The Sephardic Research Foundation is a charitable foundation registered in the Netherlands, working to recover and preserve the documentary record of the Sephardi diaspora.
Why this is needed
The records of Sephardi Jewry are scattered across some thirty countries and eight languages — congregational registers in Amsterdam and London, ketubot in Livorno and Tetouan, circumcision registers in Morocco, Inquisition files in Lisbon and Madrid, community archives in Istanbul, Jerusalem and Rio de Janeiro.
Many of the communities that created them no longer exist. Their archives have been dispersed, sequestered, damaged or simply forgotten.
What we do
We build a research database. Records from Sephardi communities worldwide, brought together with full provenance — every entry traceable to the source it came from. It currently holds several hundred thousand individuals drawn from more than eighty sources across some thirty territories.
We support scholarship, through publication, through the identification and rescue of records at risk, and through collaboration with archives and researchers.
And we make the work public, as far and as fast as we responsibly can.
Governance
The Foundation is a stichting registered in the Netherlands, with its seat in The Hague. It is governed by a board drawn from genealogical scholarship, archival research and law.
Get in touch
If you hold records — community registers, ketubot, photographs of gravestones, family papers, or anything else documenting a Sephardi community — we would very much like to hear from you. Material is credited, and we work under whatever conditions contributors set, including full anonymity.
If you would like to support this work, or to discuss a research partnership, please write to us at [email protected].