Try to guess who the following are when you hear their original name:

Woody Allen --- Alan Stewart Koenigsberg
June Allyson --- Ella Geisman
Lauren Bacall --- Betty Joan Perske
Jack Benny --- Benjamin Kubelsky
Irving Berlin --- Israel Baline
Milton Berle --- Milton Berlinger
Joey Bishop ---Joseph Gottlieb
Karen Black --- Karen Blanche Ziegler
Victor Borge --- Borge Rosenbaum
Fanny Brice --- Fanny Borach
Mel Brooks --- Melvin Kaminsky
George Burns --- Nathan Birnbaum
Eddie Cantor --- Edward Israel Iskowitz
Jeff Chandler --- Ira Grossel
Lee J. Cobb --- Amos Jacob
Tony Curtis --- Bernard Schwartz
Rodney Dangerfield --- Jacob Cohen
Kirk Douglas --- Issue Danielovich Demsky
Melvyn Douglas --- Melvyn Hesselberg
Bob Dylan --- Bobby Zimmerman
Paulette Goddard --- Marion Levy
Lee Grant --- Lyova Geisman
Elliot Gould --- Elliot Goldstein
Judy Holliday --- Judith Tuvim
Al Jolson --- Asa Yoelson
Danny Kaye --- David Daniel Kaminsky
Michael Landon --- Michael Orowitz
Steve Lawrence --- Sidney Leibowitz
Jerry Lewis --- Joseph Levitch
Peter Lorre --- Lazlo Lowenstein
Elaine May --- Elaine Berlin
Yves Montand --- Ivo Levy
Mike Nichols --- Michael Peschkowsky
Joan Rivers --- Joan Molinsky
Edward G. Robinson -- Emanuel Goldenberg
Jane Seymour --- Joyce Penelope Frankenburg
Simone Signoret --- Simone-Henriette Kaminker
Beverly Sills --- Belle Silverman
Sophie Tucker --- Sophia Kalish
Gene Wilder --- Gerald Silberman

Who do you think you are?

Who do I think I am?

Certainly, a major part of this High Holy Day season is spent contemplating who we are, and who we think we are.

How do you determine who you are?

What are the factors that determine who you are?

Most important of all to ask today is, are you satisfied with who you are, and is there anything you can do to improve who you are?

On this day, we look behind us, and ahead. So much of who we are today depends upon our history - our individual history, our family history, our genealogy.

But as long as we are alive, that’s not the end of the story.

Who we are, up to now, does not define who we think we can become.

As long as we are alive, as long as we are able to begin, and God willing, complete another year, we can add to who we think we are, and perhaps even change what we have become.

An image that helps explain where we are at this moment is the image of the hourglass.

The top half of the hourglass represents where we’ve been, and all we have done up to this moment.

The bottom half of the hourglass represents the future, toward which we are constantly moving.

The very thin center of the hourglass, where each particle of sand falls from the top to the bottom - that is exactly where we are at this moment, from moment to moment as we continue to live our lives.

Often, who we think we are, depends upon from whom we have come.

Do we not frequently describe ourselves by the actions, choices, professions, life histories, of our ancestors?

Many of you already know that a good part of who I think I am is derived from the fact that I come from Buffalo. I mention it frequently.

And in addition, a good part of who I am, comes from the fact that my parents are from Poland.

I imagine that you also refer to your parents, when you hear the name of the city or country in which they lived.

Indisputably, this past year, with the beginning of the Arab spring revolutions in Egypt, Elie and Ziza Pallia had to feel more directly involved and attached than the rest of us.

They grew up in Egypt, and not surprisingly, part of who they think they are has to be Egyptian.

So, who do you think you are?

So much of that depends upon your past, from where you have come, how you grew up, and, many things from the past that you may not even yet be aware of, or perhaps may never learn.

However, every once in a while, especially with today’s ability to trace our genealogy so carefully, it is possible to learn something so startling and different about our past, that the revelation becomes transformative into not only who we think we are, but, who we think we need to become.

Today I will review a case of someone who thought she knew who she was, but who ends up discovering that her ancestry was very different than previously understood.

I discovered this story while surfing channels on television one evening.

The title of the show I watched, which obviously prompted this sermon – is, Who Do You Think You Are?

This particular episode traced the ancestry of a well-known actress who most recently starred in a film about a country singer and who is a guest cast member on the award-winning television show called Glee.

Gwyneth Paltrow is the daughter of Bruce Paltrow and actress Blythe Donner.

The show opens as Gwyneth describes her unconditional love for her father and how he was the love of her life until he died.

