One week later, I stood in front of my family, friends, and Jewish community, becoming a bat mitzvah. I was nervous at first, and Rabbi Seider had to whisper to me to speak louder into the microphone. Then I messed up some Hebrew words in the beginning of the service—part of a prayer I knew back to front. But instead of making me nervous about the tougher readings to come, it was actually a big relief. I was bound to make a mistake at some point, so at least I got it out of the way. Even better, nobody noticed or cared. My parents were still beaming with pride in the front row, with my dad’s video camera on a tripod in the back. My brother was still fiddling with his yarmulke and drumming his hands on his prayer book. And Madeline and Ethan were still there, silently cheering me on.
I only stumbled once while reading my Torah portion, and I chanted my haftorah perfectly. After that, the last big hurdle was my speech. I stepped up to the podium and stood up very straight.
“In the Torah portion I just read, Naso, the Israelites are wandering in the desert, and God asks Moses to take a census. He needs to count all the men between the ages of thirty and fifty, to determine how many there are from each of the families. The family that they’re from determines what their job is in moving items from the Tent of Meeting, or the Tabernacle. I’ll admit I was kind of disappointed when I learned that this was the subject of my Torah portion. Taking a census sounds pretty boring.”
I got a few laughs here, which made me blush. I took a breath and continued. “Then I realized that being part of a census means identifying yourself as one group or another. In this story, being a Levite or a Gershonite determines what job you have, but in real life, identifying as one group or another can mean a lot more.
“In researching my Holocaust project, I learned that Hitler invaded the small country of Luxembourg in May of 1940.” I looked up for a second here and glanced at Grandpa. He winked.
“The Germans wanted everyone there to join the Nazi party and identify as German,” I read. “But in the 1941 census, 95 percent stated that they were Luxembourgish. In this small way, the Luxembourgers showed their resistance. This made the Nazis angry and led to mass arrests. Of course, it was even worse if you were Jewish. Starting in September of 1941, the Jews had to identify themselves by wearing the yellow Star of David. This made it easier to deport and kill them. We often hear the final count—the census—of how many Jews died in the Holocaust. But it’s important to remember that each number in that census represents a real person, like my great-grandma Anna’s parents, and her grandparents and siblings, even her twin sister.
“Because of the color of my skin, people are always surprised when I identify as Jewish. They often ask me what I really am, or where I’m really from, just like they’re taking a census. Being adopted, I’ve always asked myself these questions too, and not knowing the answers is hard. Where you come from is a big part of who you are. That’s why my family and I decided to take a DNA test, to see where our ancestors are from. I just got the results to mine, and it turns out I’m a real mix. My genes are 40 percent Nigerian, 10 percent North African, 13 percent Eastern European, 13 percent Western European, and 24 percent Middle Eastern—maybe those ancestors were wandering the desert with Moses!”
People laughed and started whispering to each other. I wondered what they were saying. When I’d opened the package, my own reaction was just as mixed as those results. The African percentage was something of a confirmation, and it was definitely interesting to see so much was from Nigeria. It was cool to think I was part Middle Eastern, too—maybe my ancestors were Jewish, though who knows. And European! Maybe a small strand of my DNA had roots in Luxembourg.
I still had so many questions, though. Were my European ancestors like Anna, who came to America on a boat full of refugees? And my African ancestors—did they come on a boat too? Did they make a choice, or was their ship full of slaves? When and how did those strings of DNA intertwine, and what did that say about my past, and my present?
I didn’t know the answers, but in a way, it made no difference at all. I still came from a long line of people who made the difficult choice to send away their child. One was smuggled across the ocean, one was thrown from a train, and I was placed for adoption. But that doesn’t mean those parents didn’t love those children; I know that for sure. The best part is that all those children lucked out, because I also come from a long line of people who take in strangers and make them part of their family. Max and Hannah, Oliver’s parents in England, and—beaming with pride in the front row of the synagogue—my mom and dad.
I didn’t need to find my birth parents. Not yet, at least. It’s not like I’d ever forget about them, and I might still decide to look for them someday. But right now, the people who mattered most were all in this temple, listening to me read this speech. And once I read the ending, I’d be minutes away from becoming a bat mitzvah.
“My DNA results answer some questions about ‘what’ I am,” I read, “but they don’t really change who I am. I am still me, and my family is still my family. Whether or not Judaism is in my blood, it is in my history, and I can still feel a connection to it. Before I read from the Torah today, my family stood in a line and passed the Torah down, from my grandparents down to me. I only wish my great-grandma Anna could have been here to be in the line. If I were to take a census of all the things that make me proud to be who I am and connected to my Jewish heritage, Great-Grandma Anna and her story would be high on the list.”