Over 190 lectures since 2020, by archivists, historians, geneticists and genealogists working at the front of this field.

The chronological list is at the end. This index is organised by subject, because that is how people actually look for things.

On this page

• By place
• By record type and archive
• By theme
• Family case studies
• The society and the field
• Speaker index
• Not available

By place

Amsterdam and the Netherlands

The largest single body of material in the library.

Archives and records

• The Amsterdam Archives — Ton Tielen
• The Amsterdam Notarial Archives — Harmen Snel
• The Sephardic Archives of Amsterdam: The Early Years — Ton Tielen
• The Sephardic Archives of Amsterdam in the Dutch Golden Age — Ton Tielen
• Q&A with Harmen Snel, Senior Archivist, Amsterdam City Archives
• Amsterdam Research: Ets Haim School, Library and Charity — Ton Tielen
• Fintas, Promesas, Imposta: Taxing the Portuguese Nation — Ton Tielen
• Mail Order Brides, Sephardic Style (Dotar) — Ton Tielen

Community and society

• The Sephardic Poor of Amsterdam and London — Ton Tielen
• Balkan Sephardim in Early Modern Amsterdam — Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld
• Servants, Masters and Families: African and Eurafrican Jews in 17th-Century Amsterdam — Mark Ponte
• In Conversation with Mark Ponte
• The Lost World of Vlooienburg, 1600–1815 — Maarten Hell
• Rembrandt and his Jewish Neighbours — Mirjam Knotter
• Dutch Sephardim: an interview with Professor Bart Wallet
• Sephardic Customs of Amsterdam — Nachshon Rodrigues Pereira

Books, rabbis and controversies

• Highlights from the Ets Haim Collection — Heide Warncke
• As Perfect as if Cast in Gold: manuscript culture and Hebrew printing — Heide Warncke
• Amsterdam: Bookstore of the World — Emile Schrijver
• Menasseh ben Israel vs the Rabbis — Steven Nadler
• Why wasn’t Spinoza excommunicated? — Yitzhak Melamed
• Selomoh Ayllion: Controversial Rabbi — Ton Tielen
• Four Quarrelsome Rabbis: Conflict in 17th-Century Amsterdam — Ton Tielen
• The Life of Jacob Judah Leon, Modeller of the Temple of Solomon — Ton Tielen
• The Irresponsible Life of Joshua Cohen Rodrigues — Jair van Dijk

England and London

• Finding Early London Sephardic Ancestors — Ton Tielen and David Mendoza
• London’s 18th-Century Secular Records — David Mendoza
• Everyday Justice in London’s Sephardic Jewish Community — Wendy Filer
• Keeping the Faithful: Poverty, Welfare and Cohesion in Georgian London — Ali Erginsoy
• Jews in Georgian Society: the Laras of London — Pearl Foster
• The Bevis Marks Synagogue Story — Marilyn Scott with Rabbi Shalom Morris
• Opening the Archives with Technology: Bevis Marks, a Case Study — David Silvera
• Mining the Archives with Technology — David Silvera
• The Sephardic Poor of Amsterdam and London — Ton Tielen
• The Lindos: Sephardic Grandees — Ton Tielen
• Daniel Mendoza, Regency Boxer and Improbable Jewish Hero — David Mendoza

Portugal

• Tracing your Jewish Ancestors back to Portugal — Ton Tielen
• Researching Sephardic Ancestors in Portugal with Tombo.pt — João Ventura
• Beginner’s Guide to Searching the Archives of the Portuguese Inquisition — Ton Tielen and David Mendoza
• Vindos de Portugal — Carla Vieira
• Trade and Persecution: Three Merchants between Lisbon and London — Carla Vieira
• The De Sola Mendes Family and the Portuguese Inquisition — Florbela Veiga Frade
• DNA Evidence of Jews in Portugal — Inês Pires Nogueiro
• Speaking for the Silenced — Richard Zimler

