Leeds Group

Contact: leedsregion@jgsgb.org.uk

JGSGB Leeds & NE Region committee

Like any family tree, it has many branches.

1. Who are we & what we do
2. How we can help, what support you can expect & how to contact us

1. Who are we and what we do

Leeds & NE Region JGSGB are a Regional Genealogy Committee

We have a dedicated committee that hold an AGM in Leeds every year, as a charity, have our own small budget and an audited bank account. The Branch was formed many years ago and we have extended our membership beyond Leeds. Regional outreach is in Yorkshire, Kirklees, Calderdale, Teeside & Tyne & Wear.

Local endeavours, partnerships and outreach

British Jewry & Sherry Landa / Major Clive Behrens / Leeds Libraries & Archive Centre / Leeds Family History Centre, Kirkstall / Leeds Jewish Representative Council multi-faith / Synagogue records / Milim / Leeds University records & Local Historians / Makor / LJWB Queenshill Heritage Day / Leeds Jewish archive / Limmud

Education & Workshops

• We have arranged successful educational courses at the Marjorie and Arnold Ziff Centre with handouts

• We have run a very successful family tree/brick wall workshops led by Michael Hoffman in a Synagogue community hall. The second being necessary as the first was oversubscribed.

Visits

• We visited the state of the art Discovery Centre of Leeds City Museum where we given a guided tour of the Jewish artefacts held there.
• We have a presence at Leeds Limmud, Family History Centre and a Leeds Jewish Welfare Board Queenhills Heritage Day.
• Participating in the 2011 exhibition to celebrate 150 years of Leeds Jewry. Jeanette Rosenberg and Mark Nicholls brought the Society’s WDYTYA stand and provided expert advice and we mounted a display based on the 1851 census showing the names of Jewish families in Leeds at that time with their addresses shown on a map. (OK, that’s 160 years, but who’s counting?) The picture below was taken at the 150 year celebration of Leeds Jewry in 2011 and shows left to right Jeanette Rosenberg, Judith Williams and Ann Lightman

Projects & Records

• Alan Tobias is running local and National database projects eg Updates on detailed Regional cemetery records available on JCR-UK

Remembrance & research

• We attend community and contribute to research endeavours eg Royal British Legion; AJEX and Major Clive Behrens Branch or 1-2-1 requests via our mail-in

Speakers

• We run coordinated events with the Leeds Jewish Historical Society eg local walk talks with Nigel Grizzard.
• A talk by Dr David Lewis on the Jews of Hull – “What can the Hull Jewish Archive do for you?” This was a joint “production” with the Leeds Branch of the Jewish Historical Society.
• A talk by Dr Nicholas Evans on “Jews at Sea – from the Haim to Luxury Cruises”.
• Michael Tobias, a Vice President of JewishGen, recipient of the IAJGS Lifetime Achievement Award for his work in setting up the JewishGen databases, delivered a tutorial on the JewishGen databases.
• We have run a virtual online family film and book presentation in collaboration with Milim (Cassio Toplar’s family from Brazil to Moldova to discover his roots)

• We have local speakers and historians such as Sherry Landa from British Jewry for a National presentation

Voluntary

• We have presented & updated records eg Bad Arolsen and We were There too

2. How we can help, what support you can expect & how to contact us

Education & Workshops

• We have templates for family tree research
• Run Genealogy local face-to-face educational courses and handouts

Records

• We can signpost if you’re an ex-pat in Leeds & NE Region
• Have family relatives or visiting family or ancestry from Leeds & NE Region
• Have discovered your Jewish heritage later in life

Remembrance & research

• We have templates for Holocaust testimony, remembrance, memorial and to organise your own family tree research
• We helped Sharman Kaddish and National Heritage with Religious buildings eg Cemetery sites
• We presented to the Weiner Library at the Leeds Family History & Central Library teams

Visits

• We can help you determine where your ancestry are buried in local cemeteries or virtually
• We can signpost for Family History, JGSGB & local library records & genealogy/DNA records
• We have the facility to enhance and animate photographs through MyHeritage

Volunteers

• We are always open to new members and/or new committee members

If you are interested in any of the above, please don’t hesitate to contact us via email LeedsRegion@jgsgb.org.uk

Meetings are mainly in-person, but did take place using Zoom during the pandemic and shortly afterwards.

Such meetings were recorded and Society members can view these recordings in the Members Area: