“I have something to tell you, and I want you to hear it from me while I’m alive.”

I had no idea what my mother was going to say.

“You are Jewish.”

I knew that her mother’s parents, Noemi David and Henri Simon, had been born in France. Now she told me that on one of their documents she had seen the word “Israelite.”

“What about your father?”

“Your grandfather’s name was originally Bernstein. He changed it to Burns when he came to this country.”

“I thought Theodore was born in New York.”

“No, he came to New York as a boy. He was probably born in Russia.”

And his siblings? Apparently Theodore, having shortened his name to Burns, always introduced his brother, David Brandon Bernstein, as his lawyer. Uncle Dave=s children took Brandon as their family name.

At the next opportunity, I attended a Jewish genealogical workshop at the Jewish Community Library in San Francisco where Judy Baston offered helpful suggestions and then assigned Steve Harris to work with me individually. After a fruitless search in myriad databases, I began to think perhaps my mother was mistaken. We found no documentation to support her revelation. I left the library confused and discouraged.

The next day I received an e-mail from Steve Harris. He had found, as he put it, “the smoking gun.” On my grandfather=s World War I draft application, in his own hand, he had written Theodore Burns and in parentheses “Bernstein.” He listed himself as having been born on July 7, 1893, in Pereyaslav, Poltava, Russia. Steve explained that the city is now in the Ukraine and, as I later learned, the birthplace of the important Jewish writer Sholom Alecheim. At Steve=s suggestion, I sent for Theodore=s Social Security application.

I was hooked. I bought and devoured Arthur Kurzweil=s From Generation to Generation in which he describes “Jewish Genealogy as a spiritual pilgrimage.” I obsessively searched <ancestry.com> and <stevemorse.org>. I visited my mother again to interview her and tape record some of her recollections. I discovered that my grandmother=s mother=s parents were Samuel David, born in Belfort, and Caroline Levy of Colmar. Her brothers were Andre, Emile and Georges. My grandmother=s father=s parents were Auguste Simon and Celeste Wert.

My mother started doling out cousins, chiefly those related to her Uncle Dave. David Brandon Bernstein was a prestigious lawyer in Los Angeles, who had served as a military judge for the War Crime Tribunal in Frankfurt and Kassel from 1945 to 1948. When I spoke to my newfound relatives, they all indicated that they were aware of my mother and our family. They were surprised that I had no knowledge of their existence. Each member of the family encouraged my research, referred me to someone else and asked me to apprise them of my findings. One relative sent a copy of a photograph of the four Bernstein siblings taken sometime in the 1910s. She also included a rudimentary family tree compiled by her late husband listing my grandfather=s parents, not as John and Jenny, but Jacob and Zelda.

Each piece of garnered new information elicited many more questions. I voraciously read books about Judaism, anti-Semitism, European history, passing, assimilation, conversion and genealogy. I joined the San Francisco Bay Area Jewish Genealogical Society and monitored <jewishgen.com>. I watched doc­u­mentaries about the Holocaust. Feature films like Fiddler on the Roof took on new meaning. These were my grandparents’ people. I found the ship manifest listing my great-grandmother=s arrival with her children in 1906.

When I told my friends of my new heritage, everyone was as thrilled as I was. Finally, my mysterious weeping at klezmer concerts, lighting the menorah each December, visiting Holocaust memorials and Jewish museums, which I had described in my recently published essay, “At the Museum of Jewish Heritage,” made sense.

Assured that I did not need to convert, I nevertheless wanted to celebrate my newfound identity. I decided to throw myself a simcha (happy event). On my 55th birthday, more than 45 of my dearest friends gathered in the backyard to witness a ceremony that included elements from a bar mitzvah, a wedding and a bris (ritual circumcision), punctuated with an accordionist=s klezmer songs. Wearing a kippa (head covering) and a tallit (prayer shawl), I told my story and took my great-grandfather=s name. A friend designed, baked and decorated a huge chocolate cake, which she proceeded to carefully circumcise. I went back to visit my mother, taping her recollections and bringing home a suitcase filled with photographs, documents and correspondence that had belonged to her parents. I am now writing a family memoir entitled My Grandmother=s Suitcase.

Jim Van Buskirk’s essays have been featured in various books, newspapers, magazines, radio broadcasts, and websites. Jim coauthored (with Susan Stryker) Gay by the Bay: A History of Queer Culture in the San Francisco Bay Area (Chronicle Books, 1996), and (with Will Shank) Celluloid San Francisco: The Film Lover=s Guide to Bay Area Movie Location (Chicago Review Press, 2006). He co-edited the nonfiction anthologies Identity Envy: Wanting to Be Who We’re Not (Harrington Park Press, 2007; co-editor Jim Tushinski) and Love, Castro Street: Reflections of San Francisco (Alyson Publications, 2007; with Katherine V. Forrest). Jim is currently book group coordinator at the Jewish Community Library.

Avotaynu 2007; 23(4):29-30
DOI: 10.17228/AVOT20070429
Copyright © 2008 Avotaynu, Inc.