I just read an intriguing article in American Israelite, entitled “Jews in Odd Places, Part II.” This kind of situation illustrates the absurdity of trying to claim a person as one thing or another when so many people are between. Intermarriage and the spread of the Jewish diaspora mean that people who would have been labeled “Mischlinge” like my father are everywhere. The last sentence of the article especially reminded me of my godmother’s testimony: “Moise identifies as Christian, but his father’s Jewish background may be used against him.”

From the article: “Last week, I noted that Iceland’s president has an Israeli Jewish wife.  Major media outlets, like the NY Times, are now reporting on a major crisis in the Congo (the much bigger of two countries with this name) . . .  [The incumbent’s] rival for the presidency is Moise Katumbi . . . He’s popular because he is competent and some say less corrupt than most Congolese politicians. His father, like many Sephardi Greek Jews from the Island of Rhodes, fled to Africa in the 1930s when the Italian fascists took over the island.  Unlike most Rhodes Jews, Katumbi’s father stayed in the former Belgian Congo when it became independent in the 1960s. He wed the daughter of a local chief.”