He taught her to always love family.

Bruce Paltrow is from an Eastern European Jewish background.

The family name previously was Paltrowitch.

Gwyneth Paltrow’s mother is Protestant with a German background.

Gwyneth seems to inherit a sense of feistiness, or as she puts it - chutzpah, from her great-grandmother on her mother’s side who left Barbados when she was 18.

The first half of the episode presents the exploration of her mother’s family, which is quite interesting.

You will have to watch the show to find out more!

Gwyneth Paltrow also begins to unravel some of the mysteries associated with her father’s family, beginning with her father’s father.

He was a loving, kind man but never was close to his own family.

He spoke disparagingly of his own childhood and his strained relationship to his parents, especially about his mother Ida, Gwyneth’s great-grandmother.

It seems that this is a dark, depressing period in the family’s history.

Gwyneth wants to learn more so she visits and interviews her father’s sister, Aunt Fran Paltrow.

She learns that her great-grandmother, Ida, was a very intelligent woman who went to Hunter College.

That was quite unusual for a woman in that period of time.

Aunt Fran also knows that Ida became neglectful of her family responsibilities, but never knew why.

Gwyneth Paltrow begins to discover why, with the help of historians and genealogy experts.

Ida, the former Ida Hyman, is on track to become a schoolteacher, which was a most prominent profession during the end of the 19th century in New York City.

But before Ida is able to finish college, she loses her mother and her older brother, who die.

Her attendance at school waivers and she is discharged before being able to graduate.

Gwyneth Paltrow discovers that soon thereafter her great-grandmother Ida subsequently lost a daughter named Helen when Helen was 3 years old.

She was run over by a wagon and fatally injured.

So this great-grandmother to Gwyneth Paltrow in the course of a few years while trying to attend college, lost her mother, her brother, got married and lost a 3 year-old daughter.

By the way, Ida was pregnant when her daughter Helen was killed.

She gave birth to another daughter named Marian just 3 weeks after Helen was killed.

All this information helps Gwyneth understand how her grandfather, Buster, had such mixed feelings about his own mother whose neglect is now not so surprising.

It really was amazing that he was nevertheless such a loving man despite all of this serious family drama.

Finally, the episode ends as Gwyneth Paltrow researches her father’s father’s ancestry.

Her paternal grandfather Meyer was the son of a rabbi named Simon, also known as Simcha, from Eastern Europe.

Supposedly, Gwyneth Paltrow came from a long line of rabbis. She investigates whether this is true.

She wonders if her own spiritually curious soul descends from her father’s family and this long line of rabbis.

Gwyneth discovers that Simcha’s father, Tzvi Hirsch, was also a rabbi of a small town in Northeast Poland.

So it seems as if this rabbinic lineage does go back at least a few generations if not more.

That has been documented as true.

With the help of an Eastern European Jewish History professor, Gwyneth Paltrow discovers in a Memorial Book from her great-grandfather’s home town in Eastern Poland that Tzvi Hirsch, her grandfather’s grandfather, was a great holy man and master of Kabbalah – Jewish mysticism.

The memorial book records that once, a great fire erupted outside their town.

The fire approached the Jewish neighborhood.

A great panic ensued.

However, the rabbi Hirshala went out to the balcony of his house, waved his handkerchief toward the fire, and the fire was extinguished.

Since then they say, that a fire that erupts in the town will not spread very much, for the blessing of Rabba Hirshala protects us.

This was extremely fascinating to Gwyneth Paltrow because, like everyone else in Hollywood, she also studies Kabbalah.

She now believes her spiritual soul seems to have been inherited from a long line of rabbis in her family.

She learns that she has very special, very holy people in her family line.

There is one more piece of information to share!

Gwyneth Paltrow is shown one more item – a book entitled, “Keter Tzvi – The Crown of Tzvi.”

It was a book written by her great-grandfather, Rabbi Simcha Paltrovitch, and it was named after his father, Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh, of whom we have been speaking.

There is a reflection in the book by Rabbi Simcha, on his father, Rabbi Tzvi Hirsh, which is read in translation from the Hebrew to Gwyneth –

“For my Lord and Father, the genius of blessed memory, was always on call in his study house with legal discussions in cases that they brought before him.

And they came from all the communities where people knew the reputation of my Lord and Father.

They sought Torah from his mouth as from the mouth of one of the angels, of the Lord of Hosts.”

Whereupon, Gwyneth Paltrow states, “We have a long line of people loving their fathers in our family.”

Gwyneth Paltrow was amazed to learn that her great-grandfather spoke about his father, the way Gwyneth Paltrow speaks about her own father, Bruce.

