"At Least She's Jewish"

A Spousal Calculus

The solid yellow circle on my Ancestry.com DNA profile indicates that I am 100% Eastern European Jewish. My husband’s circle is also monochromatic — pure Jew #2. How did this happen, I have asked. Was being Jewish a requirement for all of our ancestors as they sought spouses, or was it more happenstance — if you only knew Jews, then you married one?

My relatives, like young people of later generations, must have thought about what they wanted in a potential mate. What qualities were essential, what features desirable but not necessary? And what were the deal-breakers? Where in this hierarchy of features did “of Jewish ancestry” land?

Sadie Saul, born in Pittsburgh, PA in 1884, was heartbroken when her mother arranged for her to marry an older cousin, recently arrived from Lithuania, a guy thirteen years her senior, Apparently she sobbed the entire night before the wedding. “It’ll be fine,” her mother assured her. He turned out to be a nice man, far less competent than she, but reliable. And marriage was marriage — done. Finis.

But Sadie’s brothers danced to a different American drummer. One sent home photos of himself with a recently divorced actress, and the other married a woman from Blakely, GA. (Wikipedia lists Blakeley’s only notable resident as “Wilbur Little, lynching victim.” ) Unembarrassed and unambitious, neither Great Uncle Dave nor Aunt Vincie were Jewish in orientation. And Great Uncle Sam never married.

Marriages on my maternal side was more complicated and calculated. Neither Minnie Shelkowitz nor Phillip (Falek) Rappoport, who married in 1916, would have ever considered marrying a non-Jew, but recognized that all Jews were not created equal. Perhaps to compensate for his diminutive stature, bald head and thick Yiddish accent, Phil came courting in a car driven by one of his factory workers dressed as a chauffeur. Despite humble backgrounds, both Phil and Minnie wanted to be rich, really rich, and they found in one another partners who could help make that happen. Her desire to “speak British and think Yiddish,” and his to maintain his place of dignity in an Orthodox shul while buggering little girls as a pastime, offered mixed results.

A look outside my immediate family also enlightens. I was once mistakenly emailed the resume of a young Chasidic girl who was being presented to the family of a potential mate. It began with her name and her height (not her weight, I noted). Then it listed the yeshivas she attended, the names of her brothers and sisters, and whom they had married. There were also references from rabbis. Was this resumé a proxy for my yellow DNA circle, or could potential partners read Jewish possibilities or even Jewish nobility between the lines?

I remember visiting my high school friend Joanie — we both lived in Danbury CT in the 1960’s — when she was dating a non-Jewish guy. On the way to her bedroom we had to pass the yortsayt candles her parents lit because “to them she was dead.” Joanie finally bowed to family pressure, married a Jewish dentist from a “good family” who turned out to be physically and mentally abusive. She ended up taking her own life several years later.

When my husband introduced the idea of me to his parents, they argued against the match: I was the wrong age, from the wrong part of the country, had refused the bridal shower, had had other lovers. His mother pouted, then wept. Finally the dad, in an attempt to console his wife, declared, “Well, at least she’s Jewish.” As it turned out, that was not really enough — for any of us.