The Knowles Collection: August 2023

18 August 2023

Jewish Genealogy Society of Cleveland (JGS Cleveland)

For anyone wanting to know more about Using FamilySearch for Jewish research, please join me on September 6th. More info can be found at jgscleveland.org/event-5351672.

Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies (SCJS)

Over the last few days I attended the 2023 Conference of the Society for Crypto-Judaic Studies (SCJS), held this year in El Paso, Texas. The society studies everything about our Crpto-Jewish families. Also known as conversos, these are the descendants of those Jews, who in the 14th and 15th centuries, while living in Spain and Portugal, faced forced conversion to the Catholic church, and expulsion from their homes.

Those who were able to flee the persecutions, fled to lands far away. They became the "hidden" or "secret" Jews. They lived in secret in the American Southwest as well as all of Latin America. In many cases their secret Jewish lifes continues to this day. The SCJS is trying to help bring those families together and to help people rebuild their heritage. More info can be found at cryptojews.com.

For those who think their families may be the descendants of Crypto Jews, would be will served to join the SCJS. The next conference is in 2025 in Los Angeles, I hope to see you there.

Growth and Change

In the 12 years since the Knowles Collection was first published, the numbers have climbed from 7,500 to over 1,4000,000. So many of our ancestors left their native lands for new homes. Because of that movement the collection will now be in 6 different databases. All of them will be under the Knowles Collection umbrella. They are Jews of The British Isles; Jews of the North America; Jews of Europe; Jews of South America and the Caribbean; and Jews of Africa and the Orient and the newest one, Jews of the Southern Pacific.. This is a great indication of how universal our families are, and of how much still needs to be done.