The Appalachian Jew

Tag: Melungeons

  • Inviting ancestors into the sukkah

    Inviting ancestors into the sukkah

    This week Jews around the world are celebrating the holiday of Sukkot, an annual holiday that follows the High Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. The word Sukkot means “booths” or “huts,” and the holiday is both an agricultural festival of thanksgiving and a commemoration of the years spent wandering in the desert with no permanent homes.

    In the Hebrew Scriptures, Sukkot is referred to as the Feast of Booths. Christians may be familiar with the term Feast of Tabernacles which is used in the 7th chapter of John, describing how Jesus traveled to Jerusalem for the week-long festival.

    To celebrate the festival today, Jews often build a sukkah, a temporary shelter with at least three sides and a roof-covering of natural materials that provide shade yet allow those sitting in the sukkah to see the stars at night. Sukkahs can be as simple or as elaborate as each family or community desires. Meals may be eaten in the sukkah, and in some cases people sleep in the sukkah overnight.

    I have somewhat of a makeshift sukkah on one end of my front porch, and I am spending some time every day sitting there. Because of where I live, and due to the fact that there are wild animals (bears, cougars, bobcats, and coyotes) around my property, I don’t set up a proper sukkah either in front of or in back of my house, and I would never sleep in my makeshift sukkah on my front porch.

    Extending hospitality to others is a custom during Sukkot. Tradition states that there are special guests who are there in spirit: Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, Aaron, and David. Today, Jews are encouraged to add women of the Bible to that list and to invite friends and relatives to join them in the sukkah.

    Sukkot is also a wonderful time to honor our own personal ancestors, and many Jewish communities have begun asking their members to consider who they would invite to join them in the sukkah if they could. My Central Synagogue community did this tonight, and people shared family stories about parents, grandparents, aunts, uncles, other relatives, and friends who inspired them or were influential in their lives.

    I thought about who I would invite and shared that if I could invite any of my ancestors into my sukkah, I would invite my great-great grandparents, Ceborn and Eliza Westmoreland through whom my Jewish ancestry comes on my mother’s side.

    My ancestors have lived in Appalachia since before the Revolutionary War, and there were always Sephardic Jews in my family. Ceborn was a Melungeon, which is a mixed-race group of Appalachian people with Sephardic, Northern European, African, and Native American ancestry. Eliza also had Sephardic ancestry, her family having fled the Spanish Inquisition, and after several generations in France and England, making their way to America. This ancestry was hidden, apparently being passed down by word of mouth to one person in each generation. I happened to be the person who was told almost 100 years later.

    Ceborn and Eliza were born in the hills of Appalachia in the early 1840s. They married in 1860 when Ceborn was 20 years old and Eliza was only 16.  

    Six months after they married, the Civil War broke out. Knowing he would be drafted anyway, Ceborn joined the Confederate army as a conscientious objector, stating that he would never point a gun at another human being. He was detailed as a combat medic and served in field hospitals on the front lines in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Georgia. Eliza and her sisters-in-law essentially worked in the resistance, providing assistance to those fleeing the war.

    After the Civil War, Ceborn was ordained as a Baptist preacher, but he later abandoned Christianity and became known to his extended family as “The Infidel.” He opened a dry goods store, and when he died, he was remembered as a man “whose life was spent in helping the needy, out of his great love for humanity.”

    Ceborn and Eliza had 10 children, and I am descended through one of their younger daughters, Lillie, who I knew well, as she lived to be almost 112. In 1920, that daughter (my great grandmother) and her husband, who was a former state legislator and progressive attorney living in Athens, GA, had to flee rampant anti-semitism and the Ku Klux Klan, loading their 6 daughters in a wagon and traveling in the dead of night to Ceborn and Eliza’s home further back in the hills.

    Ceborn Westmoreland and Eliza Westmoreland

    My great grandmother, Lillie Westmoreland Dorough, with photos of Ceborn and Eliza

    Ceborn and Eliza lived long lives, and I’ve always felt a connection with them. I would love to be able to invite them into my sukkah and sit down with them and hear their stories firsthand.

