Find Your Ancestors in Historic Jewish American Newspapers

For those of you who have Jewish ancestry in your family tree, there are lots of Jewish-American newspapers that have been published over the last hundred or so years that may help you find some information and stories about your ancestors.

Take a look at these sites and search away!

Listed are only those that are available online. As always, there are tons more available via microfilm and in original form via libraries and archives.

Please note that some are free and some require a subscription or a login from a university library. Some are indexed, and some are not.

Also - there are a number of Jewish newspapers that are active, but many I am not labeling as historic, as they started publication after 1950.

Free Collections:

• Jewish Floridian
  
• Chicago Sentinel
  
• American Jewess
  
• Ohio Jewish Chronicle
  
• The Occident and American Jewish Advocate
  
• The Jewish Herald. Texas
  
• The Jewish Monitor. Texas
  
• The Jewish South. Virginia
  
• The Southern Israelite (1929-1958, 1984-1986). Georgia
  
• The Pittsburgh Jewish Newspaper Project (1895-present)   Includes Jewish Criterion  (1895-1962), the American Jewish Outlook (1934-1962),and the Y-JCC series (1926-1975).
  
• The Judaica Newspaper Collection at the University of Florida includes The Jewish Floridian (1928-1987) and about 40 other titles, in English, Hebrew and other languages, from Florida and elsewhere.
  

Free from Libraries with a ProQuest Subscription:

• The American Hebrew & Jewish Messenger—1857-1922
• The American Israelite—1854-2000
• The Jewish Advocate—1905-1990
• Jewish Exponent—1887-1990

Genealogy Bank (subscription):

• Jewish Chronicle 
• Jewish Daily News
• Jewish Journal
• Jewish Morning Journal 

Newspapers.com (subscription)

• The Jewish Herald
  
• The Jewish South
  
• The Wisconsin Jewish Chronicle
  

Other Excellent Resources:

• The Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA) reports on the the Jewish community. News clippings, some as old as 90 years are available via the JTA Jewish News Archive.
  

• Wikipedia has a list of 51 Jewish Newspapers Currently Published in the USA. You might want to visit the individual sites to see if they have historical archives available. Might require a subscription.
  

• Compact Memory is a digital collection of 118 Jewish periodicals from German-speaking countries, 1806-1938. All in German.
  

• The Historical Jewish Press has a collection of 45 publications (most not from America). Included are Jewish newspapers published in various countries, languages, and time periods.
  

• A nice Library of Congress article on the Jewish Press in America over the years can be found at   http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/awhhtml/awas12/newspapers_periodicals.html
  

• Several university libraries have purchased parts of the ProQuest collection and may have Jewish newspapers available. You might check with your nearest major university library to see what they have in their collection or have easy access to.
  

Good luck!

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