JewishGen, the online Jewish genealogy platform, is often contacted by people who have discovered Jewish branches on their family trees. There are several categories that enquiries usually fall into, according to Karen Franklin, director of outreach. There are those who only find out from parents later in life they are Jewish, while others stumble across the truth when a parent passes away; they might find a tallit, a mezuzah or candlesticks while clearing out their late parents’ belongings. Alternatively, it could be when visiting a cemetery that they notice some Hebrew lettering on a grave.
Macedonian Mezuzah.[Missing Credit]
There are many reasons why Jewish heritage may have been hidden by previous generations, according to Franklin, including instances of mixed marriages, post-Holocaust trauma or simply because people chose to bury their identity. “It could have been a big family secret,” she says. “Remember that socially these were very different times.”
She adds: “When I go to general genealogy conferences and people stop at the Jewish genealogy table, you often wonder why, because they’re not Jewish. It might be because they’re doing the family tree of their Jewish daughter-in-law or son-in-law or they have a particular Jewish ancestor they’ve discovered, or they’ve just always felt that they were Jewish. Alternatively, they might have found out that they have Jewish DNA and want to explore it.
“Often these people really want to find their Jewish connection and that simply would not have been the case many years ago. We always say in the field that the ones who are the most passionate are the ones from whom the secrets were kept.”
Pauline, who does not want to give her surname, certainly falls into this category. Now in her seventies, she tells the JC she “always felt Jewish” growing up and when she was about 15 began to think about conversion.
“From an early age I remember hearing that my dad was of a Jewish family but there was no concrete evidence,” she says. “My dad, like a lot of people of his generation, didn’t talk about it.” She recalls her paternal grandfather wearing a head covering, but had been told it was a “smoking cap”.
“I had plenty of Jewish friends and funnily enough, nearly all my boyfriends were Jewish. I felt very comfortable among my Jewish friends and felt as if I was one of them. It’s very hard to explain,” she says.
When she began to inquire about converting in her teens, Pauline was told “you’re too young”. Years later, she met her husband and they moved to Australia. “I tried to find out if I could convert there but now I was told, ‘You’re married, your husband’s not Jewish, you’ve got children – why rock the boat?’”
Eventually they returned to the UK and settled in Windsor. Then, in 1994, she decided to visit nearby Maidenhead synagogue, where she met Rabbi Romain. Under his guidance, she eventually converted.
Jewish men walk along the street in the Stamford Hill area on January 17, 2015 in London, England. (Photo by Rob Stothard/Getty Images)Getty Images
“To be honest, it probably ranks as one of the best days of my life,” she says. “It was as if there was something just lifted from me – it’s melodramatic to say a weight off my shoulders, but it was something I knew that I needed to achieve. I actually remember, when I first met Jonathan, saying to him, ‘I might not be Jewish, but I’m going to die Jewish.’”
Pauline’s husband and children fully accept her decision. Although they have moved away from the area, she still makes it now and again to shul – where she was in charge of the kiddush rota for nine years. She has a mezuzah on her door and is a regular subscriber to the JC. “I light candles at home and try and make challah, but it usually turns out like rock cake,” she laughs.
Others only find out about their heritage when they start exploring their family history, often through DNA tests.
Mark Gallon, 57, says his life has been greatly “enriched” since testing his DNA through Ancestry seven years ago. Until then, he had never met anyone Jewish. But everything changed when his daughter began exploring their family history, soon after losing her mother.
The biggest shock was that his paternal grandfather was someone called Thomas Gallon, a man he had never heard of – and whose surname he later adopted. Meanwhile, the test result revealed he had Ashkenazi heritage, hailing from Lithuania. Gallon is not sure whether his father ever knew of this Jewish connection: “He might have taken this secret to the grave,” he says.
Gallon, who lives in Stockton-on-Tees and works in social housing, has since learnt that his paternal great-grandfather was called Louis Levi, and that he was born in 1878 and died in South Shields in 1938. Through DNA, father and daughter have connected with many Jewish cousins who have helped them learn more about their Jewish ancestors – including an 18th-century talmudic scholar called Rabbi Jacob Emden. “I’ve got this massive family out there that I never knew I had,” says Gallon.
Mark Gallon, whose DNA test revealed his Ashkenazi heritage, with his wife.[Missing Credit]
What Gallon discovered has impacted him so much that he has started to wear a Star of David. “I’m quite religious,” he says, adding that he is a church-goer. “But the past has been making me look at my religion again. Should I be Jewish or stay Christian? I’m on a journey and that’s something I’m still coming to terms with. With everything that’s going on now, I don’t want to hide that I’ve got Jewish blood and Jewish ancestry.”
This dual identity is something Jennie Milne, who lives near Inverallochy in north-east Scotland, can definitely relate to. It was during the last year of her mother’s life that she uncovered her Jewish heritage. Her mother, with whom she had a difficult relationship, had grown up with no family after she was left at a babies’ home in Devon in 1943. It was only when one of Milne’s nine children was studying the Second World War at school that Milne began exploring her family tree.
“I’ve been trying to piece my family together,” she says. “The reason I began to search in the first place is I had a very difficult relationship with my mum.” What she uncovered led her on an incredible journey of discovery, which transformed her perception of her mother – and indeed her entire life.
Her maternal grandfather had been a senior member of the Polish government in exile, while her grandmother was a Jewish woman serving in the Polish army under British command. Her brother had been murdered by the Nazis, while her 13-year-old nephew was so badly beaten by Hitler’s forces that he almost died. “She was obviously traumatised,” says Milne. “Her community back in Poland had been massacred right before Mum was born. So when she fell pregnant with my mother, she obviously didn’t know what to do.” What Milne found led her to believe that her grandmother had given up her mother as a baby in order to keep her safe – and not because she did not want her.
Jennie Milne.[Missing Credit]
She recalled a Jewish genealogist who helped her with the research telling her: “You do realise this means you’re Jewish? Your grandmother was fully Jewish. Your mother was fully Jewish, your children are fully Jewish.”
Milne, who became a Christian at 17, is philosophical about her identity. “I told my brother, who is a pastor, “Peter, we’re Jewish.” And he replied, “Well, you can’t get more rooted than Abraham.”
The revelation, she says, “gave me this sense of belonging”. She had never been around Jewish people but the discovery led her to take a deeper interest and even visit a synagogue in Aberdeen, the closest one to where she lives. “I remember going in and feeling like I wasn’t alone,” she says. “Everybody understood trauma, even if it was generational trauma. It sounds strange but that, to me, was real connection.”
Milne has travelled to Israel numerous times and has even met with the families of some of those kidnapped by Hamas on October 7, for whom she has campaigned. “Discovering I was Jewish actually strengthened my faith in a sense, because Christianity’s roots are fully in Judaism,” she says. “I’ve found that I identify with the Jewish people much more strongly, particularly in the light of everything that’s going on in the world,” she says. “When you look at everything the Jewish people have had to deal with and come back from – I think I have some of that resilience myself. Christianity is still my faith but I really identify with my heritage.”
Milne is always open about her faith, she says, “because I don’t want to pretend I’m something that I’m not. But I would also definitely say now, ‘Yes, I’m Jewish and I stand with the Jewish people.’
“It’s a privilege for me.”
