Nigella Lawson Discovers Her Dutch Jewish History | Who Do You Think You Are
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Nigella visited Samuel's place of birth in Rheinberg and discovered his birth certificate. It revealed the name of his father, Lehmann, along with the fact that he was a professor of languages. But her travels were not over. Samuel's wife, Hannah Joseph, was born in Amsterdam and Nigella had a hunch that she was part of an ethnic group of Sephardic Jews who had travelled from Spain and Portugal in the 16th century.
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Nigella knows quite a lot about her background, mainly because several of her ancestors are quite famous figures. For a start, her father, Nigel Lawson, was Margaret Thatcher's chancellor of the exchequer for many years, while her mother, Vanessa Salmon, was an heiress born into the Lyons Coffee House dynasty. As a British institution, Nigella is acquainted with the history of the company. Instead of trading in tea, they originally sold tobacco under the name Salmon and Gluckstein. But what can she find out about her relatives who started the business? And what about other branches of her family? Are there Jewish connections, as she suspects?
She started with her mother's family, the Salmons, and their links to Lyons. Her grandfather, Felix Salmon, was instrumental in running the company and shaping its direction towards the famous Lyons cornerhouse tearooms. Travelling around London, many of today's famous landmark buildings, such as the Trocadero and Hard Rock Café, were formerly in possession of Lyons. Yet despite his success, Felix Salmon was a melancholy man, and one possible cause could be his wartime role. He was a member of the catering corps, and it appears from research at the Imperial War Museum that he might have been attached to one of the regiments that liberated the German concentration camp at Belsen. One cannot begin to imagine the trauma of the event, particularly for a Jew in the catering corps, responsible for famine relief for the liberated inmates.
Nigella continued to investigate the history of the company, turning her attention to Salmon and Gluckstein, the tobacco sellers, who claimed to be the largest in Europe at their launch in 1873.
One of the founding fathers was her great-great-grandfather, Barnett Salmon. His surname was originally Solomon. On the 1841 census it transpired that his father Aaron Solomon was a clothes dealer in the East End. Barnett started work as a travelling tobacco salesman. He married Helena Gluckstein in 1863, and went into business with his father-in-law, Samuel Gluckstein.
It was on the back of the success as a tobacco company that Lyons was born in 1889. To ensure none of his family was ever threatened with poverty he set up a family fund, but equally insisted that none of the women were allowed to work. At his death, Barnett was worth £3.5 million in today's money, and set up a trust fund for his wife worth £34 million.
The Glucksteins had become naturalised citizens in 1861. Samuel originally hailed from Germany and his wife Hannah was from the Netherlands. Like Barnett Salmon, his early years in this country were very humble, based also in the East End among the Jewish community.
Nigella visited Samuel's place of birth in Rheinberg and discovered his birth certificate. It revealed the name of his father, Lehmann, along with the fact that he was a professor of languages. But her travels were not over. Samuel's wife, Hannah Joseph, was born in Amsterdam and Nigella had a hunch that she was part of an ethnic group of Sephardic Jews who had travelled from Spain and Portugal in the 16th century.
Hannah's original surname was Sammes, but that name was of Dutch Israeli background, suggesting she belonged to the north European Ashkenazi ethnic group. Yet Nigella's disappointment was tempered by the fact that the meaning of Sammes derived from 'carer of the synagogue', a position of great respect in the community.
By contrast, Hannah's father, Coennraad, had been accused of theft and had been tried, convicted and sentenced to 18 months imprisonment in 1830. He never served his sentence, instead fleeing the country and turning up with his family in England. Without his flight, Hannah would not have come to England.
Пікірлер: 89
She said, "It would have been nice to have made that Iberian connection, but never mind." Emphasis on the word Iberian. She was disappointed in not having that Iberian (Spanish/Portuguese) connection. She was not dissing her Ashkenazi roots as some commenters are suggesting!
@gordonski9310
2 жыл бұрын
Clearly she had no prior interest in reading up on her roots or of the Jews in Europe/UK generally.
