80 Friday, August 31, 1984 THE DETROIT JEWISH NEWS PURSUIT Inspired by a genealogy expert, Esther Allweiss Tschirhart begins her own search for her family's history. BY ESTHER ALLWEISS TSCHIRHART Special to The Jewish News Genealogy begins as an interest Becomes a hobby Continues as an avocation Takes over as an obsession And in its last stages is an incurable disease. (Source: Anstett a History and Descendant Record by Marion Radigan) It was about two years ago that I heard genealogist and author Arthur Kurzweil speak in Detroit about his experiences tracing his father's fam- ily back to its ancestral shtetl of Dob- romil in Poland. He told with stil vivid excitement &•oing back ther and meeting his cousins, and• al o about how he painstakingly turned up records that traced his lineage back a - couple hundred years — de- spite everybody's warning him that he never would,• that all the Jewish records in Europe were destroyed. As he spoke, a strange gleam came into my eye and I felt a distinct itch in my blood. And at that mo- ment, another genealogist was born. To all those lost Allweisses and Klatzkins (my parents' family lines) hiding away on forgotten old mic- rofilm and 'microfiche, I made an inner vow: I. will find you! Don't ask why I made that re- solve, Jewish genealogists operate on many levels and have many separate and intertwined motivations. For some, it's a love of their parents and Jewish heritage and history that spurs them on. Or they may feel a need to "belong" somewhere, to feel connected with those who came be- fore, and to keep alive the memory of , -Esther Allweiss Tschirhart is a member of the Genealogical Branch — Jewish Historical Society of Michigan. these relatives for future genera- tions. Others of our breed may•take pride — perhaps to excess in some cases — in being able to trace their families back to a great rabbinical family. One thing's certain, when genealogy is your hobby, you don't spend your vacation afthe seashore (unless you've got some elderly rela- tives there to interview). A much more profitable use ofleisure time for the genealogist is investigating lib- raries and archives, or looking for headstones in old cemeteries. An- other is attending a conference that brings genealogists together. So, it was with great anticipa- tion that I travelled last month to Evanston, Ill., for the fourth national . seminar on Jewish genealogy entitled "Routes to Roots." Teacher Janice Goldstein of Southfield, my comrade for the ad- venture, had been bitten by the genealogy bug at the same Kurzweil lecture given at the Jewish Welfare Federation Women's Division Spring Forum. Since then, Jan and I had merrily traded stories about finding distant relatives around the world who we could link to our family trees, or of getting clues from elderly cousins who could remember some- thing about some "missing" relatives who left the shtetl for America long, . long ago. We also joined the Genealogical - Branch of the Jewish Historical Society. There was further inspira- tion for our searches at the bimonthly meetings, where we heard from as- sorted experts and the group's president, Betty Provizer Starkman of Birmingham, who has been quite , Continued on Page 36 HEBREW UNION COLLEGE LIBRARY, C WAL TER ROTHMAN, LIBRARIAN CTNCI1!N4TI, OHIO 45220 L.' Betty Starkman.and a genealogical chart.