WJW Staff

It was 1977, and Sallyann Amdur Sack's daughter, Kathy, wanted the two women to research their family.

"She had discovered a Jewish genealogy book in a store and found my maiden name in the index," says Sack, 69, who three years later would become a founder and first president of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Washington.

"When your 15-year-old wants to do anything with you, you drop everything."

Eventually, her daughter tired of the enterprise ‹ 15-year-old girls are more interested in boys, she explains ‹ but Sack fell hard.

"Jewish genealogy took over my life," says the clinical psychologist, who lives in Bethesda.

Three years later, the Washington Hebrew Congregation member had a meeting with Rabbi Malcolm Stern, whom Sack calls the "father of Jewish genealogy in the U.S."

"He told me to go home and organize a Jewish genealogical society," she says.

Easier said than done. How could she get out the message to Washington-area Jews with an interest in the subject?

She got the job done with a little help and a lot of ingenuity. First, she got a list of about 50 Washington-area subscribers to a Jewish genealogical publication called Toledot.

Then, she went to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormon) library in Silver Spring ‹ those libraries were and continue to be a good resource for doing Jewish genealogical research ‹ and copied the names and addresses of local Jews who had ordered microfilm.

"The subscribers and Mormon library users, about 100, got hand-written invitations to come to the first meeting," she says.

She also sent notices to every area synagogue and asked those institutions to post the notice. In addition, Sack sent a notice to Washington Jewish Week, which resulted in an article.

A talk with the Jewish Historical Society of Greater Washington garnered the Lillian and Albert Small Museum in the District as a meeting place.

More than 40 people showed up at the museum, and membership in JGSGW that first year reached 50. Celebrating its 25th anniversary with a luncheon on Sunday at Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria featuring genealogy pioneer Gary Mokotoff, the group today boasts 500 members.

Two of the people who attended that first meeting were Faith and Jack Klein. The Annandale woman ‹ whose husband was the group's first vice president, and succeeded Sack as president ‹ says they had been doing research on their family for five years in 1980, but after JGSGW was formed, the work became more "organized."

"The key word in genealogy is networking, sharing information about what you know about people and places," says Klein, 71, who is a member of the 25th anniversary committee, which is organizing Sunday's program. "That is the way to learn."

JGSGW's current president, Sharlene Kranz, 59, joined in 1989, after reading another article about the group in WJW. The birth of her child motivated her "so I could tell him about his family," the District resident says.

Her first activity was a workshop for beginners, which the group still offers.

Education continues to be the prime focus. Monthly meetings always are informative, she says, teaching "how to do research, methods of research and new resources," and there is a quarterly newsletter as well.

In the beginning, Sack says she "gave countless talks called 'You Really Can Trace Your Jewish Roots.' Many thought that after the Holocaust, Hitler had destroyed all the records and research was impossible."

Today, that skepticism has been largely overcome as there is a Jewish genealogy community worldwide, with "a vast number" of people engaging in research and an umbrella organization, the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, which organizes an annual congress.

Technological and political innovations have matched changes in attitudes. Klein notes the much greater access to information from Eastern Europe following the collapse of the Soviet Union and its empire.

The Internet, Kranz says, "revolutionized research. Not only can we get information, but we can network easily. Genealogists from all over the world share information on a daily basis because of the Internet."

All this has led to an explosion in the number of Jewish genealogical societies.

"We were the second or third to get organized 25 years ago, and now there are hundreds round the world," she says.

Most important, those changes have led to great strides in society members learning about their families, with both Kranz and Klein tracing their relatives back to the beginning of the 19th century, and Sack to 1750.

One of JGSGW's future projects is to promote and expand the teaching of Jewish genealogy in local day and congregational schools, according to Klein.

Doing the research is itself educational. "The study and history of any Jewish family is like the history of the Jewish people," says Klein, a member of Beth El Hebrew Congregation. "Before beginning research on one's family, there is a need to study the historical environment of your family, how they got where they were.

"In the process of doing that, you'll learn a lot of history."

Jewish genealogy pioneer Gary Mokotoff will speak on "Genealogists as historians" at the anniversary luncheon at Beth El Hebrew Congregation in Alexandria on Sunday at 1:30 p.m. To purchase tickets and for further information, call Faith Klein at 703-941-3818.