Rocking Their Religious Identities

That's what happened to people who didn't accept Jesus, the priests in religion classes told him when he was growing up in France. And did this mean he was related to the people who killed Jesus? Who was he, if he wasn't Catholic? All the children in his Paris neighborhood were Catholic and went to a religious school, as he did. His parents and grandparents had lied to him.

For Geschwind's family, his discovery in 1971 set off a painful spiral that continues.

Geschwind had many questions about his grandparents, three of whom were Jewish. In an effort to protect their children, Geschwind's parents, they had sent them to Catholic schools and attempted to reinvent themselves as Catholics.

Yet Geschwind could feel, even as a boy, that certain things weren't to be discussed. By the time his sister told him that they were Jewish, the family pattern of silence was deeply ingrained. Questions remained unasked.

But Geschwind, 42, a Potomac radiologist, became eager to escape the "fabricated life" his family had crafted and the European anti-Semitism he knew was part of his legacy. In his 20s, he moved to the United States, where he developed a strong cultural identity as a Jew. But, he said, he remains deeply angry about his upbringing, disoriented about religion and conflicted about what to teach his children.

"I still fear to be openly Jewish," Geschwind said. "I can have this agnostic identity -- it's easier to handle."

Barbara Kessel interviewed about 200 people who discovered as adults that they had Jewish roots for her 2000 book "Suddenly Jewish." There were deathbed declarations and drunken confessions.

For people who come to such discoveries with a strong sense of who they are in terms of religion and other aspects, "this is just another piece of information," she said. But for those who don't, it fundamentally changes their lives.