I was recently alerted to the fact that the famous novelist George R. R. Martin – almost entirely known for his unfinished fantasy series ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ which was screened as the widely-watched television series ‘A Game of Thrones’ – by my friend Bobby Thorne.
I checked and Bobby was correct: Martin is indeed jewish albeit he allegedly didn’t know that he was until 2019 when he took part in PBS’ show ‘Finding Your Roots’.
As Curt Schleier writes in the ‘Times of Israel’:
‘Martin, 70, grew up in Bayonne, New Jersey. His mother was part Irish, and his father was half Italian. Martin was very close to his paternal grandmother, Grace, whose Italian husband, Louis, left her and started a new family without a divorce (Grace was a devout Catholic).
Martin believed he was at least a little Italian, genetically, but a test of his genetic makeup revealed he actually has no Italian DNA at all. However, the test also showed that he is 22.4 percent Ashkenazi Jew — about the equivalent of having one Jewish grandparent.
To check their results, researchers located one of Louis’ sons from the second family and tested him. If Louis was George’s grandfather, there should have been a partial match — about 6 percent. But there was none.
A test of Martin’s maternal grandparents showed only Irish ancestry, so the show’s researchers speculated that Louis left Grace after discovering she had an affair with a Jewish man.
All a stunned Martin can say on the show is: “You’ve uprooted my worldview.”’ (1)
This is pretty definitive, and I probably agree with ‘Finding Your Roots’ researchers here in that it would appear that Martin’s maternal grandmother had a fair with a jew and Martin’s mother was the result and further that Martin’s Italian grandfather left her as a result.
It is one of those things where you have an odd bit of history in your family that has never been really explained – his Italian grandfather leaving his Irish grandmother – only for an additional piece of information – in this case an affair with a jew and a love-child – to surface which suddenly makes sense of it.
That is in many ways is what makes history such an amazing discipline because you when you have that ‘Eureka’ moment of discovery; it is a dopamine hit like few others, because you are maybe the first person to know what actually happened other than those who it happened or made it happen.
However, coming back to the point this means that by halakha (jewish religious law) Martin is not jewish – his grandmother wasn’t a jew only his biological grandfather was – but by Israeli law and by our racial principles: he is.
So yes George R. R. Martin is indeed jewish.
References
(1) https://www.timesofisrael.com/game-of-thrones-creator-george-r-r-martin-discovers-hes-a-quarter-jewish/