Dear Genners,

Shalom Bronstein has published on the Jewishgen Yizkor Book Project the
English translation index to the Pinkas ha-Kehilot Romanyah, which is
Volume 18. The English title means, "Encyclopedia of the Jewish
Communities of Romania." This great work was first published by Yad
Vashem in Jerusalem in 1969. The work consists of a two-volume set:
Volume I for the towns in Moldavia; Volume II for the towns in
Transylvania.

The first English translation of a chapter to appear on the Yizkor Book
Project was devoted to the chapter about the history of the Jewish
community of Birlad, published by Toby Sanchez.

I have been able to locate a complete copy of the Pinkas ha-Kehilot
Romanyah, Volume 18, at the UCLA Charles Young Graduate Research
Library, which includes three parts: General History of Romania's Jewish
Communities, Volume I - Moldavia, and Volume II - Transylvania. The
whole work is about 600 pages and was written in Hebrew. David Hirsch
is the Bibliographer of the Jewish and Middle Eastern Studies section of
the Research Library and can be contacted by e-mail at
<dhirsch@...>.

Eleven chapters of the texts >from the towns have been photocopied and
digitized to permit the arrangements for transmission of the documents
for English translations. I plan to publish the texts of the following
chapters >from this great work on the Jewishgen, Yizkor Book Project
website in the very near future. The Moldavian town chapters include:
Pungesti, Negresti, Vaslui, Husi, Iasi, Harlau/Hirlau, Galati, Botosani,
Podul Iloaiei/Podu Iloaiei, Roman, and Frumusica.

This information has been forwarded to the Jewishgen Discussion Group
digest, ROM-SIG digest, Ukraine SIG digest, in order to alert other
members about the availability of the Pinkas ha-Kehilot Romania index at
the following URL: http://www2.jewishgen.org/yizkor/translations.html.
However, all of the other volumes of the Yizkor books and Pinkas books
are available in many libraries and archives throughout the U.S. and
world wide. This is a grand opportunity to obtain significant
information about other towns that had Jewish communities and to arrange
for the publication of the English translations. Joyce Field is the
project director of the Yizkor Book Project. I urge you all to invest
your energies into this very worthy project and donate your translated
works for the benefit of all genealogical researchers. Get other members
of your families to join in the project. Joyce Field can be contacted
for publishing details.

Good luck to all,

Robert S. Sherins, M.D.
Pacific Palisades, California