good morning welcome to maze a church. i am so honored to be a host of this morning. the san francisco bay area is characterized in part by being a place that encourages and urges self-discovery. would like to invite you into a conversation with monty hall and jim who along with self- discovery discovered that you are jewish. welcome.

>> thank you for inviting us. just tell us how did you discover that you are jewish. >> well, when i was 30 i had grown up as a wasp and gone to an episcopal church. my parents are long dead. my sister was a generation older. she had taken the side and she said, did you have any idea that our family was jewish. and i was absolutely gob smacked. i had had no idea. i thought there was a secret but i thought that the family was mexican. because my mother was dark and she spoke spanish. but finding out that i was age you was so startling. >> i was 54 and i have been estranged from my mother and i reconnected with her and she had said something very important to tell you i do want

you to find out after i'm dead. and she said repeatedly you are jewish. and i finally said mom, i'm jewish that's mean you that your jewish. >> know. i've never had any affinity or affiliation with judaism. i'm not going to start now. and, like she said you know it was a revelation and in some ways i had felt like i had been waiting my whole life to hear this news. and the tectonic plates they just were realigning. >> so for each of you, you each have a bit of a sense of you know internal rumblings a secret waiting for this revelation. i'm wondering if you could speak about what is that that was at work in terms of jewish >> it made me reflect on my history and when i did i had

thought of certain episodes that were startling and anomalous in my background. i remember that there was a farm boy who when he didn't get paid adequately by my family he said you must all be jewish. i went back i repeated that and i saw the consternation ripple through the family. i had no idea what that meant. i also had a baby book where everything had fun except one baptismal certificate that was stamped and it had been glued for eternity. so i had put all of this in. i started connecting dots and i thought you know there were clues all along. came home from boarding school and i told an anti-somatic joke and my brother who knew as my sister had, he got so upset. he never got upset with me. i thought back and my history was revealed in a whole different light. >> interesting and for you? >> well, the timing was

interesting. i had written an essay called at the museum of jewish heritage for this anthology that i co-edited with my friend. it's called identity wanting to be who we are not. and it was about identification and i wanted to be jewish. i let the menorah, i went to holiday services. i went to the jewish film festivals. my boyfriends were all jewish. it was like you know, what is this about so, this had been written some years earlier and it was published. a month later, my mom tells me this news. i'm thinking it's not just nv. i'm jewish. but it is like it was a cellular level. my body just knew something that i didn't really know or

understand myself. >> in the jewish community a lot of people who are born and raised jewish have this sense of it is in ourselves within our community. so, we develop a certain type of embodiments. so when we hear people say things like, i just knew inside myself, i didn't know what it was. it was like a cultural healing that i'm sure that you see. and part of a natural question ends up being do you know where the gap happened. you know where there was a place where the jewish identities stopped being overt and somehow they got lost. but still known under the surface. do you know in any of your cases >> that is an interesting question. are my family it went way back that they were southern shoes

and assimilated before the civil war. so they had had a running start on assimilation. when my mother was born she was determined not to be jewish. so she changed the family story. because a lot of anti-semitism in texas and around 1905 when she was born as you can imagine. so i think what you're saying it's interesting in the sense of there were a lot of cues. there are all kinds of cues as i look back that i didn't understand because i wasn't around jewish people that i had known of as a child. throughout the country. no synagogues no nothing. but there are kinds of ways of being in the world values even some food some things that just really they were educational value. they were ethical sort of standards. i think that you know they were

basically jewish. >> we are going to take a quick break and come back to this in just a moment right here.

