…and that his mother kept this fact from him all these years?
Being from a family with southern roots (but widely dispersed at this point) it seems that knowing who your ancestors were is pretty important, and if your getting into upper crust territory it’s sometimes a near obsession. I just can’t believe him when he say he leaned this through a newspaper article re his Jewish roots on his mother’s side of the family.
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How indeed, especially for a bunch of nominal bluebloods?
Having read James McBride’s The Color of Water some years ago and who knows how many other biographies with odd secrets kept, I can well believe that families can keep anything secret.
Well, I’m from Spain, where “everybody has a king, a whore and a jew among his ancestors”, but I don’t know in which particular branch of the family tree any of them is.
Having met several americans who didn’t know their mothers maiden names :smack: or where their grandparents were born, or what their lastname was spelled like back in the home country… Sen. Allen’s story is not unbelievable.
Initial outrage may have been just surprise and also a good healthy dose of “either someone is kidding me or I oughta kill my mother for not telling me - oh wait that’s illegal, fugedaboutit”
My Great-Grandmother, who I knew, & who knew me, may or may not have been a Jew.
She was born in Poland, & emigrated to Chicago in the late 19th Century. During this era, many employers pressured Eastern European Immigrants to abandon their own faiths, especially Jews, in favor of their employers’ faith.
And oddly enough, my Mother’s side of the family (Polish/Norweigan) is Episcopalian (Church Of England). :dubious: Hmmm…
Certain remarks & family recipies suggest a possible Jewish ancestry, & my Mother admits that it is quite possible.
I love that. What with CSI et al, you have now introduced the new field of Culinary Forensics. Hats off to you.
No, his claims of not knowing his Jewish roots aren’t credible, but perfectly predictable given the bombastically proud, fatuous and imbecilic Allen. (He’s one of my least favorite senators, but is no doubt destined for the White House.)
Family is indeed important to affluent Southerners. Allen obviously knew at least the basics, but concealed it from the good old boy contingent that buys into his common-man persona and puts him in office.
Looking at its recent senators, Virginia seems to prefer dumb politicians.
With Allen, anything he says has to be closely scrutinized to separate the truth from the politics. The man doesn’t make a phone call to his family memebbers without first consulting PR flacks. So I’m taking the whole thing, which is all over the news here today, with a grain of salt. It wouldn’t surprise my that this is just another way for him to get his name in the papers, because this race is one heck of a lot closer than anyone thought it would be.
George Allen isn’t a southerner by birth or rearing. He grew up in California and Chicago; graduated high school in California. He never lived in the south until he transferred to UVA as a sophomore. However, this distinct lack of southernness hasn’t stopped him from having a particular affinity for the Confederate flag. :rolleyes:
This part is precious “really more of a lasso”
Wow, what’s going to happen if he ever finds out he’s part “macaca”?
Of course it’s credible. If his mother didn’t tell him, then she didn’t tell him.
I love it that people hear assume they know Allen’s family better than he does. Unless you are part of his immediate family, you have to assume he’s telling the truth. You certainly have no proof or evidence that he’s not.
If it could happen to Madeleine Albright, why not George Allen?
I don’t see why it wouldn’t be credible. The OP’er cites extensively from the article but leaves out Allen’s own response:
It seems to me that if Madeleine Albright could be raised with no idea her family used to be Jewish – and I don’t doubt for a minute her claim that she didn’t know – then this guy could be too.
I certainly think it’s credible! I know very little about my grandparents. I’m reasonably certain they weren’t Jews, but they could have been Muslim and it certainly would have been hidden from me.
Some families just don’t talk about these things.
I don’t really fault Allen for “not knowing he’s part Jewish” or whatever. There were folks in his grandparents’ generation who had damn good reason to go underground with their Jewishness, and if they stayed underground (even to their families), I can’t really blame them. George Allen is a disingenuous prick, whatever his ethnicity; this latest flap really isn’t needed to make or confirm that determination.
After doing geneology for almost ten years on my mother’s side of the family, we never knew that there was even a possibility that we had converted Jews in the background. Her maiden name is “Christ” for Pete’s sake. Last week in Wurtzburg we went to the LDS center there and in talking to the volunteer, found out that a particular notation on his marriage record indicated that he was probably a former Jew who changed his name to “Christ” to get rid of his obviously Jewish surname - and that “Christ” was a particularly popular choice for those Jews who did so.
As much as I don’t like Allen, I don’t find it incredible that he had Jewish ancestry and didn’t know about it.
IIRC, John Kerry didn’t find out until April 2004 that he had a Jewish grandfather.
I’m no fan of Allen, but I can’t say I’m surprised. He doesn’t seem like the kind of guy to be terribly contemplative or inquiring about his ancestors, having apparently embraced a Lost Cause, neo-Confederate mindset after leaving California and Illinois.
Madeleine Albright was surprised to learn that she had some Jewish ancestry, as noted above; wasn’t John Kerry, too?
Beat me to it!
Let me tell you about my Cousin Jay. He is my Mother’s first cousin and is 100% of Jewish ancestery. He believed that denying he heritage would help him to progress further in business. His last name is kind of German sounding and is not a typical Jewish last name. This may or may not be true but my family back then was of modest means and he is now a very, very wealthy man. He has an MD degree but didn’t practice medicine for very long. He owns a chain of medical centers in Florida. He is very active behind the scenes in politics and has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the GOP. He had lunch with Reagan in the White House.
I’ve never met him. He won’t acknowledge the Jewish side of the family at all with the exception of his sister, my Cousin Ellen. Jay’s wife knows about his background but his daughter doesn’t. Ellen is a kind hearted woman and wants a relationship with her brother so she has agreed the she, her husband and her kids will maintain the fiction that Ellen married a Jewish man and that’s why the family is Jewish.
A couple of years ago, Jay’s daughter who was in her late 20’s at the time, found out by chance that Jay is Jewish for the first time. She was mortified that she had been lied her whole life and Jay was furious that she found out. The secret could easily have been kept though and the next generation never would have known.