I am an Israelite

Written by Zhey Chua |Posted on July 1, 2009 | Comments

I’m still in the process of digesting all of this at the moment but I would like to share with all of you who come here what I recently discovered.

I am an Israelite.

Yes, I am. If you’ve been with me on Facebook, you may have already read my status messages which I shared in real time, as each discovery of my origins unfolded before my disbelieving eyes. How did I come about this, you may ask? Here’s the story:

Since last week, I have noticed that my blog is being viewed by someone in the south and this gave me renewed hope that my biological mother might still be located, after all. I have launched a nationwide search for her when I was eighteen, but there was no internet yet at that time and long distance calls to the province of Leyte proved to be pocket-draining for an eighteen year old newspaper correspondent/college student like me. Eventually, I got tired from hoping and so I quit searching.

Then, came two days ago when, as I have said, this southern reader gave me renewed hope. Google became my ally by being my launching pad. I typed the surname and there they were, a bunch of people who shares the same surname as my mother (as told by my Dad)… Well, not quite a bunch, there were only five of them who came up and who all are located in the same small province – Leyte. I could not be far off the mark. If there are only five people of the same surname in the whole country coming up on my search, then I am certainly right on target. I sent about four of them an email inquiry and please, please do pray for these people to respond. I have to keep in mind that I may not be welcome to this family since, as Dad confirmed just now, my mother could be a product of an unwanted/unwelcomed love affair.

Anyway, so how did this all lead me to the conclusion that I am an Israelite? I remembered a time when my Dad told me that my mother had foreign blood in her, he specifically said Italian (or so I thought?), so I grew up thinking I am of Italian descent. But then, because I am naturally partial to Sicilians, I somehow was hoping that my forefathers are from Sicily, and the “curious George” in me turned once more to Google and what came up was to date the biggest surprise of my life. My surname is included in an Etymological diary written by Heinrich and Eva Guggenheimer entitled Jewish Family Names and their Origins.

My first question when this came up was, “What?!! I’m of a Jewish descent???”, not that there is anything wrong about that, but come on, Dad said I am Italian! Anyway, still not fully convinced, I went to Facebook and on the search box typed my mother’s surname and guess what, every Facebook account holder with that same surname is located in Israel, there are a few in Turkey and about six or seven who are scattered all over the Eastern United States. I am dumbfounded, to say the least.

Then, I told my husband about my discovery and he asked, “so from which tribe did you come from? The Levites?” rather jokingly, well, he was really just kidding but I took that question seriously and again, Googled what kind of Jew are we (or the surname, that is). And that is when it all started to add up.

I came from the Sephardic Jews, the term “Sephardic” came from the Hebrew word “Sepharad” (see Obadiah 1:20), who were exiled in the Iberian Peninsula. The Iberian Peninsula encompasses what we now know as modern Spain and Portugal. Now that makes a lot of sense because in 1521, Ferdinand Magellan, a Portuguese, discovered the Philippines and his voyage landed him particularly in the island of Cebu, a southern province only roughly 200 nautical miles from Leyte. If my forefather is a Hispanic Jew, then there is a great chance that he belonged to Magellan’s army and probably one of those who fell in love with the island and settled here with his family. Of course this link to Magellan as to the story behind my ancestors setting foot in the country is an intelligent guess, but it is highly likely.

Wikipedia also supports my own implications as it gives a summary of how the Sephardic Jews were distributed by circumstances:

Following the 1492 expulsion from Spain, and the subsequent expulsions in Portugal (1497), these Jews, the nascent Sephardim, settled mainly in Morocco, the Ottoman Empire (modern-day Turkey, Greece, Southwest Asia, North Africa and Bosnia and Herzegovina), southern France, Italy, Spanish North America, (Southwest United States New Mexico, Texas (Tejano), Arizona, and Mexico), Spanish South America and the Philippines and Portuguese Brazil, as well as the Netherlands (whence a number of families continued on to the former Dutch possessions of Curaçao, Suriname and Aruba), England (as well as English colonies such as Jamaica), Germany, Denmark, Austria and Hungary.

As a result of the Jewish exodus from Arab lands, many of the Sephardim from the Middle East relocated to either Israel or France, where they form a significant portion of the Jewish communities today. Other significant communities also exist in New York City, Argentina, and Montreal, Canada and Gibraltar.

Well, there goes my brief genealogy for you. I am still quite amazed at this discovery, you know, all I was trying to look for was my biological mother and what I unearthed instead is a great history of my origins, it’s just mind-blowing.

I still don’t know from which “tribe” did my family come from, but does that still matter? Knowing that I am an Israelite is already too overwhelming already, but anyway, maybe I’ll find out soon, who knows?

Oh, by the way, I called Dad and asked him a series of questions and this is how the conversation went like:

Me: Dad, you mentioned a surname, see if I’ve got this correct, it’s __________, right?
Dad: Yes, you know as a matter of fact I have a suspicion that she did not use that in your birth certificate to hide her identity because she was a runaway…
Me: Yeah, okay, so I searched for people in the Philippines with this surname and they are all from Leyte.
Dad: Those are your relatives, dear.
Me: Okay, didn’t you say my mom’s Italian?
Dad: No, she’s Arab.
Me: What? But you said Italian, specifically!
Dad: No, it’s Arab. Her father is a Middle Eastern man, and so are her grandparents.
Me: Okay, Dad. I did a quick search on that too, I have Jewish forefathers.
Dad: *quiet, pregnant pause*
Me: Dad, I’m an Israelite.
Dad: *laughing but serious*, Yes, you are…

***Cross posted from ZoeGrapho