  • My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 4

    My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 4

    The Road to Conversion

    Livestreaming services from Central Synagogue in New York is what made me aware that there was a path by which I could convert to Judaism.

    Central Synagogue has a Center for Exploring Judaism, established in 2010 and geared mainly towards those with a Jewish partner or spouse, helping them to understand the Jewish faith and what it means to live a Jewish life. But the program also is open to individuals who desire to explore Judaism. Originally, all classes were held in person at the synagogue, but in recent years online cohorts have been comprised of people literally from around the world.

    In late Spring 2023, I contacted Rabbi Lisa Rubin, director of the Center for Exploring Judaism to ask about being accepted into the program. What fascinated me about the hour-long interview with her was that one of the first things she said to me was that she was wondering why a Jewish person (me) would want to be in a cohort group. She considered me to be already living a Jewish life. When I explained that I had been raised as a Christian by parents who also were raised as Christians (even though they knew they were Jewish), she agreed that actual conversion would be the proper course of action for me.

    My cohort group consisted of about 40 people from throughout the U.S. and from several other countries. Classes extended over a six-month period from July through December 2023, met once a week on Zoom, and were conducted like university classes. We had a syllabus, several required books, and weekly assignments and were expected to actively participate in class discussions and complete two projects . Both projects could be submitted after classes ended, but no one could be considered an actual candidate for conversion until both were turned in. In addition, each of us had to meet individually on Zoom with Rabbi Rubin on a regular basis.

    The following is from Central Synagogue’s website:

    Summary of the Conversion Process

    1. Initial meeting with Rabbi Lisa Rubin, our Director of the Center for Exploring Judaism 
    In this introductory meeting, we will discuss your background and interest in Judaism and do our best to ascertain whether our program may be a good fit for you.

    2. Enrollment in our Exploring Judaism course 
    Our course covers the foundations of Judaism: holidays, history, prayer, theology, and life cycle. A new class begins every other month and we meet weekly for a six-month period.

    3. One-on-one meetings with Clergy
    These regular meetings (during the six-month period of the Exploring Judaism course) are for individual guidance and mentorship.

    4. Extended study after the course
    Conversion candidates are encouraged to study with a rabbi as long as is needed to attain confidence with a basic “literacy” of Judaism. Time will vary with each student.

    5. Completion of a conversion project and spiritual autobiography
    Students are asked to complete two small projects toward the end of the conversion process.

    6. Bet Din and Mikveh
    A bet din (rabbinic court) will be assembled on the day of your conversion followed by a visit to the mikveh (ritual bath).

    Everyone in the cohort group had to submit, as one of their projects, a personal spiritual autobiography. Much of my spiritual autobiography has been included in earlier posts of this blog as My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3.

    The second project could be anything relating to Judaism that was of interest to the individual student, but the topic had to be approved by Rabbi Rubin. For my second project, I did extensive research, reading another dozen books plus several articles and participating in a webinar sponsored by the Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience in New Orleans. Much of that research also was included in earlier posts of this blog as The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4, Part 5, and in The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Sources.

    I submitted my second project in February 2024, thinking I probably was the last person in my cohort to submit their work, but this turned out not to be the case. In addition, I had been under the impression that each of us would be assigned to another rabbi at Central Synagogue to continue studies until such time as that rabbi determined we were ready to complete conversion. That also turned out not to be the case for me.

    As soon as Rabbi Rubin had my second assignment in hand she asked me when I could come to New York to complete my conversion.

    Conversion

    I made the trip to New York in mid-March 2024 and formally converted to Judaism on March 14. Unlike in Christianity, in which conversion is often a public event including baptism witnessed by friends and family, conversion in Judaism is a private event involving only the convert and three rabbis.

    My Bet Din, or rabbinic court, consisted of three female rabbis, all of whom teach in the Center for Exploring Judaism.

    (Two other members of my cohort converted on the same day and one had a different configuration of rabbis on her Bet Din.)

