Methodology
This site's strength is its promise: every high-stakes fact is verified, sourced and dated. Here is exactly how we work — so anyone can replicate our checks.
Multiple independent sources
Every high-stakes fact (world ranking, percentage, figure) is cross-checked against several independent sources — our internal pipeline ('FactMax') requires at least five for the strongest claims.
Primary sources first
When a primary source exists (Nobel records, USPTO patents, treaty texts, official statistics, UN, state.gov), it prevails — secondary sources serve as corroboration.
Everything is dated
Every source carries its consultation date and every dossier displays its last-verification date. An undated figure is a suspect figure.
Honesty notes
When a fact deserves nuance (contested figure, changed ranking, partial ancestry), the nuance is displayed on the card itself — never hidden.
Who is in the directory — and on what basis
A person enters by one of three routes: affiliation, conversion or descent. Each requires an explicit, sourced statement. None is satisfied by a surname, or by appearing on somebody else's list.
Affiliation
The person lived as a Jew or identified as one. This is the simplest and the most common case.
Conversion
The person converted to Judaism. Judaism does not seek converts: one does not enter it through proselytising but through a long and deliberate process. Jewish tradition does not see the convert as an outsider admitted, but as someone rejoining what was already theirs — the teaching holds that the souls of all future converts stood at Sinai with Israel.
Descent
The person has at least one Jewish parent or grandparent, in whole or in part. This is also where the State of Israel draws the line: the Law of Return, extended in 1970, grants citizenship to anyone with at least one Jewish grandparent, and to their spouse.
Being Jewish is not only a religion: it is also a people and a culture. That is why someone raised in another faith can appear here on their grandmother's account, and why someone who left Judaism appears here still — Jewish law holds that a Jew who converts to another religion remains a Jew. History put it more bluntly: the persecutors never accepted those conversions either, and that is precisely why the Law of Return settled on the grandparent test — the Nuremberg Laws being broader than any strict religious definition, it would have been absurd for the refuge to be narrower than the persecution.
In return, the card always states what the evidence establishes and nothing beyond it. When someone is here on descent alone and lived in another religion, the card says so outright. Cases contested by serious sources stay out, and the false attributions that circulate (Gutenberg, Alzheimer and the rest) are explicitly excluded.
A fact's journey before publication
No 'shock figure' enters this site from memory or hearsay. The standard journey:
- 1
Identify the candidate fact (contribution, person, figure).
- 2
Source hunt: primary sources first, then independent corroboration.
- 3
Ancestry verification for people: a reliable source documenting Jewish ancestry (even partial) is required — a surname alone is not enough, and famous false attributions (Gutenberg, Alzheimer…) are explicitly excluded.
- 4
Sober writing: the fact, its date, its source — no unsourced superlatives.
- 5
Publication with visible source, then periodic re-verification.
Corrections policy
We correct openly, never silently. When a published fact turns out to be outdated or wrong, the correction is visible: the card keeps a note stating what changed. People removed from the database (unverifiable attribution) stay removed, and cases re-evaluated on new evidence are reinstated with their source.
Real example: our Teva card carries the note 'Teva is no longer the world #1 in generics' — the ranking changed, and the card says so.
Translation
Every profile is written in English, then translated into the six other languages. The translations are reviewed line by line against the English, but a mistake can still slip through: a wrong word, a lost date, a sentence that ends up saying something the source does not. Where the two differ, the English text governs. If you spot an anomaly on a profile in your language, tell us: name the profile, the language, and what it should say.
Report an error
Spotted an error, a missing source, or a doubtful attribution? Write to us: every report is checked with the same methodology, and any correction is published.
Report an errorTransparency
ThankJews.com is an independent, free, ad-free website published by Getawing LLC. It sells nothing and is funded by no organization. Its mission: fighting antisemitism with verifiable facts.
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