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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]PP with the allegedly Hungarian Jewish great-grandmother again.  I really think the DNA angle is the best to pursue. Figure out what % of your DNA would be provided by your target.  If it's really small, and Jewish ancestry doesn't show up in another site's test, see if you can get an older direct-line relative to test since it doesn't seem to show up.  My spouse has a small percentage that we believe could only come from a great-great grandfather.  I think by reading up you can learn whether or not you should be finding DNA evidence.

Regarding connecting with a heritage, sometimes it's valuable to consider that people moved to America to get away from their impoverished village roots, the religious strictures of their communities, etc.  Even if you can learn about aspects of your cultural heritage, without documentation, you'll have no idea how they felt about it or which practices they followed.  All we have left in our family is an alleged fondness for matzohs.

Good luck with your search and hope you will embrace whatever the true story turns out to be.  I have found quite a bit about a previously unknown great-grandparent through genealogical research over the past few years.

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Well not to put to fine a point on it, but Jewish immigrants fled to the US to escspe antisemitism, and then assimilated to avoid it in the US. So it’s not that they wanted to leave the old world behind, but that they were unsafe as Jews. In the days when there were still college admissions restrictions and restrictive housing covenants against Jews, many chose to leave the identity behind. [/quote]

PP above again. I definitely don't want to downplay anti-Semitism as a factor.  But OP was also reflecting above on a Catholic to Protestant transfer. So, my remarks were more directed to the title of the post: "Lacking Religion = Missing Jew".  I mentioned the circa 1900s freethought movement because I do think we should allow for the possibility that immigrants didn't care about preserving their Old World religious identity/were not believers as well as the possibility that they wanted to hide/erase their heritage to avoid persecution.  That certainly seems true of the Czech Freethinker community in Chicago.

I have been researching non-Jewish Slovak
genealogy for a few years, and it's quite common to read testimonies from Boomer (first through third gen) Americans explaining that their Slovak immigrant relatives didn't value or explain their Old Country roots because they had escaped grinding rural poverty and weren't interested in dwelling on it.  Remember, back then, it was more taboo to talk about negative experiences, personal trauma, etc.

So that's the spirit behind my comments above.  From what little I know (and I intend to do more digging), that branch of my family didn't care at all about giving up their Jewish heritage.

By the way, I recommend Lara's Jewnealogy Blog for anyone who wants inspiration on how to research Old World Jewish records and to learn to analyze Ashkenazi DNA issues.  Lara's writeups are really interesting and can give ideas on how to pursue one's own research by example.[/quote]

Thanks for the additional thoughts. Yes, I agree with you - it is anachronistic for us to believe that generations past were deeply attached to their old-world roots. [/quote]

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