INSIDE:
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LOCAL GENEALOGISTS FIND
EWISHGEN INVALUABLE AND
URGE SUPPORT FOR THE
FINANCIALLY STRAPPED WEB SITE.
ESTHER ALLWEISS TSCHIRHART
Special to the Jewish News
n this computer age, members of the 18-year-
old Jewish Genealogical Society of Michigan .
(JGSMI) agree that, for doing research, not
much can beat JewishGen.org --the leading
Internet site for Jewish genealogy.
"It's wonderful," said JGSMI past president Marc
Manson of Farmington Hills. "It has enabled people
all around the world to find not only their ancestors,
but also living relatives."
Susan E. King of Houston, Texas, founded
JewishGen in 1986. It began as a "bulletin board" for
150 individuals interested in their Jewish ancestry.
Through the years, the nonprofit organization — run
by volunteers and sustained by contributions —
evolved to include many facets of interest to
researchers.
"JewishGen is a magnificent resource for keeping
the Jewish people together," said frequent visitor
David Sloan of Huntington Woods, another former
JGSMI president.
Yet the site is having financial difficulties. In an e-
mail sent to genealogists Dec. 9, King said that
JewishGen has a goal of raising $300,000 by year's
end.
"This is the magic number needed for JewishGen to
support current resources and to move into 2003 with
the necessary funding for the first quarter," she wrote.
Researchers find JewishGen especially useful in these
categories:
• JewishGen Family Finder — an interactive data-
base allowing researchers to search and enter surname
and town combinations; has more than 275,000
entries with 75,000 unique surnames, 18,000 ances-
tral towns.
• Family Tree of the Jewish People — a searchable
compilation of Jewish family trees submitted by 2,000
Jewish genealogists in GEDCOM (a software file for-
mat that allows genealogical data to be created and
transmitted between computers).
• JewishGen Holocaust Global Registry — a cen-
tral place for searching for Holocaust survivors; works
closely with the Shoah Foundation.
• JewishGen ShtetlSeeker — a database of more
than 5,000 localities in Eastern and Central Europe.
• JewishGen Discussion Group Message Archives
— a forum for thousands of researchers worldwide to
exchange information and research sources and strate-
gies; more than 100,00 searchable messages have been
posted since 1993.
JewishGen Success Stories
JGSMI charter member Leah Jordan Bisel of
Farmington Hills, editor of the society's Generations
newsletter, has had luck using the JewishGen Family
Finder.
Through this tool, she located a cousin she'd never
met before in Israel who was researching the same set
Marc Manson, a
of great-great-great-grandpar-
JGSMI past president,
ents.
points to his father's
"We were able to figure out
name in a 1920
our relationship and compare
record he found
research notes via e-mail," Bisel
online.
said. "The best part was meet-
ing him when he came to
Florida to visit relatives."
On the site, she also found help locating a branch of
her grandmother's family she'd been seeking for 20
years.
Sloan regularly consults JewishGen's Frequently
Asked Questions (FAQ) section, which "leads you to
their extensive InfoFiles and every link for research."
He found the name of a great-great-grandfather,
12/27
2002
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