Website aids Jews' search for ancestors

For years, Carol Clingan tracked down her ancestors the hard way.

She trekked north to Vermont or south to Philadelphia, searching for that elusive marriage certificate or birth record. She sifted through reams of records in old storage vaults, hoping to stumble upon a decaying ship passenger log that might offer some clue about her Jewish ancestry.

Now Clingan, 63, does much of her searching without leaving her Newton home. Thanks to the Internet, she has discovered a branch of her family tree thousands of miles away.

Clingan is among the 100 core members of the Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Boston, an all-volunteer nonprofit organization that gathers monthly in Newton Center's Temple Emanuel.

Clingan logged on to JewishGen.org -- the Jewish genealogy website -- and entered one of her ancestor's names, Harpok, and his hometown, Rovno in Ukraine. A short time later, she got a call from a man living in Israel. His name was Yuval Harpok, and his family also came from Rovno.

He turned out to be her second cousin.

The two exchanged photos online and eventually had dinner together when Clingan visited Israel. Five years later, they're still in touch.

``I've been hugely enriched by a cousin I didn't even know of," she said.

The genealogy society, which draws most of its members from Newton and Lexington, brings in experts to lecture on tracking Jewish family history.

Last Sunday, a speaker explained how to read Hebrew tombstones. Last month, a Woburn man told how his research led to his family being listed on a Holocaust memorial in Berlin. On June 11, Ellen Smith speaks on the Jews of Boston.

With the Internet making it easier for individuals to explore their family history, some genealogy societies are withering away. Not so with the Jewish society, says Judy Izenberg of Framingham, one of its acting copresidents.

The society, which celebrates its 25th anniversary next year, has seen its membership remain stable at 400.

Izenberg, 65, says Jews rely more on a genealogy community because they face hurdles others don't. Persecution dispersed their ancestors throughout the world. In addition to language barriers, researchers are challenged by a lack of marriage, birth, and death records -- many of which were lost in the Holocaust.

``It's not quite the same when you are exploring Jewish roots," Izenberg said.

Society member Tom Weiss of Newton can attest to that. His wife, whose ancestors come from the British Isles, has had little trouble tracing her family back to the 1600s, while he struggled to uncover his own roots beyond the 1700s.

The 71-year-old retired Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor lived in Prague as a child before immigrating with his family to the United States during World War II. A few years ago, he searched through Vienna's extensive archives and learned that his grandfather had siblings.

Ultimately, his journey into the past led him back to America and the discovery of a second cousin, who lives in New Jersey. The two have spoken, but not yet met.

Since 2000 , Weiss has twice traveled to Ukraine as part of a cemetery project.

Those trips have yet to yield any clues about his own family, but with the help of a Hebrew translating team he has enriched the database on JewishGen.org.

Weiss said his genealogical adventures have made him view history on a more personal level. ``You start reading history from a very different perspective," he said. ``I now see historical events in terms of the movements of my ancestors from one place to another."

The Jewish Genealogy Society of Greater Boston is on the web at http://home.comcast.net/~jgsgb/