Tracing your Jewish Roots on the Giant Websites

Sunny Morton is an internationally-known, award-winning writer, editor and speaker for the multibillion-dollar genealogy industry. Her voice is heard on the Genealogy Gems Podcast, which has more than 2 million downloads worldwide. She is a Contributing Editor at Magazine and a popular speaker at conferences and seminars across the U.S. Sunny is especially known for her expertise in tracing U.S. ancestors; her unique comparisons of the industry’s largest websites; and her inspiring presentations on how to reconstruct and tell meaningful stories from the past. She is the author of Story of My Life: A Workbook for Preserving Your Legacy, Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites and MyHeritage.com Quick Reference Guide.

Comparing the Genealogy Giants: Ancestry, FamilySearch, Findmypast and MyHeritage  Each offers unique content and tools.  All continue to add new records, develop new tools and collect more user-submitted data.  No single website has everything you’ll need or want as you build your tree over time.  Free access options are available, with access to most features of these sites!

Site statistics at-a-glance Ancestry.com FamilySearch.org Findmypast.com MyHeritage.com

Registered site 2.7 million paying 9.17 million free Not publicly released 93 million free and paying users registered users Annual $198—$298 USD Free $34.95 - $239.50 USD $110 - $250.74 USD subscription Names in 10 billion 5.9 billion, plus 1.9 8 billion 4.4 billion historical Estimate of names in billion browse-only Estimate of names in Estimate of names in indexed records* indexed and records and indexed and unindexed and unindexed records unindexed records 353,000+digital books records Names in trees* 10 billion (in 90 1.2 billion (community Not searchable 2.7 billion (in 40 million million individual tree, 4.26 million individual MyHeritage trees) trees) contributors) User-submitted 235 million+ photos 21.65 million photos Content is private 75 million photos, videos, and public content and scanned 1.55 million stories Not searchable documents documents DNA profiles* 7 million from over None None Over 1 million; DNA added to 30 global markets site in 2016 DNA test retail $88.95 USD N/A N/A $111 USD (U.S. shipping) DNA tools** Ethnicity, migratory N/A Ethnicity, DNA matching tools, communities and chromosome browser DNA matching tools

Site operates in English, French, Chinese, English, French, English All shown here, plus see these languages German, Italian, German, Italian, Japan- https://tinyurl.com/MyHerita Spanish, Swedish ese, Korean, Portuguese, geLanguages Russian, Spanish Free mobile app Android, iOS Android, iOS No app Android, iOS *All figures approximate January 2018. These figures aren’t adjusted for variations in defining records and methods of counting unindexed historical records. Figures cited in part from www.ancestry.com/corporate/about-ancestry/company-facts, media..org/company-facts, www.findmypast.com/content/company- information and https://about.myheritage.com. Additional data obtained from company representatives. **Note: AncestryDNA customers without an Ancestry.com subscription only have access to some of the site features. Learn more at https://tinyurl.com/AncestryDNAsubscription.

Sunny Morton, © 2018. Please do not copy without permission. Find me at www.sunnymorton.com. What do all the sites have in common at the top membership levels?  Ability to search indexed and unindexed historical records  Core records: U.S. censuses to 1940 (population schedules), England censuses to 1911, SSDI  Family tree building tools  Automated record hinting if you have a tree on the site (accuracy and thoroughness vary)

Historical record highlights Ancestry.com FamilySearch.org Findmypast.com MyHeritage.com

Geographic record US, Australia/NZ, US, Canada, Mexico, England, Scotland, Scandinavia, England, strengths Canada, UK, France, Central/South America, Wales, Ireland, Germany Germany, Italy, Mexico, most of Europe, some US/Canada, Sweden of Africa and Asia Australia/New Zealand Featured historical US census special Vital records and all Parish records: Church Scandinavian record types schedules and state- other core genealogical of England and collections territorial censuses, records Catholic, newspapers city directories

Library Editions Institutional subscription versions of Ancestry.com, Findmypast.com and MyHeritage.com are available at:  Family History Centers around the world (find one at https://familysearch.org/locations/). Call ahead to be sure they have access to the FamilySearch portal.  Some public libraries subscribe to Library Editions of Ancestry.com, Findmypast.com or MyHeritage.com. Call ahead to see which genealogy website subscriptions they have. Library Edition services may be limited, including certain databases, tree-building functions and tools (including some member communication functions).

