RECOGNITION

I came back from a trip to Paris… a very important trip. I am officially registered as Jewish. My children will not forget who they are. My heritage is not gone for ever. I’m so proud.

It took me a whole year to collect all the information I needed:
My grand-mother doesn’t have any proof of her being Jewish. She says she was too afraid to ask for any. I think that it is the guilt-feeling of marrying a none-Jew, that held her from ever going to a rabbi and asking for any written proof.

So I found myself in front of the difficult task of finding her sister, who lives in France, going to her, convincing her to give me her kettouba (an old kettouba dating from 1943, and issued in Lebanon!) , then going to the “consistoire de paris” with a big pile of paper (papers that prove links from my grand-mother to her sister, then my mother to her mother then me to my mother and grand-mother….), and proving I’m a Jewish.

I couldn’t believe how easy it was. Here I am, recognized by the Jewish community, officially.

It is just a piece of paper, and my belonging to my Jewish heritage goes a lot further than that, but it is like never having registered a born baby: the child exists, of course, but not officially. Same here, I felt that as long as I don’t have it archived somewhere, I don’t really exist.

The torch can still be passed on…