Good morning,

Regarding Cohanim and Levites .... and I have told this story before ...

When my paternal grandfather Kassemoff arrived in Leeds, UK from Rezekne, c. 1905 he went to the local council offices to arrange accommodation.

The clerk at the council office asked him what his surname was. Grandpa Joe said: Kassemoff. The clerk said: how do you spell that? Grandpa Joe hadnt been in England for very long and told the clerk that he didnt know how to spell it .... The clerk asked: are you Jewish? Joe said: Yes. So the clerk said: OK, Im writing down Cohen. So in a council office, somewhere in Leeds, Grandpa Joe Kassemoff became Cohen.

Joe and his male siblings and ancestors are all Levites. It has also been proven on y-DNA testing.

Regards
Angie Elfassi
Israel

Searching:
RAYKH-ZELIGMAN/RICHMAN, Stakliskes, Lithuania/Leeds
COHEN, Sakiai, Lithuania/Leeds
MAGIDOWITZ, Jurbarkas, Lithuania/Leeds
KASSIMOFF, Rezekne, Latvia/Leeds
MULVIDSON, Rezekne, Latvia/Sweden
GREENSTONE, Rezekne, Latvia/Leeds
ITMAN, Stakliskes, Lithuania/USA
SOKOLOV, Latvia
KANTOR, Sakiai, Lithuania
GOLDBERG, Sakiai, Lithuania

The website for the Latvian State Historical Archives has been changed to https://raduraksti.arhivi.lv/

The registration page is now https://raduraksti.arhivi.lv/signup

Jewish records are at https://raduraksti.arhivi.lv/collections/1:4:13:2022

None of the links in the "The Jewish Vital Records of Latvia Collection - The Christine Usdin Collection", "Latvia Marriages and Divorces Database", "Latvia Births Database" and "Latvia Death Records" database on JewishGen will work.  (Neither will the links on my website, but I don't think anyone uses it anyway, so I'm not bothering to fix it.)

I am looking for a volunteer to go on the new website and find the new link to replace each link in the database.  I will give you a spreadsheet that has all the records in the database.  You would open it in Excel (or a similar free program), replace the links, and send it to someone at JewishGen for them to upload.

Stephen Weinstein
Camarillo, CA, USA

Sally,

That isn't correct --  the Family History Library still uses both sets of numbers:  the old FHL microfilm ones, as well as the new DGS digital ones.  Entering either number in the FamilySearch catalog in the Film/Fiche Number field will take you to the digital images, if they exist.

Regards,
David Oseas

Traying to make contact with the children of Rachel (nee Fruchter) and
Moshe Friedman (died in 2013) - Channah, married Meir Weisz, living
in Boro Park, Avraham Yaakov (“Yanky”) Friedman, married Miriam
Brieger, living in Lakewood, NJ and Binyamin Friedman, married Pearl
Hirshkowitz, living in Flatbush, NY,

Tryin to make contact with the children and families of Rose and
Joseph Wolf of Cleveland (both died in the 1960s), parents of Ida
(married Jack Glickson and Jack Cohodas) and of Alfred Wolf of
Cleveland. Ida's children are Harriet (married Schilling and
Friedberg) and Tom Glickson (married Amy).

Hi,
    I am a Kohane, confirmed by DNA, tombstones in Hungary and family information, and can not do the split fingers automatically.
                               Regards, Mark Reichard

Does anyone have or know where to find the rabbinic line from ReMa to present day?

I wrote an article on this very subject which should be coming out in the next issue of Avotaynu. I also may be giving an online demo on how to work with unindexed records like these on FamilySearch for the upcoming IAJGS Virtual Conference. During that demo, I'll show you rather than just tell you how to make use of these unindexed films.

To specifically answer Harlan's question:

The #2 in the right-hand column under the film number is the Item # on the microfilm. A film may contain only one item, part of an item or it may have multiple items. In your example, the fourth image on your film is the beginning of Item 1. Scroll down through the film until you see a similar image that contaIns the beginning of Item 2. The third button on the left menu (under the minus sign) lets you toggle between seeing one image and multiple images which makes scrolling easier.

In some cases, the image number is in the JewishGen index record, right under the Item # but it's not there in this case. But, there is a Record # in the next column to the left, F266. So the record you want should be on Film 2205099, Item 2, Record # 266. Page through a few frames in this item to see how the records are arranged. You can see that there are several records on a page and the Russian is on the left and Hebrew on the right. Either page through or guess how many frames to jump until you get to #266. It is at the bottom of the page on image 293.


--
Risa Daitzman Heywood
Arizona, USA

Thank you so much to Jan and Alberto for this information.

I wondered, for those of us who have not used JSTOR before, do you have any tips, hints, or resources for effectively using this database?

