#Scottish Jews

[jewishpopculture]

LP cover of Harry Belafonte’s album “An Evening with Belafonte” (1957).

The album featured his version of the Hebrew song “Hava Nageela”.

Its popularity led to Belafonte once referring to himself as “the most popular Jew to America”.

His version of the song is believed to be the most popular, with Belafonte claiming “most Jews in America learned that song from me”. It became a staple at Jewish celebrations, especially weddings.

Belafonte was of Sephardic Jewish, Afro-Jamaican, Dutch, and Scottish descent. Although he was raised Catholic, he honored his Jewish heritage throughout his career, between singing this song at nearly every one of his concerts, and playing the Jewish angel Alexander in the film “The Angel Levine” (1970).

#harry belafonte #music #jewish #jewish culture #jewish heritage #jewish history #jewish music #hebrew #Black Jews #Black culture #Black history #Jamaican Jews #Scottish Jews #Dutch Jews #Caribbean Jews #West Indian Jews #hava nagila #Hava Nageela #pop culture #jewish pop culture

[mental-mona]

#jumblr #jews #jewish interest #scotland #scottish jews

[eretzyisrael]

Source

#scotland #holocuast #holocaust remembrance day #jews #humza yousaf #scottish first minister

[bijoumikhawal]

People discussing Israel's racist policies and Israel's policy of fucking over non Rabbinic communities and fucking up the transmission of diaspora cultures (such as the teaching of languages) is not the time to go "we don't need gentiles in our intracommunity politics". Foundational to Israel is "maintaining a Jewish majority". These communities are attacked in lathe part because they are seen as not being as Jewish as White, Ashkie, Western European Jews (with respect to how Eastern European Jews are also often mistreated), or their Judaism is otherwise seen as deficient. The maintenance of this majority is also why Palestinians generally, cannot really get an Israeli citizenship, even if they wanted to, and sometimes even if they can prove they are of Jewish descent. "Who is a Jew and what is a Jewish culture" is a constructed boundary: for the past 70 odd years it has been a boundary used for violence. If you want anti-zionists to have politics informed by the needs of Jews, they must be party to these discussions.

#cipher talk #Also seeing a post like 'talking about racism in Israel feels bad bc it casts Ashkenazim as evil elites imo' #(Person saying this WAS white AFAIK and that's very funny given not all Ashkenazim are white- and most posts I've seen #Are made by Jews or POC focusing on whiteness more than 'Ashkienormativity') #Then seeing a post like 'I don't believe you care about Yiddish if you only use it to attack Hebrew >:(' is nuts #Which is it do 'gentiles' care too much about Ashkenazi culture and use it as a weapon or do they pick on them as the acceptable group of #'Bad jews' (as people like to put it)? #And ngl any white person pulling this right now definitely doesn't care that much about JOC normally. If they did they'd let them say when #They're uncomfortable lmao because thar is the point of reference you need when discussing racism here #Otherwise you're just doing the 'white person shuts down conversation about racism because they feel upset' thing that everyone does #Including gentiles. Including gentiles who belong to groups (like white Latinos white Irish and Scottish people etc) who have faced #Marginalisation discrimination and genocide #And if you as a white person aren't doing that that tells me you either don't care to pay attention or you don't talk to JOC #So you don't know when JOC are actually uncomfortable and a lime is being crossed #And that's pretty bad because there's quite a few Mizrahim who are aggressive Zionists lmao and would love for you to use them as shield

[murderballadeer]

also i met my friend's friend who is an exchange student from scotland yesterday and she is refusing to try a montreal bagel bc "it's just bread" and "why would i eat a plain bagel" and "i can just go to provigo, buy a bagel and toast it"... oh how little she knows

#one of the other guests was calling her antisemitic for saying that while sitting in a sukkah lol #she's cool aside from the bagel thing tho she's the first scottish jew i've ever met #soapbox

[docholligay]

Small temple announcement that requires a formal card:

SCOTTISH JEWS ARE COMING LOOK ALIVE, EVERYONE

#WE CAN'T LOOK STUPID IN FRONT OF THE SCOTTISH JEWS #there's like three Jews in scotland so they should feel right at home ahaha

[haurchef4nt]

i dont think israeli jews should get to have an opinion on who does and doesnt count as being part of a diaspora group. as if you fucking get it!

