Secrets of the Blood: What’s in my DNA?

I just ordered a Personal Genome Kit from 23andme.

As I was entering my credit card number, my heartbeat accelerated. And when I completed the transaction, my body let out a deep exhale. My eyes are on the verge of tears. Though I’m not crying. But, I am slightly trembling.

For about seven or eight years now, I’ve wanted to get my DNA tested. There’s a deep-rooted curiosity within me that’s been tugging at my heart, wanting to know the answers to questions I don’t even have.

Yes, I know my family is from the Former Soviet Union (FSU) and yes, our faith is Jewish. But that alone doesn’t seem right. It doesn’t seem like enough.

During WWII, many people in my family perished. Additionally, during the two great wars – and all the centuries of battles preceding them – ancestry was difficult to discover, to maintain and to preserve. Men would go off into war. No one knew if they were dead or alive. Some started multiple families in multiple cities, with neither the wives or the kids being aware of the polygamy. Communication was, especially by today’s standards, abysmal. And DNA tests are a very modern technology.

Often times, secrets, especially secrets of the blood, ensured that only those consummating knew the very truth that would impact their descendants.

I’m lucky in that I come from a huge extended family, with loving aunts and uncles, all over the world, and terrific cousins, with many of whom I have a very good relationship. All of us look very distinct. In a lineup, siblings can very much be identified. But most of us cousins are as different in our physical make up as can possibly be imagined: different color skin; various hair colors and textures; all degrees of height and weight; and dramatically distinct eye color and, even more so, shape.

Since I was in my 20’s, strangers have had a fun time trying to guess who I am. And depending on my (colored) hair color of the season, this swayed the public in many directions: Turkish, Albanian, Italian, Syrian and even Irish. Very few guess Russian / Ukrainian. A few years ago, within two weeks, in two different places, two different people each came up to me, speaking fluent Greek, and after realizing I had no idea what they were saying, then stopped and said the exact same thing: “Oh, I thought you were George’s wife.”

No, I’m not George’s wife. But I’m also not sure exactly what I am.

In 2008 (or 2009), at the Cleveland International Film Festival, Ben Lieblich, his wife Nadia and I checked out the dramatic film Mongol. It was about Act 1 of Genghis Khan’s life. Something visceral hit me about the film and driving home, I called my Sister and said, “I think we’re part Mongol.” Her response? “You’re just now figuring this out?”

One of our late Great Uncles, in so many ways, looked Mongolian, yet this wasn’t something anyone ever talked about. Because when you come from the Soviet Union, where information is used against you, no one talks about anything even remotely risky. And discussing our origins, especially with all the Antisemitism, was, in fact, very risky.

And, between the two great wars, immigration, geographic dispersion and the passing of time, with the exception of some photos that my parents’ generation may have kept stowed away and the stories The Elders still recall, there’s very little factual data available about where my family once came from and what kind of blood runs thru my veins.

A few weeks ago, while meeting with a student and her family, her mother, who is Indian, looked at me, and asked, “Are you one of us?”

I’m looking forward to discovering that answer.