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.
I don't buy for a minute that Albright and Kerry discovered late in life that they were Jewish. I am positive they knew it from the get-go. Notice how Kerry claimed that he found out his grandmother was Jewish 15 years ago (actually it was probably from childhood) yet his ex-wife says their kids only learned recently about their Jewish roots after the newspaper story about it last year. Also didn't Kerry's father have the LEAST BIT OF CURIOUSITY about why his last name was Kerry yet his parents spoke in distinctly NON-IRISH accents? Believe me, John F-ing Kerry knew about his roots for at least the past 50 years.
BINGO!
Like Whoopi Goldberg!
Hmmm....Let's see---Your last name is Kerry in heavily Irish (and ethnocentric) Boston yet your Dad (who remembers his parents speaking in distinctly non-Irish accents) tells you that you're NOT Irish. So we are to believe that Kerry (a snob) had absolutely NO CURIOUSITY about his background? I mean hardly a week would go by in Boston that somebody wouldn't hear his last name and say something like, "Oh, you're Irish?" So what did Kerry reply? "No, I'm not." To which the NATURAL response would be, "So what are you doing with an Irish last name?" And in ALL that time, we are to believe that Kerry didn't have the least bit of curiousity about how he had an Irish last name but was not Irish? I mean the obvious thought to even somebody who isn't a snob would be "Okay, I have an Irish name but I'm not Irish. So WHAT am I and how did I get the Irish moniker?"
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