learn how abbvie could help you save. (energetic music) good morning and welcome to 'mosaic'. i am honored to be your host this morning. this area is characterized in part by big playset nourishes self-discovery. we would like to invite you into a conversation this morning. along the way, you discovered you were jewish. welcome. >> thank you for inviting us. >> how did you discover that you are jewish? >> when i was 30 , i had grown up as a wasp and gone to an

episcopal church. my parents were long dead and my sister who was , another generation older, she took me aside and said did you have any idea that our family was jewish? i was absolutely gob smacked . i had no idea. i thought there was a secret but i thought the family was mexican. my mother was dark and she spoke spanish and came from texas. finding out that i was a jew , was a revelation. >> i was 54 and had been estranged from my mother and reconnected with her . and she said i have something very important to tell you. i don't want you to find out after i am dead. and she said repeatedly , you are jewish , you are jewish , you are jewish. i said, mom , if i am jewish that means you are jewish. no,

dear. i have never had any affiliation with judaism and i will not start now. it was a revelation. in some ways i felt like i had been waiting my whole life to hear this news. and the tectonic plates were realigned. >> for each of you, you each have a sense of -- you can say you have some internal rumbling. a secret waiting for this revelation. i wondered if you could talk more about what is that , that was at work in terms of jewishness? >> it made me reflect on my history and when i did i thought of certain episodes. that were very startling and anomalous in my background. i remember there was a farm boy , when he did not get paid adequately by my family said,

you must all be jews. i went back and repeated that and i saw the consternation ripple through the family. i had no idea what that meant. they also had a baby book where everything fell out except there was one baptismal certificate that was stamped in and glued for eternity that would never fall out. i started connecting the dots and thinking, there were clues all along. there were strange things. i came home from boarding school and told and and a incessant a joke. i thought back in my history was revealed in a different light. >> interesting. >> for me and the timing , was interesting. i had written an essay called, at the museum of jewish heritage for this anthology i co-edited with my friend. it is called, identity

and wanting to be who we are not. it is about identification and i wanted to be jewish. i let the menorah. i went to high holiday services . i went to the jewish film festival. my boyfriends were all jewish. what is this about? this piece had been written some years earlier and was published. a i'm thinking, it ther tes is not just envy. i am. but it was like on the cellular level. my body knew something that i did not really know or understand. >> in the jewish community, a lot of people who are born and raised jewish and in the jewish culture have this sense of , it is in ourselves, in our community, in our bodies . we develop a certain kind of

embodied miss about being jewish. when we hear people say things like , i just knew it inside myself , i did not know what it was. it is a kind of cultural cueing that i'm sure you see. part of the natural question ends up being , do you know where the gap happened? do you know where there was a place where jewish identity stopped being overt and somehow got lost , but known under the surface ? do you know in any of your cases? your past family framework . >> that is an interesting question. for my family it goes way, way back. they were southern jews and assimilated before the civil war. they had a running start on assimilation , in a way. when my mother was born and grew up she was determined not to be jewish.

she changed the family store and was determined -- a lot of anti-semitism in texas around 1905 , you could imagine. i think what you are saying is interesting. i think there were a lot of views as i look back on it. that i did not understand because i was not around jews that i knew of, as a child. we were in the country with no jews or a synagogue . there are all kinds of ways of being in the world, values, even foods. all kinds of things that were educational value. ethical standards. that i think were basically jewish. >> we will take a quick break and come back to this conversation. right here on 'mosaic'.

good morning and welcome back to 'mosaic'. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation . about the ways in which they respectively discovered they are jewish. welcome back we were talking about your background and how you came to understand that you are jewish . i'm wondering if you can share a little bit about once you discovered you were jewish, how you came into

the jewish community and how you approach the jewish community , resources? >> my first stop was the jewish community libraries jewish genealogical soy and i went with the vague pieces of information that my mother had given me. and tried to figure out if and if it was true or if there is documentation. fairly quickly discovered that one of the researchers found my grandfathers world war i draft application, which said, theodore burns and in parentheses, bernstein. we had always believed he was of scottish descent. and he had been born in oakland. it turns out he was born in russia and immigrated in 1906. my mother had some confused pieces of that. and my grandmother , who

was parisian , i knew well. her maiden name was simon. and i discovered fairly quickly that her mother's name was david . and her mother's maiden name was levy. it did not get much more jewish than that. both my mother's parents were closeted , flash assimilated. my mother believed that they might not have even known about each other's hidden jewish identity. >> fascinating. >> the first step was to go home to my lover and tell her i was a jew . my lover was jewish. and she said , i always knew . that was my

first stop as far as my immediate community. and i went back and i found my relatives in texas. i started communicating with them and they had a huge family reunion and brought in all the cousins i have never known. it was funny. southern jews are half southern. they had hospitality bags for everyone for out of town people. it was a high read culture. >> what is a hospitality bag? >> that is interesting. they l goodies and barbecue sauce and treats that were from texa de aninsidefor laves who were from out of town for this reunion . it was such an interesting history and they collected all this archival material. i found out all about the family history . they are very proud of it. the community for me, my community has a lot to do

with my ancestors that i have reclaimed my ancestors, who i never know about. but i am very proud of them. they started the first synagogue in austin. they are down to earth, ethical people. they were hard-working and smart and they prospered, in spite of anti-semitism in texas . >> it is interesting that you have come to judaism as an adult. you came to judaism with your full self , certainly with all your life experience. yourself to that point in time to judaism and how the community influenced you from that point?

