Great news!

I have a newly found relative - albeit a very distant one.

If you don't know this about me, I have a limited number of siblings (1 sister), cousins (4), aunts (3) and uncles (1 who passed away in late December).
In comparison to my husband who comes from a Greek family with tons of uncles, aunts and cousins, I am a "family-challenged" person.

So finding a new relative is a big thing.

My new relative, Q., found me via the DNA results from the DNA testing I had reported on earlier, which we had done through the National Geographic Genographic project. Family Tree DNA, who runs the actual DNA tests, allows you to publish your results on ysearch.org or mitosearch.org so other participants can find matches easily.

Q. is actually a genetic match to my father. He e-mailed me, and after a few e-mails back and forth, he told me that "this might shock" me: His father's side is Jewish. His grandfather, Q.'s great-grandfather fled Europe at the turn of the century - 1899 or 1900.

He explained that they are Sephardic Jews, coming from the Mediterranean area.

Talk about a flooring moment in life. I had found the missing Jewish connection link!

Of course, the genetic link we share may be many generations (as in 50 or more) ago. It still fascinates me.

We even share interests such as photography, and from our early interactions, we seem to tick in very similar ways.

I have to admit, I am still waiting for the link on my maternal side, where we had suspected it.
I found two webpages that lists my maternal grandmother's (Nussbaum) and great-grandmother's (Brenner) names as Jewish names. Not that that is exclusive evidence, but it just seems to all fit.

So keep on swabbing your cheeks - go DNA testing!
posted by Elke at 10:39 PM