Get Help: Site tutorials and genealogy research skills Ancestry.com  Getting started on the site: support.ancestry.com/s/gettingstarted  Community and Message Boards for common topics of interest: www.ancestry.com/cs/community  Blog (for expert tips and highlights of historical events) blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry  YouTube channel with educational videos: www.youtube.com/user/AncestryCom  Ancestry Academy online classes—requires an additional subscription: www.ancestry.com/academy  European Jewish ethnicity category, AncestryDNA: https://www.ancestry.com/dna/ethnicity/european-jewish  AncestryDNA Genetic Communities for Jewish heritage: https://blogs.ancestry.com/ancestry/2017/07/21/is- ancestrydna-helpful-for-jewish-genealogy/

FamilySearch  Learning Center: at the top right, roll over Get Help, then click Getting Started (if you’re a beginner) or Learning Center (to learn about specific topics). For the latter, enter a topic and hit Search. If you click on Lessons, you’ll see video tutorials relating to that topic.  FamilySearch Wiki: More than 85,000 articles on genealogical research skills and record-finding for 244 countries (familysearch.org/wiki). For beginners: on the Wiki homepage, scroll down and click New to Genealogy for introduction to the principles of research.

Findmypast  Help: From top of home page, click Help. You’ll see options for top how-to articles on using the site, beginning research tips and articles about using specific records.  Findmypast blog: Includes free how-to guides and webinars (blog.findmypast.com).

MyHeritage  Blog includes categories for webinars, hints and tips, DNA, historical records, history (blog.myheritage.com)

Sunny Morton, © 2018. Please do not copy without permission. Find me at www.sunnymorton.com.  Help Center: Scroll to bottom of any page, click Help. You’ll find tutorials on using the site.  Can MyHeritage DNA prove Jewish ancestry? https://faq.myheritage.com/DNA/Ethnicity- Estimate/951696291/Can-the-MyHeritage-DNA-test-prove-Jewish-ancestry.htm  So You Want to Take a DNA Test (https://medium.com/@CleverTitleTK/so-you-want-to-take-a-dna-test-40eef84ee172)  MyHeritage DNA ethnicity analysis includes “five major Jewish groups — Ashkenazi, Ethiopian, Yemenite, Sephardic from North Africa and Mizrahi from Iran and Iraq; Indigenous Amazonian.”

Comparing Historical Records on the Genealogy Giants Cautions: Comparing record numbers at each site  Total record numbers may include items other than historical records: tree profiles, DNA tests, other user- submitted information and content imported from other free websites  Total numbers of historical records may include both indexed and unindexed content. Unindexed content may be counted as the number of record images OR an estimated number of record images based on sampling.  Records may be counted differently (1 birth=1 record (baby), or 3 records (baby, mom, dad)

HEAD TO HEAD FOR US RECORDS: MILITARY DRAFT REGISTRATIONS Conflict Ancestry.com FamilySearch Findmypast MyHeritage Civil War Yes World War I Yes (2nd overlapping list) Yes (also ME) Yes Yes World War II, Yes (also Young Men’s Draft, Yes (also AR, Only GA LA (1st, 2nd, 1940- (1942, 4th reg.) 1940-1947) GA, LA 1st reg.) 1959) AR (2nd, 1948-59, GA (1940-2)

