 cash award and free three-day registration to the 2011 Southern California Genealogical Society Jamboree conference - June 10-12 - in Burbank, California.

The 2011 Grant is the first awarded by the Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Fund, which was founded in 2010 to assist young genealogists seeking to advance their genealogical education.


Genealogists ages 18-25, attending school within the last year, and attending the SCGS Jamboree were eligible to apply for the 2011 Grant. In recognition of Suzanne Freeman’s enthusiasm for the nationally recognized Jamboree, this year’s award was directed to help a student attend the SCGS Jamboree genealogy conference.


“We are excited to find many young people becoming involved in genealogy and family history, and delighted to help a student attend a conference such as the SCGS Jamboree. We especially appreciate the Jamboree committee’s support of this project by donating a full three-day conference registration to the grant recipient,” comments Denise Levenick, daughter of Suzanne Freeman and genealogy writer/blogger The Family Curator.

Ray heads the Antelope Valley Genealogical Society cemetery indexing project and is a volunteer researcher assisting with Hispanic research at the Palmdale Family History Center. This will be his first time attending the SCGS Jamboree. He is a music studies sophomore at West Coast Baptist College in Lancaster, California.

Tracing the Tribe asks where are all the Jewish genealogical societies and personalities who should be encouraging our own young researchers in the same manner?

Archives.com: First two grants announced

Just as Tracing the Tribe was walking out the door to the Family History Library, we received this announcement from Archives.com, naming their first two grant winners.

Are you or a group working on a special project? Would a $1,000 grant enable you or your group to complete the work? Read the announcement and apply online.

Here's the press release:

Archives Announces Two Grant Winners for January 2011 Grant Will Help Recipients to Digitize Historical Records and Explore Black Heritage

(PRWEB) February 8, 2011 -- Archives.com launched its Grant Program in early January and has received a terrific response. In the last 30 days Archives received over 100 applications, and has been extremely impressed with the caliber of project proposals. Archives is pleased to announce not just one, but two Archives.com Grant recipients for January 2011.

These are the first recipients of the Archives.com Grant, an award that will be given monthly. Archives is honored to help the two recipients achieve their goals. Both projects will contribute in unique ways to the preservation of family and community history, which is of central importance to Archives’ mission.

Winners of the January 2011 Archives.com Grant:

Columbia County Historical & Genealogical Society (CCHGS) - CCHGS is an organization dedicated to the preservation of Columbia County, Pennsylvania history. CCHGS would like to transcribe marriage license dockets 1921 to 1939, an estimated nine thousand bride and groom names. Once entered into an electronic database, the records will be made available on the CCHGS website and published in book form. This project will enable researchers worldwide to easily find information about their Pennsylvania ancestors.

CCHGS Vice President Andre Dominguez notes, “This index will be particularly valuable in the case of the bride's index, since the bride's birth name is provided, which could potentially solve a brick wall.”

Archives is honored to assist a project which helps to bring more valuable historical records online. Archives recently integrated a marriage collection from Alachua County, Florida, adding over 45 thousand records and images to its website from a similar time period. We applaud CCHGS’s effort, and are pleased to help them bring these records to the online community.

Myron McGhee - Myron is an amateur historian who would like to explore questions regarding his African-American heritage, and expand on his father’s considerable family history research. Specifically, Myron wants to investigate the hypothesis that his black ancestors were related to a nearby white family of the same name. Myron comments, “In ways yet unknown, I hope that exploration of the relationship between these extended families alters the manner in which typically polarized communities might engage one another.”

Myron seeks to travel to Alabama and interview residents, review deed transcriptions, and scan photographs which will help him to solve this mystery. Ultimately, he will compile and share both his and his father’s findings to honor his family’s proud tradition. Archives.com is delighted to make this second grant award to a project which will make a positive contribution to the research of African-American families in Alabama during this fitting time of Black History Month.

Each recipient will be awarded a $1,000 grant to pursue their projects. Archives believes the work accomplished will be of significance to their families and communities now and in the future.

Thanks to each and every grant applicant for taking the time to share their stories. Applicants from previous months will still be considered for future grant awards. If you have wanted to pursue a family history project but just need a little extra help, we encourage you to visit Archives.com and fill out a grant application.

