Who cares?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Ok, so this story sounds a bit bizarre but.

10 years ago, prior to us meeting DH began a search into his family history. He found that he may have some Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors from Poland on Ancestry. He spoke with a rabbi in town who he began taking classes with and was urged to find some verifiable proof of his lineage. He came to a dead end, struggling with the dated records and polish translations and limited records available online. He has names and dates of very Jewish sounding ancestors (last name is something along the lines of Koen), but he hasn't been able to find the proof he is so desperately searching for.

That being said, none of his family is observant. His mother was estranged from her own grandmother who was the last person in his family believed to have been an observant Jew, and she had some degree of mental illness and there is a lot of dark family history there.

DH hung a Mezuzah. He wants to send our 8 month old son to a Jewish preschool when he is of the proper age. We have prayer shawls and yarmulkes and Judaica for the jewish holidays but DH has no idea how to go about it. He buys this stuff but it just kind of sits there, around the house. He is hesitant to reach out to a Rabbi again, knowing he would likely need some kind of proof in order to be accepted into the Jewish community. But, it all seems a bit much. DH didn't grow up with any observant religious family members and I think this is some kind of soul-searching for him. I'm trying to be supportive but short of hiring a genealogist who is well versed in eastern poland genealogy, he has hit a dead end. He is considering converting but we are on limited funds and he would have to pay for several Hebrew classes and introductory classes, taking up alot of our time and money.

What do I do? I'm trying to be supportive, but this is hard as i'm not religious myself. I'm not sure where all of this came from. This seems to be some kind of quest for DH to prove his ancestry.

Maternal lineage makes him Jewish.

Sounds like he just can’t prove the grandmother was Jewish.

My family has a similar wall with NA ancestry. DNA tests show we’re part NA on my mom’s side —matching oral history, but without a Dawes Roll documentation, officials don’t care.

Anonymous wrote:Ok, so this story sounds a bit bizarre but.

10 years ago, prior to us meeting DH began a search into his family history. He found that he may have some Ashkenazi Jewish ancestors from Poland on Ancestry. He spoke with a rabbi in town who he began taking classes with and was urged to find some verifiable proof of his lineage. He came to a dead end, struggling with the dated records and polish translations and limited records available online. He has names and dates of very Jewish sounding ancestors (last name is something along the lines of Koen), but he hasn't been able to find the proof he is so desperately searching for.

That being said, none of his family is observant. His mother was estranged from her own grandmother who was the last person in his family believed to have been an observant Jew, and she had some degree of mental illness and there is a lot of dark family history there.

DH hung a Mezuzah. He wants to send our 8 month old son to a Jewish preschool when he is of the proper age. We have prayer shawls and yarmulkes and Judaica for the jewish holidays but DH has no idea how to go about it. He buys this stuff but it just kind of sits there, around the house. He is hesitant to reach out to a Rabbi again, knowing he would likely need some kind of proof in order to be accepted into the Jewish community. But, it all seems a bit much. DH didn't grow up with any observant religious family members and I think this is some kind of soul-searching for him. I'm trying to be supportive but short of hiring a genealogist who is well versed in eastern poland genealogy, he has hit a dead end. He is considering converting but we are on limited funds and he would have to pay for several Hebrew classes and introductory classes, taking up alot of our time and money.

What do I do? I'm trying to be supportive, but this is hard as i'm not religious myself. I'm not sure where all of this came from. This seems to be some kind of quest for DH to prove his ancestry.

Maternal lineage makes him Jewish.

Anonymous wrote:Does he want to find more about his family history or be part time Jewish?
Being married to a non-Jew who is not interested in being religious might be a problem

FTFY

Many of us—me included—are married to non-Jews (most of us don’t use the terms goy or shiksa) and do not have a problem observing our religion and culture, interacting with our family history, and raising our children Jewish. That’s a separate conversation about marriage and what each partner brings to it.

