An Ambivalent Jew Returns to Germany for Taylor Swift
I feel echoes of what once happened here. My daughters felt nothing, till I showed them — and they showed me.
A few years ago, I spat into an Ancestry.com tube and eagerly awaited the results.
My whole life, I’ve only known I’m an Ashkenazic Jew — or as I’ve described it, an Eastern European mutt. My direct family line immigrated through Ellis Island ahead of the first World War; my grandparents were born in the U.S. right before the Great Depression.
Any relatives who stayed presumably died in the Holocaust.
I’m indifferent to all religions, including my own. I don’t identify as Jewish, religiously or culturally, even as I went to Hebrew school and had a Bat Mitzvah. I also have green eyes and freckles, and loads of natural redheads in my family. Years ago, a dermatologist asked me, “you’re Celtic, right?”
I laughed. “Not unless there are Celtic Jews.”
It got me curious though. Maybe I was something other than just Jewish? Nearly 6,000 years of history, surely someone in my bloodline had an illicit affair, or… something? Or at a minimum, perhaps I could find my European roots, to learn which countries were in my bloodline, as I had no living relations…