Congratulations to both of the Archives.com Grant recipients! To read more about the recipients, visit the Archives.com blog where their stories will be posted soon.

About Archives.com

Archives.com is a leading family history Web site that makes discovering family history simple and affordable. The company has assembled more than 1.1 billion historical records – birth, death, marriage, divorce, census, obituary, immigration, military and more – all in a single location, and makes them available at a price that’s up to 80 percent less than the leading competitor. Archives also partners with other leading family history websites to provide integrated record collections, discounted memberships, official certificates and other special promotions – providing a comprehensive resource for researching your family history. Archives.com is free to try for seven days, allowing anyone to explore the benefits of membership without risk or obligation. For more information and to start discovering your family history, please visit www.Archives.com.

For more information or to apply, visit the website. Congratulations to the first two winners.

Tracing the Tribe hopes to see some Jewish genealogy projects on the winners' list in the future.

Archives.com: Family history grant program

Whether you are a newbie or professional research or connected to a library, historical society or archive, a new family history grant program may be just the ticket to help with your family history research or historical preservation project.

The Archives.com family history grant program will begin providing monthly awards of up to $1,000 at the end of January. US-based individuals and organizations are eligible to apply.

The mission of the grant is to help fund important individual and communal initiatives that contribute to the promotion and advancement of family history research and historical preservation. Project examples may include preservation of historical documents, restoration of culturally significant artifacts, transcription of records, promotion of awareness of historical events, or others.

CEO Matthew Monahan said “Now we are going one step further by establishing the Archives.com Grant Program so that valuable research projects do not perish due to lack of funding. We aim to level the playing field so that anyone can embark on the preservation projects that matter to them because family history shouldn’t be a hobby solely for the rich and famous.”

According to the press release:

Grant recipients may come from all walks of life, and may be individuals or community-based organizations. Specifically, Archives is seeking any project that contributes to the promotion and advancement of family history research and preservation. Examples include projects related to document preservation, artifact restoration, record transcription, and promotion of historical events.

Grant recipients will be chosen monthly and awarded up to $1,000 to fund their project. Archives encourages every person or organization in the U.S. to apply, whether a newbie, hobbyist, expert, or community group, like a historical society, library, or archive.

"Archives is excited to continue investing in the community, as we believe there are few things more important than the exploration and preservation of our history, culture, and heritage," said Director of Product Joe Godfrey. "Undoubtedly, the Archives.com Grant Program will prove to be an important resource for a diverse group of family historians and organizations."

Read the complete press release at the link above. For more information, click on the application page, the online process is simple, and asks for detailed answers to only four questions. If you have more questions, send an email.

Don't know what Archives.com is?

Archives.com is a leading family history Web site that makes discovering family history simple and affordable. The company has assembled more than 1.1 billion historical records – birth, death, marriage, divorce, census, obituary, immigration, military and more – all in a single location, and makes them available at a price that’s up to 80 percent less than the leading competitor. Archives also partners with other leading family history websites to provide integrated record collections, discounted memberships, official certificates and other special promotions – providing a comprehensive resource for researching your family history.

The site is free to try for seven days, allowing anyone to explore the benefits of membership without risk or obligation. Learn more at Archives.com.

Jamboree 2011: Grant for young researchers

Do you know a young genealogist who might benefit from attending a major regional genealogy conference?

The Southern California Genealogical Society's annual Jamboree is an amazing event for beginners as well as advanced researchers.

Now, thanks to one of our intrepid geneablogger colleagues, there's a fund to assist young genealogists to participate in the 2011 event, which will be held June 10-12, in Burbank, California.

Denise Levenick, who writes The Family Curator, has set up a fund in honor of her mother Suzanne Freeman, who died in August 2010. Writes Denise: "At the time of her death, Suzanne was still searching for her elusive Winsor cousin."

A longtime youth volunteer, Suzanne deveoped an interest in family history and enjoyed the growing number of young student genealogists. Our geneablogger community met her during the past two Jamboree events where she assisted in the Geneablogger Welcome Bag project.

According to Denise's press release, young genealogists are invited to apply for the 2011 Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Student Genealogy Grant established by friends and family to honor Suzanne’s Freeman’s lifetime of service to young people and to assist young genealogists seeking to advance their genealogical education.

The first grant will be awarded to a student attending the 2011 Jamboree. The award includes $500 toward conference expenses.

