Sussex Jewish Records is a volunteer-led project to digitise the hitherto unpublished records of Sussex’s historic Jewish community, centred on the coastal resort of Brighton & Hove.
The Brighton & Hove community recently celebrated its 250th anniversary, commemorating its first known permanent Jewish resident, Israel Samuel Cohen (Ensele/Ensli ben Samuel Cohen Brighthelmstone) in 1766. Since then the community has waxed and waned, partly in line with the fortunes of the city itself.
Sussex Jewish Records was conceived to celebrate the local community’s milestone birthday by making accessible the genealogical records of its members. In doing so, we hope to give family historians and anyone with a connection to Jewish Sussex access to sources that shed light on not just its better-known residents, but its ordinary inhabitants and families that have made the community what it is over the course of more than 200 years.
AVAILABLE RECORDS
Sussex Jewish Records was born out of an agreement with Brighton & Hove Hebrew Congregation – Sussex’s oldest congregation – to photograph and index its two burial grounds at Florence Place and Meadow View, and to digitise its paper archive, part of which is still housed at the synagogue on New Church Road.
Progress of work on the Brighton & Hove Hebrew Congregation records, deemed Phase 1 of the project, is still ongoing. These comprise some of the oldest records relating to the permanent settlement of Jews in Sussex, including marriage records from the first purpose-built synagogue at Devonshire Place, as well as its lavish successor, Middle Street Synagogue which opened in 1875, partly to serve the spiritual needs of holiday-making Goldsmids, Rothschilds and Sassoons.
Alongside the recently completed index for Florence Place cemetery, which opened in 1826, there are also marriage authorisations and ketubot, minute books, funeral records and congregation lists as well as later burial records from the ‘new’ Meadow View burial ground on Bear Road, which opened in 1921.
Going forward, we hope to be able to extend the scope of this project by working with the other congregations which form such an integral part of Sussex’s Jewish community.
BURIAL RECORDS
We have begun indexing two out of the three Jewish cemeteries in Brighton & Hove, including the city's oldest cemetery, Florence Place, with burials dating from the 1840s.
MARRIAGE RECORDS
Marriage records from the Brighton & Hove Hebrew Congregation have been indexed for the period 1837-1939 and are searchable on this site, together with images from the original marriage registers.
KETUBOT & MARRIAGE AUTHORISATIONS
We have begun photographing and indexing original marriage authorisations and ketubot from the archives of Brighton & Hove Hebrew Congregation.
PROGRESS OF INDEXING
WHO ARE WE
Led by professional Jewish genealogist, Naomi Leon, Sussex Jewish Records is driven by a group of dedicated volunteers and family historians.
Work is carried out in spare time but we are working as fast as possible to realise each phase of the project and make new records available to family historians with an interest in Sussex’s Jewish community. If you would like to help, we’d be delighted to hear from you.
HOW THIS SITE WORKS
Whilst Sussex Jewish Records runs on a non-profit making basis, it does incur some limited costs, including the maintenance of this website, towards which we ask for a nominal annual subscription fee of £19.99. We hope you can see from the available indexes whether the site is likely to be useful to you. If you would like to drill down deeper to look at the records we have in greater detail, we ask you to pay the subscription fee. Any surplus funds are put towards associated projects, such as cemetery clearance, gravestone restoration and conservation of records.
250
YEARS
1641
INDIVIDUALS
584
FAMILIES
176
MARRIAGE RECORDS
725
HEADSTONES