ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

September 2025
Volume XLV, Number 2
page 3

InDesign and I have found an uneasy truce as I now use Google AI to quickly learn new tricks and fixes. And I return to ChatGPT now and again to enhance images. In this issue I upscaled Alice J. Ramsay’s 1987 chart and aimed for a scintillating rosette burst in the corners of the cover frame (details on page 17). My tea roses call again for attentions to their skeletal remains, the traces of past rosettes.

This last ZN interval has found me engaged in several personal genealogy pursuits, and some wild goose chases. In my mother’s father’s line I’ve been making the case for the Danes, and am on the verge of sharing my findings with both the known cousins, a cohort of fellow seekers and our indefatigable trail-blazer Fay Bussgang, and with the would-be cousins. If only we could find the crumbs on the forest floor! This has involved the help of the Łódź Town Leader and the digestion of documents which added no discernable help in the still-veiled branchings.

Some things are hidden by the corrosions of time, and others, perhaps, by deliberate obfuscation. And sometimes the miscues and the clues are intertwined. On the way to learning that my mother’s mother’s Ukrainian family was Chassidic, I encountered denials. I have been waiting, waiting, waiting to take a leap in illuminating another matter, and the pursuit has been thwarted at a number of turns. My sister has recommended patience, but it seems as if I’ve been waiting generations to know again what was known before.

What do genealogists look like? Sometimes they are very lucky seekers who reach for a blossom and are gifted with a tree. Sometimes they are the keepers of vast troves of documents who can distribute their treasure precisely into just the right hands and hearts. And sometimes they are the ones who can keep a secret for another generation.

And if we are really, really, lucky, we get to know, and to illuminate, and to bronze the hard-won truths—and we get to feel hopeful, if just for a fleeting season, that the next ones will recognize treasure when they see it.

What does a future SFBAJGS Board member look like? Curious. And busy. Our Zoom Board meetings are open to interested members. Our next meeting is Sunday, November 23, 2025 at 11:00 am. For more information email Jeremy at president@sfbajgs.org.

If I may again quote a Jewish philosopher: Leonard Cohen:
“There is a crack, a crack in everything
That’s how the light gets in”

Barbara Toby Stack
September 2025
Berkeley, CA

ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

June 2025
Volume XLV, Number 1
page 3

Editor’s Column

InDesign dished out a new torment: the entire draft became mysteriously corrupted—twice! And twice I had to rebuild it, ultimately from the version I made two issues ago. The roses continue to exclaim now and again, and my pleasure in their nearness cascades to the scents of their youth, and mine.

When I brought the last ZN to the printer I decided it was long past time to fulfill a bucket list item: to use their wide-format scanner to image the 21-foot family tree created by my ¾ 3rd cousin Joseph Chandler of Portland, Maine, which he gifted my sister in the early 1980s, and which drew me into genealogy. It’s now a jpg and a pdf and everyone in the family can have one. On their phone yet! But especially on my phone.

There have been other notable genealogical moments for me during this time: I enjoyed a fun, funny, warm and fascinating lunch with a second cousin I’d never met. Filled another square on my Altstein great grandparents’ matrix with a long-sought photo of a lovely Rose; now if I could only find another, and another, like filling the squares on my childhood stamp album. I continue to stumble around in the Danish branch of the Toronczyk family, but early stages generally feel like this. Advil helps.

What do genealogists look like? Sometimes they are the distant relations of another era who tossed their trees and letters and albums into an unknowable future, into unseen future hands to catch and repackage and cast forward again. Sometimes they are the field reporters who collect the news and photos from their branches and file reports to a cousin aggregator. Sometimes genealogists are a veritable clearinghouse of new news and old news, curators of clues and mysteries, and masters of not-knowing and partial-knowing. But above all, genealogists are trusting that there will be someone there to make the catch.

And if we are really, really, lucky, we get to pass the baton to the next ones, see their delight and gratitude, while trusting they won’t leave the cake out in the rain, or marry hard-won fact to facile fiction, or bring down the whole clan in some future data-driven genocide.