Rules and regulations:

-- Applicants need not be a currently registered student, but must have been a enrolled at a college, university, or secondary school within the last 12 months, and be 18-25 years old.

-- Complete guidelines and application are available online at The Family Curator blog. The application deadine is February 15, and the award recipient will be announced March 1.

Suzanne Winsor Freeman was born January 5, 1933 in Olathe, Kansas to Arline (Kinsel) and Frank Ammi Brown, and grew up in Orange and Santa Ana after her family moved to California in 1937. She purchased property in Green Valley, Arizona in 1982 and became a full-time Arizona resident in 1997.

The Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Student Genealogy Fund honors her love of service and of family history. The purpose of the fund is to assist young genealogists by offering grants to advance their genealogical education, including funds to attend genealogy conferences and workshops.

Suzanne enjoyed researching family history online and frequently posted queries that resulted in new family connections. She supplied stories and anecdotes for TheFamilyCurator.com, the blog written by her daughter Denise Levenick, and also appeared as a guest blogger at ShadesoftheDeparted.com.

For more detailed information on how to make donations, via any Wells Fargo bank branch, to the Suzanne Winsor Freeman Memorial Student Genealogy Fund at Wells Fargo Bank, Green Valley, Arizona, contact Denise Levenick.

Columbia University: $4 million for Jewish Studies

New Yorkers interested in all aspects of Jewish studies will have something new to access for information.

The Columbia University Libraries have received a gift of $4 million to establish the Norman E. Alexander Library for Jewish Studies. It will fund endowments for a Jewish Studies librarian, the General Jewish Studies Collection and Special Collections in Judaica.

Michelle Chesner is the new Librarian for Jewish Studies is Michelle Chesner. Previously she was at the University of Pennsylvania as an archivist and Judaica Public Services Librarian at the Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies. Her research interests include 15th century Jewish history and early Hebrew books.

Special collections at the Jewish Studies library include 29 Hebrew incunabula, more than 30016th-century printed books, and nearly 1,500 Hebrew manuscripts, plus extensive archival collections related to Jewish life and culture, and Jewish individuals in all fields of study and work.

Key components were acquired in 1947 (the Oko-Gebhardt Spinoza Collection, nearly 4,000 books by and about the Dutch Jewish philosopher) and in 2009 (the papers of Yosef Yerushalmi, Columbia faculty member and scholar of Jewish history). New endowment funds will be used initially to catalog the Hebrew manuscripts, the second largest such collection in North America.

Jewish Studies collections at Columbia offer more than 100,000 monograph volumes, 1,000 current and historical periodical titles, about 60,000 Hebrew and Yiddish titles and large holdings of Jewish scholarly works in Western and Slavic languages. It also subscribes to relevant electronic titles, ebooks and databases. It is the only New York City repository for the Visual History Archive of the Shoah Foundation.

Read more here about Norman E. Alexander and the endowments. Learn more about the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services here.

Morocco: Jewish documents to be digitalized

An Oregon anthropologist has received a grant to digitize Jewish Moroccan documents.

In Rabat, Morocco, on a 2005 Fulbright research grant, Lewis & Clark University assistant professor of anthropology Oren Kosansky worked with community leaders and discovered a genizah (photo left) - a room or depository found in synagogues, where old religious documents no longer needed are kept and then periodically buried.

Tracing the Tribe reminds readers that such collections are often rich resources for family information and provide details not available elsewhere, which will surely benefit genealogists and family history researchers looking for information on Jewish families in Rabat.

Kosansky has now won a $50,000 grant from the National Endowment of the Humanities (NEH) to develop a digital archive of Jewish Moroccan documents from the 18th-20th centuries. The online archive will enable open access to international researchers interested in North African Jewish culture and allow them to share ideas and information. The project will also offer a new model for intercultural and international collaboration in the creation of technological resources to share historical information.

What is a genizah and what may be found in one? The most famous of course, is the Cairo Genizah.

“In Judaic tradition, documents containing references to God are forbidden from being destroyed,” Kosansky explained. “Most obviously books and papers on religious topics such as the Torah are deemed sacred and treated in a ceremonious fashion, but any item with religious or legal references—such as a wedding announcement or business contract—would also be kept.