#also comparing having scottish ancestry to being jewish from a grandparent. as if so many jews #specifically american jews #grew up without that culture bc their parent or grandparent was FORCED to stop practicing their religion and culture due to i dont know #THE FUCKING HOLOCAUST? #or just violent antisemitism? #i think they should get to say yeah! i have jewish family! reconnecting is difficult but theres a feeling there deep down. #jewish people who grew up in israel do not fucking get it. they dont. you dont. sorry! #i just saw a post by an israeli jew that PISSED ME OFFFFF #like are you really getting into some weird blood quantum shit about this. i bet you believe you can only be jewish if its passed down #by your mother's side too. LOL

[autistic-katara]

dont ask me why but W should be pronounced “Wee” not “Double You”

#it isnt even a double u its a double v #(ikik its like that cause us used to look like vs idfc they look different now) #and it just has the ee letter vibe yk #like it would fuck up the pronunciation of the alphabet song sure #but we could just add a letter in to fill that gap #like maybe one pronounced like “th” (soft or hard) sh zh or ch (either the english or hebrew/scottish pronunciation) #by hebrew/scottish pronunciation i mean stuff like in challah or loch #tho i know u non scots/non jews often pronounce those hallah and lock but thats not my problem learn the correct pronunciation #i’m going off on a random tangent here sorry-

[burnt-scone]

Friends/acquaintances growing up, including poc ppl: You're mom is not white, what is she.

Me: Oh, she's mostly Cherokee and Choctaw but also French, Persian/Turkish Jew, and then German. People say she looks ambiguously native and Middle Eastern.

Them: No, she's not.

Me: Not what?

Them: Not Native or middle eastern. I think she's Mexican.

Me:...what.

#Mexican is still Indigenous. Why can we be Indigenous but not our tribes?????? #indigenous #my dad is white German Jew and then scottish (other Euro) and i got all those German colors but I have her structure mostly #and people believe me when I say my white ass is Indigenous and my tribes but not her who they admit is poc and most likely Indigenous #people used to ask if she was my “Mexican Nanny” or if she kidnapped me. 😐. #Brown moms with white kids need a break. atleast now people think were related. (they think were sisters. good for her)

[prismatic-bell]

Not to be that goy, but my web browser skills are non existant, and you have been a vital resource for learning about jewish perspectives for me. (Ie. If this ask is too much to deal with. I get it. Ignore it and/or tell me to fuck off)

It has been nightmarishly difficult to differentiate between non antisemitic palestinian advocacy and antisemitc palestinian advocacy. So for the most part my involvement has been, i do not have the spoons for this so im staying out of it and unfollowing and blocking anyone being a blatant asshole about it.

Is the boycott of eurovision one of the less antisemitic parts of the pro-palestine movement or am i going to be treating this as yet another dog whistle?

Dogwhistle.

1) claim #1: Israel should not be allowed to perform because it’s committing genocide. Aside from the fact that quite a few experts have said IT ISN’T: let’s remove every country that’s committed genocide since 1901–

….oh. Well, that’s embarrassing. (And I missed Sweden and its attempts to get rid of the Sámi, so it’s even worse than that graphic makes it look.) Maybe just the ones doing it right now, which is surely just Israel—

…..or not.

Clearly, it’s not actually about genocide.

2) claim #2: Israel should not be able to participate because it isn’t in Europe. There is a small amount of merit in this—except that nobody is calling for Australia, Azerbaijan, or Armenia to be removed on the same grounds. Incidentally, if we’re going based entirely on geographic location, there are two other countries that ought to get the boot by virtue of being at least partly over the Europe-Asia border.

So it’s not actually about location.

3) claim #3: Israel shouldn’t be able to participate because it’s a colony. I’m going to say something controversial: most of Israel is not, because you can’t colonize a place you’re indigenous to, HOWEVER, because the West Bank was intended to be specifically a Palestinian state, I think the settlements there could count as colonization. Okay, I’ll give you that one. Surely the protestors are calling for the removal of all countries that currently have colonial holdings—

….oh.

Special shoutout to the UK, by the way, which IS a colony. The Welsh, Cornish, (some) Irish, and Scottish people are under English rule, and the English have very cleverly put it into their own laws that none of those countries can declare independence unless England says it’s okay.

(Also, I feel like if you’re going to yell about colonization and Eurovision, maybe we should discuss how all Eurovision entries must be in English.)

So it’s not really about colonization.

Claim #4: Israel is trying to sneak propaganda in with its song, so it shouldn’t be allowed to participate.

This one is so fucking stupid I’m just going to say “judge for yourself.”

