Was Columbus Secretly a Jew?

A new good friend of mine shared this news story with me: Was Columbus Secretly a Jew? (thank you Jamie J).

It made me recollect an incident in my own life that was quite revealing:

A family member on my dad's side speculated that a great uncle or some such was Jewish and we may have some Jewish blood in us. Great Grandpa Bauer (Grandma Cairns's father) was a German immigrant and it wasn't inconceivable. However, my Aunt Dottie Young (Dad's sister) has done a lot of research into that side of the family and there's simply no evidence to support the idea.

But for an instant, when I heard that story - and I remember it distinctly - there was a marked shift in my perspective on who I was, and an upwelling sense of kinship with a culture with which I have no first-hand experience, but rather only images and facts irregularly collected from Bible stories and movies.[1]

It was delightful, however fleeting, and more importantly, enlightening.

How quickly our picture of others can change when we are part of the picture.

[1]
Want to hear something sad? Many years ago, while waiting in line for breakfast at Calvin College, I said to a friend, "I love bagels so much, I must have a little Jewish in me." She looked at me like I had horns growing out of my head, so I said, "You realize I'm joking," but apparently she didn't, and wouldn't, and treated me thereafter very differently; the change was palpable.

I come from the most racially tolerant home you could imagine. I didn't know what anti-Semitism was until I got to college. I never heard a cross word about anyone or any group based on their color or religion. Though my folks were clear on whether or not other religions were "right," that judgment never extended to people, but stopped at the ideas held by those people.

Started: 2012-05-25