    I expected an intimidating scene in which I would be grilled by the rabbis on various aspects of Judaism, but it turned out to be a delightful discussion. All three rabbis considered me to be living a Jewish life and told me that they saw me not so much to be converting as returning to the faith my ancestors had once practiced but that had been hidden for several generations.

    As part of my conversion I was formally given my Hebrew name, which, as an adult, I had chosen. I kept my given name, given to me at birth by my mother who had named me for a heroine in the Hebrew scriptures, but I changed my middle name from Leigh (Leah) to Shira, a name that means song because I have always been a singer. דבורה שירה

    Immersion in the mikveh, the ritual bath, is an integral part of conversion. Central Synagogue uses the community mikveh on the Upper West Side in Manhattan. Those coming to the mikveh enter from the street through a rather non-descript door to find a beautiful, spa-like atmosphere inside. As a convert, I immersed in the mikveh’s warm water alone, completely submerging three times and saying a specific blessing after each immersion. The rabbis waited outside the door and greeted me with a rousing chorus of Siman Tov Mazel Tov.

    Here’s what that sounds like…

    Afterwards, I was given the priestly benediction and was declared to be officially a part of the Jewish people.

    The priestly benediction can be heard here, beginning at about 3:11 in the video. Here, Central Synagogue’s Senior Rabbi Angela Buchdahl gives the blessing to former Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer who had been interviewed at the synagogue…

    The evening following my conversion was a Friday, and at Central’s Friday night Shabbat service, I along with many others who had converted at Central Synagogue in the preceding twelve months, was called to the bimah (the platform at the front of the synagogue) to bless the reading of the Torah and to receive the priestly benediction.

    In this photo, which features Rabbi Rubin from the Center for Exploring Judaism, I am among the group on the bimah although, because I am so short, I cannot be seen.

    I returned home from New York a different person, knowing for certain what I had “known” all of my life, that I was, in fact, a Jew. I finally was where I belong.

    The following song from Temple Israel Westport expresses what I had always known. Written and sung by Cantor Becky Mann, on the left, joined by Cantor Julia Cadrain (formerly at Central Synagogue) on the right, it says, “You’ve always belonged here.”

  • My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 2

    My Journey Back to Judaism, the Faith of My Ancestors – Part 2

    Jewish beginnings

    Even though I was raised as a Christian and was immersed in Christianity, ever since I was a small child there was another track running through my life. I felt that I was Jewish and wanted to be part of the Jewish people.

    I didn’t know how I knew this; it was just a knowing. I believed I was someone born with a Jewish soul, although I wouldn’t have used those words when I was a child.  In my child’s mind, I thought I was a Jew who had been born into the wrong family. But as I listened to my mother, I realized she was dropping hints.

    My mother made it clear that she named each of her children for people from the Hebrew Scriptures.  She also spoke of going to Jewish summer camp when she was young. That, of course, leads to the inevitable question of who in a small town in the South would send their daughter to Jewish summer camp in the early 1940s unless they were Jewish?  When I was old enough to go to camp she sent me to a secular camp where a large number of campers were Jewish.

    When I was older, my mother helped manage the book and gift shop at the local Episcopal Church. Her inventory there included this wall hanging, which is now in my home…

    The shop also sold cassette tapes and songbooks from the series “Scripture in Song,” musical settings of the Psalms.

    I now know that my father, too, had Jewish ancestry, but I didn’t pick up on his hints when I was young. He said only that he had Black Dutch ancestry and that his grandmother told him that anyone who researched the family history would be cursed and die a horrible death. The term Black Dutch is often used as a euphemism for Sephardic Jewish ancestry from Spain.

    My father also had a love for Israel that went beyond any I had ever seen among Christians. Tithing ten percent of his income was central to his spirituality, and he found a way to pay a tithe from the profits of his business directly to Israel. An inventor and manufacturer of the chicken deboning machine, he sold that machinery around the world. However, every tenth machine that was manufactured was given to a kibbutz in Israel, and he personally escorted the machines to the kibbutzim.

    After his death, a former colleague told me that my father often spoke to her about being Jewish, but he never told his own children, and he lived his life as a very devout Christian.

