Are you familiar with JewishGen’s Memorial Plaques Database (https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Memorial/)?  The goal of this project was to photograph and index all the information on Yizkor plaques and Yizkor lists from synagogues and other institutions worldwide.  These plaques were  usually sold to their congregants to raise money. Similar to headstones, many of these plaques contain the Hebrew patronymic name of the deceased, which is especially helpful to link together two generations for those doing Jewish genealogical research.

Believe it or not, the idea for this project came from JGSLI!  But since we did not have the ability to create and maintain a searchable database, we asked JewishGen if they would be interested operating it.  Of course they were and the database was born.  There are currently 205,600 records from institutions and memorials in 38 countries (https://www.jewishgen.org/databases/Memorial/tree/MemList.htm).  However, it’s a little embarrassing that since JGSLI came up with the idea, there is information from only 6 Long Island synagogues.

JGSLI would like to fully participate in JewishGen’s Memorial Plaques Database.  Therefore, we are asking our members if they are members of a Long Island synagogue, and if so, which one?  We are hoping that a personal connection at a local synagogue will increase the chances for a successful information request. Please complete the survey below!