Coming Home: The Moth Podcast

The Moth

Two powerful personal narratives explore identity, heritage, and the journey of reconnecting with one's roots—Gwendolyn Lopez-Cohen discover

Key takeaways

• Identity is not solely defined by upbringing but can be reclaimed through discovery and connection to ancestral heritage.
• Language serves as a bridge to cultural belonging, especially when personal experiences highlight gaps in self-understanding.

Main topics

• Jewish heritage
• Puerto Rican identity

Notable quotes

"You know, I've been to a wedding like this before." – Gwendolyn's grandmother at her wedding.

Conclusion

Both stories underscore how personal journeys of discovery—through fai

Transcript preview

Speaker 2 (0:01) Welcome to The Moth. I'm Emily Couch. In this episode, we've got two stories all about finding out where you come from, the process of figuring out who you are in relation to your family, your culture, your background, even your language. With both the Jewish High Holidays and Hispanic Heritage Month coming up, we wanted to reflect on this journey of discovery and growth with two stories about tradition and identity and what comes up when those two things intersect. First up, we have Gwendolyn Lopez-Cohen. Gwendolyn told this story at a special event that The Moth put on with Barnard College at their annual reunion. Here's Gwendolyn, live at The Moth. Speaker 4 (0:43) So it's Martin Luther King weekend in 1992, my senior year of Barnard. And I'm sitting in my room at Hewitt Hall and there's a knock on my door. It's my friend Rachel from down the hall. And she says, hey, you want to go to Cannons? Speaker 2 (0:56) And I Speaker 4 (0:57) thought, well, you know, I honestly prefer studying to going out, but it's my senior year. And so it's kind of now or never. So I decided to go out. And we went to Cannon's, a local dive bar. And that night at the bar, this nerdy looking guy walks up to me and says, hey, aren't you in my art history class? And I looked at him and was like, no. And it turns out neither one of us was taking an art history class, but it was an icebreaker. And at the end of the night, he said, you know, would you like to have dinner sometime? I said, sure. My name's Gwen Lopez and I live at Hewitt Hall and you can look me up. Fast forward four years and we're dating and I'm working as a first grade teacher on the Upper East Side and taking pre-medical classes at night at Hunter College. And we're both pretty busy. So we decided, you know, we made a regular Friday night date of sorts going to the synagogue, B'nai Jeshurun on the Upper West Side. And, you know, my boyfriend was Jewish. It was important for him to go to the synagogue. Speaker 4 (2:03) I found that I was really drawn to the singing and the dancing and the Hebrew prayers. And there was this magical feeling at B'nai Jeshurun, this incredible spirituality. I had grown up Unitarian and celebrating Christmas and Easter. So I didn't have a strong religious affiliation myself. And I found at these Friday night synagogue services that I felt a real connection to God that I'd never experienced before. And it was something about the music and the dancing and Hebrew prayers that really helped me to leave behind all the stress of the work week and start to really feel relaxed and at peace. My boyfriend and I had a conversation where he said, you know, I'm Jewish. It's really important for me to have Jewish kids. I thought about it. I thought, well, I feel very connected to Judaism. So I decided that I wanted to convert. So a local rabbi or someone referred me to a conversion rabbi at Yeshiva University named Rabbi Bomzer. I went to his office at Yeshiva University and I sat down with him and I said, you know, I really I've been going to synagogue. on Friday nights, and I really feel a strong connection to Judaism, happened to be dating this Jewish guy, and I really want to become a Jew, make it official, and convert. And then I said, you know, and it's not so surprising to me because my grandmother was from a Jewish family in Germany. Maybe that's Speaker 3 (3:39) why. Speaker 4 (3:40) I'm not sure. And he looked at me and he said, well, which grandmother are we talking about? Speaker 3 (3:45) And I said, well, my mother's mother Speaker 4 (3:47) came from Germany in 1938 because of World War II, and she had to leave Frankfurt. And he looked at me and he said, well, chances are you are a Jew. And he recommended that I learn more about my family heritage and look into this. So at that time, you know, I was kind of surprised. Because, you know, growing up Unitarian, I was taught that religion