JewishGen, the preeminent Jewish genealogical website <www.jewishgen.org>, has had a change in leadership. Susan E. King, the ebullient founder and director of JewishGen, relinquished the reins effective March 31, 2008. Warren Blatt, JewishGen’s vice-president and editor-in-chief since 2004, has taken over as its Managing Director. In a recent interview, Blatt emphasized both continuity and change as he described his vision for the future.
History of JewishGen
In Houston, Texas, in 1987, Susan King created a dial-up bulletin board for Jewish genealogy, a FIDOnet echo called “JewishGen,” which was an electronic forum for computer users to exchange information about tracing their Jewish roots. There were about 150 participants.
Knowledge of the bulletin board spread by word of mouth. JewishGen moved onto the Internet in 1993 as an electronic mailing list and Usenet newsgroup. In 1995, the JewishGen website was created, with the first online databases accessible in 1996. JewishGen became a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) U.S. tax-exempt organization in 2001. In short order, JewishGen grew to be the leading Jewish genealogical presence on the Internet.
JewishGen is a major grass roots effort which brings thousands of people together into a virtual worldwide community centered on discovering Jewish roots and history. JewishGen is run by a cadre of volunteers, who continue to create a wealth of web pages and databases, host Special Interest Groups (SIGs) and provide an array of diverse services for researchers of Jewish family history.
Until 2003, JewishGen was staffed entirely by volunteers. That year, JewishGen affiliated with New York’s Museum of Jewish Heritage, although it continued to be administered from Houston. While the museum affiliation provides the stability and long-term viability, JewishGen is still totally dependent upon financial donations and volunteers for all of its data acquisition and transcription projects.
Blatt notes:
From the beginning, JewishGen has been characterized by King’s energy and exuberance, her ability to craft a virtual Jewish genealogical community worldwide, and her talent for attracting a host of devoted volunteers—the heart and soul of the organization. The JewishGen Family Finder (JGFF) and the Family Tree of the Jewish People (FTJP) have been especially popular.
Changes Planned
According to Blatt, the major immediate changes will be largely internal and not particularly obvious to users. JewishGen has moved its headquarters from Houston to the museum in New York, where a full-time administrator will run the administrative and financial aspects of the organization. Blatt will remain in Simi Valley, California, and Michael Tobias in Glasgow, Scotland, will continue as vice- president of programming.
Finances will be the area of major reorganization—and Blatt’s primary responsibility. Beginning immediately, this multi-million dollar endeavor will operate on a balanced budget—“for the first time,” says Blatt. He adds that JewishGen “will never institute user fees and will never charge for access.” Instead, the necessary funds will be sought primarily from donations and grants, possibly from data-leasing and from “value-added services.” The latter program, already in place, offers enhanced search capabilities and other services to individuals who donate at least $100 per year to the JewishGen General Fund. (Contributions are tax-deductible in the U.S. and Canada.) Blatt notes also that the ShtetlSchleppers and the JewishGen Mall programs have been dropped “because the overhead costs more than they brought in.”
In addition to seeking the financing to keep JewishGen solvent, Blatt looks forward to developing further his pet project, the JewishGen Communities Database, a comprehensive database of more than 5,000 former Jewish communities, which unifies and links together all of JewishGen’s resources. For each community, the JewishGen Communities Database contains the town’s geographic/ political history and all synonyms for the town name, with its language and time period. Each community’s page displays an interactive map of the area and links to all of the JewishGen resources for that locale—yizkor books, ShtetLinks sites, SIGs, JGFF, JOWBR, and other database searches. In the future, Blatt hopes to expand to include a user-contributed Wikipedia-like feature. He notes also that links will be provided to other Internet resources. This summer, the database will be expanded to include communities in Western Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.
Greatest Challenge
In addition to finances, Blatt sees his primary challenge as continuing to motivate the army of JewishGen volunteers. He notes that his background is in computer software, but says that he relishes the opportunity to develop further his passion for genealogy in general and JewishGen in particular.
About Warren Blatt
Blatt first became involved with JewishGen in the late 1980s, when he wrote its first Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ), initially a one-page item that later expanded to become a full-fledged booklet (coauthored with Gary Mokotoff). As vice-president and editor-in-chief since 2003, Blatt has been responsible for creating, coordinating and editing everything on the JewishGen website—in essence, “what goes in and how it is organized,” he notes.
Raised in the Adirondack Mountain town of Gloversville, New York, Blatt studied computer science at Columbia University and later moved to Boston, where he joined the Jewish Genealogical Society of Greater Boston and chaired the 15th annual International Seminar on Jewish Genealogy there in 1996. He notes that he began doing genealogical research at the age of 14, when, inspired by Alex Haley’s Roots, he tried to figure out the relationships in his large extended family, most of whom lived in Brooklyn and Toronto.
“I began by talking to my grandparents, all of whom were immigrants,” he notes, “and I was fortunate enough to interview one of my great-grandparents.” Today Blatt lives in Simi Valley, California, with his wife (whom he met through JewishGen) and children.
