The author of a new guide to tracing Irish-Jewish ancestry has said he desperately needs people to come forward to help him verify tens of thousands of details of Irish Jews stretching back nearly four centuries.

Dublin's Stuart Rosenblatt, author of The Yidiot's Guide to Irish Jewish Family Ancestry, said he hoped the book would be a way for the descendants of Irish Jews to add information to the current archive of more than 42,000 names.

Businessman Mr Rosenblatt, head of the Irish Jewish Genealogical Society, has put together a 16-volume archive of births, marriages, burials and school records from Belfast to Cork, Limerick and Dublin. The volumes are kept at the Irish Jewish Museum.

He is selling his guide on his website, Irish Jewish Roots. "We've self-published the book at vast expense. It's an all-consuming hobby of mine. It's caused some problems in the family, but they know the end results are fantastic.

"We get inquiries from all over the world on a daily basis. Many from South Africa, a lot are people are seeking European passports. It takes up a lot of my time, weeks, to do the research and so this is to help people do their own.

"We've got all these records, but we need to hear from more living relations of Jews in Ireland in order to verify them. There're hundreds of Jewish people in England who are originally Irish."