“In this case, I found literally thousands of books and documents pertaining to virtually all facets of Jewish life in Morocco, especially as it was transformed during the 20th century. My first thought was, ‘How can I save these materials from burial, so that they can be consulted by community members and scholars.’”

The Rabat community once had thousands of residents, but decreased to less than 100 following major emigration to Israel, France and elsewhere. The research materials remained in Rabat.

“Written materials are very important in Judaism,” Kosansky explained. “It is a very textual culture. These documents offer great insight into a culture and a community of people that once thrived here. They offer an opportunity to investigate elements of a society that has not been fully explored by those of us in the academic field. For the Jewish community, it represents something perhaps even more valuable—an opportunity to reflect on how their traditions have been shaped by modern life, colonialism, technological change, and global networks of migration, communication, and commerce.”

The community leaders allowed Kosansky to go through hundreds of sacks containing thousands of documents to determine which documents were appropriate for burial and which represented significant historical texts suitable for preservation. They gave him the documents for preservation and he donated them to the Jewish Museum in Casablanca. The collection includes handwritten letters, unpublished manuscripts, community records, as well as published materials in Judeo-Arabic, Hebrew and French.

The project raised questions on how to build such a specialized archive, and how to respect legal, ethical and social differences across societies:

“There are so many issues up for consideration,” Kosansky said. “For example, what, if any, are the copyright issues for such old documents? And what are the copyright laws in Morocco? Are their private documents we shouldn’t digitized out of respect for some individuals or the Jewish community? Who should be consulted on such ethical considerations?”

He will begin the project when he directs the university's first overseas program in Morocco in spring 2011. While there, he'll be locating experts in the US and in Morocco in digital archives, information access, intellectual property law and Jewish history to address the legal issues, begin digitization and build the website.

Read the complete article at the link above for more information.

HIAS: Google's Brin gives $1 million gift

HIAS (Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society) received a $1 million gift from Google co-founder Sergey Brin, according to a press release from the organization.

The organization was one of the groups that helped his family when it left the Soviet Union some three decades ago.

Both of Google's co-founders (Brin and Larry Page) are Jewish.

The New York Times reports that Brin has given several gifts to Jewish organizations that helped his family:

“I would have never had the kinds of opportunities I’ve had here in the Soviet Union, or even in Russia today. I would like to see anyone be able to achieve their dreams, and that’s what this organization does.”

The gift was announced on the 3oth anniversary of his arrival in the US, when Brin was 6 years old.

Many readers of Tracing the Tribe had ancestors who were helped by HIAS when they arrived. HIAS has been helping immigrants and refugees since it was established in 1881. The estimate is that more than 4.5 million refugees and immigrants have been helped to resettle in the US, Israel and other countries.

In a HIAS press release, chair Michael Rukin noted that “As a refugee himself, Sergey Brin knows better than most the value of living freely in a country that allows people to dream and -- through vision, creativity and hard work -- fulfill those dreams."

He and his family were able to build a new life in the United States and, as a result, he was able to create a new industry by changing the way we process and use information. His contributions literally have changed the world.”

For more information on HIAS, click here. Read the New York Times story here.

HIAS also runs a location service, helping to reconnect families through a database of missing people. Learn about it here.

Making it Accessible: The Leon Levy Foundation

Since 2007, the Leon Levy Foundation has made grants to some two dozen institutions to identify, preserve and digitize their archival collections and make them accessible online to everyone.

Read about the Leon Levy Foundation in the New York Times here; there's also a Slide Show.

The foundation’s archives and catalogs program has awarded more than $10.3 million, including two grants this week: $3.5 million to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, N.J., to collect and conserve the papers of its present and former scholars, including George F. Kennan, J. Robert Oppenheimer and Albert Einstein; and $2.4 million to the New York Philharmonic, where archivists will digitize 1.3 million pages, including a 1909 Mahler score for his First Symphony originally marked up by the composer and further annotated 50 years later by Leonard Bernstein.

Among the finds facilitated via the grants:

National Park Service: The original 1695 deed for the Virginia homestead where George Washington was born; and copies of John Peter Zenger’s New-York Weekly Journal from 1735 reporting on the landmark trial affirming freedom of the press. Under the NPS, Federal Hall had thousands of boxes stored at Staten Island's Fort Wadsworth. Among recently unearthed documents were letters from 1785 from the Congress, which met in New York. A $60,000 grant will allow the NPS to identify what they have and digitize it.

