A.J. Jacobs sets out to prove that we’re all just a little bit related.
By GLENN C. ALTSCHULERFamily tree. (Illustrative)(photo credit: RICK NEASE/TNS)
A few years ago, A.J. Jacobs, a contributing editor at Esquire magazine, and the author of The Year of Living Biblically, The Know-It-All, and Drop Dead Healthy, heard about an initiative to connect all human beings in a World Family Tree. Jacobs knew that his ancestors, Ashkenazi Jews, tended to inbreed. He discovered, however, that they, and everyone else on Earth, were actually blood cousins, sharing as much as 99.9% of DNA with one another.Armed with this knowledge, Jacobs decided to organize a worldwide reunion, “like Woodstock, but with more pants and antiperspirant,” a gathering that would break the Guinness World Record for family reunions.He listed the pros and cons. Although he concluded that the event probably would not end all racism and war – “I’m not Bono” – Jacobs (virtually) pumped his fist and started to make plans.The most important result, of course, is a book. Based on a gimmick, It’s All Relative: Adventures Up and Down the World’s Family Tree is often funny. Jacobs gets the attention of celebrities, ranging from Henry Louis Gates, the host of Finding Your Roots on PBS, to Donny Osmond, by telling them he is their cousin. And he gets a dirty look from his wife when he tries to “live” his conviction that we are all cousins by rooting against his son’s soccer team.To be sure, It’s All Relative does have a serious side. As he recruits “cousins” to his reunion, Jacobs introduces his readers to recent findings about human relationships: biological, social and emotional. The nuclear family, he reminds us, is a fairly recent phenomenon, with an unfortunate us-versus-them downside.It now competes, of course, with lots of other family structures. Jacobs summarizes the legendary Hatfield-McCoy feud and informs us that the two families buried the hatchet, so to speak, with a reunion in 2000 that featured a barbecue, tug-of war, and a softball game.He also reviews the pros and cons of assimilation and identity, revealing that most Homo sapiens have a small percentage of the DNA of Neanderthals, one of several now-extinct species that bred with our ancestors. He similarly provides a list of web sites that offer DNA results and genealogical research to users interested in acquiring or sharing information.Jacobs also relies heavily on Jewish history, traditions and lore as well as stories about his own family. Consulting a family tree his dad put together, he learns that the Vilna Gaon, the acclaimed 18th-century Lithuanian rabbi, is his sixth great grandfather.“What ‘yichus’” (pedigree), a genealogist gushes. But then again, Jacobs realizes he has inherited only a smidgen of the Gaon’s DNA and an equal amount from 255 other people in his era. Instead of talmudic genius, he may have inherited a tailor’s “hand-eye coordination and ragweed allergies.”Moreover, the Gaon, who, legend had it, could recite the entire Hebrew Scriptures at age nine, was also said have left a sick child to study in the woods. Jacobs’s takeaway: family histories play favorites, celebrating a drop of blood from Pocahontas and “ignoring the thousands of regular Josiahs.”To illustrate how often family surnames changed, thereby complicating the tasks of genealogists, Jacobs reveals that the Friedenheits (his mother’s great-grandparents) may have acquired their name by responding in German to the question “What’s your name?” with “Anything is satisfactory.”To Ellis Island officials, it sounded sort of like “Friedenheit.” And Jacobs recycles the old tale about the Jewish man who answered the question by repeating the Yiddish phrase “Ich habe schon vergessen” (I already forgot) and therefore received the moniker “Sean Ferguson.”Whether he is conveying information or cracking jokes, Jacobs always circles back to a single, simple, some would say simplistic, theme. Genealogy, he insists, should turn its back on lineage societies, like the Daughters of the American Revolution, which are little more than “gated genetic communities.”Instead, genealogy should be inclusive, with everyone eligible for membership in a community of cousins. Jacobs wants his kids to see themselves as a “small part of the vast web of life.” Rather than feeling insignificant, they will feel more compassionate, he hopes, more connected.Jacobs cites evidence that embracing strangers as distant relatives has a positive impact. When Palestinians and Israelis were told they shared significant DNA, he indicates, they treated one another with more kindness and seemed more open to peaceful solutions to the Arab-Israeli conflict.Other studies have found that people are more likely to assist strangers who share their surname – and tended to be more cooperative when they perceive they are related to members of the group into which they had been placed.These findings, Jacobs acknowledges, are not hard science.But, he insists, even if his Global Family Reunion did not quite work out as planned, this research can be a place to start. Especially if, these days, you think “delusional optimism is all we’ve got.”Glenn C. Altschuler is the Thomas and Dorothy Litwin Professor of American Studies at Cornell University.
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