Have you discovered hints of Jewish heritage in your family tree or wondered how to begin researching a possible Jewish ancestor? Join us for a fascinating hybrid study day designed to help genealogists and family historians explore Jewish ancestry, records, and identity. Whether you attend in person or online, this informative day will bring together expert speakers, unique collections, and real research stories to help you deepen your understanding.

Jeanette Rosenberg will guide participants through practical approaches to Tracing Your Potential Jewish Ancestor. Drawing on her extensive experience in family history research, Jeanette will highlight key records, research strategies, and common challenges encountered when identifying Jewish lineage.

In a special conversation, Else Churchill speaks with journalist and author Tim Franks about his thought-provoking book The Lines We Draw: the Journalist, the Jew and an Argument about Identity. Their discussion will explore questions of identity, heritage, and what it means to discover or define Jewish ancestry.

Else Churchill will also introduce participants to the rich Jewish Collections at the Society of Genealogists, highlighting resources that can support research into Jewish families in Britain and beyond. This session will provide valuable insight into the archives, publications, and records available to researchers.

Family historian Ruth Willmore presents Letters from Matilda Godfrey, a compelling case study based on personal correspondence that illuminates the life and experiences of a Jewish woman and her family. Through these letters, Ruth brings historical voices to life and demonstrates how personal documents can enrich genealogical research.

Michael Tobias will present a Jewish DNA case study solving an unknown biological parentage puzzle for a man abandoned in infancy in pre-War Germany. This session will show how DNA evidence can complement documentary research and open new avenues of discovery.

Whether you are just beginning to explore a possible Jewish ancestor or looking to deepen your knowledge of Jewish genealogy, this engaging day offers expert guidance, historical insight, and practical research tools. Join us online or at the Society of Genealogists for a day of discovery.

Members of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain will be available on site throughout the day to answer questions and offer guidance to those researching Jewish family history. The Society of Genealogists will also present a special display of relevant materials from its collections, giving attendees the opportunity to view and explore some of the resources available for researching Jewish ancestors.

 

• You can attend in-person at Wharf Road where presenters will be live or watch online via Zoom. The option to choose either online or in-person appears before checkout
• 20% discount for SoG members
• Each talk will be recorded and available to attendees until 19 July 2026.  (Recording of Tim Franks interview is TBC)

Tracing your Potential Jewish Ancestor

• Were they Jewish, and what more can you find out about them?
• Were they from a Sephardi or Ashkenazi background?

Most people have at least one ancestor they can’t trace, and this talk will give you clues to follow if you think your brick wall ancestor was Jewish. Jeanette Rosenberg will help you discover if they were potentially Jewish and what records for them may be available. She will introduce you to both Sephardi and Ashkenazi records and to the records and resources from the Jewish Genealogical Society of Great Britain. She will also signpost you to other Jewish genealogy sources beyond the UK.

The Lines We Draw: the Journalist, the Jew and an Argument about Identity

Tim Franks spent years as the BBC's Middle East Correspondent covering Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. During that time, he was attacked as a self-hating Jew and as an Islamophobe – as a tool of competing, malign agendas. He always tried to respond with a journalist's detached curiosity, drawing a clear line between his identity and his work. Up to the point that he asked himself: is that necessary? Beyond the judgments of others: what does it mean to be Jewish?

It was a question he struggled to answer. As a child in 1970s Birmingham, Tim was a practising Jew with hardly any relations or sense of lineage. And so he embarked on a search for his ancestral roots, from Constantinople to Curaçao, from Amsterdam to the death camps, from Lithuania to Downing Street.

Framing each part of his journey through what he has learned as a journalist, Tim discovers ancestors who all speak to a part of the Jewish story: there are the refugees and the risk-takers; the artists, rabbis, soldiers and revolutionaries; there is even a route to the Conservative Party's unlikeliest leader, Benjamin Disraeli.

Jewish Collections at the Society of Genealogists 

The library of the Society of Genealogists holds a range of resources that can support research into Jewish family history. In this talk, Else Churchill will highlight key materials available to researchers and how they can be used to explore Jewish ancestry.

Alongside useful textbooks, guides and periodicals, the Society holds many printed abstracts and transcripts of records, as well as collections of research notes and pedigrees relating to Jewish families. Else will introduce these resources and show how they may help researchers uncover new information and connections in their family history.

Letters from Matilda Godfrey

Between 1840 and 1848 Matilda Hyman née Godfrey wrote 31 letters to Mrs Louis Cohen and family. The letters were written from Kingston, Jamaica, about the difficulties in receiving an inheritance from an uncle, of her marriage, and the ups and downs of business.  She tells of English people she has met in Jamaica, and asks to be remembered to many friends at home in London. Ruth Willmore explores when and why Matilda emigrated.

Kurt Walter Badrian

On 5 May 1934, Kurt Walter Badrian was born to Frieda Badrian, a Jewish mother, in the town of Beuthen in Upper Silesia near the Germany-Poland border. No father was listed on his birth certificate. Late in June that same year, Frieda left Kurt, not quite 2 months old, in a Christian orphanage run by nuns. 5 years later, in 1939, the nuns realised that Kurt, being Jewish, was in danger and they sent him on a kindertransport to England. He arrived in Harwich on 6 June 1939. 

In England, a religious Christian family eventually adopted Kurt and he later became the Church Pastor, Courtenay Harris. He only became aware of his Jewish roots later in life and for many decades he, his four children and grandchildren, had been trying desperately to correctly identify his biological parents.  Michael Tobias spent 2 years researching in the UK, Israel, USA, Hungary, Poland, Austria, Colombia and the Czech Republic plus doing DNA analyses that confirmed which of 3 Frieda Badrians in Beuthen was Kurt’s mother and eventually identified Kurt’s biological father as Getzel Ulreich Elter. Courtenay now has close family in Austria and Israel.

Click here for information about our events.  Contact events@sog.org.uk if you have any questions.