@-_YouMayFind_-
2 ай бұрын
I think it has to do with that people think that dark hair, dark eyed and olive skin is only a southern thing but in fact The Netherlands has that too because my grandmother and my sisters have that too and we are basically 100% North/Western European. WE also thought that we have some Italian or Iberian but not really. My grandmother had Finnish instead haha, but Iberian is not exotic to us XD. I have been to Spain a lot and they are very similar to us so to me its just the same people XD
The archivist at the Amsterdam archives is one of the main people in the Dutch version of this program when it concerns about people who lived in Amsterdam.
Liked the archivist's smooth move to get a coffee with Nigella. Kudos.
@harriantoncornell5405
2 жыл бұрын
Me too
@susannamarker2582
Жыл бұрын
He got a date without making it look like a date.
@jamiehershon
Жыл бұрын
@@susannamarker2582 It's a dating loophole like deliberately losing a bet!
@grant4176
Жыл бұрын
I'd do the same!! Lol
My father worked together with people who are called Neeter and they are Ashkenazi, when i saw that name i knew she was from that decent.
Nigella is beautiful. Voice.. Personality.. Intelligence... Everything.. Full package
How amazing! Shalom Moira From England.
Very interesting.
Very interesting
Why does that unexpected phone call seem so expected
@allansuaza
3 жыл бұрын
And how fittingly that she’s in a cheese shop when she receives it! For a few seconds it was like watching one of her cooking shows, browsing around, surrounded by all that cheese!
I’ve always found the yearning among Ashkenazim to discover one Sephardic ancestor very similar to my grandfather and many of his generation pretending to be 1/16 Cherokee.
@tobiasisback4605
5 ай бұрын
Well, let's face it, the Spanish are gorgeous and passionate, potato faced eastern europeans in cabbage fields, less so 😂
Hi, how much Haredi in Netherland ?
The speaking Journalist-off , stop called them "Sefardi Jews in Amsterdam" WE ARE PORTUGUESE JEWS 🇵🇹✡! WE HAVE A NATIONALITY UNLIKE Ashkenazim who are mixed on different Central European countries. This synagogue is called 《 Esnoga : The Portuguese Synagogue 🇵🇹🕍 of Amsterdam 🇳🇱 》
As an American, I don't know who NL is, but, she's hotly beautiful.
@ajarnwordsmith628
10 ай бұрын
We Europeans have long rumbled Donald J. Trump but can't understand how our American cousins have bottled out on rhyme and reason in the matter.
@LondonEE16
3 ай бұрын
@@ajarnwordsmith628 Less than half the population vote for Trump. Of course that is millions too many. But they got that way in the main due to the same malign influence of Rupert Murdoch who has influenced the UK in the same way. I've lived in both countries and easily led people are everywhere and certainly all over Europe these days. Ex: people who voted for Orban, Meloni, Le Pen.
@ajarnwordsmith628
2 ай бұрын
@LondonEE16 You've reminded me that we have allowed our children to spend most of their formative years absorbing all that's good and all that's bad in cyberspace. Alas, the bad overwhelms the good many times over. Murdoch laid it all out on a plate for the digital age and beyond.
Nigella's son was right afterall, there was a thief in the family lol :))
Your ancestor's name was... Anne Summers.
dude, this is cool
she might be related to anne frank the girl in the cupboard
"Exotic Spanish blood" ?! Dear Nigella - Even IF your ancestors had had an experience in Spain would not have meant you had any Spanish blood in you! All Jews have the same blood and same origin. It is only because of the expulsion from Israel that we left in the first place and some ended up in Ashkenaz (associated with the area around Germany) and some in Sefarad (Hebrew name for Spain).
@lm7338
2 жыл бұрын
Perhaps same origin but that doesn't exclude influence. It seems pretty obvious that the diverse groups of Jews had some sort of mingling with their proximity. OTherwise there is no plausible explanation for the diversity.
It doesn't end your dream, do a genetic test and you"ll have a better idea probably whether or not you have a link with "exotic" Spain.
Nigella finds a reason to go to Amsterdam.
@susannamarker2582
Жыл бұрын
My husband used to go to Amsterdam a lot before we met, but he doesn't remember much about his trips there.
@willvangaal8412
11 ай бұрын
@@susannamarker2582 So what .
@susannamarker2582
11 ай бұрын
@@willvangaal8412 Calm down.
Jews forced out of Spain were Sephardic, not Ashkenazi. Different roots, Different customs. The Sephardic Jews had their wealth confiscated, so Isabella and Ferdinand could finance the voyage of Christopher Columbus and replenish the Spanish vaults after 800 years of war with the Moors.