good morning and welcome back to mosaic. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation. about the ways in which they

themselves respectively discovered that they are jewish. welcome back. >> we were just talking about your background and how you came to understand that you are jewish. and i'm wondering if you can share a little bit about when you discover that you are jewish how you came into the community how you approached the jewish community how did you start out? >> my first stop was the jewish community libraries jewish genealogical society meeting. and i went with a very vague piece of information that my mother had given me. and i tried to figure out if any of it was true or if there was documentation of anything. fairly quickly i discovered that one of the researchers had found my grandfather's world war i draft application which had said theodore burns and then in parentheses bernstein. we'd always believed that he was of scottish descent. that he had been born in

brooklyn. it turns out that he was born in russia. he emigrated in 1906. so, that was you know my mother had had confused pieces of that. and then my grandmother who was parisian i knew her well and then her middle name was simon. and i had discovered very quickly that her mother's maiden name was david and her mother's maiden name was levy. so, it didn't get much more jewish than that. so both of my grandparents were closeted/assimilated. my mother believed that they may not have even known about each other's hidden jewish identities. >> that is fascinating. >> well, the first step was to go home to my lover and tell her i was a junior. my lover was jewish. she said always knew you had it.

>> a jewish mind. >> right. and so that was my first stop as far as my immediate community. then i had gone back and i found my relatives in texas and they had had some communication and there was a huge family reunion. they brought in all the cousins and it was so funny. southern juice are half southern so that all had hospitality bags for everybody. it was just an interesting hybrid of culture. >> what is that? >> c, so interesting. they pride themselves on being hospitable. so they had had all kinds of goodies and barbecue sauces. they had treats that were from texas inside. then inside of the bag for all of those relatives who were from out of town for the

reunion. it was just an interesting history. they had collected all this material so i had found out all about the family history. they are very proud of it. so, the community has to do with my ancestors. but i have reclaimed my ancestry which i'd never known about. very proud of them. they started the first synagogue in austin. and, they are you know very down to earth. ethical people. and they were so hard-working and smart and just utterly they prospered in spite of anti- semitism in texas. >> it's very interesting that you've come to judaism as an adult so you came really just with your full self. certainly with all of your life experience. i'm wondering if you can talk i know it's a big question. but if you could talk a bit about how you have brought yourself to that point in time

because then how the jewish community just kind of influenced you from that point. >> well, the first thing that's just so important is that i had already gone through a self revelation which is i had read a book when i was in my 20s about identity. i had been with women before but i hadn't thought of myself as a lesbian. i had a dream that night and i woke up and it was women in bars in new york. i had had a dream about myself and i woke up a different person. i had already had this transformational experience so i had already knew how mutable identity is. and the same thing happened when i found out i was jewish. overnight i had found myself like a hugely different person. just everything about me was different and i had realized that before i had been condescending towards jewish

people who were my friends and lovers. i thought i had been superior i didn't know it until i was jewish. >> interesting. we got to take a break but we are going to continue this fascinating conversation.

good morning and welcome back. i'm so honored to be your host. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation. about how they had discovered their jewishness. we were just talking before the break. and she was sharing how her own adulthood at a certain point where she discovered that she was jewish served and influenced her back-and-forth. and i'm wondering for yourself how that was real.

>> somewhat similarly. i came out when i was 20 as a man. my identity a kind of rearranged itself. it felt somewhat similar when my mother had revealed this identity i was like okay well i completely changed it was completely the same. and i took myself to synagogue thinking well, maybe now i will find the service is a much more meaningful. maybe now i will know the songs and i will feel like such an interloper. none of it changed. i hadn't grown up jewish. i thought of liking it to the analogy of being transgender. the transgender person does not have the childhood of the gender that they are living. i feel as if i'm not a pretend you i mean my mother's family was jewish. and i've done all the

activities but my identity lacks the beginning nurturing parenting jewishness. >> very interesting. self-discovery often times always but often times involves revealing or breaking things that were before that moments a secret. that can have its own domino effects. both of you have talked about that little bit of an element so i'm just wondering what effect this had more broadly on your families of origin. and in what ways did they really live as choose. has really made it transparent and brought it to the floor. >> the first thing that is important for me was as a counselor i work with people's narratives all the time.

some narratives are just not helping certain people. what this did when i found myself to be such a chameleon and how it changed me, it empowered me in my work to take a more hegemonic view of narratives and say i can help people change. look i changed from these revelations. i can also help people change their narratives. it is very instructive in my work. and then my family members all of whom think that they are loved that everybody is dead. you know i'm the last one. it's up to me to pass on the heritage. >> interesting. and it was interesting. my mother was doling out cousins. and i would call them and i got a family genealogy that had indicated that my grandfather's parents were not john and jenny burns of scotland but they were jacob and zelda bernstein.