Yes, it’s about the grief of 10/7. But if you didn’t know that, you WOULDN’T know it, and grief is not political.

So it’s not really about politics or propaganda.

And finally,

Claim #5: Israel shouldn’t be allowed to participate because it’s an ethnostate and those are bad.

So first, Israel is not an ethnostate. Only 73% of its population are Jews; over a quarter belong to other ethnicities. But sure, I’ll play: every country with a population that’s 74% or more from one ethnicity is now disinvited from Eurovision!

….oh.

Also, wanna know why Poland is crossed off in red? Because it’s 98% one ethnicity. Now THAT is an ethnostate.

But this one is getting warmer, because….

It’s not about genocide, or colonialism, or politics…but it is about how many Jews there are.

It’s antisemitism, plain and simple.

#you ask nina answers #Nina blogs antisemitism

[4ft10tvlandfangirl]

You know what's incredibly upsetting? Seeing so many pro-Israel or pro-Zionist posts parrot that the only reason anyone could be pro-Palestine or call for a free Palestine is because they hate Jews.

I know what this tactic is meant to do and I know how making people apathetic, how discrediting their knowledge of a topic or questioning the genuineness of their empathy and other similar tactics are used to benefit the oppressive group but it's still pissing me off.

I am a descendant of enslaved people.

Our history lessons always begin with the slaughter & genocide of the indigenous peoples that were here first, primarily the Taino, who thankfully have a few descendants living in isolation along with the protected Maroon villages. It is normal throughout high school to take history trips to former great houses & plantations and see for ourselves the sites where our ancestors were brutalized and massacred; the weapons and tools of torture preserved and on display so that we knew but a taste of what they went through.

My university is built on the grounds of a former plantation. There are businesses and homes built on top of mass graves & on top of sites of slaughter. There is literally no escaping our colonial history because it touches everything. Our last names are not even our own! Most of us have English, Scottish and Irish last names given by the plantation owners to our ancestors. Or you know...because many children were the product of rape. We cannot accurately trace our true heritage more than 4-5 generations back because most families have no complete records.

A lot of you like to bring up grandparents. Cool. My great-great grandmother was the daughter of a mulatto free woman and a white Scottish sailor. She was white passing. Because land and work were hard to get here under colonial rule, she left the island for a better life with her husband who was a Cuban born mulatto and they ended up living in the US through WWII and after. They were considered an interracial couple (black & white rather than both being seen as mixed) and could not live in certain places because it was illegal. Papa couldn't find work, was treated horribly, because he had darker skin but Grandma found work passing as white and was treated much better. She worked 2-3 jobs to provide for them and their 5 children.

But, there were times when she would appear darker like if she was out in the sun too long or her curls would start to show and a Jewish neighbour/coworker suggested to her it might be safer to tick Jewish on forms rather than white if her race was ever questioned. I suppose due to that kindness the family formed friendships within the Jewish community where they lived & Grandma's eldest son actually married a Jewish woman. His kids and grandkids are all Jewish and they still live in the US.

I share this specific thing because I have very real concerns for those members of my family. But while I worry for them in this time of increasing anti-semitism and absolutely decry any verbal/physical attacks against them, I am still going to speak against things that are wrong. What Israel is doing is wrong. Of course as a non-Jewish person I can acknowledge I may misstep and if I say/do something that is genuinely anti-semitic I'll take the correction. But if your aim is just to intimidate me into silence it's not going to work.

And trying to tell me 'well black people are not welcomed there or black people wouldn't get treated well in Palestine' as if that affects the cost of bread. Guess what? Black people face racism everywhere. Even among our own and colonialism has a lot to do with that. That same grandmother, I was fortunate to grow up with her in the latter part of her life after she returned to the island and every time I went out with her there were questions of whether my family worked for her. Or why was I, this little black girl with this little old white lady as if I meant her harm. She had to say proudly, "This is my granddaughter." How other people view me or treat me isn't going to stop me from speaking up for what's right.

With the history of my people I could never ever ever side with the oppressor. Ever. Whether its here in the west or in the east, whether it's happening to my fellow black people, or any other group of people, I cannot in good conscience stand with the oppressor. My ancestors were forcibly stripped of their humanity, called savages, animals, barbarians and all of that was brutally beaten into them. That same language and similar acts of brutality are being used against Palestinians today.

You think you can cower me into staying silent on that? With unfounded accusations of hate? I refuse.

N.B. - my use of the word mulatto here is strictly to provide the historical context of how my grandparents were seen/classified and spoken of. It is not a term we use.

