Hidden Blood

A constant source of wonder and amusement, and no small amount of consternation, is the number of times I'm taken for Jewish even without being asked.  Often I'm told "I thought you were Jewish."  Or "I just assumed you were Jewish."

Their minds get set on this and it becomes a reality for them--no need to verify or confirm.

As a result of this phenomenon I've been the victim of anti-Semitism.  Once in college a friend reported that another student referred to me as a "jewboy".  How many times it's happened out of earshot, or affected my pathway in life, who can say.

The other night in a cafe, commenting on how differently northerners view male-female relationships than do southerners in this country, a college kid from New Jersey, who was born in Poland, took umbrage. To which I said "especially if they're from New Jersey, and especially if they're speaking Polish."

Depending on the audience, this could be handled humorously.  Instead, this kid came back instantly, and quite vehemently, with:  "And I suppose it's better when they're speaking Hebrew!"

What do you do with that? I did provoke him, in a way, but his response was based on a fallacy.  I was raised Catholic.

I've also visited Auschwitz in Poland, and know quite well their record on that score.  Most of the Jews exterminated during the war were done so on their soil, or so I've been told. When I was there in 1990, only 5,000 Jews continued to live in Poland.

So, do I respond out of righteousness for these atrocities against humanity? Do I protest proclaiming my actual religious allegiances? This seems a minor point against the former.

A complication does arise with my ethnicity.  On this my Polish friend may not have missed the mark by all that much.

The part of my ethnicity I believe I can vouch for is the one quarter Irish plus the one quarter Italian, both Catholic. The part that is somewhat questionable is officially one quarter French (from my father's side) and one quarter Lithuanian (from my mother's).

Actually, as I've been able to reconstruct it by various means, and through family denial and evasion, my paternal grandfather was a quarter Jewish ethnically and my maternal grandfather was a half.  So I consider myself to be three sixteenths Jewish ethnically.

Curiously, but perhaps predictably, the hidden blood on one side of the family found the hidden blood on the other.

I'm certainly not a practicing Jew, and have no real intention to convert. The whole concept of being "racially Jewish" is controversial in the Jewish community. And so, officially at least, I do not qualify as a Jew.

This doesn't change the way people see me, though, and short of wearing a priest's robe I see very little I can do about that.