Part I. The Project

The Jewish National Library has a collection of family trees. Currently these are accessible via a card catalog, which lists the family name, and the shelf number. The IGS has thus far given to the JNL a number of trees that are unpublished and fragile. The card catalog is located in the Department of Archives of the Library. The family trees are located nearby in the archives. There are family trees in the Jacobi collection as well which are located in the Reading Room. For this latter collection, there is a separate index.

We have reached an agreement with Rosalind Duke, the Deputy Directory of the JNL, to allow us to create an Excel record of these family trees for inclusion on the IGS website. The following information will be included: shelf number, family names, format (text/graphic), years covered, year published, language, and location [cities and countries]. This represents the minimal data, which is a beginning towards a more comprehensive project of listing the individual names.

Anyone wishing to send family trees to the Jewish National Library, please note the following contacts and address.

Dani Reiss of the Dept, of Manuscripts & Archives Department is our liaison along with Mrs. Rifva Plesser, Archivist.

Dani Reiss
Department of Manuscripts and Archive
Edmund Safra Campus Givat Ran
P.O.B. 3910
91390 Jerusalem Israel
E-mail dani_reiss185@yahoo.com

Part II. The Index

All the data is indexed in English at this stage, even though there are many family trees written in Hebrew. The information we wished to include was not always listed on the document and there are lacunae in the information collected. One of missing links is that we have not received all the shelf numbers for the family trees donated by the IGS, consequently they are not yet listed. We will constantly update the material as the information becomes available. Many trees are related to more than one family. In such cases, all the surnames have been indexed with referrals to other related names. We tried, as much as possible, to add the localities from where the families originated. The names of these localities are entered according to the book “Where Once We Walked” (Avotaynu, 2002). In order to complete the information about these localities, we have added the names of the former countries in which they were located at the time.

Family Trees Found at the JNUL Archives Department