Am I Jewish, and if so of what flavour?My cousin by marriage, the polymath Jonathan Miller, said he was more Jew-ish than Jewish, not the whole hog as he put it. I hope perhaps people will have the patience to read this complex story through and offer me some advice.I’ve done a lot of family research and have a mass of biographical info as I seem to have had some interesting ancestors. However I can’t get back more than about seven generations, so about the mid-18th century and don’t really know how the family arrived in the UK.I seem to know a lot about a lot of family members, but in most cases not how they ‘fitted’ Jewish society.Great-grandparentsI have often wondered at what point my various families became secular Jews. Leaving aside the fact that my double-maternal great-grandmother can not have been Jewish by birth [Sarah Joseph, née Edwards] the closest to an answer may be found in the names they gave their children. Of course to a degree this could be put down to the assimilation of the Anglo-Jewish middle classes, but certainly from what I know the children of my grandparents generation who were given English names all were secular even if at least one of their parents [Nathan S Joseph] was deeply religious, the brother-in-law of the Chief Rabbi and architect/surveyor of the fabric to the United Synagogue. The latter, along with one of his sons and a nephew were responsible for the majority of the major synagogue buildings in England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. Despite his relationship with the Chief Rabbi and the US NSJ and his son Ernest were prominent in the introduction of the Reform movement in England and the son became architect to the LJS.Between them my great grandparents had 41 children, and of my grandparents only my paternal grandfather Herman had a Jewish first name, though a few more Jewish names were preserved in their middle names.Of his in-laws, Myer and Sarah Salaman’s [b 1836 and 1844 respectively] 15 children only the the first [Josiah] and the sixth [Elkin] had Jewish given names.Four of Jacob and Sarah Cohen’s 12 children had Jewish first names [including my grandfather Herman who inherited his grandfather’s name, but with only one final ‘n’].Nathan and Alice Joseph [b 1834 and 1848] had six children, but despite both of them both being highly religious none of their children had Jewish first names.Lazarus and Sarah Joseph [b 1845 and 1846] had eight children of whom only three had Jewish first names, but perhaps this was a compromise between Jewish and Goy parents.So, all in all, only nine of the 41 first names in my grandparents’ generation were Jewish. An incidental ‘problem’ here is that unless my research is totally wrong Emma was not Jewish, as her mother Sarah [née Edwards] seems certain to have been a gentile, her parents being respectively William Edwards and Hannah Cotter who were married at Christ Church, Spitalfields. From her portrait, painted by the Jewish portraitist Issac Cohen [no discernible relation of mine] it is inconceivable that she was Jewish. I find no evidence of Cotter being a Jewish name. If you want to offer a view on this her portrait, and many others, can be found on my rather ‘derelict’ site www.Missing.Portraits.info.GrandparentsSo, the next conundrum is how my maternal grandparents, Ernest and Emma, actually got married. The record is unequivocal in that it states that they were married by Ernest’s ‘uncle-in-law’ the Chief Rabbi Herman Adler. I’ve been over this with a professional historian with good connections to the British Board of Deputies, etc, and the odds against such an event seem immeasurable, bear in mind this was the US in 1903, and not the LJS. NSJ and Herman Adler died in 1909 and 1911 respectively, but NSJ’s move towards Reform never dimmed their friendship.My paternal grandparents are not particularly relevant, other than Herman Cohen being one of the founders of the ‘Maccabeans’ and, as it turns out, a wife-beater.So, where does that leave me? I realise that technically by virtue of Sarah Edwards not being Jewish nor am I: the fact that she was born in the heart of Spitalfields and the intervention of the Chief Rabbi don’t change it!Then there is the mix of Sephardic and Ashkenazi: I can trace my four main lines back to the 18th century, but I have little luck finding when each line arrived in London. On my Cohen side, which I presume to be Ashkenazi, the census [from 1841 I think] for Herman Jacob Cohen, says he was born in Holland it 1795, the son I believe of a Jacob Hacohen [?Hayim b Yaakov Hacohen], a name too common to think of tracing. I have no idea if my male Joseph line is 'S' or 'A', but Ernest Joseph seems to have been very ‘ecumenical’ and was architect to the Brady Street Settlement [see my last post about the Brady Street Cemetery from the BBC]. He was also heavily involved in running the Jewish Lads’ Brigade, which I also assume was ecumenical given that his two closest colleagues there were a Montifiore and a Goldsmid.The most definite Sephardic line to me seems to be my father’s mother’s line which became Salaman. They seem to have changed their name from Solomon some time in the 18th century and originally were said to come from Leghorn [Livorno] in Italy. These Salaman’s also married on the de Pass family and there is no doubt that they were Sephardic.Can anyone see through this thicket, and given my odd mix say if they think DNA testing has any value [I read such mixed views here and elsewhere].Thank you for your patience: I hope for some constructive comments!