If I was guessing, I’d bet a fair number of these villagers have maternal line and paternal line Jewish ancestors that they only vaguely know about.
I view these things as Jewish souls crying out to be Jewish.
Still, the exuberance of a wedding dance appears to be missing. It seems forgone that nobody’s coming back in large numbers, any more than they’re returning to Spain or Germany, so there is no chance to get Polish Jooo!-weddings up to speed.
“If I was guessing, I’d bet a fair number of these villagers have maternal line and paternal line Jewish ancestors that they only vaguely know about.”
That’s actually a pretty fair bet. Thousands of Jewish people in the area were misled by false claims of messiahood, first by Sabbatai Zevi and later another fake, Jacob Frank (founder of “Frankism” which persists to this day, to some degree).
Many of these disillusioned Jewish people converted to Christianity as a result of involvement in these cults.
So, yes, I’d bet a lot of these people would be surprised if they took Ancestry.com genealogy tests.