23 and me

I've had some interest in genealogy going back a while. I knew that my father's parents came from Belchatow (at least that's how we spell it) in Central Poland, and that their town was under the government of Russia when they came to America, although previously it was under Prussia, Austria-Hungary, and even Napolean for a few years.

I attended a Jewish genealogy convention in Washington in 2003. I met some cousins I had never heard about. A woman I met there with ancestry in Belchatow found her and my greatgrandfather's burial sites next to each other in New York City. I found that my father's family had been traced back to the early eighteenth century, when they first took last names. I also learned that my grandparents were not the first set of cousins to marry in that family, explaining our good looks and intelligence, but also our tendency to have bad hearts and immune system problems like asthma and psoriasis.

On my mother's side, I couldn't find much. I knew that my granfather's family was well-known in Europe, that great-grandpa was not born in Kamenetz in Ukraine, where he came from to New York. It's possible that their family had the rare privilege in Czarist Russia to live in St.Petersburg before the czar's assassination in 1881. I haven't verified that. And my grandmother's mother, the only great-grandparent I knew, although from "Russia," her papers from Ellis Island say "Austria-Hungary."

At Osher Life-Long Learning, or OLLI, where both Joe and I taught last quarter, a geneticist from WVU taught a class about DNA testing at what one might find. I signed up for the class and sent a vial of spit and some money to "23 and me" to find out more.

Jews in Baltimore in the 1950s and '60s had a peculiar status. We were restricted to certain neighborhoods, both wealthy (suburban Stevenson) and poor (Lower Park Heights Avenue in Baltimore City). I  went to junior high with kids from parts of Stevenson, and joined B'nai B'rith Youth at that time, where many of the kids lived in Lower Park Heights. Both were great places to grow up.  We lived in a new neighborhood in the early fifties, one that had excluded Jews until the builder of our house decided to advertise in The Baltimore Jewish Times.

We were clearly not African-Americans, who could not buy new houses in the suburbs or go anyplace outside of their neighborhoods. Still, we were excluded from the private neighborhood swim club near us.

I did have a sense that we were not exactly white people. I thought Pat Boone and Tab Hunter were handsome enough in the movies, but it was not until suave and gorgeous George Chakiris in West Side Story showed up (Greek from Ohio, playing a Puerto Rican) that I saw someone I might grow up to look like, except for the tall with long legs and a full head of hair part. My friends in seventh grade. Michael, Lenny and Alan, were all dark like me.

In Los Angeles and Miami, the two places I lived longest as an adult, I fit in better. I spoke good Spanish and could pass for Cuban. They were a majority in the city. In Los Angeles, I could be Mexican, Filipino, Armenian, or more correctly, Russian Jewish. The neighborhood where I lived with Joe from 2006-2010 was a homeland-in-exile for Russian Jews, many of them elderly and almost all of them of Jewish background. I saw them as different, but they spotted me, and I learned a few words of Russian to engage.

23 and me gives you a wealth of data, much of it just incomprehensible numbers, and lists of possible cousins with whom you share DNA. The first two of these, my closet relatives in this system, are my first cousins' sons, one on my mother's side and one on my father's. After that there is a lot of "Anonymous" and people whose names I don't recognize. A few have contacted me, but I can't find a connection by name.

They also can tell you your likely eye and hair color, which I already know, and if you are a carrier for a certain disease or condition, which might be helpful if is one is planning to reproduce.

They can tell you what ethnic group you are from. In my case, I am 97% Ashkenazic, or Jewish from Germany, Austria, Poland or Russia. Not shocking.

The most interesting thing was the haplogroups, data they can get from your parents' chromosomes. These show the branch of the family tree of our whole species that one is on. My father's haplogroup is most likely from Southern Europe, the Near East and North Africa. These people are typically  Bedouins, Ashkenazic Jews and Algerians. My mother's group is from the Near East, North Africa and Western Eurasia. These people include  Saudi Arabs, Yemeni Jews, and Bedouins.

So maybe we do go back to Bible times in Israel. And maybe the Arabs are not different from some of us at all. Perhaps my affinity to people from Iran is more genetic than I think it is.

Race is still an issue. I am perhaps overly sensitive to how I am treated, even by restaurant servers and hotel managers. I've heard from African- and Asian-Americans and from Middle Eastern people that they are looked at differently and with distrust here. It's happened to me, and I think how fortunate I am to not be African-American, and to be able to speak like an Appalachian person (my native Baltimore is not far from here, linguistically). I can pass for white, straight and local if I want my experiences to be easier.

