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 kestenbaum@forward.com and follow him on Twitter at @skestenbaum
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.
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 the protests on college campuses.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
Make a gift of any size and become a Forward member today. You’ll support our mission to tell the American Jewish story fully and fairly.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