Spain

• Spanish Archives pre-1750 — Daniel Smith-Ramos
• The 1680 Madrid Auto-da-Fé — David Mendoza
• Spain and the Jews: From Expulsion to Citizenship — David Mendoza

Morocco and the Maghreb

• Jewish Genealogy in Morocco — Jacob Marrache Fischel
• Jews in the Maghreb: their Surnames and their Roots — Alexander Beider
• A Moroccan Jewish Genealogical Journey — Raquel Levy-Toledano
• Ancestral Origins and Genetic Diversity of Moroccan Jews — Raquel Levy-Toledano
• The Book of Mogador: the Lost Jewish World of Essaouira Revealed — Sidney Corcos
• Rabbis, Merchants and Consuls: the Marrache Family of Morocco — Jacob Marrache
• Merchants, Migrations and Memory: the Pariente Family from Tetuan to Nice — Jacob Marrache
• A Jewish Library in Early Modern North Africa — Noam Sienna
• Denmark, Morocco and the Jews — Bent Blüdnikow
• The Moroccan Jews of Cabo Verde: Preservation of Memory — Carol Castiel
• Finding Myself: Sephardic Roots in Algeria — Chantal Clabrough
• The Kings of Algiers: Two Powerful Jewish Families during the Napoleonic Wars — Julie Kalman
• Libyan Jews in the Maelstrom of Modern History — Sephardic Horizons
• The Shamama Case: Debating Jewish Identity — Jessica Marglin (Tunisia)
• De Megorachim à Dhimmis aux citoyens français — Sylviane Serruya

Italy, Livorno and Venice

• Jewish Marriage in Livorno — Alain Nedjar
• Sephardic Genealogy in Livorno — Alain Nedjar
• The Jews of Italy — Luca Ascoli
• Sephardic Migrations in 16th-Century Italy — Luca Ascoli
• The Venetian Jews: Sephardim, Germans and Levantines in the Ghettos — Nardo Bonomi Braverman
• The Portuguese Conversos of Ancona, 1556 — Martina Mampieri
• Five Centuries of Five Italian Jewish Families — George Sacerdote

The Ottoman Empire, Turkey and the Balkans

Archives and method

• Jewish Archives in the Ottoman Empire — Michael Waas
• Researching Jewish Ancestors in the Ottoman Empire — David Mendoza
• Researching the Sephardic Communities of the Ottoman Empire — Jonathan McCollum
• Muestro Yerusha: Jewish Heritage and Identity in the Ottoman Empire — Michael Waas

Communities

• The Jews of Edirne, Turkey — Jacob Daniels
• The Jews of Rhodes: Between Ottomans and Italians — Valerie McGuire
• The Lost World of Monastir: Sephardic Jews in Ottoman and Yugoslav Macedonia — David Mendoza
• The Jews of Bosnia — Francine Friedman
• The Jews of Bosnia — Ana Ćirić Pavlović
• Sephardim in Romania — Felicia Waldman
• The Romanian Legacy: Sephardic Jewish Community — Peninah Zilberman
• Jewish Bulgaria: a Virtual Sephardic Journey — Joseph Benatov (not recorded)
• Ladino Culture and Jewish Identity in Bulgaria — Leah Davcheva
• Digital Humanities and the Ladino Press — Benjamin Charles Germain Lee
• The Holocaust in Yugoslavia — Esther Danon Gitman

The Middle East and Egypt

• The Jews of Egypt — Yves Fedida
• Genealogy of the Jews of Egypt — David Mendoza
• Using Facebook for Researching the Jews of Egypt — Jacob Rosen-Koenigsbuch
• Syrian Jews from Aleppo to Brooklyn — Sarina Roffe
• From Glory to Dispersion: the Sephardic Lisbona Family from Damascus — David Lisbona
• The Farhi of the Levant — Alain Farhi
• “My Heart is in the East…”: Financial Support for Eretz Israel from the Farthest West — Ton Tielen
• Sir Moses Montefiore — Abigail Green