What does a future SFBAJGS Board member look like? Curious and busy. Our Zoom Board meetings are open to interested members. Our next meeting is Sunday, August 31, 2025 at 10:00 am. For more information email Jeremy at president@sfbajgs.org.

If I may again quote a Jewish philosopher: Simone Signoret
“It is threads, hundreds of tiny threads, which sew people together through the years.”

Barbara Toby Stack
June 2025
Berkeley, CA

ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

April 2025
Volume XLIV, Number 4
page 3

Editor’s Column

InDesign continues to challenge, but is less punishing; so that role now gets assigned to Illustrator. The roses arc over my world and rain pink and yellow petals. Today’s resolution: enjoy.

My own genealogical nosiness these days finds much nourishment in historic newspapers, in curious younger cousins, and in the scrapbooks of lateral lines.

I marvel at the journey which has taken me from a tight family of “just us” and the local family and the scrapbooks to a planet of relationships and an eternity of connections. My world is abuzz with meaningful links. And I had long believed that meaning was the central scarcity.

What do genealogists look like? Sometimes we are the landsleit who demand to know where the documents are. We are the collectors of clues and disembodied facts and unconnected Wolfs whose files feature disintegrating connections, fragile implications, and tattered memories just in case the call comes to cook up a theory or a branch. We are the ones who ache to make sense but keep the brakes on untethered speculation. We are the entertainers who cast our best lines into the future.

And if we are really, really, lucky, we get to hear and meet the other seekers, the other collectors, menders, discoverers and celebrants of this vast tapestry. If we ask “why,” together, we may find an unsuspected harmony.

What does a future SFBAJGS Board member look like? Curious. Our Zoom Board meetings are open to interested members. Our next meeting is Sunday, August 31, 2025 at 10:00 am. For more information email Jeremy at president@sfbajgs.org.

If I may again quote a Jewish philosopher: Lou Reed:
Between thought and expression
Lies a lifetime

Barbara Toby Stack
April 2025
Berkeley, CA

ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

February 2025
Volume XLIV, Number 3
page 3

Editor’s Column

I have concluded that InDesign is infested with dybbuks, but I’ve also discovered a helping community on Facebook. I’ve clipped the wandering rose branches just in time to avoid an overhead thicket of unwanted mergings. My resolution: be careful of projecting the rules of flora onto our fauna. We are not in the severing business.

My own genealogical research sallies forth. Janet turned out to be Zelda and I had her manifest all along. There are more photo collections to scan, eyes to see through.

And I wonder whether I’m doing enough to entice, enchant, engage and entrap the youngsters in this family enterprise. We have became a family with a history, a history which is as fragile as the digital and paper records, and the human lives which carry the stories.

What do genealogists look like? Sometimes we are the ninety-something elders who continue to ink the record and assist the scribes. We are the knitters of the sagas and the restorers of the fabric: we are the ones who notice things and remember and report.

And if we are really, really, lucky, we get to see what are, more likely than not, the answers to our questions and the bones of the story, and the joints of the mechanisms, the paths of the flows, and the sinews of influence. If we ask “why,” we may get lucky and learn “why.” If we seek, we may find the shores of the lacunae.

What does a future SFBAJGS Board member look like? Curious. Our Zoom Board meetings are open to interested members. Our next meeting is Sunday, May 11, 2025 at 10:00 am. For more information email Jeremy at president@sfbajgs.org.

If I may again quote a Jewish philosopher: Abe Meeropol:
What is America to me?
A name, a map, the flag I see,
A certain word, Democracy

Barbara Toby Stack
February 2025
Berkeley, CA

ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

August 2024
Volume XLIV, Number 2
page 3

Editor’s Column

InDesign remains a challenge: next editor take note. The rose branchings leave arcs overhead, outlines of their origins and lineages, soon to be cropped My resolution: watch the moving lines, the shadows, the erasures. We are in the sleuthing business.

