Sephardic Genealogy

01/07/2026

The New York Municipal Archives

The New York City Municipal Archives continues to expand one of the most valuable free genealogical resources available online: its collection of digitised historical vital records. Accessible through the New York City Department of Records and Information Services (DORIS), the website provides free access to millions of birth, marriage, and death certificates covering the five boroughs of New York City. Researchers can search by name, browse by year and borough, or locate records directly using certificate numbers. The collection is particularly important for those tracing immigrant families, as New York served as the principal gateway to the United States for millions of newcomers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

The project remains ongoing, with new records added regularly. Recent updates include nearly 60,000 additional marriage licences for the Bronx covering 1932–1937, together with thousands of corrected death certificates from Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Queens. Current coverage includes Brooklyn birth records from 1866–1909, Manhattan birth records from 1855 and most years from 1857–1909, Queens records from selected years between 1866 and 1909, Bronx records from 1872–1909, and Staten Island records from 1898–1909. High-resolution colour images can be downloaded free of charge, allowing genealogists to examine original certificates from home rather than visiting archives in person.

For anyone researching New York families, the Municipal Archives website has become an indispensable resource and should be among the first places consulted when searching for evidence of births, marriages, and deaths in the city.

https://a860-historicalvitalrecords.nyc.gov/

30/06/2026

Book Review: Genealogia Hebraica: Portugal e Gibraltar, Séculos XVII a XX by José Maria Abecassis

José Maria Abecassis's Genealogia Hebraica: Portugal e Gibraltar is one of the most ambitious and important works ever produced on the modern Sephardic families of Portugal and Gibraltar. Published in five substantial volumes between 1990 and 1991, the work brings together genealogical, biographical and historical information on hundreds of Jewish families whose roots lie principally in Gibraltar, Portugal, Morocco and the wider Western Sephardic world. The set contains thousands of individual entries, family trees, photographs, documentary references and extensive indexes.

The strength of the work lies in its scope. Abecassis attempted to reconstruct entire family networks, tracing marriages, parentage, occupations, migrations and family relationships across multiple generations. Families are arranged alphabetically across the five volumes, with separate treatment given where unrelated families share the same surname. The author also discusses surname origins and family backgrounds wherever evidence permits. Particularly valuable is the coverage of the Jewish communities that emerged in Gibraltar from the eighteenth century onwards and the re-establishment of openly Jewish life in Portugal during the nineteenth century.

Researchers should nevertheless understand the book's chronological focus. Despite its title referring to the seventeenth through twentieth centuries, the strongest and most detailed material concerns the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, when documentary records become abundant. Earlier generations are included where evidence exists, but coverage is necessarily less complete. As with any large compiled genealogy, users should verify significant claims against original records whenever possible. Nevertheless, the work remains an indispensable finding aid and often provides clues that would otherwise require years of archival research to uncover.

More than three decades after publication, Genealogia Hebraica remains a standard reference for anyone researching Portuguese, Gibraltarian and North African Sephardic families. It is particularly useful for tracing connections among families such as Abecassis, Benoliel, Benatar, Bensusan, Benzaquen, Gabay, Serfaty, Toledano and many others that appear repeatedly throughout the Western Sephardic diaspora. Few genealogical works combine such breadth, detail and documentary richness, making this a cornerstone reference for the study of Sephardic family history.

29/06/2026

Jews and the American Revolution

Jews shaped the American Revolution and how the Revolution remapped American Jewish life. Although numerically a small proportion of the population in the thirteen colonies, Jews played a disproportionate role in the Revolution. This presentation focuses in particular on the contribution of Sephardi Jews in the military and in supplying provisions to the rebels and British.

Laura Arnold Leibman is the Leonard J. Milberg Professor of American Jewish Studies at Princeton University and President of the Association for Jewish Studies. An award-winning historian, her research focuses on Jewish life in the Atlantic world, particularly women, children, and Jews of colour. She is the author of several acclaimed books, including Once We Were Slaves, and is widely recognised for combining genealogy, archival research, and social history to illuminate overlooked Jewish lives.

Jews shaped the American Revolution and how the Revolution remapped...

24/06/2026

Miguel de Mendonça Valladolid - Prisoner of the Inquisition

Miguel de Mendonça lived an extraordinary life that took him from Spain to Portugal, Amsterdam, Brussels, Bayonne and colonial Brazil. Born into a New Christian family, he spent part of his childhood in Amsterdam's Portuguese Jewish community before becoming a merchant in Brazil, where he travelled widely and moved among networks of New Christians stretching from Bahia to São Paulo. Arrested by the Portuguese Inquisition in 1729, he left behind a remarkably detailed trial record that reveals a world of merchants, family connections, religious secrecy, long-distance migration and colonial life. Drawing on his Inquisition processo and other archival sources, this talk reconstructs the life of one man while offering a rare glimpse into the Sephardic diaspora and the workings of the Portuguese Inquisition.

Miguel de Mendonça lived an extraordinary life that took him from S...