The Caribbean, the Americas and the Atlantic

The Atlantic world

• Sephardim in the Atlantic World — Jessica Roitman
• Amsterdam to the Americas: the Making of a Sephardic Atlantic — Wim Klooster
• Ruling the Sephardic Atlantic — Carla Vieira
• Trade and the Sephardic Diaspora: a Reappraisal — Daniel Strum
• Jewish Pirates of the Caribbean? — Ton Tielen

Jamaica

• The Jews of Eighteenth-Century Jamaica — Stanley Mirvis
• The Jews of Jamaica: an interview with Ainsley Cohen Henriques
• Finding Jews in Jamaican Archives — Toni Pitock and Marina Delfos Harris
• Untangling Jamaican Jewish Genealogy — Stephen Delgado Porter
• Jewish Cemeteries in Jamaica — Rachel Frankel and Joseph de Leon
• From Portugal to Jamaica: the Delgado Story — Steve Delgado Porter

Suriname, Guiana and Brazil

• Suriname: Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society — Aviva Ben-Ur
• A Trip to the Dutch Wild Coast: a 1658 Sephardic Expedition — Jonathan Schorsch
• Jews in Dutch Brazil, 1630–1654 — Ton Tielen

Curaçao and Barbados

• A Journey through Curaçao’s Jewish History — Ron Gomes Casseres
• Sephardic Jews of Barbados — Simon Kreindler
• Enslaved People in Sephardic Jewish Households in Bridgetown, Barbados — Amalia S. Levi

North America

• The First Jewish Citizen of New York — Daniela Weil
• Who Owns the Cemetery? Shearith Israel, New York — Zachary Edinger
• Storied Stones: Shearith Israel’s Cemeteries and the History of New York City — Zachary Edinger
• Judah Touro and the Touro Synagogue of New Orleans — Adrien Genet
• Jews and the American Revolution — Laura Arnold Leibman
• Art of the Jewish Family — Laura Arnold Leibman
• Peixotto: a Portuguese-Jewish Family in the Americas — Haakon Lazarus Chevalier

France, Germany and elsewhere in Europe

• Sephardim in Ancien Régime France — Ton Tielen and David Mendoza
• The Cercle de Généalogie Juive: Jewish Genealogy in France — Alain Nedjar
• The Portuguese Jews of Hamburg — Hugo Martins
• The Nação Portuguesa in Antwerp — Florbela Veiga Frade
• Gibraltarian Jews in the 18th and 19th Centuries — Joshua Marrache

Smaller and overlooked communities

• Four Overlooked Sephardic Communities: Madras, The Hague, Dublin, Glückstadt — Ton Tielen and David Mendoza

By record type and archive

If you have found a document and want to know how to use it, or you want to know what an archive holds.

Notarial records

• The Amsterdam Notarial Archives — Harmen Snel
• Following the Paper Trail: Notarial Archives and the Sephardic Diaspora — Ton Tielen and David Mendoza

Inquisition archives

• Beginner’s Guide to Searching the Archives of the Portuguese Inquisition — Ton Tielen and David Mendoza
• Researching Sephardic Ancestors in Portugal with Tombo.pt — João Ventura
• Spanish Archives pre-1750 — Daniel Smith-Ramos
• Jewish Cookery in Inquisition Archives — Hélène Jawhara Piñer

Consular and diplomatic archives

• Sephardic Jews in Diplomatic and Consular Archives — Thierry Samama

Community records

• The Sephardic Archives of Amsterdam — Ton Tielen (two lectures)
• Fintas, Promesas, Imposta: community taxation — Ton Tielen
• Mail Order Brides, Sephardic Style: the Dotar — Ton Tielen
• Amsterdam Research: Ets Haim School, Library and Charity — Ton Tielen
• Jewish Marriage in Livorno (ketubot) — Alain Nedjar
• Opening the Archives with Technology: Bevis Marks — David Silvera

Ottoman records

• Jewish Archives in the Ottoman Empire — Michael Waas
• Researching the Sephardic Communities of the Ottoman Empire — Jonathan McCollum

