While this might be old news to some of you, I recently became aware that
FamilySearch's Catalog contains a vast collection of Jewish records. You can
get to them by going to the Catalog search page
<https://familysearch.org/catalog/search> and doing a "subjects" search for Jewish
records. Here's a direct link to the full results of that search:
http://tinyurl.com/hdvwto5 Be patient, it might take a minute or two for the
page to load.

To see which records are available for a particular place, click on the
arrow at the beginning of the line. For example, one of the towns of
interest to me is Musninkai, Lithuania. If I search the page for
Musninkai (or slide down the page until I get to "Lithuania, Musninkai")
and click the arrow at the beginning of the line, there's a link to
"Metrical books, 1854-1914." Clicking on that link would bring me to a
page containing a detailed description of those records, including Film
Notes for each film showing type of record (birth, marriage or death),
year, and Family History Library (FHL) film and item number. At the end
of each line under Film Notes, there's a camera icon. Clicking on that
icon would take me directly to the images on the particular film.

In some collections, if you follow the steps I've outlined above, you'll
see an icon that looks like a roll of film, not a camera, at the end of
the line. In that case, the records wouldn't be available on line, but
clicking on the film icon would take you to a page where you could order
the film >from the Family History Library in Utah and view it a few weeks
later at your local Family History Center.

Unfortunately, FamilySearch hasn't indexed these record collections yet. Finding
an individual record without an index, particularly if it's in a foreign language,
is next to impossible. That's where JewishGen comes to the rescue. JewishGen has
done a wonderful job over the years of indexing numerous collections of Jewish
records and making those indexes available on line in various databases
<http://www.jewishgen.org/databases>. If you search one of JewishGen's databases
and find a result of interest to you, you could jot down the relevant information
(place, year, record number, and FamilySearch film and item number) and then
attempt to retrieve the underlying record on FamilySearch.

The process for retrieving a record on FamilySearch can be a bit
complicated and may vary depending on the record collection. Anyone who
needs help with this process is welcome to contact me privately.

Paul Auerbach
Sharon, MA

Researching:

ARONSON (Podolia (Gubernia), Ukraine), AUERBACH / AVERBUKH (Chisinau, Moldova),
BENJAMIN (Ostrolenka, Poland), BLODEK (Krakow, Poland), KHAKIM (Maisiagala /
Musninkai/ Vilnius, Lithuania), KAPLAN (Koidanov / Minsk, Belarus), LEVINE /LEVIN
(Traby / Vilnius, Lithuania), MINKIN (Rezekne / Kaunata, Latvia), NEEDLE /
NUDELL (Odessa, Ukraine), PELICAN / PELIKAN (London, England & Tarnow / Krakow,
Poland), ROSENLICHT (Krakow, Poland), TAFFET (Krakow, Poland)