The Center for Jewish History: Raphael Lemkin's 1944 document in which he coined the term "genocide." With more than 100 million documents, the CJH received a "life-altering" $666,000 grant, allowing it to process 1,200 linear feet of archives from 50 collections.

Some organizations and institutions never knew what they had stored away uncatalogued, while others didn't have the resources to digitize their collections. Most recipients are New York City cultural institutions, including the New York Public Library, Brooklyn Academy, the Frick’s Center for the History of Collecting, the Museum of the City of New York and others.

Founding trustee of the foundation is Shelby White. It is named after her husband, a Wall Street financier and philanthropist dedicated to making history more accessible.

According to the New York Philarmonic's archivist Barbara Haws:

“Access is one thing, but since we’re digitizing these documents, you’ll also have the ability to see details you’ve never been able to see: a score marked by Mahler in 1909 and used by Bernstein in 1959, a conductor making marks in the heat of the moment, some old and faded, can now be enlarged, which is just magical. On a single page there are multiple experiences reflected over time.”

Read the complete article and view the slide show at the links above.

Genius grants: Members of the Tribe

The Jewish Journal of Los Angeles discussed the MacArthur Foundation's list of "genius grant" recipients, based on today's New York Times article.

The MacArthur Foundation gives each of its 24 recipients $500,000 over 5 years in unrestricted funds to continue his or her work. Grants generally go to artists, scientists and thinkers whose work crosses disciplines and boundaries.

Three of the most obvious members of the tribe (MOTs) are

- Short-story writer Deborah Eisenberg, 63, a short-story writer, who grew up in Winnetka, Illinois. The NYT Book Review called her "one of the most important fiction writers now at work."

- Evolutionary biologist Beth Shapiro, 33, of Pennsylvania State University, is known for mtDNA analysis of the dodo and ecology articles in journals. Smithsonian Magazine (in 2007) named her one of 37 young American innovators under the age of 36.

- Law professor Elyn Saks, 53, of the University of Southern California, who fights for the rights of the mentally ill and has written of her own mental illness.

Tracing the Tribe believes there may be a few more MOTs on the complete list of recipients.

Read the complete Jewish Journal article and the New York Times report. View the MacArthur Foundation site at the link above for more information on each of the 24 recipients.

Nine years: Megan's marvelous grants

Nine years ago, Megan Smolenyak Smolenyak began offering Honoring Our Ancestors Grants. More than 100 have been awarded since May 2000.

What makes her sit up and take notice of an application?

"I find myself drawn to innovative ideas that can serve as a model to others! Why not give it a go?"

What's the catch, you ask? She says there isn't one. Megan states that she's had so much fun with genealogy for 30 years and received help from countless other genealogists, that now it's her turn to give back to the genealogical community.

Megan and her husband Brian run the modest program that has provided funding for a variety of projects, activities and more. The only requirement is that they be for some sort of genealogically-oriented initiative.

There's a short application on her Honoring Our Ancestors website. On the top bar, hit GRANTS to see the awards listed by year, followed by the application.

When we picked the one for this May, it dawned on us that we've been doing this for nine years. I started the program as a way of giving back to the genealogical community because I consider myself very fortunate in so many ways, but I'll confess to you now that in the early days especially, it was sometimes difficult to come up with the funds for that month's grant. Still, I'm glad we stuck with it.

Every once in a while as I travel around speaking, folks will ask me about the program. How do I do my due diligence? How do I know the money is really used for the intended purpose? My system is admittedly less than scientific, but if I had any doubts whatsoever, the time leading up to the 9th anniversary this year brought me a reminder each and every month.

What kind of projects are eligible for a grant?

Genealogical societies, local and specialized libraries, and avid genealogists are always short of the funds they need to buy appropriate books and CDs, acquire the necessary computers and peripherals, get collected information into print, and pursue other projects. I'd like to take a tiny step toward addressing this problem.

If you represent an organization which serves the genealogical community at large - or if you serve a smaller community (perhaps you produce a family newsletter, host a website, organize reunions or some such thing) - and find yourself shy of necessary funds, please consider filling out the form below to apply for a small grant.

