Tracking Down My Jewish Cousins

When I was growing up in Rock Island, almost every kid in my class had grandparents or great-grandparents from the Old Country,  so"where you came from" was a constant classroom assignment.

"Bring some food from your country"
"Tell about how your country celebrates Christmas."
"Teach us a few words in your country's language."

In junior high the assignments became more complex: the political structure, history, and economy of your country.

By high school, we were writing histories of immigration from our country, writing reports on its literary classics, and charting its GDP.

Except for me.  My grandparents and great-grandparents, both biological and adopted, were born here, and no one remembered any farther back (except for Grandma Davis's great-grandmother coming from Quebec.). 

 I was forced to "just pick a country" to do the assignments: Spain, Finland, the Philippines, Japan, and India spring to mind.

Being American-born-American, with no particular ethnic heritage, I've always been eager to embrace any hints of anything non-WASP-y in my family tree.  Like my Native American relatives, who turned out to be Aunt Nora's husband's family.

And...Jewish?

I have two odd memories that suggest a Jewish connection:

1. It's around 1968, when I'm seven years old, but before we move to Rock Island.  My parents decide to drive out to see "Otto."  I don't know if he's a friend or relative or what: these things are never explained to kids.

Otto was the old man in the story The Muscles of Morris Street, but I don't make the connection.

He is way old, way older than my grandparents, bald with wrinkles and glasses that make his eyes look big.  

His living room is heavy with thick furniture, a dark-oak piano, black-and-white pictures of dour-looking relatives, and a very nervous, trembling poodle.

One of his photos shows some guys in old-timey swim uniforms.  Otto catches me looking at it.

"That's my son, back when he was not much bigger than you," he says.  "Do you like to swim?"

"No.  I like to watch tv."

"I don't have a television, but I can give you some paper to draw on."  He goes to his desk and pulls out a black-bound day calendar for the year 1963. Blank, never used. It starts in September, not January, and has dates for "Yom Kippur," "Rosh Hashanah," "Purim," "Pesach."  I don't know what any of those words mean at the time, but later I figure out that they're Jewish holidays.  So Otto is Jewish.

2. It's couple of years later,  maybe 1971, when I'm 10 years old. Grandma Davis has taken us to Fort Wayne, the big city about 30 miles from her farm.  In the midst of doing fun grandma-and-kids things, she drives us to a ritzy neighborhood far from downtown, and says "I have to stop at this house for a minute.  You can come in, but don't make fun because they're Jewish."

I'm offended.  Does she think I'm a hick?  There are lots of Jewish kids in our neighborhood in Rock Island.

We climb up a thick, heavy porch with granite pillars, and knock on the door.  A middle-aged man with wavy hair and a little paunch answers.

The only other thing I remember are two teenagers, a girl and a boy, sitting at the kitchen table, watching tv -- the first portable black and white tv set I had ever seen!

The boy doesn't have his shirt off, sorry.  But he is still cute, with dark crewcut hair and very pale skin.  And he looks very, very grown up.

"Have you been to see Otto?" Grandma Davis asks the boy.

He looks up sheepishly.  "We're.. .um... planning to go later today."  No doubt he wasn't.

"You should visit him," she insists.

So the cute boy with a tv in his kitchen was friends or relatives with the elderly Otto, who had no tv at all.  Weird!

When Grandma Davis died, I was bequeathed her Bible, with family records in it, and everything became clear:

Otto (1890-1971) married Blanche, Grandpa Davis' sister, in 1923.   Apparently he was never accepted by the family because he was 15 years older than Blanche, because this was his second marriage (the first ended in divorce), because he was Jewish, .,and because their son Wilbur was born five month after the wedding.

Scandal upon scandal in 1923!

Maybe Grandma Davis also rejected Otto and Blanche  -- or maybe she saw them during the 350 days a year that we weren't in town.  Blanche had already died by the time of Memory #1.  Memory #2 must have been an errand that brought us to see  Otto's son Wilbur.  

Wilbur was married in 1945, apparently just after he served in World War II, and had two Baby Boomer children, David (born 1948) and Kama (1950). The cute boy must have been David. Which makes him my...fourth cousin once removed?

What's important is: I have a Jewish connection.  Rather a distant connection, but I'll take it.  L'chaim!

And maybe I have even more contemporary Jewish relatives.

Grandma's Bible record ends there, but internet searches have yielded more.

David became some kind of business person in Chicago. He has one son, Jared David, who has never married.

According to Facebook, Jared lives in Louisville, Kentucky, where he's into crossfit.

Maybe gay?

He  "liked" St. Andrew's Episcopal Church.  The Episcopalians are pro-gay.










Wilbur's daughter Kama married Roger S___.  They have a daughter, Nikki, who is married to someone named Trusty in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Nikki has a son named Mason (my fifth cousin, once removed, by adoption).  On the swim team at St. Xavier High School.

St. Xavier High School?  

It seems that over the generations, my Jewish relatives assimilated and lost their Jewishness.

I'm still taking it as evidence of Jewish ancestry.

Sorry, I forgot to put in nude photos, but here's a nice Jewish boy with his penis out to tide you over.