As a result of the investigation documented in the show, “Who Do You Think You Are?” Gwyneth Paltrow has made a major change in her life and in the life of her children, her daughter Apple and son Moses.

Not long ago, she said, “I don’t believe in religion.

I believe in spirituality.

Religion is the cause of all the problems in the world.”

But now, Gwyneth Paltrow has revealed she wants to raise her children in the Jewish faith.

You see, ladies and gentlemen, Gwyneth Paltrow finally discovered much more about who she really is.

She goes on to say that there is energy in your ancestors. It’s more than just facts about who was born where.

Gwyneth Paltrow states, “the most interesting and important lesson that I’ve learned is that we need to take responsibility for all of our stories and teach our children about where we come from in both the good ways and the bad, because the most meaningful things about our histories, is what we learn from them.”

And I want to tell you, that not only did her great-great grandfather perform wonderful holy acts, for which he is remembered and have been recorded.

But so did her ancestors from long ago. And that’s part of who she is, and who we are, as well.

Yes, she all of a sudden learned about these wonderful deeds, these holy acts, this spiritual heritage which is hers through an inheritance from her ancestors.

And when she and we pay close attention to our religion, we also learn that there are other ancestors, even more ancient, who have a pretty good track record of religious acts of piety and kindness.

It didn’t come easy for them either - their names are Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.

That’s why on this first day of the New Year we read stories from the Torah about Abraham and Sarah and their family, the first Jewish family, our Jewish family.

Today we review from where we have come, and from whom we descend so that no matter what we do, no matter where we go, no matter whom we encounter in the coming year, we will better know who we are and who we might become!

We are here today just weeks after the 10th anniversary of 9/11.

So much still reverberates from the events of that day and there are many other events which took place not long thereafter that are easier to forget, but which should not be forgotten.

One example is the murder of Daniel Pearl in Pakistan. I mention this today because of what we know Daniel Pearl was forced to say, but was proud to say immediately before his death – I am Jewish.

Daniel Pearls parents, Judea and Ruth along with others, released a book entitled, "I am Jewish," which contains short essays by well-known Jewish individuals on what that statement might mean.

I share with you a few sentences from a declaration by the Jewish actor Joshua Malina, who played the role of White House speechwriter in the Emmy Award-winning series The West Wing

“For me the statement "I am Jewish" is no different from the statement "I am."

Judaism is the foundation of my identity, the fixed base upon which all other aspects of my self are balanced — actor, husband, father, American. 

"I am Jewish."

You all know how I like to look at the ways in which texts are framed.

And if you look at the opening scriptural readings for the high holy days – those that begin on Rosh Hashanah with the stories of Abraham and Sarah and their family, and look at the concluding scriptural reading on Yom Kippur afternoon – the story of Jonah, you will find in that story something that Jonah says which connects him to Abraham.

Jonah is hiding on this boat, in the midst of a hurricane. Somehow the crew discovers that this storm can be attributed to Jonah's presence on the boat.

They find him and ask, "who do you think you are?

What is your business?

Where do you come from?

What is your country and of what people are you?"

And Jonah replies in the tradition of his ancestors Abraham and Sarah,

וַיֹּאמֶר אֲלֵיהֶם, עִבְרִי אָנֹכִי; וְאֶת-יְהוָה אֱלֹהֵי הַשָּׁמַיִם, אֲנִי יָרֵא, אֲשֶׁר-עָשָׂה אֶת-הַיָּם, וְאֶת-הַיַּבָּשָׁה

I am a Hebrew, he replied – I worship Adonai, the God of heaven, who made both sea and land."

The high holy day texts are framed with stories of individuals who declare in the midst of a much larger world, Ivri Ahnochi - I am a Hebrew, I am a Jew, and I am in the line of those who come to be known as Yisrael – those who strive with the tension between the Godliness and humanity within us!

Gwyneth Paltrow now has a much better idea of who she really is – and so do I.

I know who I am and who I am supposed to be – I am a descendant of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel and Leah.

And on my good days, when I’m able to perform acts of goodness and kindness, I pray that I bring honor and blessing to their memories.

The daily early morning service declares:

TAKE TALLIT

Ashreinu Mah Tov Chelkaynu - We are happy – how goodly is our portion;

U Mah Naim Goralaynu – How pleaseant our lot;

U Mah Yafah Yerushataynu – How beautiful our heritage!

This is something we all share.

I am proud to share it with all of you today, and God willing, all the days ahead in the New Year for which I pray we will be inscribed for goodness.

AMEN!