O pinion
Three DNA Bombshells Upended My Life
BY SAMUEL BURKE
CONFUSION. DISBELIEF.

Denial. Those were the emotions
cutting through me as I looked
at my dad’s DNA results. We
come from a small Phoenix
Jewish family, but this at-home
test was showing a big discovery
none of us could explain.

“Dad, it says you’re Mormon.”
Words I never thought I’d utter.

My father’s response shocked me
even more.

“I know,” he said as my eyes
widened. “I saw that when the
results came in. But it’s so prepos-
terous that I just ignored it.”
You can ignore DNA results,
but that doesn’t make them
go away. The test classifies my
dad (and by extension me) as
“Mountain West Mormon
Pioneers.” We had no idea
a scientific test could tell if
someone comes from a relative-
ly-new proselytizing religion like
the Church of Latter Day Saints.

I was determined to solve
this mystery, but the deeper I
dove into it the more I realized
our lives would never be the
same again. When I finally
untangled the web, my heart
broke as I watched the DNA
test steal a part of my dad and
his identity. We’re still Jewish,
but my father’s paternal lineage
was not at all who or what he’d
always believed.

“It changed my whole
perspective on who I was,” my
dad admitted, referring to his
identity in the past tense.

At-home DNA testing has
become commonplace in the
United States and this nearly
$10 billion market is now
taking off around the world.

But there’s a secret side to these
kits which the DNA industry
doesn’t like to talk about.

Experts find that as many as
11% of people who take a DNA
test discover that one of their
parents is not their biolog-
ical parent, according to the
American Journal of Physical
Anthropology. This sounded
ridiculous to me — until it
happened twice in my very
own family.

The advertising for DNA
testing focuses on positive stories
of people who were seeking
out answers about their ethnic
backgrounds. They don’t spotlight
families like mine whose lives are
turned upside down by a simple
swab of the cheek.

For my family, the DNA
test wasn’t just adding a new
chapter in our lives. It seemed
as though it was rewriting our
life story. After my mom sent
in her sample, we received a
cryptic email from a woman
whose family also attended
Congregation Beth Israel. As
I read the stranger’s email, I
realized the woman was insin-
uating she and my mom are
sisters. When I found a picture
of the woman, my jaw literally
dropped. My mom took one
look at the photo and made a
blunt proclamation.

“Well, we don’t need a DNA
test. She’s obviously my sister,”
she said as she stared at her new
younger sister in amazement.

A third DNA shock brought
my family closure to the
case of a missing cousin who
disappeared in the late ’80s.

We believed he had died from
AIDS, but learned he had met
a different fate.

The DNA test began adding
and subtracting the people
I called “family” so quickly
that I started questioning the
very meaning of the word. Are
family the people who you are
raised with? Or the people
you’re related to?
I began documenting my
family’s own journey as well as a
dozen other families around the
world whose lives were torn apart
and put back together by DNA
testing. Two years of listening in
on these families’ roller-coaster
journeys is now a podcast called
“Suddenly Family.”
Infidelity. Blackmail.

Murder mysteries. Kidnapping.

Clandestine artificial insem-
ination. These families have
experienced it all. Their DNA
plots sound more like block-
buster thrillers, but behind that
are the emotional firsthand
accounts of people who’ve had
to pick up the pieces of their
lives and start all over again.

What type of relationship
do you owe a relative stranger
you had never met before the
DNA test? What happens to
the close family you no longer
share a bloodline with?
These were the questions
I needed answered and the
families who let me listen in
on their most intimate DNA
moments truly provided them.

I learned more about what
the family I’ve had all my
life means to me after devel-
oping relationships with my
newly-discovered family.

Now that the dust has
settled, my dad summarizes
what this gut-wrenching DNA
experience has meant to him:
“It’s now just a matter of fact,”
he said. “It’s not good. It’s not
bad. It just is.” l
Samuel Burke is a three-time
Emmy Award-winning news
correspondent, Arizona State
University graduate and Phoenix
native. He now lives in London
and is the host of the podcast
“Suddenly Family.”
What Jewish Comedians Thought of SNL’s Israel Dig
BY ANDREW SILOW-CARROLL
AT THE TIME of this writing,
it’s almost Purim, which means
I am busy writing jokes that
poke fun at the stuff we do and
obsess about as Jews without
offending too many people. Not
always easy, and that’s when I
am writing for an audience that
14 MARCH 4, 2021
I know extremely well.

Now imagine writing Jewish
jokes outside the bubble. “Saturday
Night Live” found out the hard
way after a joke about Israel went
viral for the wrong reasons. Here’s
the joke Michael Che told on the
Feb. 20 show: “Israel is reporting
that they’ve vaccinated half of
their population, and I’m going to
guess it’s the Jewish half.”
David Harris of the American
Jewish Committee said the joke
“accuses Israel of vaccinating
only Jews” and “spreading an
anti-Semitic lie.” The Reform
movement’s Rabbi Rick Jacobs
said that the joke “was in poor
taste” and that “Israel is a world
leader in COVID vaccinations,
protecting Jewish and Arab
citizens alike.” Gilad Erdan,
Israel’s ambassador to the U.S.,
demanded an apology, tweeting
that “perpetuating anti-Semitism
is just not funny.”
I heard the joke as a comic
riff on the idea that any ethnic
state would of course take care
of its own before others. But
clannishness can be seen as
an anti-Semitic trope: When
the Anti-Defamation League
surveys anti-Semitic attitudes,
it includes “Jews stick together
more than other Americans” as
an anti-Jewish stereotype. I don’t
know if Che or whoever wrote
the joke was aware of this trope,
but that doesn’t absolve them.

The other possibility is that
the joke is about an actual
controversy: accusations that
Israel hasn’t done enough to
JEWISH EXPONENT
get vaccines to Palestinian non-
citizens living in the West Bank
or Gaza. In which case the
joke may be harsh and inaccu-
rate criticism of Israel, but is
it anti-Semitic? A lot of Israelis
have criticized Israel for not
getting more vaccines to the
Palestinian Authority.

Che’s defender’s say the joke
is fair criticism of a country that
recently passed a nation-state
law that privileges its Jewish
population over other groups;
a Haaretz columnist writes the
joke was “a humorous exagger-
ation of Israel’s open and
systemic discrimination against
non-Jews.” Ilana Glazer, the
co-star and co-creator of “Broad
City,” praised Che, retweeting
activists who said the joke told
the truth about the “separate
and unequal treatment” of
Palestinians under occupation.

My hunch is that “SNL” wasn’t
aware of any of this discourse,
and Jews are attaching their own
agendas to a throwaway joke.

To me it sounds like a one-liner
written by a roomful of writers
who live and work in a city with
the world’s largest population of
Jews outside Israel. It is a joke Jews
and even Israelis might tell each
other, but which becomes uncom-
fortable and even anti-Jewish
when released into the wild.

But that is just me. For a
gut check, I reached out to
comedians and entertainers who
specialize in Jewish material or
See Silow-Carroll, Page 19
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM