Suddenly Jewish by Barbara Kessel (2007, Paperback)

Kessel interviewed 166 people who were raised as non-Jews and later discovered that they were of Jewish descent. She placed an author's query in the New York Times Book Review and postings on the Internet. The largest number of responses came from descendants of the two million Jews who immigrated to the U.S. between 1881 and 1920. Although most of these immigrants maintained, at least for a generation, their religious and cultural ties to Judaism, their children were often more interested in assimilating into American society than in maintaining their Jewishness. The author divides the book into four chapters: crypto-Jews (descendants of the Jewish victims of the Spanish Inquisition); hidden children of the Holocaust; children of Holocaust survivors; and adoptees. Some of Kessel's subjects said that the news only confirmed a long-held suspicion; others were taken by surprise to discover the truth. This book, the latest in Brandeis University's erudite American Jewish History, Culture, and Life series, is candid and reflective--and sometimes even humorous