One Woman’s Surprising DNA Discovery — Of Jewish Roots
Image by Facebook
By Sam Kestenbaum July 28, 2017
Alice Collins Plebuch, raised in a proud Irish Catholic family, sent away for a “just-for-fun DNA test” — but the results changed her life. She found out that somewhere in her family, she had Jewish roots.
Plebuch told the Washington Post about her surprising journey of self-discovery in a recent story.
Plebuch, now 69, was bewildered by the results of the test. “I really lost all my identity,” Plebuch said. “I felt adrift. I didn’t know who I was — you know, who I really was.”
After much searching, she ultimately discovered that her father was Jewish — and was not genetically related to his parents.
Through much sleuth work, and some luck, she got to the root of the issue: a baby mix-up at the Bronx hospital where her father was born, back in 1913.
“Somehow, a Jewish child had gone home with an Irish family, and an Irish child had gone home with a Jewish family,” the Post reported. “This was a mistake that no one had ever detected, a mistake that could only have been uncovered with DNA technology.”
Email Sam Kestenbaum at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.
We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.
If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
