The Surprise

  The Surprise

About five years ago now, I asked to look at our daughter Aviva’s “23 & Me” results.  Aviva and her husband Mathew had used 23 & Me for genetic flagging three years earlier when she was pregnant with our grandson Sol.  They were able to give the coding results of their DNA tests to their physician at UCSF to spot any potential genetic birth defects.  Aviva nor Mathew never really looked at the results for what many people go to 23& Me for, ancestry results. 

As I recall, Sol was taking a nap and Aviva was going out to run an errand.  I’m not sure why I asked to see her DNA results, but I did.  Perhaps I had been hearing some news buzz about 23& Me or something.  The first thing I noticed in the overview was that Aviva was 50% Jewish.   If I were 50% Jewish (my mom was Jewish and my dad was not), and if Aviva’s mother Tamar was 100% Jewish (Tamar having been born in Israel), then Aviva should be 75% Jewish, not 50%, I almost immediately concluded. 

Next, I perused the names of people to whom Aviva was related to.  In addition to the family name of “Palmer” and “Solomon”, I knew of the names Titsworth, Beckstead, Bennett, Street, and Pippenger.  There was no one by any of these names to be found, not one even fifth cousin to be found. 

I ruminated on the information for the next year.  Perhaps Aviva’s mother Hannah, a Pole, who came to Palestine before the Second World War was not Jewish.  Maybe only her father, a Rabbi, was.  Or maybe my mother, fluent in Yiddish and from Romania was not.  That seemed impossible as her nationality on official papers listed her as “Jewish”, a practice even in the US before the 1950s.  I seemed transfixed, not by the fact that no names matched, but by the fact that Aviva was only 50% Jewish.

It took some time to start thinking my mother was not my biological mother.  I focused on some arguments my parents were having in the front seat of the car when I was a young teen.  Somewhere in the conversation, my mom said something that made me think my dad may have had an affair.  My dad told my mom “Don’t go there” or something to that effect.  I’m not clear on the details and perhaps this argument never really happened but I’m thinking it did.  That would be the best explanation for Aviva not being 75% Jewish.  At least that seemed more logical than Tamar’s mother being Israeli, Hebrew-speaking non-Jew. 

It's interesting to me now, that during this year time between looking at Aviva’s test results and doing the test myself, I never focused on the relative names aspect of not having any matches, but rather totally on the Jewish angle and my conclusion that my mom was not my mom.  At one point I briefly thought that perhaps I was not the father. But I discounted that one quickly as Aviva looks so much like me that such did not seem possible. 

I waited a year before I took the test.  I took the test at the same time as Susan, and they were dropped off at the mailbox together.   Several weeks later, Susan received an email that her results were in.  My results did not arrive.  I kept waiting and wondering and then one day I received an email from someone unknown from Texas saying we were relatives.  I went into 23 & Me and found that my results at coming in.   The email informing me that my results were in did not come until the next day, but I’ve learned that people who work on family trees instantly react when new people show up, even before the formal notification process is complete.

The result that I immediately saw before me; I was not even 1% Jewish.  My mom was not my mom or my mom was not Jewish as I had thought.  That argument my parents had in the car 60 or so years previously again came into focus.  Yes, I concluded, I was the product of an affair.    To be continued