Looking back, perhaps we should have known. My mum’s hairdresser certainly did: “But of course you’re Jewish,” he shouted, when she told him she’d been researching her background, “You look like Barbra Streisand!” Suddenly, looking at her again, her Ashkenazi features were undeniable.
I always knew my mum was adopted. It was part of our family narrative. Her adoptive parents were kind and loving, and wonderful grandparents to me. But it was obvious my mum was very different to them. They were Salvation Army members living in the suburbs of Swindon. My mum had something more exotic about her. Dark-skinned, dark-haired and flamboyant, she was a total contrast to their English Christian conventionality. From an early age she rebelled against their lifestyle, wanting to escape to something more exciting.
But it still came as a shock, one day in my twenties, to find out that Mum had confirmed that her biological parents were both Jewish, by birth and by religion. She was born before her mother married a different Jewish man. A letter from her aunt — who looked after my mum from birth until adoption at three months — says of the father, “He was a nice Jewish boy of pure blood, from a group of musicians”. She writes that the mother was clever, but it’s also clear she had the baby and ran. The “nice Jewish boy” never knew he was a father.
For me, discovering Mum’s story was a lightbulb moment. I suddenly understood where I was from and it made innate sense. I was delighted. I’d often been asked if I was Spanish or European, and had no answer. I envied my Jewish school friends’ strong cultural bond. I also felt outside what I saw as the dullness of being English. Here was my identity — I was Jewish.
A DNA test confirmed that Mum is 99 per cent European Jewish of Ashkenazi descent. She set to work finding living relatives, with the help of a private investigator. But when she phoned her biological half-brother, he was rude and dismissive, calling her a liar. She sent copies of letters from his (and her) aunt to prove it, plus her birth certificate and a photo, but never heard back. Understandably, she didn’t get in touch again. She got more sympathy from a male cousin who knew her mother. Both the aunt and the mother were dead by this point.
In fact, unknown to me, Mum had an inkling about being Jewish before researching her heritage. Her parents must have mentioned it at some point. So, some time earlier, she had phoned people who had her mother’s married surname (Fineberg) near Southall, where she was born. She remembers one woman reacting coldly and defensively, and wonders if this could have been her mother.
“I feel Jewish,” she said to me recently. We were looking at letters from the kind aunt to Mum’s adoptive parents, which are fascinating, sweet and grateful. Mum was born in 1939 (her name is Valerie, but her original birth certificate says Marian Shephard). The aunt talks about her many male relatives going into service as war heated up. These are relatives that Mum never knew.
My mum’s other identity is as a musician. A talented pianist, she later found out that her real mother requested that her new parents gave her piano lessons, which they dutifully did. She made music her career, studying it at university and becoming a secondary school music teacher, and performer. She says, “I used to fantasise that my real father might be Alfred Brendel, or some other brilliant Jewish classical musician.”
And for me, being given a Jewish identity in adulthood has had a lasting positive effect. I readily tell people I’m Jewish, and my three boys have Jewish names — Ruben, Joseph and Jake. We don’t practise religion — I never have, but I feel a strong cultural connection. I think of it as a little like discovering you’re Italian then feeling that your love of Tuscany, the passeggiata, fashion, pasta and shouty conversations are suddenly validated. I know being Jewish is more than a set of stereotypes about flamboyance and a slight exclusivity — Jews, like everyone else, are a mixed bunch of personality types. But cultural stereotypes do exist. The truth is that my mum is flamboyant, looks Jewish, feels a connection to the culture, and so do I. Is there any more needed than that sense of belonging?
With antisemitism rearing its ugly head in the UK, I’ve read more about Israel, Zionism and the extremist anti-Israel feeling. To me, it’s unequivocal that Israel has a right to exist and that Jews should feel their homeland is there. Being Jewish reinforces those thoughts. A UK friend of my mum’s went to fight in the Six-Day War, and I am impressed by his strength of feeling — of wanting to defend his homeland. Having been brought up as a lefty, I feel shocked by the current left-wing rhetoric of Palestine good/Israel bad. It’s a hard one to discuss in public; slogans rule, where in-depth discussions would be more helpful.
I haven’t been to Israel, but will go. Mum went and loved it and felt connected to the culture. But I think she is fearful of delving too deep. “What’s the point?” was her response, when I suggested she contact the cousin again. When a Jewish friend told me that my boys can go on a Birthright tour to Israel regardless of lack of religion, I was excited for them — that they might find their own cultural connection. But I also have a nagging sense that we aren’t quite Jewish enough for that. Like Mum, I veer away from full immersion. Maybe that’s the legacy of being adopted, or of finding out your link later in life — you don’t feel like you quite belong. Having said that, writing for the JC feels like an arrival! One step at a time.
My teenage sons have been born and bred in Scotland, and have the full force of Scottish identity to be proud of. Being Scottish means something important to them, in a similar way that being Jewish means something to me. They know they’re Jewish, and share that fact easily, but their core sensibility is Scottishness. Perhaps we’ll discuss what being Jewish means to them as they become adults, and maybe that will be my time for a deeper immersion. Right now, just being Jewish feels right, and that’s enough for me.
