International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies
The Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies (IAJGS)

The Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant honors Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern, widely considered to be the dean of American Jewish genealogy, and his efforts to increase the availability of resources for Jewish genealogical research. The Stern Grant provides funding to encourage institutions or organizations to pursue projects, activities and acquisitions that provide new or enhanced resources to benefit Jewish genealogists. 


Annual Call for Nominations

Supporting the Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant

Past Recipients

2011

Gesher Galicia was awarded a Stern Grant towards the continuing efforts to inventory, index and record acquisition for the Cadastral Map and Landowner Records Project. This project will benefit a wide range of genealogists.

The American Jewish Historical Society was awarded a Stern Grant towards the Archive's continuing efforts to microfilm the Records of the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (Boston), 1870-1977. The original files are in Boston and by microfilming them it would give greater access to these records both in their Boston and New York facilities. A partial finding aid is searchable on-line. This project is not only beneficial to genealogists but by providing funds to the AJHS we build better relationships between Archives and Genealogist.

2010 Towards the upcoming IAJGS International Conference on Jewish Genealogy to take place in Israel in 2014, the Israel Genealogical Society (IGS) has taken upon itself an ambitious project to make available as much family information as possible for genealogy researchers.
One section of the project will be to transcribe and scan records from the Ottoman Empire, recorded in Ottoman Arabic Osmanli script. A second section deals with the Hebraizing of family names, which has proven to be a stumbling block to international family researchers. The IGS intends to have pages from various libraries in Israel scanned and to build a database of the name changes. The third section will be to locate books of residents and/or directories of citizens, and to have them scanned to make them accessible to researchers both in Israel and abroad. - $2,500.
2009 "Shamir" (www.shamir.lv) a non-profit organization based in Latvia for "The Guide to Jewish Materials Stored in the Latvian State Historical Archive". The grant will help in preparing an overview of existing materials about the Latvian Jewish Community that are in the Latvian State Archive and to create a comprehensive guide which will benefit Jewish genealogists researching their Latvian roots and other historians. The Latvian State Archives has materials on Jewish history, culture and genealogy dating back to the XVI century which have never been catalogued nor a listing made available to the public. - $2,500.
2008 The Italian Genealogical Group (IGG - www.Italiangen.org). The grant will make it possible for the IGG to create and computerize a Brooklyn Brides Index for 1910-1930 from original records on 268 rolls of film from the Family History Library. There is currently no such index available for this period – a period of massive Jewish immigration. The Jewish genealogy community has greatly benefited from the 12,000,000 records computerized by earlier IGG projects, and it is most appropriate to support the 1910-1930 Brooklyn Brides project, one that will surely allow many researchers to identify the descendants of female relatives who have to date been untraceable.  - $2,500
2007

US Holocaust Memorial Museum for its upcoming project to index materials it receives from the International Tracing Service (ITS).  - $2000

2006

Toledot-Jewish Family History Centre in Prague for its project to Digitize Jewish Familiant Registers from Bohemia (1760-1849)  - $2000

2005

Jewish Genealogical Society of Montreal for their project to digitize and index Canadian naturalization records 1932-1951 covering approximately 400,000. The data will be posted to the Internet. - $2000

2004

No award given

2003

University of Denver Ira M. Beck Memorial Special Collection Archives to support the JCRS project indexing about 25,000 tuberculosis patient files from 1904-1920 - $2000 

2002

The Jacob Rader Marcus Center of the American Jewish Archives, Cincinnati, OH - $2000 to expand its archives

2001

Genealogy Institute of the Center for Jewish History, New York City - $1000
Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem - $1000
The Philadelphia Jewish Archives Center, Philadelphia, PA. - $1000
Center for Judaic Studies at the University of Latvia, Riga - $1000
JewishGen, Houston, TX - $1000

2000

No award given

1999

The International Survey of Jewish Monuments, Syracuse, NY - $2000
The US Holocaust Museum, Washington, DC - $2000 to computerize Russian lists of Holocaust victims

1998

Jewish Agency Search Bureau, Jerusalem Jerusalem - $1,250
Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland - $1,250 

1997

No award given

1996

Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland - $1,250 
The US Commission for the Preservation of America's Heritage Abroad, Washington, DC - $500

1995

Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, Poland - $1000
The Federation of Genealogical Societies' Stern-NARA Gift Fund for US National Archives microfilming - $1000

1994

Yad Vashem, Jerusalem - $3000 to purchase computers to speed process of computerizing Pages of Testimony 

1993

Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People, Jerusalem - Funding for adding much needed office space

1992

No award given

1991

Jewish Agency Search Bureau, Jerusalem - $3000 

Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant Support

Jewish Genealogical Societies, their members, and all others who wish to advance the work of Jewish genealogy are invited to send a donation to the Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant Fund. The IAJGS accounts funds donated for the Stern Grant as designated funds, and they are not used for any other purpose. Donations should be sent to:

IAJGS Treasurer
PO Box 3624,
Cherry Hill, NJ 08034-0556


Call for Nominations

The Rabbi Malcolm H. Stern Grant Committee is established each year to consider nominations from the IAJGS member societies, to be presented to the IAJGS Board for their consideration. Nominations from all member societies are encouraged. We also encourage you to send a donation to the Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant Fund in addition to nominating an organization to receive the Grant.

Deadline: April 17, Annually

Nominations should be made using the one-step form at Steve Morse's website.

Chairperson:

Phyllis Kramer - Palm Beach, FL, USA phylliskramer1@gmail.com

Members:

Jeanette Rosenberg - London, England jeanette.r.rosenberg@googlemail.com
Nolan Altman - Oceanside, NY, USA nta@pipeline.com

Nominations should be made using the one-step form at Steve Morse's website.

All evaluations by the committee will be in-camera. The committee will make a recommendation to the IAJGS board, for their consideration and approval, which is then presented to the membership for a vote at the annual meeting.

Grant Criteria: The Rabbi Malcolm Stern Grant honors Rabbi Rabbi Malcolm Stern and his efforts to increase the availability of resources for Jewish genealogical research. The intention of the Stern Grant is to encourage institutions or organizations to pursue projects, activities and acquisitions that provide new or enhanced resources to benefit Jewish genealogists. The Grant is to be given to institutions or organizations rather than individuals.

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