#long post #vent post #palestine #pro palestine #free palestine #anti oppression #colonialism #anti colonialism #antisemitism #personal #genocide #anti genocide #social justice #indigenous people #taino #maroons #jamaica #i will not shut up about this #anti zionism #from the river to the sea palestine will be free #i stand with palestine #free palestine 🇵🇸

[svartikotturinn]

שומע יא אידיוט תפסיק לתקוף יהודים אמריקאים ולקרוא להם לא יהודים? מאיפה אתה חושב שאנחנו הגענו? לפני מאה שנה גם אנחנו היינו בגלות. תחשוב מה שאתה רוצה על יהדות רפורמית אבל מאיפה הטימטום לחשוב שלראות את האויבים שלנו כאשכרה אנשים זה לא יהודי, ומאיפה הטמטום שיהודים בגלות ברחבי העולם הם לא יהודים.

סתום ת'פה ותפסיק לפגוע בקהילה של עצמך כפרה.

I’m gonna take the opportunity and respond both to your stupid bullshit and the stuff I got from @spacelazarwolf and @the-catboy-minyan with this image:

This kind of bullshit is a perfect example of why so-called ‘American Jews’ get on my last nerve. They are not actually a part of the culture, they engage with it on an extremely shallow level, and then have the nerve to barge in and pretend they fucking own it. (Here is another example. Here is another one.) So no, I am not ‘threatened’ by them, I am deeply irritated. (Much the same way Irish and Scottish people in those countries are irritated by Plastic Paddies boastfully claiming to be descendants of Robert the Bruce, by the way.)

I don’t know who you are, anon, but I do NOT appreciate your bullshit strawmanning. I did not say this applies to all Americans, and certainly not to all Jews living abroad. I am talking about this type which does not do the absolute bare minimum, which is, first and foremost, speaking Hebrew. This is the one major thing that Jews have in common outside of religious practice: the lingua franca Jews have used for millennia (yes, even beyond religious practice—read some Shlomo Haramati), without which you might be in touch with your own community but your link to Jewishness as a whole will be hobbled.

Now, as for Pharaoh, here is what Jewish scripture and exegesis has to say about him. Notably, here is how the Talmud describes him physically. This is not a flattering description, it’s barely humanizing, it repeatedly refers to him as evil with the only thing resembling a redeeming characteristic being that he charged at the front of his advancing army as a form of showing respect to God by confronting him personally at that one particular time. The thing about ‘forgivenss’ is particularly galling, as it is specifically pointed out that he explicitly refused to repent, and he is outright stated to be an evil fool. Compare and contrast with Christian scripture. (EDIT: Also, you claim to be Jewish yet are entirely unfamiliar the lyrics to Dayenu. Curious.)

This is another thing you need to be meaningfully Jewish: you need to actually engage with Jewish tradition and texts (and to do that, you need to—once again, say it with me—speak Hebrew). Once again, that brand of ‘American Jews’ are not doing that, but rather watering down the real deal to something palatable to their own sensibilities, regardless of whatever actual traditions they might have to trample along the way.

And the worst part of it? Now Israeli teens who socialize primarily online and speak English instead, a language they are not native speakers of, are getting in on this bullshit and become indistinguishable from their ilk at a glance. Hell, a few years I even saw one claiming the Jewish Bible was originally in Yiddish on Reddit.

So quit your LARPing, quit your harping, and kindly fuck off.

#Hebrew language #Jewish #Judaism #Pharaoh #Dayenu

[hero-israel]

Here's the thing about this narrative that Palestinian resistance no matter what form is acceptable. Jewkilling cannot exist in a bubble. It cannot be politically neutral. 1000 years of European (and Arab) antisemitism culminating in genocide have ruined that. Sorry to Palestinian activists but that's just how it works. You can't murder a Jew without it being a tragedy, without it contributing to the continued global oppression of Jewish people.

And all that said, that's just if Hamas and others only targeted soldiers and police (or at least tried as best they could). The IRA didn't go out of its way to purposefully target noncombatants. Why? Probably because there isn't thousands of years of history of English people being seen as subhuman, there isn't thousands of years of anglophobic propaganda showing English people as twisted monsters preying on children and secretly undermining Irish society. The Irish national movement was not born because English refugees returned to their historical homeland and challenged the notion of Irish Supremacy. It was a pragmatic liberation movement. Resist military occupation, undermine military infrastructure designed to oppress the people. The descendants of English and Scottish settlers would even be allowed to stay if they had won. Imagine that.