>> the first thing that is so important, i had already gone through a self revelation. i read a book when i was in my 20s . i had been with women before but i had not thought of myself as a lesbian. i had a dream at night , influenced by that book. it was women in bars in new york. i had this dream and i woke up a different person. i already had this transformational expense about identity, and the same thing happened when i found out i was a jew. overnight i found myself like a hugely different person. everything was different about me and i realized before , i had been somewhat condescending toward jews who were my friends and lovers. i thought i had been superior. i did not know that until i was jewish . >> believe it or not, we have to take a break . we will come back and continue this

fascinating conversation.

good morning and welcome back to 'mosaic'. i am honored to be your host this morning. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation. about how they discovered their jewishness. we were talking before the break and sharing how her adulthood , when she discovered she was jewish influenced her sense of jewishness and back and forth. i am wondering how that was for you? >> somewhat similarly. i came out when i was 20 as a gay man. my identity arranged or rearranged itself . this felt somewhat similar when my mother revealed this identity. okay.

i completely changed and was completely the same. and i took myself to synagogue thinking , maybe now i will find the services much more meaningful. maybe now i will know the songs and i will not feel like such an interloper. and of course, none of that changed . because i had not grown up as a jew. i liken it to , i use the analogy of being transgender. a transgender person does not have the childhood of the gender they are living. i am not a pretend jew, my mother's family was jewish. and i have done all the activities . but my identity lacks that beginning , nurturing, parented common jewishness .

>> interesting. self-discovery, often times involves, either revealing or breaking things that were before that moment , secret. that can have its own domino effect . both of you have talked about that little bit of an element in your families. i am wondering what effect this had more broadly on your families of origin? in what ways living as jews has really made it transparent ? >> the first thing that was important for me that as a counselor , i work with people's narratives all the time. some narratives are just not helping certain people. but 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 viewnaes and say i heange. look how anfr lp peoange eir naive. it was very instructive in my work and very influential. with my family members, now that everybody is dead, i mean all the predecessors, i am the last jew. it is up to me to pass on the heritage, and i have been doing my part . >> it is interesting. my mother was doling out cousins and i would call them and i got a family genealogy that indicated that my grandfather's parents were not john and jenny burns of scotland. but jacob and velda bernstein. i called my brother and said, isn't that interesting that our great-grandfather was jacob and you named your son jacob. he

was not interested. he said jacob was named for someone in my wife's family. i said, yes . it is common. that you think that's an interesting lineage? he was not engaging. i remember at a family dinner my nephew , who was a teenager at the time said, i don't understand . how is it that you are jewish , but that's not jewish and grandma is not jewish. and i'm looking at my brother thinking , how do i answer that. and that is how things remained. >> we will get another quick break and come back on 'mosaic'. please join us in just a moment .

good morning and welcome back to 'mosaic'. we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation about discovering that they are jewish . welcome back. there is so much to talk about. i am wondering how the two of you met ? and if you would talk about , is there a community of like folks in our jewish community? >> one of the ways -- we had

met. but we reconnected when i remembered the wonderful novel by richard hall called, family fictions. it was about a family jesh identity . and i op it up and it to her. i sent her an email and i said, guess what? i think i am part of the tribe. we sat down over lunch and started comparing notes. it was this great connection and it really gave me solace and a sense of community. i remember her telling me about a bar mitzvah she held for herself. you mean a bat mitzvah. she said, no. bar mitzvah. talk about that. >> anyway. richard was my brother. it is a true book --

i mean it is a true novel about a fiction, a family fiction. >> it is interesting. >> have you discovered folks like yourself , later in adulthood you discovered that they are jewish? >> many. it turns out is a very common narrative . there have been lots of books about it. memoirs written. we have and many adults have discovered they have jewish heritage. >> i wonder as part of your narrative so far, how do you begin to make choices about the jewish life toward the life of what you have? how do you understand jewish holidays?

how do you understand jewish approaches to biblical narrative ? jewish ethical values and that sort of thing? can you talk a little bit about what that is for you? >> for me it has been an evolving process. it has been years , to the point now i am so proud and happy to be a jew. very open . but it has been very gradual and it is take a lot of process and investigation and historical searching on my part. >> i'm sure this is true for both of you, do you start to relinquish christianity or things you did that were not particularly jewish, is the part of the process? >> i didn't think i had any christianity to relinquish.

one of my rabbi friends asked, what religion where you growing up ? i said tongue-in-cheek, we were unitarian. and he rolled his eyes. i had a wonderful opportunity. coincidentally the universe provided, i was working at the jewish community library. i have resources to the staff, to the collections, two people. any question i had , and my job was to read books for the book club in a box program. all day, every day i was sitting and reading about the jewish experience . every form and variation and every geographical place. it was a crash course in judaism. everything i had not been taught as a young person , i was filling up the reservoir and understanding and having a particular perspective. as i say, i did not have it to begin with , but i was growing ,

somewhat similar. >> believe it or not we just have one minute left in our conversation. i am wondering for anyone who might be listening or know somebody in their world, in their particular state of discovery, what is one thing you might suggest to somebody who finds themselves discovering that they are jewish . >> i would say to celebrate that heritage. what a marvelous heritage. how lucky we are . >> i would echo that and to say , we are not alone. there are lots of us all over the world. for one reason or another have had to hide their heritage and to embrace it and celebrate it and find like-minded people. >> thank you so much for sharing your stories. and thank you for joining us on 'mosaic'. we encourage you to

self-discovery. have a wonderful day.

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