Megan reviews the applications and periodically selects one. She tries for one a month, and applications remain active for six months from date of receipt. It only takes a few minutes to fill out the short form, and the result might be something you or your society have been dreaming about.

2009 grants included: The Phillips County Museum (northern Montana) for a computer to access digitized collections, the non-profit Save Our Cemeteries which is compiling records of those buried in New Orlean's largest Creole cemetery, St. Louis Cemetery No. 2, to upgrade video editing software for Alannah Ryane, to sponsor the First International Black Genealogy Summit, October 29-31, at the Allen County Public Library, Ft. Wayne, Indiana.

In 2008, grants went to support individuals, genealogy societies, historical societies as they worked on documentaries, genealogical societies, cemetery preservation, The Italian Genealogical Group (New York), digital cameras to record old marriage record books, website fees for a cemetery site, for Social Security application requests for the Facebook Unclaimed Persons group, a professional scanner and printer for oversized original documents for a historical society, a roots trip to Cameroon and the video crew to record it, digital camera and computer for archival records, and much more.

What's on your wish list?

There's more, so take a look at the GRANTS button on her page.

Are you thinking about how an Honoring Our Ancestors grant could help your project? Fill out the application.

Grants Available: Jewish genealogy research

Grants of up to $10,000 are available for original research in Jewish genealogy.

The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy has issued a call for research proposals for projects to be conducted during the 2009-2010 academic year. Proposals must be submitted by August 15; results will be announced September 15.

Criteria include the extent to which proposed projects broaden the horizons of Jewish genealogical research and/or create innovative tools or technologies to assist Jewish genealogists and family historians in their work.

These may be in the categories of pure genealogical research or interdisciplinary research, or may seek to provide Jewish genealogists and family historians with innovative tools and technologies to advance their work.

Click here for 2008's proposal guidelines, which include history, Rabbinics, onomastics, interdisciplinary (Jewish genealogy and sociology, migration studies, genetics, demography, statistics), computer science/technologies, and sources.

Proposals will be judged for academic excellence by the Academic Committee and must meet rigorous standards for substance, originality and importance.

For information, click the IIJGS website. Look in the left sidebar for PROJECTS -> Upcoming projects -> Call for Projects (2009). Follow instructions carefully; proposals not submitted according to the rules will not be accepted.

Look at the current list of funded projects to get a better idea of the grant program's scope.

Sephardic studies: Grants available

UCLA Maurice Amado Program in Sephardic Studies at the school's Center for Jewish Studies invites applications for faculty incentive grants to encourage scholars of any rank to deepen or develop their scholarship and teaching on Sephardic history or culture.

Grants may be used to develop or transform a course or to conduct research on or engage in the writing of a scholarly project with significant Sephardic content. Funding will not exceed $5,000 for any single applicant; typical grants will be in the range of $3,000. The work is expected to be conducted by the end of the 2009-2010 academic year; funds may not be used for the purchase of technology.

Applicants must submit by March 2, a cover letter (750 words maximum)detailing the project, its feasibility, and its contribution to the field of Sephardic Studies; a detailed budget; and contactinformation for two references. Send questions to Vivian Holenbeck.

For more information on the Maurice Amado Foundation, click here.

A major focus of the Maurice Amado Foundation is to ensure that Sephardic heritage is woven into the fabric of American Jewry. The Foundation has a special interest in integrating information about the religious life and culture of Sephardic Jews whose ancestors originated in the Iberian Peninsula into the education of all American Jews, with a special emphasis on reaching leaders, both present and future, of American Jewry. The heritage of Sephardic Jews includes a) the history and contributions to Jewish thought of the Spanish Jews before the Inquisition, b) the effects of the Inquisition on Jewish religious, cultural and intellectual life, c) the history of the Sephardim in the lands of their dispersion after the Expulsion, and d) modern Sephardic cultural and religious contributions to Jewish life.

Maurice Amado established the foundation in 1961. He was a descendant of Sephardic Jews who settled in the Ottoman Empire after the 1492 Expulsion from Spain. He immigrated to New York from Izmir, Turkey in 1903 and moved to Los Angeles in 1940. He supported organizations that perpetuated Sephardic heritage and culture.

ItalianGen receives IAJGS Stern Grant

The Italian Genealogical Group (Italiangen.org) was awarded the 2008 Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Grant from the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Associations (IAJGS) at the Chicago 2008 conference in August.

