Once upon a time I took Journalism classes in college and I'm miffed. Why are so many publications simply refusing to call the former Catherine "Kate" Middleton, her proper name which is, since her marriage, Catherine Windsor, or Catherine, Duchess of Cambridge?
Since she is now expecting another child, there is so much press coverage of Catherine and her husband, William Windsor, Duke of Cambridge, and reading around it for a couple hours the other night I discovered that there is a controversy circulating that Catherine is Jewish, or some small part Jewish. One website I looked at said "She is not Jewish but she has Jewish ancestry."
Apparently this is a big issue because there is also speculation that Diana, Princess of Wales, the mother of William Windsor, Duke of Cambridge, was also Jewish, through her mother, and if the speculation is to be believed, Diana's genetic father may have been a Jewish man that her mother might have been having an affair with, making her the half sibling of Jemima Khan and the Goldsmiths. One site declares that someday both the King and Queen of England will be Jews.
I find this all interesting, and I suppose the main importance of it would be that someday if William becomes King, it will be up to him to uphold and be the head of the Church of England.
On the side of "is Jewish" is that the surname Goldsmith, which is the maiden name of Catherine's mother, is supposed to be a "Jewish only" name from the days when only Jewish people were to be involved in precious metals and the making of jewelry. One sit ehad a chart of the women in her mother's line, first names, surnames, and dates. Back in the 18th century there was a Rebecca, for instance. Well, I know Christian Rebecca's.
Then there is the long held Jewish notion that the child is Jewish if the mother is. That's by Jewish standards. But this doesn't take into account that people may have been practicing another religion for generations or be uninterested in religion. Here, after many generations, we have the ONE DROP philosophy, which is that if a person has one ancestor who is Jewish, or Black, then they ARE, as if all those other ancestors should be discounted. Having met people who wished to self identify with this rather flimsy evidence I back off and say "as you will."
How someone looks has something to do with it, no doubt. How society and culture in a time and place looks at a person, also has something to do with it. DNA may also throw such controversies to the curb; I know one Black woman who just found out that her first American ancestor was a white Irish woman in early America in indentured servitude and who married a Free Black man. She feels this has thrown her self identity.
Historically there have been a lot of people forced into conversion. But there are also people who openly and willingly change religions. Dare I say there are a lot of people who don't care all that much and just go along with the program? For instance, in Europe people changed religion by command of whomever owned the land they lived on.
Clearly, when it comes to belief, both William and Catherine are members of the Church of England, which is Protestant Christian. They are not Jewish. They are not Catholic. They were married in the Church of England. Their children will be raised in the Church of England. To me, no matter what their DNA, or the history of their families, they are what they are in the here and now.
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