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Ms. Kessel: Have you interviewed Rabbi Roderick Young? He found out when he was an undergraduate at Oxford that his mother, who raised him Episcopalian/Anglican, is Jewish. It’s probably too late, but I was born in Poland, raised Catholic, immigrated to the US in ’59 at age seven, and learned at 22 (the night before my Roman Catholic wedding) that both my parents were Holocaust survivors and that all of our family is Jewish. Dear Ms. Kessel: I was raised to believe I was the daughter of an IrishAmerican mother and a Syrian-Palestinian. I learned only three months ago that my biological father is a Jew. When we found out my family was Jewish, my wife’s reaction was, boy, I’m glad you’re not an anti-Semite. My first reaction was, I’m glad you’re not! Barbara, I have the name and address of a man who was interviewed on Israeli television. As a child, he was hidden in a monastery in France during the Holocaust and found out he was Jewish when he was a young adult studying for the priesthood. He now lives on a religious kibbutz. Dear Ms. Kessel: You might want to interview my friend. She was adopted by a Jewish couple thirty-eight years ago, when she was six weeks old. Nine years ago she was contacted by her Palestinian birth father. She wrote an article about the tensions that ensued. How did I feel about it? I was glad to find out I’m Jewish. I got rid of Christmas, Heaven, and Hell—all in the same day! a u t h o r ’ s q u e r y For a book on identity, I would like to interview individuals raised as non-Jews who discovered they are of Jewish descent. Barbara Kessel ...

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