We Lived

to communities and communities
to one people.
Genealogy does have its chal-
lenges, according to Mr.
Kurzweil.
"For one thing, Ws not easy. It
really takes an effort. The
average person doesn't know how
to use a card catalogue in the li-
brary.
"But I also think people have
some ambivalence about gene-
alogy," he said. "They are inter-
ested in finding out these
interesting things, but they some-
times worry about getting in-
volved with relatives. I find that
I had more in common with some
of my dead ancestors than with
my living relatives. And the dead
ancestors were easier to get along
with."
For Mr. Kurzweil, family stor-
ies were always told around the
dinner table and throughout his

Betty Starkman and Stephen Rosman
with materials they found during their
genealogical searches.

growing-up years. He said his in-
terest in genealogy really had
nothing to do with genealogy. It
was, instead, a spiritual quest.
"I, like many young people,
was searching for a tool," he said.
"I went from a person with no
connection to Yiddishkeit to an
observant Jew."
In 1971, Mr. Kurzweil made a
discovery that, perhaps, changed
his life. He discovered a book in
the New York Public Library
about the Jews of Dubromil,
Poland, where his father was
born. In that book was a photo-
graph of his grandfather, the
man he was named for. His
grandfather was a tinsmith.
Mr. Kurzweil's search contin-
ued for years. He learned that his
mother's side of the family,
though assimilated, is connected
to a line of rabbis that go back to
the 1500s. Part of that family line
is Rabbi Isiah Horowitz, the man
who brought the teachings of
Kabbalah to Poland.
Genealogy came alive when

Mr. Kurzweil tracked down a
cousin in Poland, Joseph Schlaf.
"When I was in the airport in
Poland, you didn't have to tell
anyone this was my cousin," said
Mr. Kurzweil. "It was his face —
I knew this man and I were
members of the same family.
When I first wrote to him, he
wrote back saying, Please, cousin
Arthur, please promise me this
will be the first letter.' He also
told me that Jewish children in
Poland don't believe that they
have (extended) families."
Poland's Jewish population
prior to the Holocaust was ap-
proximately 3 million. In 1945,
that number was 400,000. There
are now fewer than 5,000 Jews
living in Poland.
Betty P. Starkman, the
founder of the Michigan Jewish
Genealogical Society, holds in her
hand a pink-colored and soiled
ceramic brick. It is a piece of a
pripetchuk (fireplace hearth). She

LEARNING page 9

PHOTO S BY DANI EL LIPPITT

rthur Kurzweil simply became
weary of learning how we as
Jews died through the ages. He
wanted to know hoW we lived
as Jews.
That and many other im-
portant messages will be pre-
sented Saturday, as Mr.
Kurzweil speaks on behalf of
the Jewish Genealogical So-
ciety of Michigan, 7:30 p.m.
at the Maple-Drake Jewish
Community Center's Shiff-
man Hall.
Mr. Kurzweil's "how to
do it" presentation will be part of
several interactive genealogy sta-
tions set up at the JCC.
For Mr. Kurzweil, the vice
president of Jason Aronson Pub-
lishers, Jewish genealogy is an
important building block in
telling the Jewish "story" in his-
tory.
What this New Jersey resident
wants us to know is that geneal-
ogy is a detective story that un-
locks keys and events that link
individuals to families, families

op

A genealogical
evening is
scheduled for
Saturday at the
JCC.

PHIL JACOBS EDITOR

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