Finding unexpected Jewish history in Homestead

HOMESTEAD, Pa. — Homestead’s Jewish history is absent from the town’s dominant industrial narrative. For a young woman hoping to uncover it, 16 boxes of records at the Heinz History Center changed the course of her life.

Tammy Hepps, 36, grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey hearing her father Michael’s stories about his grandfather, Bernhardt Hepps, who died in 1949. According to Michael, Bern-hardt was a leader, a pillar, a founder and builder of the congregation that established the town’s first synagogue.

At a talk at the Heinz History Center in the spring, Hepps said with a playful smile, “I got into genealogy because I didn’t believe a word my father said.”

No other relatives were dropping crumbs on a family trail, and her father’s practices didn’t point to an Orthodox grandfather. Then when she was 12, a letter arrived from a distant cousin seeking connections to a Bernhardt Hepps.

“We were the long lost branch of the family,” Hepps said.

Five years ago, she and her father visited Pittsburgh to find the proof she wanted. At the Rauh Jewish Archives at the History Center, 16 boxes provided a trove of information about the congregation whose last candles went out in 1993.

“Bernhardt showed up on every page,” Hepps said. “He really was there on the front lines of forming the community.

“Once I discovered those boxes, it changed everything. Researching Homestead became my passion.”

She had hit a career high as chief technology officer for a division of NBC in New York and was researching Homestead on the side. “Each time I headed back to New York” from visiting Pittsburgh, “I thought, ‘I’m going in the wrong direction.’ “

When she decided to change directions, her friends said, “You have the best job of any of us,” she recounted. “You’re going to Pittsburgh? From a great job to having no job?”