IGG will use the $2,500 grant to create an online Brooklyn Brides Index for 1910-1930.
IGG provides free public access to online databases it creates from print and card indexes to 19th- and 20th-century birth, marriage, and death records and naturalization records for New York City’s five boroughs (Bronx, Brooklyn, Queens, Richmond, Manhattan), Long Island’s Nassau and Suffolk counties, and some northern New York State counties. Every name listed in the print and card indexes is included in the databases.

The group was nominated for the annual grant by the Jewish Genealogical Society of Long Island.

According to IAJGS, “The grant will make it possible for the IGG to create and computerize a Brooklyn Brides Index for 1910-1930 from original records on 268 rolls of film from the Family History Library. There is currently no such index available for this period of massive Jewish immigration.

The Jewish genealogy community has greatly benefited from the 12 million records computerized by earlier IGG projects, and it is most appropriate to support the 1910-1930 Brooklyn Brides project, one that will surely allow many researchers to identify the descendants of female relatives who have to date been untraceable.” This marks the first time that the IGG will create a database from the records themselves rather than from an existing index.

More than 500 volunteers from local genealogy groups - and individuals in Canada, Ireland, and England who learned about the IGG’s projects through the Internet - compile the databases under the leadership and supervision of the IGG’s Project Coordinator John Martino. The IGG first participated in an indexing project in 1999 when it partnered with New York City’s Jewish Genealogical Society to create a database of Kings County (Brooklyn, New York) naturalizations.

Rabbi Malcolm Henry Stern (1915-1994) is widely considered to be “the dean of American Jewish genealogy,” and the grant honors his efforts to increase the availability of resources for Jewish genealogical research. It encourages institutions to pursue projects, activities, and acquisitions that provide new or enhanced resources to benefit Jewish genealogists.

IAJGS is the non-profit umbrella organization coordinating activities of more than 75 national and local JGSs around the world, and was formed in the 1980s. The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies is an independent, non-profit umbrella organization that coordinates the activities of more than 75 national and local Jewish genealogical societies around the world.

The Italian Genealogical Group, based in Long Island, New York, is dedicated to furthering Italian family history and genealogy. The databases it creates include every name listed in the indexes, without regard to nationality or religion. Volunteers from the IGG and other New York area genealogy organizations transcribe and index record collections held at local and regional archives.

Preserving projects: Lithuania, Poland, Belarus

The World Monuments Fund has provided grants totaling $235,000 for the repair, maintenance or preservation of three synagogues and one former yeshiva, according to this JTA newsbrief.

SYNAGOGUES

The Choral Synagogue (1903), the only functioning synagogue in the Vilnius, Lithuania received $70,000.

Subotica, Serbia's Art Nouveau synagogue which has been undergoing sporadic renovation for many years, received $75,000.

Recently restored to Jewish ownership, the 17th-century Zamosc, Poland synagogue received $75,000.

YESHIVA

Volozhin, Belarus: WMF also granted $15,000 for assessing conditions and conservation planning for the former yeshiva building - founded in 1803 - and considered the progenitor of Eastern Europe's yeshiva system.

These grants were provided through the fund's annual Jewish Heritage Program awards.

For more information, including how to submit proposals, click here.

Southern Jewish History: More grants

The Southern Jewish Historical Society offers grants for project completion, research and travel, and preservation of archival materials in the area of southern Jewish history and culture.

The application deadline is August 1. For more details, including information to be submitted for each proposal, click here.

For 2008, the SJHS will allocate $9,000 among grant recipients.

The Project Completion Grant is intended to facilitate the completion of projects relevant to Jewish history in the Southern United States. Such projects might include the publication of books or exhibit catalogs or the preparation of exhibit modules. Grants may not be used to fund research or travel; $6000 will be divided among funded applications.

The Kawaler Research/Travel Grant assists individuals with travel and other expenses related to conducting research in Southern Jewish history; $2000 will be divided among funded applications. Applicants must present a plan of research, indicating the libraries and/or archives where they intend to work, and their goal, as well as a budget of expenses and other sources of funding and contact information.

The Lowenstein Archival Grant encourages the preservation of archival materials related to Southern Jewish history; $1000 will be divided among funded applications. Applicants must include a description of the project and a budget and contact information.

