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INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE for JEWISH GENEALOGY and PAUL JACOBI CENTER

at the National Library of Israel, Givat Ram Campus of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem
Research
Overview | 2006 | Sephardic DNA | Destroyed Communities | 2007 | Darbenai Kinship | 2008 | Ancona Networks | Sephardic Elites | Cervera Archives | 2009 | Riga Registers | Hungarian Protocols | Research Grants

Overview

In its efforts to have Jewish genealogy recognised as an academic discipline, the Institute is primarily engaged in scholarly research. Towards the end of 2009, eight projects were under way, each quite unique in its way and all at different levels of maturity.

The research projects are supervised by the Institute’s Academic Committee, headed by Professor Sergio DellaPergola of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

    In its first year, 2006, the Institute launched 2 research projects “in-house”. Both were inter-disciplinary and in the category of “applied genealogy”.

  1. A Genealogical Reconstruction of Destroyed Communities, headed by Dr. Sallyann Sack.

  2. Sephardic DNA and Migration headed by Alain Farhi.

    3. In spring 2007, the Institute launched its first Grants Awards programme for research proposals in a variety of genealogical fields, including the production of tools and technologies for the advancement of Jewish genealogy. Only two of the proposals submitted met the Institute’s standard of academic excellence and thus just two awards were made, both to full professors with strong credentials in the sphere of Jewish genealogy.

    As mentioned, one proposal was in the category of “pure” historical genealogy:

  3. The Ties that Bind: Jewish Kinship Networks and Modernization in Darbenai and its Diaspora, carried out by Prof. Eric Goldstein of Emory University.

    4. The other proposal was an interdisciplinary study combining genealogy with computer sciences, falling into the “tools and technology” field (under TOOLS AND TECHNOLOGIES in the Main Menu, see Strategies for the Integration of Genealogical Datasets, conducted by Prof. Daniel Wagner of the Weizmann Institute, with two research collaborators in Poland).

    In spring 2008, the Institute announced its second research competition, this time in six designated research areas. Three awards were made in June, for studies combining genealogy with social, economic and geographical history. Two of the grants were made to younger researchers.

  4. Crossing the Boundaries: Jewish Networks in Early-Modern Italy between the Mediterranean and the New World (16th – 18 Centuries) proposed by Dr. Federica Francesconi of the University Bologna.

  5. A Genealogically Centred Approach to the Historical Geography of Eretz Yisrael: Case-studies of the Moyal and Chlouche Families in Jaffa during the late Ottoman and British Mandatory Periods, proposed by Prof. Ruth Kark of the Hebrew University, Jerusalem, and Dr. Joseph Glass of Toronto.

  6. The Notarial Archive of Cervera (Catalonia, Spain), a source for the study of Jewish Genealogy, Migrations and Life in the Middle Ages, proposed by Maria Jose Surribas Camps of Barcelona.

    7. In September 2009, the Institute announced the two successful proposals submitted some months earlier in the framework of the Institute’s third research competition.

  7. A Systematic Study of the Riga House Registers as a Source for Jewish Genealogy in Pre-War Latvia, proposed by a strong team of experts, headed by Professor Rubin Ferber, Chair of the Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia in Riga.

  8. Communal Protocols and the Daily Life of Hungarian Jews - Proposal for a new [Genealogical] Research Tool to be conducted by Dr. Howard Lupovitch of the University of Western Ontario.

Further details on all of these projects and their current status can be found in separately on the Website (under RESEARCH on the Main Menu and relevant links on the Sub-Menu).