Completing the record

Straddling a footstone in Vilno Cemetery in West Roxbury and peering through the viewfinder of a small camera, Jay Sage plays the angles of the shot. Cautious not to allow his shadow to dance into the frame while making sure each word, both in English and in Hebrew, is legible, he's aware that this photo could unlock a secret that has baffled a family for years.

His photos will be entered into the JewishGen Online Worldwide Burial Registry, a long-term genealogy project that aims to one day post every Jewish tombstone in the world on the Internet for families to search.

How long will the project take?

''Oh, probably 100 to 200 years," says Sage, a past president of the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston. In the 1-acre plot of Vilno Cemetery alone, there are about 1,100 graves.

But luckily, families looking for a lost relative may not have to wait a century or two. Last Sunday, 22 volunteers joined Sage and the Combined Jewish Philanthropies on cemetery grounds to update the records of the deceased for the Jewish Cemetery Association of Massachusetts.

After about 30,000 Lithuanians immigrated to Boston in the early 1900s, many of them came to rest in Vilno Cemetery, named after the Lithuanian capital Vilnius, said Stan Kaplan, executive director of the Jewish Cemetery Association. But since some just didn't make the books in Vilno and other cemeteries, the group periodically updates the records, plot by plot.

''When they kept records in those days, they weren't very accurate," said Kaplan, whose organization owns or manages more than 100 cemeteries and about 125,000 plots statewide.

When the association inherited the cemetery in 1998, it also acquired the ground plan, which is mapped out on a cream-colored window shade. It isn't uncommon for the group to receive a cemetery plan on a window shade or decrepit paper, which makes record keeping especially difficult, said Judith Freedman Caplan, the association's records specialist.

''Sometimes there are mistakes, so we come to the site to make sure the information on the gravestones is accurate, a lot of which have to do with date of death," she said.

The record refurbishing is particularly helpful to Jews abroad who have had trouble tracking down a relative, Kaplan said.

''We receive calls from all over the world -- people who know a relative is buried in Boston, but they don't know where -- so we're constantly updating our records," he said, estimating that the association receives about 25 inquiries per month.

Cary Aufseeser, a volunteer from Newton, pitched in at a similar event, after he had tried to track down a lost family member's grave.

''I feel that it's a way to help Jews remember their ancestors and to help people find the graves of their ancestors," he said. ''And it's a nice day."

The research conducted at Vilno Cemetery will someday be connected to the Jewish Genealogical Society's online registry, but for now families must call the Jewish Cemetery Association to have a private search performed.

The research isn't even close to completion. There are many more cemeteries to check, Caplan said, with over 60,000 Jews buried in the cemeteries located on Baker Street in West Roxbury. Because of its importance in the Jewish religion, the group will continue to update the information in their databases, Caplan said.

''In Judaism, one of the highest good deeds is caring for the dead, because they can't take care of themselves," she said. ''It's the responsibility of the living."

Glenn Yoder can be reached at gyoder@globe.com