Member-only story
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 overseas left to ask.
But no. My results came back as 96% Eastern European Jew. No countries identified — I guess the Jewish diaspora transcends borders? — and the remaining 4% hinted I might be a little Scottish, but inconclusive.
Identity is so interesting. I don’t choose to identify as Jewish or raise my children as Jewish. Yet Judaism is baked into my very cells, a hard-coded part of what makes me, me. I may not practice, but I also can’t deny it. I was hoping a genetic test could tie me to a specific country or two in Europe, but no. Just Jewish, still, in spite of my choices otherwise.
It seems I can’t choose not to be Chosen.
I envy my friends who return to the old country and find long-lost relations, a tie to their histories. This is another wound in my family of origin story, and one I share with most other Jews: no one remains. While others find long-long cousins and uncles, I…
