Our mission is to preserve Litvak heritage by discovering, collecting, documenting, and disseminating information about the once vibrant Jewish community of Lithuania.
How to Join LitvakSIG
LitvakSIG maintains several web sites.
This is the portal to our Member’s Site. It contains research aids, links to resources, and organizational records. This site is available to all persons who have paid $36 dues for the current calendar year.
If your membership has expired or if it is time to renew your dues, you can pay your dues at our secure website:
http://litvaksig.org/contribute
When you pay your dues, the treasurer will add your name to the member list for this portal. You will receive an invitation from Shutterfly. You will need to register for Shutterfly to access this site.
If you have done all this, you should see tabs on the bar above this message. When you click on a tab, there are a variety of links, article, and data files.
For questions related to your Membership and dues payment status only, please contact the LitvakSIG Treasurer, Eden Joachim at treasurer@litvaksig.com
For questions related to registering for the LitvakSIG Members Website on Shutterfly, please contact the Webmaster@litvaksig.com
LitvakSIG Research Groups
A description of each of our Research Groups is posted on the public web site at:
By contributing to a Research Group at the $100 level you will gain access to the Research Group's web site. Most of these are also Shutterfly sites and can be managed using the same log in and password if you use the same e-mail address.
LitvakSIG Public web site
Our public site is available at: http://litvaksig.org/
or can be accessed from JewishGen.org by following the links to RESEARCH, then SIGS.
LitvakSIG Discussion Group
A free e-mail group(hosted by JewishGen) for people interested in their Lithuanian Jewish genealogy. You can learn the details and subscribe from the LitvakSIG website:
http://www.litvaksig.org/digest
LitvakSIG is entering its 15th year with more than 1 million records translated, predominantly by the District Research Groups, with many more yet to be translated.
Maintaining the current Qualifying Contribution amount, which for most Districts is $100, is no longer sufficient to support the continuing translation work of the District Research Groups. The volume of data translated and made accessible has grown dramatically.
After much discussion, the Board of Directors of LitvakSIG has voted unanimously to institute a new policy for contributors to District Research Groups. This policy is effective January 1, 2012.
The Board has decided that the solution which makes sense will be to limit a contributor's early right of access to the data translated by district research groups to a period of five years from the year in which the qualifying contribution was made. The five year cycles are based on a calendar year, not the date of the contribution.
A qualifying contribution will count for the year in which it is made, regardless of the month in which it is made. Example: A qualifying contribution made on June 1, 2010 will allow access through December 31, 2014. (2010, 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 = 5 years)
The qualifying contribution for Telsiai District will be $100 as of January 1, 2012.
The qualifying contribution for Vilnius District will be $100 as of January 1, 2012.
For contributors to district groups with a Shutterfly site: If you have not made contributions totaling $100 since January 1, 2007, you will lose your access to the Shutterfly site effective January 1, 2012. Your access will be reinstated when your contribution level reaches the qualifying amount of $100. As in the past, smaller contributions are still appreciated and encouraged, and they will be viewed cumulatively during that 5 year cycle, in order to reach the qualifying level for access.
There are only two district research groups without Shutterfly sites - Lida and Trakai. Early access to the data for those districts is via email distribution of excel files and the same loss of access will apply.
For contributors to our newest district research groups for Klaipeda (Memel) and Svencionys – this policy change will not affect you until January 1, 2015 at the earliest.
Contributions made after the Yom Kippur holiday, will be considered as made in the following calendar year. If you made a contribution to a district research group since October 8, 2011, it will be considered as a contribution made in calendar year 2012.
The Board of Directors of LitvakSIG, your fellow researchers and I appreciate your financial support of our work in fulfilling our mission statement and guaranteeing that the LitvakSIG website at www.litvaksig.org continues to be the premier source for Litvak family history research.
Thank you for your understanding, cooperation and future philanthropy.
Eden S. Joachim
President
Howard Margol has returned from Lithuania. This year he found new information in the Lithuanian Archives and will be presenting his finds at the 31st IAJGS International Conference
on Jewish Genealogy
in Washington DC, August 14-19, 2011
SEE THE LIST OF NEWLY DISCOVERED RECORDS ON THE RESEARCH PROJECTS PAGE
