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.”

Forwarding the News

Thoughtful, balanced reporting from the Forward and around the web, bringing you updated news and analysis each day.

Terms(Required)

I agree to the Forward's Terms of Service and Privacy Policy

Email(Required)

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

The Forward is free to read, but it isn’t free to produce

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward.

Now more than ever, American Jews need independent news they can trust, with reporting driven by truth, not ideology. We serve you, not any ideological agenda.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. We’ve started our Passover Fundraising Drive, and we need 1,800 readers like you to step up to support the Forward by April 21. Members of the Forward board are even matching the first 1,000 gifts, up to $70,000.

This is a great time to support independent Jewish journalism, because every dollar goes twice as far.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

2X match on all Passover gifts!

$90 → $180 $180 → $360

$360 → $720

Other amount