MyHeritage will be teaming up with the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York and JewishGen to publish 5.8 million records from JewishGen to MyHeritage, the companies announced on Tuesday. The plan is to ultimately make all the JewishGen records accessible on MyHeritage.
JewishGen is a website of Jewish genealogy that holds records of Jewish communities across the world, spanning from the 18th century to the 21st.
MyHeritage already holds an extensive collection of Jewish records, which will be made larger by the collaboration. Currently, MyHeritage is the only major company of its kind that has a website that supports Hebrew. With the help of its one million Israeli members, MyHeritage has managed to build the world's biggest collection of Jewish family trees.
Another benefit of the cooperation is that JewishGen's records will now benefit from MyHeritage's technology which matches the users and their families to potentially relevant records. Moreover, while JewishGen's records have previously only been available in English, MyHeritage's Global Name Translation Technology will help Jewish users who speak other languages to find the relevant record.
“Our new collaboration with JewishGen is an important milestone that makes MyHeritage indispensable for every Jewish genealogist,” said Founder and CEO of MyHeritage Gilad Japhet. “Genealogy has been deeply important to the Jewish people for millennia. JewishGen is the key resource for Jewish genealogy and we are happy to bring its records to MyHeritage.”
“The agreement between JewishGen and MyHeritage furthers our goal to expand the availability of JewishGen’s valuable collection of historical records to genealogy researchers around the world,” says President & CEO of the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust Jack Kliger. “We are pleased that this agreement will also contribute to the expanding interest in Jewish genealogy.”
“We are delighted that a significant percentage of our historical records will now also be available via MyHeritage,” said Executive Director of JewishGen Avraham Groll. “The collaboration with MyHeritage will help millions of people across the world learn more about their Jewish roots.”