JewishGen Discussion Group #JewishGen Sources for information on rabbis in Galicia #general
Judith Singer
In case anyone else is interested in researching rabbinical genealogy
in Galicia or wants to know the rabbis of various towns, these are the suggestions I received in response to my question about sources. Unfortunately for me, there is very little available in English. Meorei Galicia (Encyclopedia of Galician Sages), 5 volumes, compiled by Rabbi Meir Wunder contains genealogies of Galician rabbinical families, listed alphabetically by surname. For prominent rabbis of each family there is additional biographical material, including rabbinical compositions, responsa correspondence and photographs. There is also a town index. It is on-line at http://jgaliciabukovina.net/limited/digital_books but you have to pay a small fee to join to get access. It is in Hebrew, but there is a name index available in English on Gesher Galicia. Another truly comprehensive book is Otzar Harabanim, compiled by Rabbi Nathan Zvi FRIEDMAN, which contains 20,000 entries covering the period 930 - 1970. Entries are arranged by first name and then by surname, with surname and community name as "book name keys". It too is in Hebrew. I don't know its availablity. Letoldos Hakehillos Be'Polin lists rabbis in Poland by town. The Biographical Handbook of Rabbis is a bibliographic directory of all the rabbis since the Enlightenment who worked in or came from German-speaking countries. It is online at http://www.steinheim-institut.de/wiki/index.php/Biographisches_Handbuch_der_Rabbiner_%28BHR%29 [or http://tinyurl.com/gwwcdbn --Mod.] It is in two parts: Part 1: The rabbis of the emancipation period in the German, Czech and Polish large countries, 1781-1871 contains entries for 1,952 rabbis who were employed in or came >from the German Bundestag and the East Prussian provinces and Part II: "The rabbis in the German Reich, 1871-1945". Each part can be downloaded for free, but it is huge and the download would take quite a while (my computer was estimating 4 hours and I have high-speed internet). It is in German. Gesher Galicia's All Galicia Database includes a few different List of rabbis >from the 1860s Another source that has been suggested is the B/M/D registers for each town. These were submitted to the state annually, and were signed and sealed by the official "chief rabbi". The officiant at the bris or wedding should be noted on the record. The Mormons have microfilmed many of these registers, so they could perhaps be found in the FamilySearch catalog. Judith Singer
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