These things are all tied up in each other. I'm against police brutality, I'm against the escalation and the militarization and the mistreatment of Arabs in Israel and in Judea & Samaria and Gaza and Golan and everywhere. But killing Jews can never be righteous. Sorry to anyone who feels that way but it can't. Antizionists NEED to understand that. Jews will always feel defensive and ready themselves for retaliation because of history, because of that context. Jews keep saying "prove to us a post zionist society where we all share the land won't be antisemitic" and their concerns are completely brushed off.

There's no empathy at all. A little girl can be stabbed to death and antizionists celebrate because she was a "settler," and that brave Palestinian man was defending his indigenous homeland, by targeting the weakest of his enemies. And since Israel has mandatory military service the antizionist can surmise that no Jews are Innocent. An Israeli Jew cannot be a noncombatant. They have to, otherwise the only other explanation for why Jewkilling is acceptable to them, or even feels good to them, is that they hate Jews. And as of right now, the optics are still against that. I have a sinking feeling the optics won't be against them much longer. I inherently don't trust a "liberation" movement that's all too eager to make murdering Jewish civilians praxis. I'm sick of the internet falling for this bullshit.

One of the best asks I have ever received. Thank you for sharing it and I agree with every word.

The entire progressive intersectional social-justice frame has failed Jews (or, alternately, has succeeded in excluding them), due to being intellectually colonized by a clearly fascist ideology of incessantly hating the Jew as a poisonous alien. Try to get an online activist to critically deconstruct the social assumptions they were raised with about Jews in their Muslim, Christian, or very slightly post-Christian society... it won't go well. Funny how Jews have lived in India and China for thousands of years yet you will look in vain for examples of bitter bloodthirsty kill-your-nextdoor-neighbor antisemitism in those societies. That's because the origin, the core, of Chinese and Indian societies was not "We're the people who are better than Jews."

From a review of Richard Landes' new book "Can the Whole World Be Wrong?":

[During the Second Intifada] Israelis were described at the time as the new Nazis. But the malice that was unleashed was even worse. As Landes writes, “It was mostly about being freed from a sense of obligation to the Jews, a chance to take up again the Jew-baiting so long denied Europeans by a politically correct post-Holocaust sobriety.” Landes quotes a poisonous comment made by a member of the House of Lords and reported in the Spectator, “Well, the Jews have been asking for it, and now, thank God, we can say what we think at last.” During that time, I was told something horrifyingly similar to my [=the reviewer's] face.

Your example of Irish nationalists not going out of their way to murder British children is a good one. The oft-reached comparisons between Palestine and South Africa are frivolous for many reasons as I have explained here before, and the ANC advocating and normalizing a vision of enduring racial diversity and equality is high on the list of reasons (made possible because black African identity is not predicated on a thousand-year history of hating and oppressing whites). The case of Rhodesia is even more instructive. Robert Mugabe - ROBERT MUGABE! - pleaded with the whites to stay, to live as equals, as brothers, and work together in building a better society in Zimbabwe. Ian Smith, last white PM of Rhodesia, agreed with him and stayed in Zimbabwe. If a so-called "liberation" movement is more openly dedicated to straight-up exterminating their enemies than Robert Mugabe ever was, maybe, just maybe, it shouldn't be described as "liberation" at all.

#antisemitism #leftist antisemitism #israel #palestine #zionism #palestinians #jumblr

[jewish-sideblog]

It’s funny because I don’t remember when the IRA intentionally mass slaughtered civilians, riddled babies with bullets, sexually assaulted and abused British women, fired thousands of rockets at soft targets, and then uploaded all the footage to social media. I don’t remember Sinn Féin’s official education system denying the Holocaust and teaching it’s children that Jews are subhuman pigs. I don’t remember the official plan for Irish independence ever involving the complete and total genocidal extermination of the English, Welsh and Scottish ethnic groups.

Terrorism is often a buzzword weaponized against legitimate resistance groups, that much is true. But if Hamas recording the intentional butchering of Jewish children on Go Pros and putting it on the internet for the world to see isn’t terrorism, then what the fuck is? Do you guys want to see the footage? Because I will gladly send it to you. And I seriously doubt you’ll be able to stomach a justification once you’ve seen it.

[scotianostra]

Happy birthday Robert Carlyle, born in Maryhill, Glasgow April 14th 1961.

