Jewish Genealogists Gather to Decipher What’s Behind a Name

Jewish genealogists are looking for more than just names of ancestors.

“Now we want all sorts of historical, cultural, sociological and anthropological perspectives to help illuminate our family backgrounds,” says Saul Issroff, a co-chair of the 21st International Conference on Jewish Genealogy, which will be held in London from July 8 to July 13.

The conference, held last year in Salt Lake City and in New York in 1999, expects to attract as many as 800 participants.

Topics will include Jewish carpets, tracing the genetic line of King David from ancient to modern times and the pattern of cousin marriages within the House of Rothschild.

While many attendees will be learning how to trace the noble lineages of barons and kings, others will be busy discovering ways to find their families’ lost “black sheep” through the use of FBI files, prison records, police crime reports and other sources.

Participants also can learn about the Jewish role in Britain’s industrial revolution and the use of genealogical techniques to trace looted cultural property in the Nazi era.

“It’s a much wider range of speakers and topics than offered by any previous conference,” says Issroff, adding that the program places special emphasis on Sephardic sources, Anglo-Jewry, genetics and Jewish migration.

“It’s amazing that interest among Jews in tracing their family trees went from hundreds of people in the early 1980s to tens of thousands of people today,” says Gary Mokotoff, a former president of the International Association of Jewish Genealogical Societies, which boasts some 85 member societies worldwide.

The first conference in 1981 attracted about 75 people, he says. The growth of the Internet is responsible for some of this tremendous growth since then, he says.

As publisher of Avotaynu, a leading journal of Jewish genealogy, Mokotoff began issuing a free monthly news bulletin over the Internet about two years ago. Its subscription list now exceeds 5,000 names.

More information about the 21st International Conference on Jewish Genealogy is available at www.jewishgen.org/London2001/.

ARTS & CULTURE

Mel Brooks’ ‘The Producers’

wins record 12 Tony awards NEW YORK, June 4 (JTA) — Say goodbye to Hollywood.

Mel Brooks has discovered that the hot place for him is Broadway, where his outrageous musical comedy “The Producers” swept the 55th annual Tony Awards on Sunday night, winning a record 12 awards.

Not since “A Chorus Line” in 1975, or “Hello, Dolly!” — which set the previous record in 1964 with 10 Tonys — has there been so much positive buzz about a show.

The show had garnered a record 15 nominations — but some of these pitted cast members against each other in the same category.

The biggest surprise of the night came when the show won a Tony for best original score over other highly acclaimed musicals including “The Full Monty,” “A Class Act” and “Jane Eyre.”

“In any other year, you guys would have won, I assure you,” Brooks told his competitors in accepting the award. “But this is a phenomenon, so forgive us for that.”

“The Producers” pokes fun at Jews, gays, old women and Hitler, among others, and includes a kickline of Nazi storm troopers.

Nathan Lane and Matthew Broderick — both of whom were nominated for best actor, which Lane won — star as Bialystock and Bloom, two Jewish losers who look for success by, paradoxically, putting on the worst musical of all time.

That show within a show, titled “Springtime for Hitler,” has been described as an equal opportunity offender: Jews are portrayed as so greedy they make merchandise out of Hitler, gay men are lispy and limp-wristed — and sexually depraved old women struggle to a sexual fling on their walkers.

Brooks, 74, was born in Brooklyn as Melvin Kaminsky.

He is well-known among moviegoers for his satires and spoofs: “Blazing Saddles,” “Young Frankenstein” and “Spaceballs.”

Brooks previously won an Academy Award for his screenplay for the 1968 movie version of “The Producers.”

Each time Brooks took the stage to accept a Tony, he entertained the audience with one-liners.

“I want to thank Hitler — for being such a funny guy on stage,” he said.

Another line: “I’m going to have to do the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my life: act humble.”

When accepting the award for best score, Brooks said, “I want to thank Stephen Sondheim for not writing a show this year.”

After one acceptance speech early in the night — sure that he would be on stage again soon to take another award — Brooks told the audience, “I’ll see you in a couple of minutes.”