@demi3115
3 ай бұрын
Ah, so you watched the video? good job.
Ashkenazim are not from Central Europe and Sephardim are not from Spain. They're all Jews, so they're from Israel. They just happened to have settled in those places after being exiled by the Romans. A Sephardi man is no more Spanish than a Chinese man, and an Ashkenazi man is no more Hungarian than an Igbo man.
@jaronimo1976
3 жыл бұрын
Not really true, since Ashkenaziem have genes from northern Europe, and Sephardiem have Iberian genes. And yes, they have Israelite genes from the middle east too. But to say they don't have any difference is simply not true.
@jonahs92
3 жыл бұрын
@@jaronimo1976 I'm literally a geneticist, I know what I'm talking about. Jews are Jews, not Spaniards, or Dutchmen, or Hungarians, or Poles. Jews don't have genes from those groups because they aren't part of those groups.
@mertkocabas7604
3 жыл бұрын
@@jonahs92 they mixed with people living among them. Some Ashkenazis look blond northern European. Yemenites look like dark-skinned Arabs. Ethiopian Jews are literally blacks. There is zero possibility that these "Jews" are ethnically related.
@mertkocabas7604
2 жыл бұрын
@@ay9204 yes, some Ashkenazis are like that. However, Yemenite or Ethiopian Jews do not resemble even the dark-skinned Ashkenazis.
@negationf6973
2 жыл бұрын
Do you regard being Spanish as purely a matter of bloodline? Culture and history do not enter the discussion? Even so, Sephardim do have Spanish ancestry. Of course, to my understanding, they are still majority Israelite in ancestry.
I'd rather ordinary families were given the chance to find their roots celebs can afford to do it themselves it's not fair we've paid tv licence for years so do it for us not celebs
@manmaje3596
2 жыл бұрын
No one cares about “us” including “us”.
@jojosmumdorothy2829
2 жыл бұрын
Wrong I care about us
@nicolad8822
11 ай бұрын
It’s really not that difficult. Assuming you can use the internet. Plenty of free or reasonably priced access.
@teddmented
8 ай бұрын
Why would I care about my car mechanic’s ancestry?
Nigella Liebson
She looks Spanish.
It's sad that I really don't care where my family lineage came from.
@metislamestiza3708
Ай бұрын
so why is it sad that you don't care? why bother even saying this lol. doesn't make sense. if you're interested - find out
@rayray.0
Ай бұрын
@@metislamestiza3708 It may not make sense to you. However, it makes sense to me. I said that because I can 😎
I am a Lawson my family came to the United States from Yorkshire England
don’t know about the study, but her face is a typical Portuguese/spanish face. Knew a few girls that could pass as her sister
We still call Amsterdam MOKUM ✡
is it just me or did she not like having Ashkenazi origins????? -- ugh. the ignorance!
@kenzawilliams
3 жыл бұрын
No I got that feeling as well being that she literally said “they kept a ghetto mentality”
@podiakosa
3 жыл бұрын
Yep yep yep!!!
@Iphenity
3 жыл бұрын
I think it’s more that she wasn’t of Spanish decent
@user-li1gp2jw8k
3 жыл бұрын
The sephardim were educated and yet traditional ashkenazis at the turn of the century were still living in shtetls until they became university educated...
Gluckstein 🤣🤣🤣🤣
@EvaLasta
Жыл бұрын
Redox 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Sefardi are the only jews who still love their country and remember even today in their literature. For anybody wonder, Jews expulsion in Europe: 1182 FRANCE 1290 ENGLAND 1421 Austria 1488 Parma (Italy) 1490 Milan (Italy) 1492 Spain 1495 Lithuania 1496 Portugal…
@cg8397
7 ай бұрын
Which country? Israel?
She just needs to take a dna test. Job done.
She is so hung up on which racial sect she belongs to…pretty narcissistic.
@amethyst4990
Жыл бұрын
I disagree. She is interested in her roots. Nothing wrong with that.
@JenniferSummers-qq3cl
Жыл бұрын
The whole point of the show is to figure out which country and ethnic group your ancestors came from.... she's not doing anything other than that.
Go back far enough and she's descended from the middle east by way of Spain.
I think she might be related to Cortney Cox ?