News archive

Hi everybody,

I wish you all a happy and sweet new year.
I've got some exciting news to begin 2012.

I've migrated the All Odessa Database to the Odessa Kehilalink. Now everything is integrated.
This was not only a "migration" but also a restructuring to support the multiple collections of the different projects going on (in a few days the translation of the "Tombstone inscriptions Book" will be published).

In the home page of the Kehilalink you'll have the statistics concerning the new addings to the database.

In the research menu you'll have a new option "All Odessa Database" that will open the AODB home page.

From there you'll be able to browse the different collections and to perform search into the database.
By the moment there's a "general" search but in the future I expect to provide more advanced search (like soundex or DM search, search by collections, etc.)

Hope you'll find this new functionality useful. I'm looking forward for your feedback.

Best regards,

Ariel Parkansky
Odessa Town Leader

Isabelle Nemirovski has written a great article about Ahad ha-Am.
You'll find it under the "inteligentsia" section of Life in Odessa or you can directly click here.

There are also new articles about other famous Odessites like Leonid Utyosov under Art & Culture and Vladimir Khavkin under Science.

Hi everybody,

You haven't heard about me recently but it doesn't mean that the Odessa projects are in stand by.

On the contrary, the different translation projects advance at a good pace and more translated vital records are added every week to our database.

We have also received new vital records. Some are already published and others will be published soon.

The great news is that a whole new book has been added to our collection:

The Commemorative Book of Schools in Odessa District for Academic year 1913-1914 that you can find here.

It contain two parts:
Part I for Schools depending of the Odessa District
Part II for National Schools
The book (in Cyrillic) has 586 pages, statistics and names of the students per school.
There's an alphabetical index at the end.


The book is in Cyrillic and I expect in the near future to translate the index as done for the All Odessa Directory of 1902-3.

The project of restructuring the Ukraine SIG website is advancing very well and I expect you'll hear more about it by mid-January.

I'd like to thank all the volunteers that have or are collaborating with the different projects, to all the comments I've received from you and to those who have donated for the acquisition of new fonds.

Please continue like this, this project cannot be done without your help.

Thanks to all of you.
Ariel PARKANSKY
Jewishgen, Odessa Town Leader
and Ukraine SIG Web Manager

A new book has been added to our collection:

Edited in Warsaw in 1889, it contains information of tombstones in the old and new Jewish Cemeteries of Odessa.

According to its introduction the book, written in Hebrew but with comments and footnotes in Rashi script, is a trial to preserve the names of some important people buried in the old cemetery of Odessa (founded 1793) and from the new cemetery (founded 1874).

The data available for each person varies, but generally there is the name, father's name, date of death. For some it says where they lived, for some how they died, sometimes there is a family name. For some there are footnotes providing more information.

The opening page contains in hebrew:
Special annotations
In the old and the new cemeteries
Of the Jewish congregation of the city of Odessa
Accompanied by the poem “songs to the victor” by the poet Reb Yaakov Aikhenboim Z”L
For the end of the stench epidemy in Odessa in the year 1838
Published by the collector (Gabay) of Khevra Kadisha
The year of “the Zionists of the city of Odessa” (or: “the marks of the city of Odessa).
Warsaw

and in Russian:
Collection of inscriptions in the jewish cemetery of Odessa.
Published by elders of Odessa Jewish funeral brotherhood.
Warsaw 1889

A project is ongoing to index the information on the book for its integration on the All Odessa Database.

Ariel Parkansky
Odessa Team Leader

Hello everybody,

The Odessa Kehilalinks has new functionalities.Some will be visible for you, other will be transparent:

- What's new section: the home page has been redesigned to provide you with the latest news on Odessa site and projects. In addition, a news archive is available under the section "about" of the main menu.

- Accessibility: some people with limited access for different reasons had problems to work with the dropdown menu (which works on javascript). The site detects now if the browser has javascript capability and deactivates the menu if it's the case. A site index has been added to help all users to understand the site structure and to help the users with javascript problems to navigate through the site. A link to the site index is situated on the footer of the page.

Other news :

- The project of indexation of vital records is very active with 7 volunteers working on the translations.
- We have also 3 volunteers working on the correction and formatting of the 1902-3 real estate index for its integration into the Ukraine database.
- New books will be soon published on the site.

Ariel PARKANSKY
Jewishgen's Odessa Town Leader and Ukraine SIG Web Manager