Cemeteries and epitaphs

• Who Owns the Cemetery? Shearith Israel — Zachary Edinger
• Storied Stones — Zachary Edinger
• Jewish Cemeteries in Jamaica — Rachel Frankel and Joseph de Leon

Institutional archives

• Central Archives for the History of the Jewish People — Yochai Ben-Ghedalia
• Alliance Israélite Universelle — Jean-Claude Kuperminc
• JewishGen and Sephardic Genealogy — Avraham Groll
• Resources for Sephardic Genealogists in Israel — Rose Feldman

Secular and civil records

• London’s 18th-Century Secular Records — David Mendoza
• Finding Jews in Jamaican Archives — Toni Pitock and Marina Delfos Harris

Method and technology

• 15 Resources Every Sephardic Genealogist Should Know — Ton Tielen and David Mendoza
• Books Every Sephardic Genealogist Should Know — David Mendoza and Ton Tielen
• Mining the Archives with Technology — David Silvera
• Data Mining the Deceased — Julia Creet
• AI and Genealogy — David Mendoza
• Geni.com: Good for the Sephardim? — Randy Schoenberg
• Breaking through Brickwalls in Sephardic Genealogy
• Sephardi Spaces: Researching Sephardic Migration — Shai Cohen

By theme

DNA and genetics

• Sephardic DNA Project — Adam Brown
• Genetic Census of the Sephardim — Adam Brown
• DNA and Jewish Genealogy — Adam Brown
• Y-DNA and the Jews — Wim Penninx
• DNA Evidence of Jews in Portugal — Inês Pires Nogueiro
• Using DNA to Track your Ancestors: a Case Study — Raquel Levy-Toledano
• Ancestral Origins and Genetic Diversity of Moroccan Jews — Raquel Levy-Toledano
• Finding your DNA Cousins — Jarrett Ross
• Fun with Autosomal DNA? Tackling Genealogical Uncertainty — Julian Land
• Do Ashkenazim Have Sephardic Ancestry? — Adam Brown, Randy Schoenberg, Alexander Beider, Ton Tielen, David Mendoza

Surnames, identity and claims

• The Story of Sephardic Surnames: Fruit Trees, Catholic Themes and ‘Expert Lists’ — Michael Waas
• Jews in the Maghreb: their Surnames and their Roots — Alexander Beider
• Sephardim and the Allure of Nobility — Ton Tielen
• Will the Real Lousada Duke Please Stand Up? — Julian Land
• Ashkenazim with Sephardic Ancestry? — David Mendoza and Ton Tielen
• Do Ashkenazim Have Sephardic Ancestry? — panel, as above
• The Crypto-Judaism Movement: Are Bnei Anusim an Ashkenazi Fantasy? — David Mendoza (patrons only)
• Sephardic and Ashkenazi Genealogy: Chalk and Cheese? — David Mendoza
• Cardinal Errors in Sephardic Genealogy — Julian Land

The Inquisition

• The 1680 Madrid Auto-da-Fé — David Mendoza
• Beginner’s Guide to the Archives of the Portuguese Inquisition — Ton Tielen and David Mendoza
• The De Sola Mendes Family and the Portuguese Inquisition — Florbela Veiga Frade
• The Peculiar Case of Luis Méndez Chávez and the Cartagena Inquisition — Brian Hamm
• Miguel de Mendonça Valladolid: Prisoner of the Inquisition — David Mendoza
• Anatomy of Torture: Torment as a Tool of the Spanish Inquisition — Ron Hassner
• The Portuguese Conversos of Ancona, 1556 — Martina Mampieri
• Jewish Cookery in Inquisition Archives — Hélène Jawhara Piñer

Slavery and enslaved people

• Suriname: Jewish Autonomy in a Slave Society — Aviva Ben-Ur
• Servants, Masters and Families: African and Eurafrican Jews in 17th-Century Amsterdam — Mark Ponte
• Enslaved People in Sephardic Jewish Households in Bridgetown, Barbados — Amalia S. Levi