Does he want to find more about his family history or be part time Jewish?
Being married to a gentile (shiksa) who is not interested in being religious would be a problem

Anonymous wrote:He has a family history lore that says the family converted due to discrimination- not being able to buy land. Why would that lore be inaccurate? I think you should be more sympathetic about this.

If the family history is 1910 till after WW2 in Poland, you really have no clue what happen. It was a very tough time to be Polish. The whole social structure was destroyed. People struggle to live and reinvented themselves.

He has a family history lore that says the family converted due to discrimination- not being able to buy land. Why would that lore be inaccurate? I think you should be more sympathetic about this.

Very few Jews have verifiable proof of their background. That having been said, your husband’s background and his earnest desire to be part of the community are two different things. If your husband wants to convert, your financial status should not be an obstacle. You two need to start going regularly to a Reform or Reconstructionist Congregation.

Jewish.gen has a wealth of polish records.

I would not do a dna test, that is very controversial and does not prove anything
What is available online is only what is in American records. Sounds like you need information on records in Poland but are not sure how to research that further

Anonymous wrote:What about the local Polish community?
Perhaps someone there can help him find more info
He most likely has more in common with them

Jews who lived in Poland would be unlikely to have much in common with their mostly Catholic Polish neighbors.

The best way for him to find information if he wants to find out if has Jewish roots is to do genealogy. He can look up a paper trail by starting with the information that he knows such as his grandparents' names. He can search for the Census records from 1900 - 1940 for free on familysearch.org or for a fee on ancestry.com. The Census from 1930 and earlier asks where the person came from and where (country) their parents came from and what native language they spoke. For Jews, it would likely say Yiddish, sometimes Hebrew. It will also give what year the person immigrated. From there you can search for a ship manifest for the ancestor which will sometimes list the town the person is from. And again would identify the person as Jewish usually by calling them a Hebrew rather than Polish. You might also find naturalization records which can give a wealth of information about from where the person came and there are other records, too. These would at least give him an idea if his ancestors are indeed Jewish. Of course, they could have been hiding it and lying on documents, so if it doesn't say Yiddish/Hebrew anywhere, that isn't proof.

Another option is to find death records for his ancestors. If they weren't hiding their Jewishness, you would generally find them buried in a Jewish cemetery and their gravestone would often be at least partially in Hebrew. There are also some records from Eastern Europe to be found. Depending on where his ancestors are from, some towns have more released records than others. They are still being released.

At the same time he is tracing the paper trail for his ancestors, he can do a DNA test with one of the big companies. After a few weeks, it will show if he has Ashkenazi Jewish DNA (they were an endogamous population - doesn't show if they were practicing Jews, obviously). It may also show up as Iberian which could indicate Sephardic Judaism (those from Portugal or Spain). The DNA will give him clues whether he has the DNA, but only the paper trail will confirm which line it comes from.

And while some people including OP might find it "weird" that her husband has this feeling of being Jewish, I have found that many people for some reason have feelings or clues that they are Jewish (or perhaps something else) and want to know more. Some people just have a strong desire to find out who they are and here they came from and those people generally pursue genealogy.

I highly recommend the book Turbulent Souls by Stephen Dubner (of Freakonomics fame). It is a wonderful memoir of Stephen's life growing up in a large, religious Roman Catholic
family but him feeling like there were secrets/clues in his family that he had a Jewish background. He investigates and questions his mom and other relatives and comes to find out that both of his parents were born Jewish but individually converted to Catholicism. Stephen somehow felt a deep connection to the Jewish faith and sought out how to become a Jew again. It is a great story and something it sounds like the OP's husband can identify with.

Of course, if OP's doesn't find any Jewish roots, he is, of course, still welcome to explore the Jewish faith which could lead to conversion if he's interested.

Best of luck!

He has the family history of conversion. That is probably accurate.

What about the local Polish community?
Perhaps someone there can help him find more info
He most likely has more in common with them

Conservative shuls require that members be Jewish but they would welcome him to services etc. and help him find his way.

Anonymous wrote:Hope he's already circumcised.

LMAO. Okay, that was funny. Didn’t see that coming.