Dr. Jacobi bequeathed to the Institute the results of his lifelong researches on about 400 European rabbinical and other prominent Jewish families.

The larger part of Dr. Jacobi’s studies, relating to almost 300 families, are the subject of the Jacobi Indexing Project, currently being conducted by the Institute. They consist of unedited papers, still in Dr. Jacobi’s exceedingly difficult handwriting, and are preserved in 47 boxes. An annotated inventory of these boxes is available.

This material is in poor condition and therefore has been photo-copied on to microfiche. To facilitate its preservation and decipherment, it is now in the process of being digitalized.

(The balance of Dr. Jacobi’s studies relate to 100 families, from which he developed 114 “monographs”, are now contained in loosely bound typewritten work-books.)

Absolute Generations

In researching so many families, sometimes going back more than 15 generations, Dr. Jacobi employed his unique system of “Absolute Generations” to record the individuals in the monographs and to synchronize them within their own and other kinship groups - and, at the same time, to harmonize their generations with wider frames of reference, both historical and societal.

Use of the Hand-written Material

The hand-written material on microfiche is available for study and research in the Judaica Reading Room at the National Library of Israel, on the Hebrew University’s Givat Ram Campus in Jerusalem. There is no public access to the original material in the cartons.

The microfiche cannot be sent elsewhere or be copied/reproduced in any form for use outside the Library.

The Institute holds the rights to the entire Jacobi collection. It seeks to index, edit and publish complete corpus of Jacobi’s genealogical work. Persons interested in acquiring a licence to specific parts of the hand-written material in order to decipher and publish it, and thus contribute to the publication of the whole Jacobi collection, are invited to contact the Director of the Institute.

Click here for the annotated inventory of the handwritten material in the boxes.

Click here for a description of the “Jacobi Absolute Generations Scale”.