Spanish and Portuguese nationality

• Spain and the Jews: From Expulsion to Citizenship — David Mendoza
• The Portuguese and Spanish Nationality Laws: What Went Wrong? — David Mendoza
• Portuguese Nationality for Sephardic Descendants: an Update — Isabel Comte and Teresa Santos

Religion, custom and culture

• Sephardic Traditions: What is Different about Portuguese Jews? — Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota
• Sephardic Customs of Amsterdam — Nachshon Rodrigues Pereira
• Rabbis with Inky Fingers: Making 18th-Century Hebrew Books — Noam Sienna
• The Golden Path: Maimonides Across Eight Centuries — David Sclar
• Haham Jacob Sasportas, Defender of the Western Sephardic Tradition — Rémy Chicheportiche
• From Rabbi to Rebels: the Sasportas Story — Rémy Chicheportiche
• I. S. Révah: the Scholar who Revolutionised Sephardic Studies — Carsten Wilke
• Sephardic Music from the Inside Out — Ian Pomerantz
• Jewish Cookery in Inquisition Archives — Hélène Jawhara Piñer
• Art of the Jewish Family — Laura Arnold Leibman

Family case studies

Arranged by family. These are the most practically instructive lectures in the library — each shows a real problem being solved.

Family	Lecture and speaker
Almosnino	The Almosnino Family — Nathaniel Farouz
Baruch Lousada	David Baruch Louzada 1640–1699 · From Cobblers to Cosmopolitans · A Sephardic Case Study · Will the Real Lousada Duke Please Stand Up? — Julian Land (four lectures)
Buzaglo	Esther the Queen and the Brothers Buzaglo — Ali Erginsoy
Cohen de Azevedo	Cohen de Azevedo: Tracing a Sephardic Family — Ton Tielen
Delgado	From Portugal to Jamaica: the Delgado Story — Steve Delgado Porter
De Sola	Rewriting a Family History: the De Sola Family — Ton Tielen
De Sola Mendes	The De Sola Mendes Family and the Portuguese Inquisition — Florbela Veiga Frade
Farhi	The Farhi of the Levant — Alain Farhi
Gomes da Costa	Chasing Shadows: Bringing the Gomes da Costa Family to Life — Ali Erginsoy
Italiaender / Levi Vitoria	The Italiaender Family of Amsterdam — Marius Heemstra
Lindo	The Lindos: Sephardic Grandees — Ton Tielen
Lisbona	From Glory to Dispersion: the Lisbona Family from Damascus — David Lisbona
Malka	Eight Centuries of a Sephardic Family: the Malka Family, 1282–2022 — Jeff Malka
Marrache	Rabbis, Merchants and Consuls: the Marrache Family — Jacob Marrache
Mendoza	Origins of the Sephardic Mendoza Family — David Mendoza
Nunes Vaz	Family Nunes Vaz: a Journey of Western Sephardic Genealogy — Jarrett Ross
Pardo	The Pardo Family Adventure — Ton Tielen
Pariente	The Pariente Family from Tetuan to Nice — Jacob Marrache
Peixotto	Peixotto: a Portuguese-Jewish Family in the Americas — Haakon Lazarus Chevalier
Pimentel	The Dutch Pimentel Family: History and Holocaust — Esther Shaya, Henk Dijkman and Fokko Weerstra
Sasportas	Haham Jacob Sasportas · From Rabbi to Rebels — Rémy Chicheportiche

The society and the field

• The Need for a Sephardic Genealogical Society — David Mendoza and Ton Tielen
• Sephardic Research: Past, Present and Future — Schelly Talalay Dardashti
• The Sephardic Diaspora: Our Online Community — David Mendoza, Jarrett Ross, Ton Tielen and Michael Waas
• Three Years of Sephardic World: What Have We Learned? — David Mendoza and Ton Tielen
• A Conversation with Ton Tielen
• Review of 2023 — David Mendoza
• Your Sephardic Problems Answered! — Q&A sessions (several)

Speaker index

Ton Tielen — Amsterdam archives, community records, Dotar, imposta, Eretz Israel, family case studies, Dutch Brazil. The single largest contributor.

