Suddenly Jewish

April 3, 2000
Stimulated by Madeline Albright's well-publicized 1997 discovery that her parents were Jewish, Kessel, a freelance writer, decided to explore the question of "hidden roots." She placed an inquiry in the New York Times Book Review and on the Internet "seeking people raised as non-Jews who discovered they are of Jewish descent." She received 178 responses. This book is based on her interviews by mail, by telephone or in person with 166 individuals. Kessel classifies her respondents into four groups: crypto-Jews ("descendants of the Jewish victims of the Spanish Inquisition"), "hidden children" (those placed with non-Jewish families to save them from the Nazis), children of Holocaust survivors and adoptees. Her book consists of statements from representatives of each group, accompanied by psychologically oriented analyses. The interviewees' wide range of reactions to the belated discovery of their Jewish ancestry make for fascinating and occasionally humorous reading. An Oxford student, on learning that he was Jewish, ran to a synagogue and shouted, "I think I'm a Jew and I don't know what to do about it!" He is now a New York rabbi. Some interviewees were "shocked or moved or thrilled or distressed"; some were "blas " while others were "dumbstruck." According to Kessel, they are all bound together by a basic human need for determining their identity.

May 15, 2000
Kessel, the director of the administration of the Board of Jewish Education of Greater New York, interviewed over 160 people who were raised as non-Jews and later learned that they were of Jewish descent. These included Crypto-Jews (descendents of the 15th-century Jews of Spain and Portugal who were forced to convert to Catholicism or be killed), "hidden children" (primarily children of the Holocaust who had been placed in non-Jewish foster homes during World War II), children of Holocaust survivors whose survivor-parents understandably denied their own Jewish heritage, and Jews adopted by non-Jewish parents. While their reactions ranged from shock to disinterest to an enthusiastic embrace of Jewish culture and religion, each gained a fuller sense of self from the discovery. Readers of the diverse first-person narrative accounts in this unique volume will not only come to a deeper understanding of a little-recognized situation that is more common than we may have thought but will themselves breathe a sigh of recognition and relief. A valuable addition to public and academic library collections.--Marcia Welsh, Guilford Free Lib., CT

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 1, 2000
Kessel interviewed 166 people who were raised as non-Jews and later discovered that they were of Jewish descent. She placed an author's query in the "New York Times Book Review" and postings on the Internet. The largest number of responses came from descendants of the two million Jews who immigrated to the U.S. between 1881 and 1920. Although most of these immigrants maintained, at least for a generation, their religious and cultural ties to Judaism, their children were often more interested in assimilating into American society than in maintaining their Jewishness. The author divides the book into four chapters: crypto-Jews (descendants of the Jewish victims of the Spanish Inquisition); hidden children of the Holocaust; children of Holocaust survivors; and adoptees. Some of Kessel's subjects said that the news only confirmed a long-held suspicion; others were taken by surprise to discover the truth. This book, the latest in Brandeis University's erudite American Jewish History, Culture, and Life series, is candid and reflective--and sometimes even humorous. ((Reviewed May 1, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)