My own genealogical research flowered in August. A year ago, after having done DNA testing with MyHeritage, I gave Ancestry a shot, and there they were, a branch of the Stacks, but from what source? It turned out to be from my great grandfather’s brother, but to reach that conclusion, oy, the twists and turns, dead-ends, genealogical favors, and lucky finds (in my own files). But now I have my new cousin Mario from Cuba! Look here for details.

And I wonder whether, in striking the pose of a sleuth, we might be obscuring, deliberately or accidently, our other roles as menders of the torn, illuminators of the past, reflectors of the family shape back to itself.

What do genealogists look like? Sometimes we are the quiet, black-clad puppeteers, pulling and weaving the strings, leaving a trail, but not a mess. We dart between the background and foreground, playing a role, reporting the process, revealing some of the tricks and obscuring others. The story can be told a thousand ways. It is we who judge the audience’s capacity for attention, detail, and complexity.

And if we are really, really, lucky, we get to see the truth decay back into the shadows and mists, not just fading, but in discreet drop outs, errors, false convergences. That is also the truth, the meta of the matter.

What does a future SFBAJGS Board member look like? Curious. Our Zoom Board meetings are open to interested members. Our next meeting is Sunday, November 10, 2024 at 10:00 am. For more information email Jeremy at president@sfbajgs.org.

If I may again quote a Jewish philosopher: Pink:
We are searchlights, we can see in the dark

Barbara Toby Stack
August 2024
Berkeley, CA

ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

May 2024
Volume XLIV, Number 1
page 3

Editor’s Column

InDesign terms its color sampling tool a pipette. And with that I’d like to announce that the software is just beginning to take a background shade in this enterprise. At last. The roses launch themselves over my patio as if to mingle with cousins on the other side! My resolution: cherish my own point of view.

Not long ago I wrote to the JewishGen Discussion Group on the matter of who will carry on: “Don’t limit your imaginings to direct descendants. I, among others, am carrying on the work of a half-third cousin and also of relatives of people who married into the family and have no kinship to me. Trust that your interest is no unicorn, that genealogists will pop up in every generation. Leave them clues in as best shape as you can, and in as many places.” To this I add, have no doubt that your work will arrive as a gift to genealogists of the future, related or not.

I have also learned that the greatest threat to genealogy is war. And that like the four sons of Passover Haggadah fame, each audience for a genealogical story must be addressed carefully, deliberately, respectfully, taking into account interests, point of view, and capacity for delight. Which means that we will be launching the same tales again and again.

What do genealogists look like? We are data wranglers, truth mavens, search hounds, balebostes of collection, presentation, dissemination and recruitment.

What does a future SFBAJGS Board member look like? Curious. Our Zoom Board meetings are open to interested members. Our next meeting is Sunday, September 8, 2024 at 10:00 am. For more information email Jeremy at president@sfbajgs.org.

If I may again quote a Jewish philosopher: Richard M Sherman:
It’s a world of laughter
A world of tears
It’s a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There’s so much that we share
That it’s time we’re aware
It’s a small world after all

Barbara Toby Stack
May 2024
Berkeley, CA

ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

December 2023
Volume XLIII, Number 4
page 3

Editor’s Column

Oh my, InDesign is a continuing challenge! I upgraded my version and finally found all the steps to making the links visible in all versions of Acrobat (I hope!); I solved more issues in linking images to text, and failed miserably in enabling right-to-left Yiddish text, though I did change to a bilingual version. Sigh. And the roses continue to reveal new branches of the family. Off with their heads! My resolution is resolve.

I also learned in this interval between issues about the the power of ZichronNote. I sent copies of my little article on the Waldman family to the two grandchildren of my Aunt Betsy and Uncle George, one of whom sent it on the the family in France. Before long I received several replies from the French family, elucidating the mysteries, showing among them an eager family historian, and bringing new revelations. The shoe I photographed in 1960 did its job once again!

What do genealogists look like? They look eager to please their audience. We are all, in fact, audiences to one another. We are story tellers, and story actors, and sometimes just part of the chorus. We may busy ourselves preserving and passing along the tales, and records, and recipes, and photos, and fuzzy clues. We remember, we follow, we dispute, and we celebrate. There are many, many roles to play in this enterprise.