David Mendoza — Inquisition, Ottoman research, Egypt, nationality law, crypto-Judaism, Monastir, London records.

Adam Brown — DNA (four lectures). Michael Waas — Ottoman archives, surnames. Alexander Beider — Maghrebi surnames, Ashkenazi ancestry. Randy Schoenberg — Geni, Ashkenazi ancestry. Raquel Levy-Toledano — Moroccan DNA (two). Julian Land — Baruch Lousada (four), autosomal DNA, cardinal errors.

Aviva Ben-Ur — Suriname. Carla Vieira — Portugal, the Sephardic Atlantic (three). Jacob Marrache — Morocco (three). Alain Nedjar — Livorno, France (three). Luca Ascoli — Italy (two). Zachary Edinger — Shearith Israel cemeteries (two). Laura Arnold Leibman — American Jewish material culture (two). Harmen Snel — Amsterdam notarial archives (two). Heide Warncke — Ets Haim (two). Mark Ponte — Amsterdam, Eurafrican Jews (two). David Silvera — archives and technology (two). Rémy Chicheportiche — Sasportas (two). Florbela Veiga Frade — Portugal, Antwerp (two). Steve Delgado Porter — Jamaica (two). Ali Erginsoy — family reconstruction, Georgian London (three).

And single lectures from: Yochai Ben-Ghedalia · Joseph Benatov · Tirtsah Levie Bernfeld · Bent Blüdnikow · Nardo Bonomi Braverman · Ron Gomes Casseres · Carol Castiel · Haakon Lazarus Chevalier · Chantal Clabrough · Shai Cohen · Isabel Comte · Sidney Corcos · Julia Creet · Jacob Daniels · Schelly Talalay Dardashti · Leah Davcheva · Jair van Dijk · Yehonatan Elazar-DeMota · Alain Farhi · Nathaniel Farouz · Yves Fedida · Rose Feldman · Wendy Filer · Pearl Foster · Rachel Frankel · Francine Friedman · Adrien Genet · Esther Danon Gitman · Abigail Green · Avraham Groll · Brian Hamm · Ron Hassner · Marius Heemstra · Maarten Hell · Ainsley Cohen Henriques · Hélène Jawhara Piñer · Julie Kalman · Wim Klooster · Mirjam Knotter · Simon Kreindler · Jean-Claude Kuperminc · Benjamin Charles Germain Lee · Joseph de Leon · Amalia S. Levi · David Lisbona · Jeff Malka · Martina Mampieri · Jessica Marglin · Hugo Martins · Jonathan McCollum · Valerie McGuire · Yitzhak Melamed · Stanley Mirvis · Shalom Morris · Steven Nadler · Inês Pires Nogueiro · Ana Ćirić Pavlović · Wim Penninx · Toni Pitock · Ian Pomerantz · Nachshon Rodrigues Pereira · Sarina Roffe · Jessica Roitman · Jacob Rosen-Koenigsbuch · Jarrett Ross · George Sacerdote · Thierry Samama · Teresa Santos · David Sclar · Jonathan Schorsch · Emile Schrijver · Marilyn Scott · Sylviane Serruya · Esther Shaya · Noam Sienna · Daniel Smith-Ramos · Daniel Strum · João Ventura · Felicia Waldman · Bart Wallet · Hans Wallage · Daniela Weil · Carsten Wilke · Peninah Zilberman · Richard Zimler

Not available

Two recordings are unavailable: Dotar — The Sephardic Marriage Market, and The Nunes Carvalho Family, from Portugal to the Wild West.

Judith Cohen’s Adeus Vila de Belmonte: Music in the Lives of Crypto-Jews in Portugal — please contact her directly.

Members-only meetings are not shared, though Patreon supporters can see them on request.