The G-d of our Fathers

I feel like it’s a pretty common thing for converts to research their family trees looking for Jews. We want to know if we are inheriting something, perhaps it’s like a gene that has skipped several generations or the people before us ignore it or were unable to act on it for whatever reason. In general, people want to know where they come from. This is why ancestry.com is a flourishing online business. I actually did the two week free trial last fall through ancestry.com and I learned some pretty interesting things.

First, let’s start with what I already knew. My father’s mother’s father was a Jew. He converted to Lutheranism. My grandma was raised a Lutheran then converted to Catholicism when she met my grandpa. It was a big drama at the time because Christians are suspicious of Catholics, obviously. No one ever really knew why my great-grandfather converted away from Judaism or when. He didn’t talk about it much. This makes perfect sense if you think about it. He took on a new religion that believes Jews are damned to hell. Why would he talk about ever having been one? And back then, people didn’t discuss personal things like that anyways; I can’t imagine religious conversion coming up for family conversation.

When I started searching on ancestry.com, I eventually found my great-grandfather. I had sat with my grandma to find out her grandparents names to make sure I was finding the right people. Eventually I found his parents who were born in Saratov, Russia. I had never heard of this city. I looked it up. It falls outside where the Pale of the Settlement was (where most Russian Jews lived). I thought maybe he wasn’t Jewish and it was a strange family rumor that had started. He was strange so someone said he was a Jew, my grandma heard it and told my dad who told me? I researched this little town further and I came to the conclusion that my grandma was right all along: he was Jewish and his parents lived in a Jewish town.

Saratov was a small town with about 40 Jews living in it. It was one of the few towns outside of the Pale where Jews could live successfully. The only reason I was able to learn any of this about Saratov is because the town makes the history books for sad reasons. In 1853 there was a blood libel case. [If you don’t know, blood libel cases are when Christians accuse Jews of using a Christian’s blood – usually a child’s – for ritual sacrifice, common around Passover because of the link to the Pascal Sacrifice. If a Christian child were found dead, Jews were blamed.] Two Christian children were found dead. Different sources say different things, but I know that Jews were hanged for it. Some say up to eleven Jews were accused. I don’t know exactly what happened with my family but I have made a pretty good guess that aligns with a standard course of action for Jews in this time. I’m guessing that my Jewish family (parents, grandparents, children) all converted to Christianity because of blood libel and other forms of antisemitism. Like Rabbi Joseph Telushkin explains, their goal was not to become Christian to be saved but to become goyim to avoid antisemitism. The ironic thing was, they eventually came to America where they would have been free to be their Jewish selves.

Why does this matter? Because it’s a part of my family history and it has informed who I am. It matters in the same way it matters that I know where my other great-grandma and grandpa came from. I know the name and location of their home-town and the story of how they got here. Also, because of ancestry.com I learned a lot about my mom’s side of the family. One line of her family has been here since the Mayflower, literally, and the men have fought in every major war our country has been in. I can find out information about them going back to the 1300s.

I’ve told one or two Jews the story of my Jewish family, and to my surprise – or, more so, dismay – they find this highly irrelevant and uninteresting. It’s like I just told them the weather report for the day. But when I tell them my mom’s family has been here since the Mayflower and that they fought in the American Revolution, they find that highly interesting. I really wonder why that is? The ancestor who fought in the Revolution is so many generations ago that I don’t even know how many greats I’d have to add to grandpa to describe him. In fact, I don’t even know his name. That’s cool but knowing my Jewish history is not? I really don’t get it because it is very important to me. To know I have Jews in my family line matters to me. To say “the G-d of our Fathers” in a prayer doesn’t just mean spiritual fathers for me, it’s literal. I have Jewish ancestry so I feel sincere when I say those words. I invoke this history when I say those words. Before my great-grandfather converted, Judaism could have been in his family for centuries. He could have been a kohane or a levite. It matters to me, because this person, who I never met, was Jewish and informs – in some small way – my Jewish identity.