Finding out I'm Jewish the day Iran attacks Israel
Having wondered and always being asked if I was Jewish, I finally received a definitive answer at 33, on a day many say the world stands "at the brink" of total war.
Are you Jewish?
This is a simple yet complex question for Jews that can be asked both in a friendly and unfriendly manner. I’ve received the question in both tones of voice, although as of late, the frequency (and thus the urgency to find out) has certainly increased since Oct. 7. It’s also an existential question, pushing some into denying it — a predicament other ethnicities don’t have to face.
While I don’t recall exactly the moment kids at school began asking (in the unfriendly tone) if I was Jewish, I can vividly remember my older brothers explaining why such a question was being asked of me. I never considered the possibility, although as the years went on, people kept suggesting I was Jewish.
My Jewish friends, which hitherto inexplicably made up a disproportionate amount of my overall friend group, were the most curious. Unlike non-Jewish people who simply asked if I was Jewish, Jews asked the question with a slight variation: “Are you sure you’re not Jewish?” They knew. My friend Evelyn Tencer of McAllen, assured me at a recent Purim event when I told her about my pending results that, “I’m certain you’re Jewish!” She congratulated me in advance.
The cliche “some of my best friends are…” doesn’t apply because for me it was not just “some” of my best friends; looking back, I’m not surprised that all of my best friends are Jewish. Come to think of it further, my only friends are Jewish.
On March 8, International Women’s Day and my mother’s birthday, I sent off my DNA results to Ancestry.com. A couple of weekends ago, they sent me a text message alert, letting me know that in approximately two weeks, I would be receiving my results.
I had already made plans to be at the quarterly meeting of the Texas Jewish Historical Society several weeks ago, well before I ever submitted my results or even ordered the test kit. So, realizing that I would likely be receiving my results while here at the conference was special and significant enough. But little did I expect that it would also fall on the very same day the dictatorship in Iran would launch attacks inside Israel, although it’s not at all surprising.
I wrote about TJHS in March, being introduced to them by close Jewish friends, who introduced me to their community several years ago. Everything they did was so fascinating, I didn’t have time or space in my article to discuss crypto-Judaism, basically Jews who fled — from the Inquisition in Spain — to Mexico. This was an important topic about which I learned much. Certain rituals kept often by grandmothers, in this field, are dead giveaways: Lighting candles on Friday, strictly enforcing “Sabado santo,” “Holy Saturday,” and so on.
Inquiring of my Mexican mother from Zacatecas about these practices, she passed with flying colors. She added that my great grandmother went so far as to make her own candles and compulsorily compelled the kids at the ranch to fast on certain days, usually in April. In all likelihood, she gave me and my four siblings our Jewishness.
She also certainly gave us our Irish ancestry, which is one percentage point higher than our Jewishness, although Ancestry stipulates the Jewishness can be as high as 4 percent. With natural red hair, full of freckles, she always told us growing up about how her grandfather and uncles sat around and played accordion, guitar and violin, describing perfectly the outlines of a traditional Irish seisiún.
This symbiosis is especially beautiful, considering the long history between Irish and Jews in the world of traditional music, described affectionately by the late Mick Maloney. I’ll have to write a fuller piece on all these things soon.
My hero who inspired me to become a writer, Christopher Hitchens, who found out he was Jewish at the age of 40, used to say: “Antisemitism is the mother of all racisms.” As I write these words, I also realize that I learned of my Jewish ancestry on what would have been his 75th birthday, April 13. As if this day needed more reasons to be the most special day of my life.
TJHS President, Joan Linares, taught me two Yiddish words after my running around our conference’s guest hotel to find her and tell her the news, embracing her and her family, who I’ve come to know: Mispocha, which means family, and Bashert, which means ‘meant to be.’
Threatened ruling classes, from Rome to Spain to the Russian Tsars, have scapegoated Jews to distract ire away from themselves. The most destructive example of it was of course the Holocaust, as the German working-class failed to take power away from the German capitalists, as had been done in Russia where pogroms were ended by the Bolsheviks. Therefore, as long as capitalism exists, so will antisemitism. Only revolutionary struggles in the Middle East and the world over can overthrow the antisemitic dictatorships in the region, in the interests of all toilers, Jewish, Arab, Kurdish, etc. On the road to these revolutionary upheavals is joining the struggle against antisemitism in America and elsewhere, which means standing up for Israel as a refuge for Jews and defending their right to defeat and destroy Hamas and their patrons.
This struggle will take many non-Jews. I would have continued to fight this fight even if I learned that I was not Jewish, a possibility I braced for. Knowing that I am, however, somehow reinforces my resolve by around a thousand percent.
jonathansalinas@substack.com