    Both of my parents had been in musical theatre (my mother’s dream had been to be on Broadway), and they made many trips to New York to see Broadway shows. This was in the late 1950s and early 1960s. On one occasion, after their return from New York, I overheard my mother tell someone that they had been denied service in a restaurant because they were Jewish. I wondered then how anyone would know they were Jewish and why they had not simply said they weren’t Jewish.  They always denied being Jewish whenever I asked directly about it. I remember once saying I wanted to be Jewish, and my mother’s response was, “Why do you want to be something you’re not?” 

    I wanted to know who I was…

    There weren’t very many Jewish families in my small hometown when I was growing up, but my mother made sure I knew who all of them were, and they seemed to know my family well. I was only in first or second grade when I learned about the Holocaust and about the Jews in my town who had come to the U.S. as refugees.

    When I was in 4th grade, the mother of one of my Jewish classmates called my mother to ask if I could go to the movies with her son. My mom said yes, and that began a friendship that lasted for several years. By 7th and 8th grade, he and I were considered to be boyfriend and girlfriend, and I became close to his entire family. At the time,  I.D. bracelets were popular among boys, and I wore his bracelet which was obviously Jewish, with the Star of David on it and his name in Hebrew. My friends’ mothers would never have allowed them to wear such a bracelet. When he had his Bar Mitzvah in Atlanta, we were the only family in our town that was invited.

    In college my closest friends were Jewish, and people have always assumed I was Jewish. After graduate school, I worked for several years as a civil rights investigator, investigating employment and housing discrimination, and members of the Jewish community with whom I worked just assumed I was Jewish. Here in the South, oddly enough, perfect strangers have walked up to me and asked if I’m Jewish.  (Why?) Yet no one in my family would openly admit having Jewish ancestry.

    I still have many questions about all of this. It has been like trying to put a puzzle together and realizing that there are many missing pieces. Unfortunately, there is no one who can provide answers. No one is still alive who would be able to give me any more insight than what I already have gleaned.

    One thing I did know for sure, however, and that was that I wanted to claim my Jewish ancestry and live a Jewish life.

  • The word “Melungeon”: Another explanation

    The word “Melungeon”: Another explanation

    In a previous post I stated that the origin of the term Melungeon is unknown and that it has been suggested that the word comes from an Arabic word meaning “cursed souls” or from the French word “mélange” for mixed race.

    However, today I came across another explanation for the origin of the word. In his book Recipes From the American South, Michael W. Twitty states that Melungeons are “an ethnically-mixed community dating back to the 17th century, descended from enslaved Africans, indentured European servants, and others (and here I would add Native Americans and Spanish soldiers in Appalachia) living in Southern Appalachia and beyond.”

    He continues, “The word comes from Mbundu from Angola, mulango, meaning “shipmate.”

    Twitty is an African-American Jewish writer, educator, culinary historian, and author of the book The Cooking Gene.

    His explanation of the origin of the word Melungeon is fascinating to me because I am of Melungeon descent, and my African American ancestry is from Angola.

  • The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Sources

    The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Sources

    Understanding that many people will question the stories about Melungeons and the hidden Jewish heritage in many Melungeon families, I am including here some of the sources I utilized in writing my previous posts. In addition to these sources, I also drew on family stories and other information that I have gathered over many years of research.

    Sources

    Cohen, Marcia and Greenberg,  Mark I. Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History.Brandeis University Press, 2006.

    Gallegos, Eloy J. The Spanish Pioneers in United States History: The Melungeons, the Pioneers of the Interior Southeastern United States. Villagra Press, 1997.

    Gerber, Jane S. The Jews of Spain: A History of the Sephardic Experience. The Free Press, 1994.

    Gutierrez, Juan Marcos Bejarano. Secret Jews: The Complex Identity of Crypto-Jews and Crypto-Judaism. Yaron Publishing, 2017.

    Hirschman, Elizabeth Caldwell. Melungeons: The Last Lost Tribe in America. Mercer University Press, 2005.