HEAD TO HEAD FOR US RECORDS: US CENSUSES Collection/schedules Ancestry FamilySearch Findmypast MyHeritage US census population (1790-1940) Yes Yes Yes Yes Agricultural (1850-1885) Yes Defective, Dependent, Delinquent (1880) Yes Indian (1880-1910) Yes Industry & Manufacturing (1850-1885) Yes Mortality (1850-1885) Yes Yes (1850) Yes (1850) Yes (1850) Slave (1850-1860) Yes Yes (1850) Yes (1850) Yes (1850) Social Statistics (1850-1885) Yes Veterans (1840, 1890) Yes 1890 only Yes Merchant seaman (1930) Yes Yes Yes Yes Enumeration district maps 1940 1900-1940

JEWISH RECORDS AT THE GIANT GENEALOGY WEBSITES  Ancestry.com o Ancestry.com landing page for Jewish research: https://www.ancestry.com/cs/jewishgen-all. Master Jewish search for World, North America, Europe, More Countries and Holocaust. Portal to search Jewish community locator; Jewish name variations; see list of free Jewish collections. Links to Jewish Roots message board; Jewish family history message boards, World Memory Project. o Finding Jewish records: https://support.ancestry.com/s/article/Do-you-have-any-tips-for-finding-Jewish- records-1460088565996-2217 o Partnerships with JewishGen, US Holocaust Memorial Museum, American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, American Jewish Historical Society, The Miriam Weiner Routes to Roots Foundation, Inc. as well as other genealogy websites o Volunteer to index Jewish records: https://www.ushmm.org/online/world-memory-project/ o Card catalog has 370+ databases with keyword Jewish but most are mainstream record collections. Searching for Jewish in title drops to 100+ with more relevant results. Largest collections [over 100k]: Sunny Morton, © 2018. Please do not copy without permission. Find me at www.sunnymorton.com. . Jewish Given Name Variations (721k) . Poland, Jewish Records Indexing: Births (604k), Deaths (515k) and Marriages (272k) . US Jewish Welfare Board, War Correspondence, 1917-1954 (454k) . East Europe, Registers and Listings from 10 Jewish Ghettos, 1939-1943 (339k) . Austria, Vienna, Jewish Registers of BMD, 1784-1911 (206k) . Romania, Jewish Names from the Central Zionist Archives (168k) [also for Hungary, 136k] . Tashkent , Uzbekistan, Jewish Refugees Evacuated from the Soviet Union, 1941-1942 (152k) . Jewish Holocaust Register of survivors printed in Pinkas HaNitzolim I & II, 1945 (119k) . U.S., WWII Jewish Servicemen Cards, 1942-1947 [106k]

 FamilySearch.org o See Catalog for over 8000 entries with keyword Jewish. Over 3500 link to digital content on/off site. Search catalog by location, then drill down to specific locale, to find both Jewish and non-Jewish records in which your ancestor may be listed. o Published digital collections: . Austria, Vienna, Jewish Registers of Births, Marriages, and Deaths, 1784-1911 . Germany, Brandenburg, Bernau bei Berlin, Jewish Records, 1688-1872 (browse only) . Hungary, Jewish Vital Records Index, 1800-1945 . Italy, Mantova, Mantova, Jewish Records, 1770-1899

 Findmypast.com o Jewish family history landing page: https://www.findmypast.com/jewish-family-history o Kindertransport records: children rescued from Nazi-occupied Europe, including Jewish children . Browse-only (41 volumes from government depts) and indexed collections o Catalog only shows 2 entries with keyword Jew/Jewish . Massachusetts, Jewish Cemetery Association Interment Index, 1853-2013 (56k) . South Carolina, Charleston, Jewish Cemeteries, 1762-1903 (121) o Newspaper searches for British, Irish, US don’t show any titles that include Hebrew or Jewish but may report on Jewish individuals, families, neighborhoods or organizations o PERSI (Periodical Source Index) includes more than 50 titles with Jewish in title

