What Americans knew for some years, the Israeli public is now finding out. In a lengthy profile in the weekend edition of Ma’ariv, author Tzach Yoked exposed to Israelis Mark Obama Ndesandjo, one of the president’s eight half-brothers, who happens to be Jewish, according to the halacha.
Mark was born to Barack Obama’s father and to his Jewish wife Ruth Baker. Ruth was born to a Jewish family that immigrated to the United States from Lithuania. She married Obama Sr. in 1964 and moved to Kenya. Ruth divorced her husband after seven years of abusive marriage.
“My mother is a liberal person who did not keep the religious rituals,” Mark Obama told Ma’ariv. “However, she always taught me to be proud of the fact that I am Jewish … as far as I am concerned, the main aspect of my Jewish identity does not stem from performing the religious rituals and prayers, but out of a strong sense that I am Jewish. It is something that you simply feel, a strong sense of secular Jewish identity that my mother gave me … she is the woman who taught me what’s important in life, who helped me to understand Torah, taught me music, helped me with my studies.”
“I am a Jew not only because I have a Jewish mother but first and foremost because there exists in me great pride to be a part of the Jewish people. I feel great belonging to Jewish heritage, to Jewish culture, and to the Jewish philosophers,” he added.
Mark first met his brother Barack in 1988, and claims to not have been in touch with the President lately.
Mark told Ma’ariv that when he first met Barack, he was struck by his brother’s rejection of Western culture.
“I remember that my impression at the first meeting was that Barack thought that I was too white, and I thought that he was too black,” he said. “He was an American citizen on a journey in search of his African roots, while I was a resident of Kenya seeking to find his white roots.”
“I remember that when I spoke with him about the heroes of Western culture he rolled his eyes impatiently. My feeling was that, here is an American who in many ways is trying to be a local Kenyan youth. This is something I tried to flee my entire life.”
Asked what he has in common genetically with Barack, Ndesandjo said, “I think that the common link between us comes not from [our] shared father, rather more from our mothers. Both of us had strong mothers, women who took great risks to raise their children and to protect them. Barack and I love our mothers to no end, because they defended us and protected us.”
“I thought it was amazing how much he resembles me,” he said of their first meeting. “And yet, we were like two Siamese twins who looked in the direction of the other, and we were unable to see each other.”
In 2011, Mark Obama Ndesandjo visited Israel secretly. One of the main purposes of his trip was to meet with the then Ashkenazi chief rabbi Yona Metzger and receive a blessing and a letter for his mother, Ruth Nidesand. He met Rabbi Metzger wearing a bandanna topped by a yarmulke.
“He looked so similar to his brother that even if he didn’t say anything I would have recognized him,” Metzger said following the meeting.
(Jacob Kornbluh – YWN)
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One Response
First and foremost, I am pleasantly surprised that President Obama has a brother who, indeed, appears to be Jewish, and I do not hold the president’s shortcomings against his brother.
“I remember that my impression at the first meeting was that Barack thought that I was too white, and I thought that he was too black….”
I’d like to note his usage of the word “White.” While this is indeed a skin complexion, I would think that it has been ingrained in modern youth since the apparent success of the black Civil Rights movements that one’s ethnic identity should have nothing to do with the color of one’s skin.
On the other hand, I’d say the nazis and other likeminded anti-Semites in Europe made it very clear that the Jewish people of Europe were not racially “white” like the other Europeans claim to be.
Anyhow, I think that making something all about being “white” versus “black” is contradictory and counterproductive to the counter-racism efforts both African-descent American and so-called “white” Americans of all cultural groups have been focusing on for the last several decades.