Bobby was brought up in Glasgow, the son of Elizabeth, a bus company employee, and Joseph Carlyle, a painter and decorator. His mother left when Carlyle was four years old and his dad looked after him from then. He left school at the age of 16 without any qualifications and worked for his father as a painter and decorator; however, he continued his education by attending night classes at Cardonald College in Glasgow.

Carlyle became involved in drama at the Glasgow Arts Centre at the age of 21 (having been inspired by reading Arthur Miller's The Crucible), and subsequently graduated from the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama. In 1991, he and four friends founded a theatre company, Raindog (named after Tom Waits' album "Rain Dog," one of Carlyle's favorites) (a company dedicated to innovative work then, which is now primarily involved in television and film work), and guest starred in The Bill. The same year he starred in his first movie, Riff-Raff, directed by Ken Loach.

I first noticed Carlyle in the excellent ITV series Cracker, as murderer Albert "Albie" Kinsella, it wasn't long after this he had a series of his own with Hamish McBeth, the dope smoking village bobby in a quiet Scottish town on the west coast, the series ran for three seasons from 1995 to 1997.

Since then Robert Carlyle has been able to pick and choose his roles, his films include, The World is Not Enough, Plunkett & Macleane, Ravenous, 28 Weeks later and of course as Francis "Franco" Begbie in the two Trainspotting films.

On the small screen we have seen him in as the title role in Adolf : The Rise of Evil, Human Trafficking and The Last Enemy on this side of the Atlantic, in the US he has starred in the TV movie 24, SGU Stargate Universe and the continuing Once Upon a Time..

The third season of British political thriller-drama COBRA is due on our screens in the coming months

Recently we saw the TV series of the popular film, The Full Monty, which surprised me of how good it was. In February Carlyle commented on X/Titter about a Simpsons episode Ae Bonny Romance, which aired last December. In one scene, audiences are shown an airline called “Planespotting”, with the plane including a picture of Carlyle’s character Begbie on its tail! Robbert tweeted "My life is complete.." As well as the nod, the episode featured the voices of actors Karen Gillan, David Tennant and Paul Higgins.

Robbiewas lastsen in the movvie, The Performance about an American Jew and gifted tap dancer while on tour in Europe, Harold and the rest of his troupe are scouted by a German attaché who leads the troupe to an exclusive performance for Hitler himself. Next up is a mini-series Toxic Town about the tragic toxic waste case in the East Midlands and three mothers fighting for the justice for the rates of upper limb defects in babies born in Corby were subsequently found to be three times higher than those of children born.

#scotland #scottish #history #actor #happy birthday

[burningchandelier]

My mom got a DNA test done and it didn’t tell us anything we didn’t already know.

Ukrainian Ashkenazi. The Wiseman Family.

We know where we come from.

We went as far North as we could when there was nowhere safe for us in Eastern Europe. We made a home for ourselves in Lerwick, Scotland. Scotland, the only country in Europe that has never expelled Jews, kept us safe for a while, but a poor family could only live at the end of the world in the Arctic Circle for so long. There were too many fishermen and not enough people to buy fish.

Between wars, we went South again, to Germany. We didn’t stay.

I am grateful every day that my great-great grandfather could see that there was trouble coming for his family. He sent his four children and wife to Canada and followed the next year. So many of us did not.

We found a place in Toronto where we watched what happened to our loved ones in Europe. We forgot Hebrew. It was easier that way.

My great-grandmother kept secrets:

Her first daughter, born out of wedlock, was raised by her parents as one of their own.

Her second daughter was told that her father was dead, rather than divorced away (it was a different time— divorce was shameful, death was inevitable).

Her job was mysterious. Officially, she worked for the state department as a pay roll clerk. I don’t know why any pay roll clerks would have traveled to Russia during the Cold War, but she did many times.

The secret she kept the longest was her heritage. As far as anyone knew, she was a severe Scottish immigrant and fiercely proud of it. Only my mother, her favorite, had suspicions.

When Granny Annie Wiseman died, she left everything to her favorite granddaughter. The money, the house, and everything inside it. Every memory of who we are.

Years later, my mother fell in love with a Jewish man. They raised me together. I had the privileges and the pains of knowing who I was. I carry our family burdens and I honor them.

Someday, I will name my daughter after the woman I never met who passed our heritage to me through the simple and brave act of survival. Her assimilation kept us alive. Her secrets got me here. She left the breadcrumbs that let us find our way home.

We know where we come from.

#jumblr #jewish heritage #jewish history #family history