 MyHeritage.com o Partnerships with Israel Genealogy Research Association and Israel Genealogical Society (IGS), Israeli State Archives. o Trees with Jewish heritage: . May contribute your MyHeritage tree to Family Tree of the Jewish People if you click from the JewishGen landing page (https://www.jewishgen.org/gedcom/) when creating a new tree or request to add your existing tree through MyHeritage customer support . Museum of the Jewish People (): gives 1-year subscription for kids to build family trees. . In your MH tree, may select Holocaust as cause of death. Profile page will add a yellow star. o Global Name Translation search tool translates names across languages. . “Descendants of European Jews who immigrated to the United States, Israel, and other parts of Europe and the world are particularly well-suited to benefit from this new technology given the linguistic and alphabet differences between the various destination countries of their relatives.” (https://www.legacytree.com/blog/myheritage-name-translation-a-useful-tool-for-worldwide-research) . Includes Russian, Ukranian, Greek, Polish, Czech, German, Hebrew/Yiddish. o BillionGraves database. “MyHeritage has photographed 90% of all tombstones in Israel and about 75% are transcribed. You can search in English and you’ll get the image and tombstone. o Major Jewish record collections: . Israel Genealogy Research Association BMD (409k) . German Minority Census, 1939 (410k) . The Jewish Chronicle (214k) . Mandatory Palestine Naturalization Applications, 1937-1947 (207k) Sunny Morton, © 2018. Please do not copy without permission. Find me at www.sunnymorton.com. . Lithuanian Internal Passports, 1919-1940 (112k) . List of Partisans from Belarus (17k) . Piotrków Trybunalski Poland Births (28k), Deaths (10k), Marriages (4k) . Yeshiva College Yearbooks, various collections . Avelim – Israeli Obituaries (41k) . Eretz Israel Telephone Directory, 1944 (16k)

What about JewishGen.org?  Free to search its databases with your guest user ID—some advanced features limited to those who donate  Claims “tens of millions of records, research tools and other resources to help those with Jewish ancestry research and find family members.”  Partnership with Ancestry.com in 2008: resulted in more powerful search interface on JewishGen and JewishGen databases (as of that date) becoming searchable on Ancestry.com

Should you use Ancestry.com or JewishGen to search JewishGen collections on both places? Note these 3 principles:

1. Ancestry.com may offer more search options and more flexible search results; the reverse may be true for some collections, though. Shown below: community search on Ancestry (left) and on JewishGen (right).

2. Many JewishGen databases continue to be updated on JewishGen but are not updated regularly at

Ancestry.com (see examples below). Some databases hosted on JewishGen are not on Ancestry.com, such as the JewishGen Gazetteer, JewishGen Family Finder, JewishGen Memorial Plaques Database, message archives, Jewish Records at the FHL.

On JewishGen.org On Ancestry.com Yizkor Book Necrology Database More than 350,000 entries. “As About 197,000 entries. Published approximately 100 new Yizkor in 2008, updated in 2017. Book translations are added to the JewishGen Yizkor Book Project each year, this database will be added to over time.” Yizkor Book Master Name Index 100,000 entries (updated over About 17,000 entries. Published time, per above) in 2013.

3. Ancestry.com has divided some JewishGen databases into smaller collections. For example, the JewishGen Holocaust database includes more than 2.75 million entries from 190+ component datasets. On Ancestry.com, these are divided into smaller collections such as Jewish Holocaust Register of survivors in Pinkas HaNitzolim,

Sunny Morton, © 2018. Please do not copy without permission. Find me at www.sunnymorton.com. Holocaust Survivor List from World Jewish Congress and Holocaust and others. More examples shown below of individual databases on Ancestry.com (left) and JewishGen collections (right):

Record searching by site Use site catalogs to search for specific collections of historical records  Indexed records: names are typed into searchable databases  Unindexed/browse-only: These are records for which names have not been or cannot be extracted. The handwritten ones may be eventually be indexed. Typed/published records may be machine-searchable (OCR, optical character recognition). Non-text records (such as maps) can’t be indexed or OCR-searched.  Partially indexed: only some names have been indexed o Wills, probate records, or marriage records that only index the primary parties o Published records that have been machine-indexed but don’t pick up everything