All the best,
Ellyn

The links from JewishGen do take you to existing LDS microfilm scans on FamilySearch. I believe that the issue Harlan has is how to go from that link, which opens the entire film in a gallery view, and points to the first image. From there, getting to the particular image within that film is somewhat complicated, and varies between the different books/archives. But it rarely gives you the exact page/scan number so some amount of searching of the images is required, which in this case might involve some understanding of the language. I look at the Slovakian books all the time and that's a bit easier since at least the character set is Roman, languages German and Hungarian, not Cyrillic and Hebrew (Yiddish) as in the Lithuanian books.

Basically, what you have from the info in the right hand column is a link then item number - in this case, item 2. Scan through the gallery and look for the black header page that has a 2 on it - they are easy to see but you have to scroll a bit. There is a beginning and end marker for that item and each film might have several in total. The image number for Harlan's entry is not present (-) so you will have to search between those marker pages for the particular entry (about 5 per page in these books, some have more some less). I usually try to do this by date - find a date on an entry that is close, jump ahead a few (or many) pages, repeat.

Good luck.
--
Jeff Goldner
Researching Goldner, Singer, Neuman, Braun, Schwartz, Reichfeld (Hungary/Slovakia); Adler, Roth, Ader (Galicia); Soltz/Shultz (Vitebsk, maybe Lithuania)

Sally Bruckheimer wrote:
"Since LDS Microfilms no longer exist, except maybe in SLC, the film numbers need to be deleted or changed to something else by Jewishgen. They were indeed the source of the information, but they aren't usable now. You might search by the subject for the digital version on familysearch.org. It may be available at your home, but more likely at a LDS library."

Film numbers may still be used to search via the catalog. While FamilySearch has been digitizing old microfilm and assigning new digital numbers to those rolls, digitized collections and records may be located via either the original microfilm number or the digital number. As a matter of fact I just used an old film number this morning to locate a NYC marriage certificate.

Emily Garber

Trying to make contact with the family of Erwin Somlo and his wife
Dina, daughter of Elza nee Horowitz who traced back to the
Horowitz-Margareten family

Harlan Weller posted:
"I located the attached index to a record on jewishgen and I wanted to look at the original document if possible.  The number 2205099 is hotlinked to an LDS microfilm, but I could not make sense of the other numbers.  Can these numbers be used to locate the image on the microfilm?  Or do I have to page through all the images on the microfilm?"

About three years ago I posted an article on my blog explaining how one gets from JewishGen's All Lithuania/Litvak SIG index to FamilySearch digitized film images. 
"FamilySearch, JewishGen, and Litvak SIG: What are They Hiding?" See, http://extrayad.blogspot.com/2017/06/familysearch-jewishgen-and-litvak-sig.html

Emily Garber
Phoenix, AZ

Leonid Kogan, a historian living in the West, is working on a study of the Jewish cemetery of Pulin in Ukraine, a small former shtetl located about 25 miles West of Zvil, a.k.a. Novograd-Volynsky, in Ukraine. His plans for another field trip to Pulin, known as Chervonormejsk or Krasnoarmejsk in Soviet times, were derailed by the Wuhan virus.

Since Leonid’s English is less than fluent, I am asking all genealogists who have traveled to Pulin and who have any photos from the cemetery to share them. You are welcome to send the photos to Boris@... and they will be promptly forwarded.

If anybody is interested in Kogan’s monograph titled Novograd-Volysnky Jewish Necropolis, drop me a note and I will send a copy. It’s a PDF file, in Russian. It includes a complete database of all burials.
--
_______________________________________
Boris Feldblyum
FAST Genealogy Service
boris@...

One of my family names is GREIL.  Solomon GREIL was born in 1811 in Schossenreith, Bohemia.

I am curious about the name, GREIL.  I'd appreciate anything any of you can tell me about this name.
--
Ellen Barnett Cleary
San Francisco CA
USA

--
Marc M. Cohen, Los Gatos, California, USA

BARAK/CANTORCZY: Khotin, Bessarabia; Strorozhinets, Bukovina, Ukraine
CHOMITZ/HAMETZ: Ionina (Janina), Greece; Ignatovka, Ukraine; Kiev Gubernia, Ukraine
COHEN: Dinovitsi (Dunayevtsy) Ukraine; Roman/Tirgu Frumos, Romania
KORNITZKY: Kiev Gubernia, Stepnitz/Stepantsy, Ukraine
RÎBNER: Storozhinetz, Costesti (Costyntsi), Drachinets, Cabesti, Bukovina, Ukraine
ROSENBERG: Tirgu Frumos, Roman, Romania; ISRAEL
WEININGER: Cabesti, Costesti, Drachinets, Czernowitz, Bukovina, Ukraine

I was told by my assistant many years ago that when Cohanim adopt
children they (if they are religious) adopt daughters so that there
won't be embarrassment when it comes to the holidays and the Cohanim
go up and bless the congregation.

Yoni