Records of the Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews 

The archival listing information in this section was gathered by Martha Lev-Zion z"l, and much of it was originally included on the website of the Courland Research Group, which is no longer active. Martha's contributions to the genealogical community, especially those with Latvian Jewish roots, were invaluable.

The Association of Latvian and Estonian Jews keeps a set of records at Kibbutz Shefayim describing historical aspects of Jewish life in Latvia and Estonia. Information concerning the holdings was made available by kind permission of the Association and its late archivist, Shlomo Kurlandchik. Martha Lev-Zion's role was instrumental in making this inventory accessible online.  

The Shefayim Archives website has been updated significantly and is worth exploring for the breadth of sources it holds. It has recently made its Communities files available as a digital archive. Visitors to the website may search the archive by town name to display the collection of digitized documents available for the town.  Documents are in multiple languages, including Hebrew, Russian, Latvian, and English. Note that the website, which is in Hebrew, may be viewed using your browser's translate function if you are not a Hebrew speaker. 

The website also solicits photo and document uploads from its users, for topics relevant to Latvian and Estonian communities and families.

The current list of digitized items has not been compared to the original inventory that Martha did, which is shown below.