Whoopie Goldberg and the Jewish Question Made Clear

 Nadene Goldfoot                                                 

Whoopie Goldberg's real name is Caryn Elaine Johnson (born November 13, 1955).  She's a year younger than my daughter; 1955 when Blacks were demonstrating and realizing they've been under duress for too long.  She's been acting since 1983 when she was 28 and became very famous, having won an Emmy, Grammy and Academy awards. She's been on THE VIEW  leading the ladies in discussions about pertinent issues.  In one about Jews, she said Jews were not a race, but the Germans had made it very clear that we were-and an inferior one at that-one that needed to be exterminated from the world.  Up to then, we Jews were saying that we weren't a race; that we were a religion.  We are a mixed bag of colors; some with luscious tans and others pretty exasperatingly white, especially when we disrobe at the beach.

                                                 

GMB viewers praise David Baddiel for ‘eloquent’ explanation of Whoopi Goldberg’s ‘dangerous’ Holocaust remarks ;  Jewish Comedian and writer Baddiel appeared on the ITV series on Wednesday (2 February) to talk about the controversy surrounding the Sister Act star, who has been suspended from The View for saying the Holocaust “isn’t racial but religious. Race; Racial is not just about color of skin. it's both; race and religion  

  

There are questions raised by Whoopie herself as to whether or not she is Jewish.  She has claimed that she is.  

                                                   

So she took a DNA test.  That was the smartest thing she could do.  She was the daughter of Emma Harris and Robert James Johnson.  They were not Jewish but were Black.  Emma's mother was Rachel Freedman, and that is a Jewish surname.  Malachi Harris was Emma's father; Whoopie's maternal grandparents.  

I had found 14 Freedman males that matched me and 9 females on the 1st page with a Freedman surname. I never realized until now how many Freedmans must be on my tree.  This is the spelling;  heavens knows how many Friedmans I might be matching.  Well, we do have 6 million Jews living in the USA, 6 million in Israel and about 2 million scattered in other countries.  We happen to be 0.02% of the world's population, not many----and we all love DNA testing because for one reason, our lives were disrupted by the Holocaust, causing all our records to be lost.                               

                     

I believe that all along, Whoopie wanted her Jewish peers to know that she had a Jewish ancestor because she told them this many times.  She hadn't felt that a Freedman grandmother was enough so took on the stage name of Goldberg, to make sure of her Jewish claim.

Why did she want to be part of the Jewish crowd?  Many of her peers were Jewish, that's why.  She was funny, and Jewish comedy was an important part of the culture.  Whoopie was born and raised in New York where lots of Jewish people lived.  She was a 'wanna-be Jew who was not raised in a Jewish home but was raised in a Black culturated home. 

                                                 

 Freedman is so Jewish that I was able to find more than 7 matches to me, and on Family Tree DNA was allowed to test 7 at a time to my DNA.  Most were 4th cousins, but I did find one man that was a 3rd to 5th cousin, a little closer with 17cMs total in a segment of 17cMs.  On the X chromosome, the sex chromosome saying we shared a common female, 3 of the Freedmans and I had a triangulation, showing we shared this common ancestor.  Another Freedman also shared with me another segment on the X chromosome.  The Freedman matches were from my maiden name, Goldfoot, and my ancestors came from Lithuania and were Ashkenazis if Whoopie is interested.  I might even match Whoopie if she tested at FTDNA.                       

Results of a DNA test, revealed in the 2006 PBS documentary African American Lives, traced part of her ancestry to the Papel and Bayote people of modern-day Guinea-Bissau. Her admixture test indicates that she is of 92 percent sub-Saharan African origin and of 8 percent European origin.  I don't know where she took the test, most likely from ancestry.com.    Her 8% European origin would be where her claim to Jewish genes comes from.  One parent would give one 50% if the company realizes your Jewishness.  A child of one Jewish parent would have 25%.  The grandchild of a person with one Jewish parent would have 12.5%, and the ggrandchild could have 8%.  Whoopie's ggrandparent could have been Jewish.  Was there a Goldberg great grandparent?  Looks like it was her maternal grandmother who passed the genes to Whoopie through Whooie's mother, and she wasn't a 100% Jewish  herself, as many of us aren't.  

Being outspoken and self-assured, she has put her foot in it more than once.  This last time caused her suspension from THE VIEW for 2 weeks.  She's simply reacting like Jews around her have done and said.  Yes, I've heard the same thing from some of our honest to goodness Jews, some bearing more Jewish genes than I.  We're a very mixed group of people today, having been exposed to all sorts of religious ideas from the lands we've lived in.  The only thing holding us together today is that fact that we do not take Jesus as someone to pray to, and that he's not any more the son of G-d than we are; so that we all are the son of G-d in that respect.  Some of us take things pretty literally and are the Orthodox Jews;  some do not and are the Reformed Jews, some in the middle are Conservative Jews.  Christian Protestants have the same span of differences in their religion.  Some of us wear big gaudy stars of David and others wear small ones,, and some none.  Most of us try to be aware of our Jewish Holidays and some, unfortunately, could care less.  We're not in a ghetto anymore and not experiencing the very same environment.  Of course, Whoopie has copied the attitudes of those less Jewish in mind and thought;  that's been her environment and she is a partial reflection of it.

                                                                

As she has said already, she's really not into any of her inherited family religions, yet she has tried to do so with our Jewish holidays, so...I take it she celebrates them all yet believes in none.  This is a typical American today.  Whoopie has a Jewish grandmother and she's proud of it as I would hope she would be.  She never really has stepped into our shoes to know how we see the world, and needs to listen and read more to understand, especially since she herself is a celebrity, voicing her opinions.  However, now we also realize what others think of us and will hopefully use education to clear the air. 

2/19/22 Update: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Baddiel  David was from England, born in the USA but raised early on in England; had English ideas about Jews being a race.   

Resource:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whoopi_Goldberg#:~:text=Results%20of%20a%20DNA%20test,of%208%20percent%20European%20origin.

https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/tv/news/whoopi-goldberg-david-baddiel-gmb-b2006573.html

FTDNA

https://www.famechain.com/family-tree/21200/whoopi-goldberg