[Cz-L] Our Roots

 
The dominating subject here for the past week or two has been genealogy, which is always fascinating.  One of the problems in genealogy is that we show too little interest in it in our youth and by the time our interest peaks, all relatives who could have helped us get perspective have deceased.
 
A distant cousin of mine showed up here after my mother died and told me of all sorts of relatives I have around the world including a branch that moved to Italy and converted, leaving me with a Catholic priest as a distant cousin. I would make up for that with an adopted cousin-in-law (a new category) as head of state of Israel.  Mother’s sister, my aunt Hilda, married a man named Schlosser and adopted his daughter, Leah, who married Yitzhak Rabin.  So there!
 
Later I began to realize that my cousin informant may have mixed up some family names. She thought my grandmother had been a Rauch but I later recalled that she had been a Hermann. So the priest connection may be fantasy.  Once when I called her with some Cz questions, I was redirected by the operator to her son's telephone.  I didn't know him.  He informed that she had died. Naturally I was upset and when I asked what it was that did her in, he said, "It was nothing serious."  When you get this kind of answer from a branch of your family, you tend to discount much of what they say.
 
My maternal grandfather, Adolph Todres, died at age 27 when mother was two years old. All I know about him is that he was very handsome (from pictures) and that grandmother loved him very much and told her daughters what a wonderful man he was.  Also, I was once told (vaguely) that his ancestors had come from Spain, presumably during the Inquisition.
 
In the late 1980s, in preparation for a Columbus Quincentenary project in 1992, I did research on the Age of Discovery and Columbus. Here I came across the story of the Jew Luis de Torres who sailed with Columbus on the first voyage as a translator and interpreter.  Luis spoke Spanish, Hebrew, Aramaic, etc., and he would have been in the first lighter sent out from the Santa Maria anchored offshore. He was the first Jew to set foot in the new world and because he would have wanted to impress the sailors and justify his position as a linguist and translator, he would not have addressed the local aboriginals with “Buenos Dias.”  Being Jewish, he most likely addressed them with “Shalom.”  Thus the first word by a European to a North American Indian was most likely, “Shalom.”
 
Simon Wiesenthal, I am told, came to a similar conclusion in his book Sails of Hope.
 
Now Columbus, himself, has been claimed to have been Spanish (Colon) and Italian (Colombo) and Jewish.  And if as great a historical figure as Columbus leaves the historians and genealogists in confusion, what chance have we insignificant mortals?
 
But since Todres and Torres are similar, I became excited about the possibility of being descended from Luis de Torres and thus did more research.  It turns out that he converted to Catholicism before they sailed, possibly a pre-condition, and he settled in Cuba probably never to return to Europe.
 
Thirty odd years ago when I visited Santo Domingo in the Dominican Republic, some of Columbus bones had been interred in a crypt inside a stately 500 year old cathedral.  On the floor of the cathedral there were a number of grave stones from the 1500s laid flat on the floor.  One of these contained the remains of a Catholic woman named “Cohen.”  In their rush to convert, apparently, some didn’t bother changing their names. 
 
Now it has come to my mind that the most famous individual ever to be born in Romania, Vlad Tepes, the Impaler, Prince Dracula, may also have been Jewish.  If you Google him and add “portrait” to your search you will find a painting of him with a large mustache.  As I stared at his face I got the sense that I had seen him before and then I imagined him without that mustache.  The resemblance was pronounced.  He looks like George Gershwin.  I once met the illegitimate son of George who was the spitting image of his father and while their expressions were usually mild as opposed to Dracula’s fierce look, the resemblance was striking. We have to remember that illegitimacy is also part of genealogy so since we are all from the same country, take a good look in the mirror.  Do you have any resemblance to Dracula?  No?  Good. Relax.
 
Where do I come from, please let me see
What were they like who came before me?
Will I be proud to learn of my past?
Or will I regret that I probed and asked?
Here am I now, but soon I’ll be gone
What is the meaning?
Why carry on?
Where do I come from?
 I’ve got to know
I’ve got to dig it up and find my roots
To get perspective before I go...
 
Happy searching
Andy

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Received on 2012-04-22 07:55:28