This has become a longer and more complex rant than I intended. What I've gotten from 23 and me is a better sense of where I am from in the deep past. I am still, of course, American by birth and by choice, and Jewish for the time that that has existed, but I get now why I look as I do, and I guess i find comfort in that.

If you are on 23 and me, look me up. Maybe you are one of the thousands of cousins they listed for me.

Coal, The Iran Deal, and The Republican Debate

Part One: Coal

There was an opinion piece yesterday, August 5, in The Gazette-Mail, Charleston's daily newspaper from Kevin Crutchfield, CEO of Alpha Natural Resources, a coal-mining company, crying about how the bankrupt company can't be sold to a company in Kentucky unless it stops paying pensions and providing health insurance to retirees. According to Chris Regan's blog (homeyesterday.com), in a post from August 3, Crutchfield received a two million dollar bonus this year, and six million total in 2011 and 2012.

Meanwhile, President Obama came out this week with new guidelines for carbon pollution to combat global warming, air pollution and the high incidence of asthma, particularly among young people who live near coal-burning facilities.

According to our local politicians, particularly our Republican Congressman David McKinley and our newly-elected Republican Senator Shelley Moore Capito, but also our Democratic Senator Joe Manchin III, Obama is the villain. The health of people in the United States, and particularly in West Virginia, comes second to the lining the pockets of coal company executives. Meanwhile the bankrupt companies want to back out of their contracts to provide for retirees, and want to sell out their union workforce to non-union companies. This year, they convinced our Republican-dominated legislature to ease safety regulations for the mines.

Educated people and anyone wanting a chance for a real life have been leaving West Virginia for decades. Whole neighborhoods in northwest Baltimore, near where I grew up, were inhabited by "hillbillies," as we called them in our ignorance when I was a teen. In the 2010 census, forty of our fifty-five counties had lost population over the previous ten years. And yet coal millionaires ask for tax cuts and buy Republican officeholders (and many Democrats) to make sure the health of the planet, and the well-being of workers and their communities are not considered. Everything is the fault of Obama and the EPA.

President Obama has offered to help retrain workers and bring new industry to the coalfields. He has been so demonized here that no one will listen. When we came here in 2012, there were signs everywhere that said "Stop Obama's War On Coal." I understand fear of change and economic insecurity. I wish someone could reach out to people who are pro-coal - and I see lots of "Friend of Coal" decals on cars- and explain to them how they are being used, in a way they might understand. Once in a while I see a sticker that says "Friend of Coal Miners," and I think that is something that needs to be emphasized.

Part Two: The Iran Deal

There has been a split in the Jewish community about the Iran deal. Again, Obama is blamed by many traditional Jewish organizations, and certainly by Prime Minister Netanyahu in Israel, of caving in to Iran and not stopping a deal. Of course, the deal is not just the United States and Iran, but includes Britain, France, Germany, the European Union, Russia and China. People opposed to the deal want the United States to take unilateral action, maybe even to go to war against the regime in Iran. President Obama warned that these are the same people who pushed for war in Iraq.

I get that Iran has a terrible government. But I also understand that the United States does not, at this time, have the power to effectively engage Iran in war, even if we wanted to. Our allies in Europe would not support us. It is time to acknowledge that we must work with other countries, our allies particularly, but even Iran. Killing off a bunch of people we think are different from us is an American tradition, going back to Colonial days, but I've known people from Iran- yes, mostly Jews who fled, but others, too- and I don't see them as different from us. As we approach the anniversary of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, I know that war should be absolutely off the table. Is everything 100% verifiable in this treaty? I don't know. But I have to trust that a consortium of nations came up with a workable deal.

Part Three: The Republican Debate

So the Republicans are debating tonight. We don't have a television, but if we did, I wouldn't watch Fox. Not one Republican of the Top Ten has had anything positive to say about the rights of LGBT people or is in favor of my marriage. That alone is reason enough to not watch them. As far as threatening to shut down the government for funding Planned Parenthood, they should be tried for treason.

I cleaned up my political act for my spouse, Rabbi Joe, when he was applying for pulpit positions in 2012. He doesn't take a public stand on political issues, although some wish he would. He and I don't agree about everything political. If you look at the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, you will find that my positions follow those of our religious movement. I'm less diplomatic in my verbiage.