Posted on 01/22/2004 3:35:10 PM PST by Lady GOP
NEW YORK -- First it was then-Secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Next it was Gen. Wesley Clark, the supreme allied commander of NATO during the war in Kosovo.
Now it's Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry whose Jewish roots are being reported.
Kerry? The Massachusetts senator, the quintessential WASP-y looking politician with an Irish-sounding name?
Yup.
Two of Kerry's grandparents were Jewish, it turns out.
Kerry, who is a practicing Catholic, said he has known for 15 years that his paternal grandmother was Jewish, but had unsuccessfully searched for news of his paternal grandfather's roots.
However, a genealogist hired by the Boston Globe found that Kerry's grandfather was born to a Jewish family in a small town in the Czech Republic.
"This is incredible stuff," Kerry told the Globe. "I think it is more than interesting. It is a revelation."
The records show that his grandfather, Frederick Kerry, was born as Fritz Kohn. He changed his name to Kerry in 1902, immigrated to the United States in 1905 -- and committed suicide in a Boston hotel in 1921.
Frederick Kerry's story highlights the Jewish experience of earlier generations, Brandeis University professor Jonathan Sarna said.
"What we are realizing is how significant was the trend toward conversion and abandonment of Judaism, for the sake of upward mobility, in an earlier era of America," said Sarna, the Braun professor of American Jewish history at
the school in Waltham, Mass. "Given the quite significant anti-Semitism of the early 20th century and the evident obstacles that stood in the path to success, people simply changed their names and sloughed off their Judaism."
But that path wasn't always successful, Sarna said.
Kerry's grandfather's suicide apparently stemmed from financial troubles. But one could wonder if, by changing his name and identity, the man had cut himself off from any sense of community, Sarna said.
The Kerry story also might hold lessons for the present and future makeup of American Jewry, Sarna said. According to current statistics, millions of Americans like Kerry may have Jewish roots but don't consider themselves Jewish.
Of course, several people contact the American Jewish Historical Society every year asking for help in their search for Jewish roots.
The e-mails usually run along the lines of, "My name is Kelly Smith, but my grandmother's name was Sara Goldstein," said Michael Feldberg, the executive director of the historical society, which is based in New York.
Kerry said he had asked cousins and searched on the Internet, but had found only bits of information on his family history.
The news does not appear to have major political ramifications.
There was an initial hubbub when Albright, secretary of state in the Clinton administration, learned in 1997 that three of her four grandparents were Jewish.
The next time she was in Prague, Albright visited the Pinkas Synagogue, where the names of her paternal grandparents are inscribed on a wall among thousands of Czech Jews who died in the Holocaust.
Observers say the revelation about Kerry is unlikely to affect the 2004 presidential race.
"There's no question there's a lot of pride in a Jewish candidate and pride in family Jewish connections, but the American Jewish community is fairly mature in its political behavior," said Ira Forman, the executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.
As far as non-Jews go, "had it come out in 1953 instead of 2003, it would have been fatal to his presidential ambitions," Feldberg said, but not in today's world.
Kerry's revelation adds another Jewish flavor to the 2004 race for the Democratic presidential nomination. Sen. Joseph Lieberman (D-Conn.), who declared last month that he will seek the nomination, is an observant Jew.
Another contender, former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean, is married to a Jewish woman and is raising his children as Jews.
JTA correspondent Matthew E. Berger in Washington contributed to this report.
Lemme guess another proabortion Catholic
Yes that certain anatomically correct part of the horse.
Then perhaps he should instead claim that his grandfather was black and co-opt another minority. Or maybe gay would be better. How about a black gay Jew?
PORTSMOUTH, N.H. -- As much as retired Army General Wesley K. Clark might want to avoid the issue, it confronts him at every turn: For him, this has turned into a race between the general and the lieutenant-turned-senator.
After Monday night's surprising Iowa caucus returns, Clark and his aides had to prepare for a scenario they hadn't anticipated: The old putative front-runner, non-veteran Howard Dean, had been replaced by a new one, veteran John F. Kerry.
While Senator John Edwards languished low in the New Hampshire polls for months, his second-place Iowa finish makes him, too, a Granite State factor.
So now, buried between the lines of Clark's stump speeches and appearances, comes a new message: He embodies Kerry's national security credibility and Edwards's Southern background.
"I'm that package all in one vote," Clark said at a press conference in Portsmouth. "I'm a veteran. I've worked in leadership at the highest levels of government . . . I'm from the South, my mother was a secretary." Clark invited the Kerry comparison in a series of veterans-related events yesterday that his aides said had been planned long in advance.
He attended a "Veterans for Clark" press conference in Portsmouth in the early afternoon and held a town hall-style meeting at an American Legion post in Rochester in the evening.
Last night at another such event, Brian Hardy, a VFW post commander from Littleton, N.H., while introducing Clark, harshly criticized Kerry, saying the senator had had "an extreme makeover" from a life of "privilege and wealth to being a man of the people."
Hardy, a former Dean supporter, called Kerry "one of a long line of presidential pretenders from New England who ran and failed."
Clark campaign officials quickly distanced themselves from Hardy's attack. Matt Bennett, Clark's communications director, said: "We did not know he was going to say that, and if we knew we would have asked him not to." Clark himself told the crowd he disagreed with Hardy's statement and considered Kerry "a distinguished senator."
In every encounter with the press this week, Clark has been asked to compare himself with Kerry. Asked about Kerry's military rank at a press conference at his Manchester headquarters later that night, Clark said, "It's one thing to be a hero as a junior officer. He's done that, and I respect him for that. He's been a good senator. But I've had the military leadership at the top as well as the bottom."In less strained moments, Clark tries to shift the subject to the specific experience he gained as he rose through the military. "I'm not trying to draw a distinction between my rank and Senator Kerry's," Clark said in Portsmouth. "We were both young officers in Vietnam. We both pursued different paths of public service."
Instead, he emphasized his experience helping to negotiate the Dayton Accords in Bosnia and leading NATO's war in Kosovo.
"We need a leader who's been on the front lines of battle and in the backrooms of diplomacy," he said in a speech about Iraq at the University of New Hampshire.
Still, for several veterans who declared their loyalty to Clark yesterday, his perceived electability was his most important asset.
"John Kerry cannot win below the Mason-Dixon Line. Clark can conceivably take Florida, Louisiana, Arkansas, and West Virginia," said Gene A. Friedman, 87, a World War II veteran. "John Kerry has great credentials, and he has good military credentials, but he's a Massachusetts liberal."
Joanna Weiss can be reached at weiss@globe.com.
Just pulled this off Drudge
Why should I care? It's freaking embarrassing to me, as a Jew, that self-proclaimed "Jewish" news sources like JTA and the old-timey bolshevik "The Forward" think this is something important.
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