    Hirschman, Elizabeth Caldwell, and Donald N. Yates. When Scotland Was Jewish. McFarland and Company, 2007.

    Jarvis, Judith J., et al. Book of Jewish and Crypto-Jewish Surnames. Panther’s Lodge Publishers, 2018.

    Kennedy, N. Brent. The Melungeons: The Resurrection of a Proud People. Mercer University Press, 1997.

    Kessel, Barbara. Suddenly Jewish: Jews Raised as Gentiles Discover Their Jewish Roots. Brandeis University Press, 2000.

    “Ku-Klux Klan Holds Annual Ceremonial.” Atlanta Journal, 7 May 1920, p. 10.

    “Much Local Interest Knights Ku Klux Klan.” Columbus Ledger, Columbus, Georgia, 9 Aug. 1920, p. 2.

    Oney, Steve. And the Dead Shall Rise: The Murder of Mary Phagan and the Lynching of Leo Frank. Vintage Books, Random House, 2004.

    Shapiro, Rabbi Merrill. “Early Crypto-Jews, Conversos and Marranos of Florida.” Museum of the Southern Jewish Experience, 20 Dec. 2023, New Orleans, Louisiana. Webinar.

    Solnick, Joseph M., and N. Brent Kennedy. From Anatolia to Appalachia. Mercer University Press, 2002.

    Thornton, Richard L. “17th Century English Knew About Sephardic Gold Mines in the Appalachians.” The Americas Revealed, 19 Jan. 2020, apalacheresearch.com/2020/01/19/17th-century-english-knew-about-sephardic-gold-mines-in-the-appalachians/.

    Thornton, Richard L. “The Juan Pardo Expedition Under a Magnifying Glass.” The Americas Revealed, 29 Jan. 2022, apalacheresearch.com/2022/01/29/the-juan-pardo-expedition-under-a-magnifying-glass/.

    Thornton, Richard L. “Why Do Archaeologists Refuse to Study Spanish and Jewish Colonial Era Sites in the Appalachians?” The Americas Revealed, 11 Feb. 2023, apalacheresearch.com/2023/02/11/why-do-archaeologists-refuse-to-study-spanish-and-jewish-colonial-era-sites-in-the-appalachians/.

    Thornton, Richard L. “LIDAR Identifies Site of 1646 Spanish Fort, Trading Post, and Mission.” The Americas Revealed, 9 Nov. 2023, apalacheresearch.com/2023/11/09/lidar-identifies-site-of-1646-spanish-fort-trading-post-and-mission/.

    Thornton, Richard L. “Footnote: Very Common for Cherokees and Muskogeans from WEST (sic) of the Ocmulgee River to Have Some Jewish Ancestry.” The Americas Revealed, 26 Nov. 2023, apalacheresearch.com/2023/11/26/footnote-very-common-for-cherokees-and-muskogeans-from-west-of-the-ocmulgee-river-to-have-some-jewish-ancestry/.

    Thornton, Richard L. “Sneak Preview of the Secret Spanish Fort in the Southern Appalachians.” The Americas Revealed, 2 Jan. 2024, apalacheresearch.com/2024/01/02/sneak-preview-of-the-secret-spanish-fort-in-the-southern-appalachians/.

    Winkler, Wayne. Walking Toward the Sunset: The Melungeons of Appalachia. Mercer University Press, 2005.

    (2020, December 3). 20 Years of Melungeon Research. dnaconsultants.com. https://dnaconsultants.com/20-years-of-melungeon-research/

  • The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Part 5 , DNA Evidence

    The Melungeons: Conversos, Crypto-Jews and Hidden Jews in Southern Appalachia – Part 5 , DNA Evidence

    The stories of Spanish forts, towns, and mines in the Appalachian wilderness, the Yuchi/Creeks providing towns of refuge for Sephardic Jews, mysterious people in Appalachia, intermarriage with other incoming Europeans (many of whom may have been Sephardic Jews) – all of this at first glimpse seems like flights of fancy and legends. Some Melungeon researchers have been discounted and labeled as “crackpots,” and many have had to self-publish their findings. However, DNA testing has supported their claims of Iberian and Sephardic Jewish ancestry.

