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I am sure there are many other questions that have similarities to mine. I apologize ahead of time if this irritates anyone.

Growing up I always felt a strange kinship with the jewish children in our neighborhood, and as I got older I was consistently fascinated by the culture.

I was raised Catholic, although I am still recovering. ;) My family would drive three and a half hours every friday night to eat fish with my grandparents as "good Catholics" might do. However, other than serve the meal and wait on my grandfather, my grandmother would always be in the kitchen singing strange songs under her breath that were polish, and then not polish, and then polish again. And she would bake beautiful loaves of bread, sometimes for hours. My grandmother married my grandfather in Germany. He was in the US army in Germany after the war, and they moved to America. But she often separated herself from us during holiday events (but not birthdays) and she did these strange things that would irritate my grandfather and make no sense to us. Her maiden name was Pryzbyla.

I asked my mother and she said her mother never spoke to her of really anything religious, but sometimes spiritual. She died when I was 16 (20 years ago), and none of this dawned on me in time to ask my grandfather, who passed a year later. I am convinced she was Jewish, and I don't know exactly what is needed to serve as proof. I also am unsure if that means I'm Jewish, as my grandmother married my grandfather in a Catholic wedding. My mother says my grandfather never would have even thought to have anything different and it was probably never spoken about. She has suspicions that my grandfather knew something, but thinks if this was what that "something" was, that again, they never would have spoken of it. It breaks my heart honestly.

Any guidance?

Jennifer Rockhill
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  • While it seems likely that your mother's mother was Jewish, making you Jewish, if you have no proof that will be hard to assert. You best bet would be contacting a bes din (Jewish court) and asking them for guidance. If you tell me what city you live in I can find the local (or nearest) bes din. – Kovy Jacob Apr 29 '22 at 23:50
  • And to clarify Judaism is matrilineal - as long as your mother is Jewish you are, no matter what your father is. So good shabbos - its shabbos tonight (the Jewish sabbath). – Kovy Jacob Apr 29 '22 at 23:53

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Theoretically if your mother's mother was Jewish, so are you. But all the stories you have so far are unfortunately not solid enough to be considered proof -- as odd as they may be. (For all we know, for example, your grandmother may have been born to a Jewish father and non-Jewish mother -- she'd be raised doing a lot of Jewish stuff, but halacha would not regard her as Jewish.) Rabbi Zylberman from the Beth Din of America has a recorded lecture about using stuff like grave markers or census documents from New York City's Lower East Side in the 1920s. If your grandmother was Polish-born, you'd have to really dig back in Poland -- a whole lot of that stuff's been lost to the war, but you could hunt.

There's nothing wrong with being a Jew-friendly Noahide, by the way.

You say you're fascinated by the culture -- that's great, but are you prepared to accept the theology too?

If you really want to be Jewish and accepted as such, then seek out a competent rabbi and explain your situation, and he'll outline a conversion curriculum for you. (Have a look at JudaismConversion.org) Trust me, you won't be the first person they've seen who's had some maybe-Jews in the family tree.

Good luck wherever this takes you!

Shalom
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