What does a future SFBAJGS Board member look like? Curious. Our Zoom Board meetings are open to interested members. Our next meeting is Sunday, February 4, 2024 at 10:00 am. For more information email Jeremy at president@sfbajgs.org.

If I may once again quote a Jewish philosopher, this time Bob Dylan:

The country I come from
Is called the Midwest
I’s taught and brought up there
The laws to abide
And that the land that I live in
Has God on its side

Barbara Toby Stack
December, 2023
Berkeley, CA

ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

September 2023
Volume XLIII, Number 2
page 3

Editor’s Column

For this issue I reached across time and reanimated the remnants of my facility with InDesign, survived my first bout with covid, which bit off about a month’s editing capacity, and began the annual pruning of my vining roses when I needed outdoor branchings. I mirrored the footers, learned how to make images flow with the text, wrangled tables, and ventured into Illustrator to jazz up an image. I also got my mtDNA tested and matched a longtime SFBAJGS member (not Janice).

Our new/old Treasurer Dana Kurtz recently asked me for my thoughts on strengthening our Society. I responded that just as a family with a genealogy and family history can become more confident and potentially a stronger network for having a back story, so might an organization benefit from an accessible history with recognizable actors and accomplishments. I hope ZichronNote can continue to serve such a purpose.

What does a child, a future genealogist look like? They might be a curious asker and listener, a photographer, a collector, a reporter, a writer, an organizer of events, people, information. Nurture them.

What does a future SFBAJGS Board member look like? Look in the mirror.

When people ask me about travel, I say that I prefer time travel.

We genealogists routinely reach across time to document and interpret the past and to wrap our albums and genealogies and stories in such a fashion as to send them forward into the future with good prospects. I recently bought some acid-free and lignin-free paper, and dove backward into the ZichronNote archive for facts and inspiration. The Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine has been a great help in making available old versions of the SFBAJGS website. I might also mention here an invaluable finding aid for the current state of our Society’s website, and usable on almost any search engine and website is:

search term(s) site:SFBAJGS.org

Now it’s time to quote a Jewish philosopher: “Be Here Now.” I am enormously grateful to have found a place on the SFBAJGS team. It is a beautiful thing to have such colleagues as these.

Barbara Toby Stack
September, 2023
Berkeley, CA

ZichronNote: Journal of the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society

May 2023
Volume XLIII, Number 1
page 3

Editor’s Column

For this issue I lost and found my ambition to be an editor, lost and found my facility with InDesign, and lost and found my love of genealogy. It’s as if I’d been called upon to renew my vows.

I drifted into genealogy from being the ten-year-old who pointed her camera at any relation who would allow it; by listening to my mother narrate her scrapbooks and guiding me though maintaining my own collections; by asking what my first personal computer could do with the 20-foot tree which came down to me via my mother’s cousin; by learning that I didn’t have to guess, that there were answers to be had, many in nearby Oakland. By asking why.

And as I began to explore the worlds of genealogy, I realized that trees offered a new way of looking at my matrixed world, that I could slither up the lines of ancestry and down the byways of laterals and gain unsuspected reflections and points of view.

In a world dominated by misinformation, impatience, short-term thinking and anomie, genealogy offers a path, colleagues, guidance, and the possibility of meaning. We document our discoveries and processes. We strive to pass along enduring insights, memories, trees, and collections. Let me here suggest that an article published in ZN is a great gift to the family as well as a ticket into the future. ZichronNote is held by genealogy libraries worldwide.

Genealogy is a field which invites and permits so many of us to be not only seekers, but also finders and revealers. Generosity and gallantry abound.

There are so many ways to participate in the team sport which is genealogy. Take some responsibility for passing along the important stuff to the curious ones in the next generations. And you get to decide what’s important! Protect the roots, even their outlines. Be a librarian. Be a shepherd of our histories. Be an inspiration to youth. Play some role. There are many to choose from. Just do something!

Wishing you all continued success in genealogy, a deep and worthy education

Barbara Toby Stack
May, 2023
Berkeley, CA