Vetted Kohen Registry

Wow…. this journey never ceases to amaze me.

I have a weird story. Bear with me.

All my life, I have tended to have lots of Jewish friends, and was often mistaken for Jewish – both by Jews and by antisemites. It caused me to take some time to learn a bit about the people I was being mistaken for, and the more I learned, the more I liked and admired the Jewish people and took it as a compliment.

A few times, Jewish people asked me if I was a Cohen. “Nope, that’s not my last name, I’m not even Jewish, sorry….” I guess I look like someone’s relative or something, okay, cool. I’m very tall and skinny, long face, with large and dextrous hands.

My grandmother and my mother were the keepers of the family genealogy, and it came to me after my mother’s passing. With a warning: “There’s something in there which probably won’t surprise you, but you must not act on it while your father is alive.” About two years later, I was rearranging the genealogy into more robust boxes and I found it.

So, about 20 years ago, I discovered that my great grandmother’s maiden name was Katz. About a million things fell into place with that little revelation, and while I couldn’t act on it while my father was alive, I was quietly proud of it.

I did an Internet search at the time, came up with my great grandmother’s maiden name meaning “descendant of a priest”. Okay… whatever that means…

My father passed away and then a few weeks later, COVID-19 hit. I was starting to take steps to learn a little about my Jewish ancestry when October 7th happened.

I resolved to stand with the Jewish people. I have missed Shabbat morning services exactly once since Bereshit the next Saturday. I was never comfortable in a church, and figured the synagogue would be like that. Instead, I find myself looking forward to going to the shul. Now I know why I was never comfortable in a church.

Consequently, my knowledge of the stories of the Old Testament is very limited, with a very minimal knowledge of who Moses was when I first walked into the shul. I might have known that he received the Ten Commandments, and that would have been about it.

This year, I have been concentrating on learning the rhythms of Jewish services, making friends, and learning Hebrew.

I’m hardly fluent in Hebrew, but it seems to come fairly naturally to me. It’s been ~300 days and however many Shabbat services and I can now follow along with the Hebrew text in the chumash with what I hear being read from a Sefer Torah. The beauty and elegance of Hebrew letters has always appealed to some part of me, since childhood, long before I had any inkling that I had Jewish ancestry.

A rabbi who has become a dear friend suggested that I read Suddenly Jewish. Absolutely a great book. So many of the accounts of people who discovered Jewish ancestry as adults really mirror my own experiences and emotions.

It turns out that I am already Jewish by Halakha (great grandmother –> grandmother –> mother –> me) and I have had four different rabbis confirm this. Wow.

This would also mean that my sister and my cousins are all also Jewish, whether they know it or not – and it was kept as a family secret.

And then leaning that Cohen is not just a family name as I had assumed, but reading kohen in the Hebrew in the chumash and learning that I am descended directly from Aaron? I have a great-great-great uncle Moses? “Kohen Tzedec”? Wow. I am humbled.

I know I am not a kohen in the religious sense due to it being maternal rather than paternal ancestry. But all the same, wow.

What are the implications of this? Is it useful to the Jewish community to keep track of maternal kohen ancestry? Do kohen DNA tests work with maternal ancestry?

Absolutely humbled and amazed, and eager to be of service in any way possible. Thank you.

Lawrence