so i had called my brother and i said isn't it interesting that our great grandfather was jacob and you named her son jacob and he was not interested at all. he said jacob was named for somebody my wife's family. and i said yes. that's a common name but don't you think it's an interesting lineage. and he was not engaging. i remember a family dinner my nephew who was a teenager at the time said well, i don't understand. how is it that you are jewish but that isn't jewish and grandma isn't jewish. and i'm looking over at my brother thinking had i answer it collects so that is sort of how things have remained. >> okay. we are going to take one more quick break and we will be right back. please join us in just a moment.

good morning and welcome back. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation about discovering that they are jewish with monty hall and jim vanbuskirk. welcome back. >> there's so much to talk about. i'm just wondering how the two of you had met and if you could just talk a little bit about is there a community of folks out there are jewish community. >> one of the ways that we had met but you know we reconnected when i remembered a wonderful novel by richard hall called family fictions. and, it was about a family who had hidden its jewish identity. i opened it up. it was dedicated to marnie. i sent her an email and i said guess what. i think i'm part of the tribe.

so we sat down over lunch and we started comparing notes. it was just this great connection. it really gave me solace and a sense of community and i remember her telling me about a bar mitzvah that she had held for yourself. and i said no. you mean this. and she said no. talk about that you know. >> anyway richard was my brother. it's a true book about that. you know it's a true novel about that fiction which is my family fiction. very interesting thing. >> and had you discovered folks like yourself who later in adulthood discovered that they are in fact jewish? >> many. it turns out it is a very very common narrative. there've been lots of books about it.

we have been on panels. panels called new juice of many people who have discovered as adults that they had jewish heritage. >> i'm wondering as part of your narrative so far how then do you begin to integrate and make choices about jewish life to the life that you already have? how do you understand those jewish holidays? how do you understand jewish approaches to the biblical narrative to the jewish ethical values about being in the world? can you talk a bit about what that is? >> for me is very much been an evolving process you know one legging at a time. and then i put something over my head. and it has been years to the point where now i'm so proud and i'm so happy to be jewish. very open.

but it has been very gradual. it has taken a lot of processing and historical searching on my part. >> i'm sure that that is true. but, she moved to those places where you start to relinquish christianity or things that you did that were not particularly jewish. >> i don't. i had a need to relinquish. one of my rabbi friends asked me, what religion where you growing up? and i said you know, we were devoutly unitarian and he just rolled his eyes. and so i had had a wonderful opportunity because coincidentally the universe had provided. i was working at the community library. so, i had had resources to the staff and collections so any question i had had and my job was to read books for the book

club and the box program. all day every day i was just sitting and reading about the jewish experience in every form and variation and every geographical place. so, it was just a crash course in judaism. everything that i had been taught as a young person i was filling up the reservoir and understanding and having a particular perspective because as i said i didn't have that to begin with but i was just growing it. somewhat similar to what marnie said. >> believe it or not. we have one minute left in our conversation. i'm wondering for anyone who may be listening or who knows somebody in that world in that particular state of discovery what is one thing you may suggest to somebody who finds themselves discovering that they are jewish and they had not previously known. what would you suggest? >> celebrate the heritage.

what a marvelous heritage. how lucky we are. >> all right. what about you? >> i would echo that and just to say you are not alone. there are lots of us all over the world who for one reason or another have had to hide their heritage but embrace it and celebrate that. >> think you also much for sharing your story. thank you for joining us here and we encourage you to self discovery. have a wonderful day.

relief this morning as the nation second coronavirus sexing begins shipment as trucks ran out of the moderna facility overnight . and chaos at a local area mall i'm hundreds of christmas shoppers run for cover as gunshots rang out.>> people were falling and running to the door. the latest from congress as lawmakers and at an impasse, a stimulus bill could be a site which has as of the vote as soon as today morning it is sunday morning it is sunday, december 20 i am