    The first DNA testing

    The first DNA testing of Melungeons was done in 2000, using hair samples of known Melungeons to test mitochondrial DNA, the female lines. The study was conducted by Kevin Jones, an English biologist, working with the University of Virginia’s College at Wise, VA and with University College in London. Results verified that Melungeons are a tri-racial group with European, African and Native American ancestry.

    In 2003 Dr. Donald Yates, himself of Melungeon descent, formed DNA Consultants specifically to determine an overall ethnic profile for Melungeons. The company used the cheek swab test offered at that time through Family Tree DNA to show from what parts of the world Melungeon ancestors came and the amount of admixture from Native Americans and Africans.

    All Melungeons who participated had Appalachian ancestry over the previous five generations and a surname from the list of the most common Melungeon surnames. Those results showed elevated Iberian, Middle Eastern, Native American and Sub-Saharan African ancestry, confirming that Melungeon ancestry is heavily Mediterranean and “browner” than that of their Northern European neighbors.

    Scottish Sephardic ancestry

    In addition, Yates believed that many of the 17th and early 18th century Scottish and Scots-Irish immigrants to America had Sephardic Jewish ancestry. He obtained DNA samples from known Melungeons and from two donors of each of nine Scottish families whose surnames are found among the Melungeon population.

    Yates himself had recently discovered his own hidden Jewish roots, is now a practicing Jew, and had corresponded with many of his DNA cousins who also had discovered that Judaism had been practiced in their families until fairly recently.

    The results of that study were published in 2007 and showed that the DNA locus for the Scottish families was centered in Spain and Portugal. Some of the Melungeons and the Scots tested showed exact matches to living people who self-identified as Jews.

    (One of the Scottish families tested was the Alexanders.  Yates traced the history of the Alexander family and found they arrived in Scotland during the early years of the Spanish Inquisition and settled in Stirling. Many Alexanders came to America through the colony of Maryland. My father had Alexanders in both his maternal and paternal lines, and they arrived in colonial Maryland from Stirling, Scotland.)

    My DNA results

    My own DNA testing with every major company and several smaller companies has confirmed that my Melungeon ancestry is tri-racial: European, African and Native American.

    In spite of the fact that I was told that all of my known and documented ancestors were from the British Isles and France and came to this country in the 1600s and early 1700s, I have substantial Spanish/Portuguese ancestry and also North African, Middle Eastern, Balkan, and Eastern European.

    Although DNA testing cannot conclusively prove Jewish ancestry, I have DNA relatives who have specifically self-identified as being Jewish from France, Morocco, Iraq, Greece, Turkey, and Yemen, and I am a close match with Jewish populations in Ukraine and Poland as well.

    My African ancestry is from present-day Angola and Congo, areas from which the Portuguese and Spanish obtained slaves as early as the 1500s. 

    A neighbor of mine who is of Yuchi/Creek descent, a member of the Creek nation, and a researcher of the Spanish forts and towns that were in the area where I live, helped me use specific DNA markers to verify that I am of Yuchi descent. It was the Yuchis who provided refuge to the Spanish soldiers, settlers and miners, many of them believed to be the Conversos or Crypto-Jews who were abandoned in the interior of Appalachia.

    A few final thoughts

    Additional research remains to be done on the Melungeon people. Much of the research that exists was done in the 1990s and early 2000s but has now stalled due to the disagreements among Melungeon descendants as to who is a true Melungeon.

    However, the fact remains that many Melungeons have Jewish ancestry, although they may not be aware of it.  Others know their ancestors were practicing Jews who at some point chose to hide their Judaism and convert to Christianity or chose simply to have no religious faith at all. And some, like myself, had parents who knew they were Jewish, dropped hints to their children, but denied being Jewish when directly asked about it.

    There are many questions yet to be answered. The mysterious Melungeons are still mysterious in many ways, but Melungeons are not the stuff of Appalachian legend.  We are here and have been here for over 400 years, and many of us are embracing our Jewish ancestry.