The following announcement was written by the Israel Genealogy Research Association:
Jerusalem, July 25, 2021
In 2012 the Israel Genealogy Research Association (IGRA) took it upon itself, to prepare databases from materials available in Israel that include the Ottoman period through the early years of the State of Israel to be accessible on our website. In 2019 IGRA decided to widen its focus to include materials of genealogical interest for North African Jewish communities, and the Jewish communities in countries of the Middle East such as Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, and others. That additional material will be mainly based on materials in archives in Israel such as the Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People (CAHJP), the Central Zionist Archives (CZA), the Council of the Sephardi and Oriental Communities of Jerusalem (part of the Jerusalem Municipal Archives), the National Library of Israel, the Historical Archive of Rehovot, Yad Ben-Zvi, the Montefiore Endowment in London, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), and databases donated by Jeff Malka from SephardicGen, Dov Cohen, Nagi Georges Zeidan, and Sarina Roffe.
Over 100 volunteers have worked on this collection in the last 10 years. Most volunteers have worked on transcription, and some have worked on proofing, transliteration, and scanning. We thank them all for the time they have devoted.
A small part of the IGRA collection has come to us through private donations from people who have prepared the files for their own use. Our latest contribution was found in the FDR library. It was a list of people in the United States applying to the British Mandate government to grant certificates for people in Hungary to immigrate to Palestine. The list was dated 1944.
IGRA has material from more than 60 archives and libraries around the world. The list can be seen here:
https://genealogy.org.il/igra-salutes-participating-archives/. Our collection has been tagged as belonging to 15 different types, enabling the researcher to choose the types of material relevant to his/her search. Only after you have searched for a name, will the website show the types of records the collection has for that name. The following chart is of the types of records in the collection as of June 2021.
On the side of IGRA’s All Israel Database page, there are various filters allowing you to focus on specific parts of the collection. They are to be used after you have done your search by name. The filters are:
Record Type
Top Surnames in Your Search (limited to 10),
Top Given Names in Your Search (limited to 10),
Filter by Localities in Israel,
Filter by Countries (in those cases where the file deals with people outside of Israel),
Filter by Record Years (The materials of the last 70 years can only be included if they have been made public),
Filter by Record Sources,
Filter by Record Repositories,
Filter by Record Databases
IGRA does its outmost to allow the material to be searched both in Hebrew and English. Our search engine allows you to search either with exact results or phonetic matches. The rules of transliteration we follow may not always show the name as you think the names of the person were spelled. It is best to search in both Hebrew and English.
You can begin your search after registering to the website. Use of the search engine registering to the website is free, but details and available scans can only be seen if you have a paid subscription.
Enjoy.