The following teaser is from a good article posted August 8, 2016 at the timesofisrael website.
Discovering a Jewish past of which she was wholly unaware, Danette Devlin of Little Rock, Arkansas, has also found family.
Devlin was raised without any religious affiliation. As an adult she attended Catholic and Episcopalian churches seeking a spiritual home.
“There were lots of nice people, they were very welcoming, but it just wasn’t right. It wasn’t me,” she said.
In 2013, Devlin went online in an effort to find her father, Edward Couch, with whom she’d been out of touch for more than three decades. Devlin found an obituary for Couch’s brother, Robert, that mentioned her late paternal grandmother, Lillian Schiff.
Devlin obtained Schiff’s application for a Social Security number listing the names of Schiff’s father and mother, Herman and Cyril. Searching cemetery websites, Devlin last year acquired photographs of her great-grandparents’ graves near Chicago. The tombstones had Hebrew lettering, confirming the couple’s Jewishness and revealing Herman as a Kohen, a member of the priestly class.
Discovering her Jewish ancestry has powerfully affected Devlin, 56.
‘I am Jewish, and I finally felt whole’
“I jumped up and down with joy!” she said by telephone from her home. “I am Jewish, and I finally felt whole.”
