The OJC project called MOJO – ‘Mapping our Jewish Roots’ – aims to display the origins of the members of Oxford’s Jewish community by collecting their ancestral stories. We were inspired by the project carried out by the St Albans Jewish Community, which created a map of the roots of the members of their community. https://www.historypin.org/en/sams-roots
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Jessica Feinstein, a professional genealogist on our Oxford Jewish Heritage team, has created a database in collaboration with some of our older members. She says “Our aim is to preserve our heritage for our children, grandchildren, and generations yet to come, and to create a virtual exhibition that can be shared within the community and more widely. Our project will be running simultaneously in different parts of the community, and we welcome new ideas for collaboration.”
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We have therefore set up a simple process online that will allow you to share a place, a story and a photo of your ancestors. This uses the History Pin website. The link below will take you to a page where you can upload these details and we hope that over a short period of time our ‘Map’ will emerge.
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We are particularly keen to get the children involved, collecting a family story that might otherwise be lost. You will need;
- a photo – which might be of your parents, grandparents or great-grandparents taken in the place where they were born, with a title, an approximate date, the place and the people depicted and their relation to your family
with
2) an accompanying story that you are happy to share.
[The photo must be a jpg or .png file and you will need permission to share it if you are not the copyright owner.]
There is a MOJO guide that you can download and follow so that these details can then be uploaded to the MOJO History Pin site or you can send them to directly to us via
info@oxfordjewishheritage.co.uk and we will upload them for you.
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If you would like more information on how to work on family history generally or a copy of a free family tree workbook suitable for beginners of all ages, please also contact info@oxfordjewishheritage.co.uk
JF & MEW & KS March 2025
