Insight

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Remember
When • •

Renaissance Man

From the Jewish News pages this week
10, 20, 30, 40 and 50 years ago.

Larry Kestenbaum knows his way around in the political graveyard.

A photographic exhibit at the
Jewish Community Center in
West Bloomfield depicts life in
Poland's Warsaw Ghetto with over
120 photos taken by a Nazi sol-
dier.

ALAN ABRAMS

Special to the Jewish News

Usage On Upswing

The Political Graveyard is also a database of historic ceme-
teries. During 2000, it had 8.3 million hits. Last year, it
was up to 13.1 million. And during January and February
this year, 4 million hits were registered.
There's a page on the vast site for every one of America's
3,000 counties, with links to outside sites about each one.
Pick a congressman at random and look for his name.
You'll find links to politicians who were born the same day
or year, links to lists of people who held the same offices he

arry Kestenbaum knows where the political bod-
ies are buried.
His Web site, www.PoliticalGraveyard.com
has brought new meaning to the phrase, "the
body politic." It is the most comprehensive free national
archive of political biographies on the Internet, all created
and operated by a single individual.
CNN, USA Today and
Parade magazine, whose
reporters discovered the
site while covering political
campaigns, have shined
their national media spot-
light on the Political
Graveyard.
The extensive site is an
intensive labor of love for
Kestenbaum, a 46-year-old
,AkZIAtA
Ann Arbor community
activist and Washtenaw
County commissioner.
Clearly, he is not doing
this for money. Because it
costs him time and money
to maintain the site, he
relies upon voluntary
online contributions from
users as well as funds from
banner advertising for its
support.
Kestenbaum's site has
Larry Kestenbaum's interests have become a political resource.
become a boon to students
working on term papers.
Punch in the words "dead
politicians" on leading
Internet search engines and the first choice you are directed or she did, links to those with the same cause of death, and
to is the Political Graveyard.
more.
A lawyer by training (he graduated from Wayne State
"Thepolitical world is a seamless web — everything con-
University's law school in 1982), Kestenbaum is affiliated
nects to everything else somehow — and the Political
with the Institute for Social Research at the University of
Graveyard makes a lot of those links very tangible," said
Michigan and is an adjunct faculty member at Eastern
Kestenbaum.
Michigan University in Ypsilanti.
The site is a goldmine for genealogists, historians and
The Political Graveyard started with 12,000 names in
plain old political junkies. That's because information is
1996 and has since exploded to include 81,279 U.S. politi-
broken down into numerous subcategories, such as the reli-
cians, judges and diplomats. The new database, debuting
gion of those listed.
this month, has more than 100,000 names.
For instance, there's Jewish Politicians in Michigan. The
Alphabetically indexed, the site provides information on
29 names on the list make it second in the nation.only to
the offices the politicos held or sought, the date or year
New York. There are 327 Jews on the nationwide list.
they were born or died, the state and county of their birth
Besides U.S. Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., and his brother,
or death and much more.
You don't have to be deT, -' -- :Ike the list.
INSIGHT on page 30

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Kenneth Kanter 's book The Jews
of Tin Pan Alley includes the story
of Detroit-born songwriter Harty
Gumm, later known as Harry Vo'n
Tilzer.

vioyArtiwww

Congregation Bnai Moshe in Oak
Park holds brunch on behalf of
the New York City-based Jewish
Theological Seminary of America.
Mishkan Israel Lubavitcher
Center in Oak Park announces a
new nursery school to open in the
fall.

-,„
B'nai David presents a special
night at Detroit's Fisher Theatre
with Harry Belefonte.
Detroit Jewish News staff writer
Herschel P. Fink is named editor-
in-chief of the Wayne State
University student newspaper, the

Daily Collegian.

"memmnr,

Temple Players, formed in 1951
at Temple Beth El in Detroit,
presents "Pure Driven Snow."
Congregation Shaarey Zedek in
Detroit announces at the 90th
annual meeting plans to erect
a school building for Hebrew
classes.

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• •

13,000 Jews have been put to
death in Lwow, Poland, with Nazi
occupation, reported in Pravda,
the offical organ of the
Communist Party in Russia.
The first bar mitzvah is held at
Temple -Israel in Detroit, founded
the year before.

— Compiled by Holly Teasdle,
archivist, the Rabbi Leo M
Franklin Archives at Temple Beth El

5/3
2002

29