The Grant Committe includes Dr. Phyllis K. Leffler (University of Virginia, Charlottesville, Va.), chair; Hollace Weiner (Author, Ft. Worth, TX); Sandra Berman (William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, Atlanta, GA); and Catherine Kahn (Archivist, Touro Infirmary, New Orleans, LA).

Southern Jewish Historical Society: Grant program

The Southern Jewish Historical Society will provide a $2,500 grant to each of two individuals to assist with research and writing outstanding scholarship in southern Jewish history. The Bornblum Foundation of Memphis, Tennessee provided the funding.

The competition is open to any individual pursuing a project substantially enhancing knowledge of southern Jewish history. Graduate students, junior faculty and others are particularly encouraged to apply.

For details write to Dr. Mark K. Bauman, Chair, Bornblum Grant Committee, markkbauman(at)aol(dot)com.

Genealogy research proposals sought

The International Institute for Jewish Genealogy (Jerusalem) is inviting serious research proposals for ground-breaking research in six preferred areas of Jewish genealogy from qualified individuals and/or relevant organizations in those areas.

The research is to be carried out in the 2008-09 academic year; successful applicants will receive grants of up to $10,000. The deadline for proposal submission is May 31, 2008, for review according to the highest standards of academic excellence by July 31, 2008.

Six preferred research areas include Jewish history from a genealogical perspective; rabbinical genealogy; onomastics; inter-disciplinary aspects of Jewish genealogy; Jewish genealogy and computer sciences; sources and resources for Jewish genealogy. Proposals in other areas are not excluded.

An overview of topic possibilities follows. For an extensive example listing, examples, go to the IIJG site, click Projects -> Upcoming Projects -> Call for Projects.

History: Researches that re-visit and re-shape the historical narrative (or parts thereof) through a genealogical lens; studies that offer a broader perspective on specific genealogical topics; integrative studies placing Jewish genealogical researches into context of the wider historical narrative, both Jewish and non-Jewish.

Rabbinics: A “holistic” (rather than particularist) and critical approach to rabbinical genealogies.

Onomastics: Application of recently developed tools for the classification and analysis of Jewish names to regions/communities where little or no scholarly work has been done.

Jewish genealogy's interdisciplinary aspects: Jewish genealogy and sociology; Jewish genealogy and migration studies; Jewish genealogy and genetics; Jewish genealogy and demography; Jewish genealogy and statistics;

Jewish genealogy and computer science (technologies): Also, large scale statistical studies of family groups, emigrations/ immigrations, with detailed analyses of family structures (age differences of spouses; including frequency of consanguinity; infant mortality; life expectancy; medical issues; hereditary diseases; given names; name changes; etc.); and development of research tools of fundamental importance to Jewish genealogy.

Sources: Studies aimed at the systematic identification and documentation of new/under-utilized/previously inaccessible sources and resources for Jewish genealogy.

Although previous awards are not listed at the IIJG site - I suggested that it would be helpful to list the individuals, their projects and the abstracts - director Neville Lamdan has kindly provided information on previously accepted projects:

Professor Eric L. Goldstein, Associate Professor of History and Jewish Studies (Emory University, Atlanta, Georgia) for "The Ties that Bind: Jewish Kinship Networks and Modernization in Darbenai and its Diaspora." He has also extensively researched the history (1760s-1941) of the Jewish community (Darbenai/Dorbian, Lithuania). Using hundreds of documents culled from Lithuanian, Russian, American and Israeli archives, he is writing a scholarly portrait of Lithuanian shtetl life, viewed through the lens of this small community.

An international team (Dr. K. Klauzinska (Poland), Prof. H. Daniel Wagner (Israel) and Dr. J. Zajdel (Poland), received a grant for "Strategies for the Integration of Genealogical Datasets." The objective is to integrate details about individuals in different databases relevant to a single town (Zdunska Wola, Poland) to increase knowledge and eventually reconstruct family trees. Algorithms/software will be developed for full data extraction from genealogical/Jewish-oriented databases and for processing data to merge databases and reconstruct trees. A pilot project will merge metrical death data and cemetery listings for the town. Long-term, the project will develop currently non-existent integration tools for merging large Jewish genealogical databases to eventually permit virtual reconstruction of entire Jewish family trees of a town or region, including families that vanished in the Holocaust.