Ancestry.com: Search > Catalog  The Ancestry catalog lets you filter by keyword/name, place, record type, time period and language and sort by collection size, popularity, date added to site/updated.  The Title search is finicky; for better luck, search by keyword  Partially-indexed record examples: o City directories or yearbooks with entries not caught (or caught incorrectly) by OCR-indexing. These may include names separated on different lines or pages, written vertically or in a font/style not recognized by the indexing program. o Quaker marriage records don’t index all attendees/witnesses o Probate records that don’t name enslaved individuals or other people listed within  Details about each online collection may include the original publisher of that database/online collection, the source from which it was taken, historical background, general content of the records, search tips and more. Find these details on that collection’s search page or at the bottom of a record match summary (click Learn more).

FamilySearch: Search > Records > Research by location OR Browse all published collections  The FamilySearch catalog lets you filter by keyword/name, place, record type, time period and whether images are available, and sort by collection size and date updated.  A more advanced and thorough option to find records that aren’t yet in published collections: Search > Catalog > search for individual items. Within an item record entry, look for links to record images.  Search browse-only records page-by-page. Individual record volumes or collections may have handwritten indexes, tables of contents, etc at the beginning/end.  TIP: Search over 350,000 digitized book volumes under Search > Books. Use keywords such as ancestral names, towns, businesses, schools, churches, etc.

Sunny Morton, © 2018. Please do not copy without permission. Find me at www.sunnymorton.com.  Details about each online collection may include which records are in the collection, what’s in them, search tips, suggested next steps and how to cite the collection. Find these details on that collection’s search page or by clicking on the hyperlinked collection title in the list of search results.

Findmypast: Search > A-Z of record sets (then choose country/region)  The Findmypast catalog is more limited, allowing searches only by keyword/title, and then sorting by title, collection size, and record category or sub-category.  For best luck finding certain types of records, try using a single keyword or phrase at a time, such as Revolutionary War or Aberdeen.  Search separately at https://search.findmypast.com/search/us-and-world-newspapers: o Digitized British, Irish and US newspaper collections o PERSI: Periodical Source Index, for articles in historical magazines/journals  Details about each online collection may include what’s in the records, historical background and search tips. Citation information is not included. Find collection details on that collection’s search page.

MyHeritage: Research > Collection catalog  The MyHeritage catalog lets you filter by keyword/name, place, record type, time period and whether images are available and sort by collection name, size, and when updated.  MyHeritage claims a collection of nearly 450,000 digital books (which you can even find automated record hinting for under Discoveries > Matches by source > Compilation of published sources).  Details about each online collection may include what’s in the records and historical background. Full citation information may or may not appear; sources are not often included for the originator of the database/online collection.

Searching for Jewish ancestors in records:  Remember to search mainstream records as well as those identified as Jewish  Depending on the area, Jews may be named in records of other faiths  Searching on major genealogy websites: add Jewish as a keyword to name searches for ancestors

More resources on the Genealogy Giants

Genealogy Giants: Comparing the 4 Major Websites:  What you can do with a free guest account on each site  Basic survey of historical record content for 30+ countries  Trees: how they differ, access and privacy options on each site  Backup: How to back up/export your tree on each site  DNA: More comparison of AncestryDNA and MyHeritage DNA  Excellent summary of pros and cons for using each site  Detailed subscription cost comparison

MyHeritage.com Quick Reference Guide:  Family websites: How to create them—and help your relatives use them  See how to build your family tree and quickly navigate the site  Maximize the site’s amazing search technologies to find records and trees  How to test or upload your DNA and work with DNA matches  Unique comparison of subscription options that isn’t offered on the site itself

Sunny Morton, © 2018. Please do not copy without permission. Find me at www.sunnymorton.com.