23/06/2026

The Minute Book of the Jewish Congregations Zur Israel in Recife and Magen Abraham in Maurícia, Brazil, 1648–1653

This slim but exceptionally important (Portuguese language) publication is the first scholarly edition of the surviving minute book of the Jewish congregations of Dutch Brazil, transcribed from the original manuscript and edited by the historian and rabbi Arnold Wiznitzer. Published by Brazil's National Library in 1955, it contains the records of the congregations of Zur Israel in Recife and Magen Abraham in Maurícia between 1648 and 1653, the final years of Dutch rule in Pernambuco. The editor rightly regarded it as one of the most significant primary sources for the study of Jewish life in colonial Brazil.

The volume includes an extensive introduction discussing the history, provenance and authenticity of the manuscript, together with explanatory notes and a glossary of Portuguese and Hebrew terms. Most importantly, it reproduces the original text itself, including the communal regulations (haskamot), records of elections, financial arrangements, charitable activities and the signatures of more than 170 members of the community. These signatures make the work particularly valuable for genealogists, as they provide one of the most reliable lists of Jews living in Dutch Brazil during this period and help identify individuals who later appear in Amsterdam, London, the Caribbean and elsewhere in the Sephardic diaspora.

For anyone interested in Sephardic history, Jewish settlement in the Americas, or the Portuguese Jewish diaspora, this is an indispensable source. It offers a rare glimpse into the internal workings of the earliest organised Jewish community in the New World, revealing not only religious life but also governance, charity, education, social discipline and commercial activity. Despite its modest length, few publications provide such direct access to the voices and names of the Jews of Dutch Brazil. A digital copy can be downloaded free of charge from the National Library of Brazil Digital Collections (https://objdigital.bn.br/acervo_digital/div_obrasraras/or1355595/or1355595.pdf). The original can be downloaded from the Amsterdam archives (https://archief.amsterdam/inventarissen/details/334/path/7.2.1.1/withscans/0/findingaid/334/file/1304/start/0/limit/10/flimit/5).

22/06/2026

Three Sephardic ladies from the early 18th century. From left to right: Amsterdam, Morocco and the Ottoman Empire.

21/06/2026

AI Summit 2026: Artificial Intelligence and Jewish Genealogy

The International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS) held its first dedicated AI Summit, attracting participants from 23 countries and reflecting the rapidly growing interest in artificial intelligence among family historians. Speakers emphasised that AI is neither a miracle solution nor something to fear, but a powerful set of tools that can assist genealogists when used critically and responsibly. A recurring theme was that confidence is not evidence: AI-generated results must always be verified against original sources.

The keynote presentations by genealogists Steve Little and Mark Thompson focused on practical applications of AI in genealogy. They demonstrated how AI can summarise lengthy documents, extract names, dates, relationships, and other structured data from wills and records, generate draft reports, and translate or simplify complex texts. Examples included converting the will of Judah Touro into a spreadsheet of beneficiaries and developing AI tools to assist with the interpretation of Hebrew gravestones. The speakers stressed that AI works best as a research assistant rather than as an authority, and that genealogists should always verify AI outputs against the original documents.

A major focus of the summit was the emerging use of AI for online research. While earlier generations of AI tools were unreliable for factual research, newer systems can search the public internet, locate sources, and help researchers evaluate competing interpretations. Participants were encouraged to learn how AI models work, understand their limitations, and use them thoughtfully within established genealogical standards. The overall message was clear: AI is rapidly becoming an indispensable tool for genealogists, but successful researchers will be those who combine these new technologies with traditional skills of source evaluation, critical thinking, and evidence-based analysis.

IAJGS AI for Jewish Genealogy Answer Book will be available soon. C...

19/06/2026

Book Review: Archivos de la Iglesia y Genealogía Hispanojudía

This substantial guide, published by Spain's Ministry of Culture, is a valuable reference work for researching families in Spain and the wider Iberian world. Its principal purpose is to explain the wealth of genealogical material preserved in ecclesiastical archives, many of which remain underused by historians and family researchers despite their enormous value.

The volume surveys the different types of church records available throughout Spain, including parish registers, marriage records, baptismal records, burial registers, ecclesiastical court proceedings, dispensations, confraternity records, notarial material preserved within church collections, and other documentary sources. Particularly valuable is its explanation of how these records were created, where they are now held, and how they can be accessed. For researchers tracing families before the introduction of civil registration, such records are often indispensable.

Of special interest is the discussion of sources that can illuminate the lives of New Christian families and individuals who came under ecclesiastical scrutiny. While church records must always be interpreted carefully and alongside other sources such as Inquisition records, notarial documents, municipal archives, and Jewish communal records, this guide demonstrates the breadth of surviving documentation that can help reconstruct family networks, migration patterns, occupations, property ownership, and social status over several centuries.

The work is richly illustrated and serves as both an introduction to Spanish ecclesiastical archives and a practical research guide. Researchers working on Iberian families, the Atlantic world, colonial Spanish America, or the wider Sephardic diaspora will find it a useful roadmap to sources that are frequently overlooked. It deserves a place on the digital bookshelf of anyone seeking to move beyond readily available online databases and into the deeper archival record.

Download this book for free:https://www.cultura.gob.es/dam/jcr:f28cc317-7893-40a3-9561-d821b6caf030/archivosiglesia.pdf

18/06/2026

Three Sephardic merchants from the early 18th century. On the left, a Portuguese Jewish merchant from Amsterdam. In the centre a Haketia-speaking merchant from northern Morocco. On the right, a Ladino-speaking merchant from the Ottoman Empire.