Just Another Story: My Mother's Birth

Page 28.
     My mother, Jane, was born illegitimately, in 1919, into an Orthodox Jewish family. Her mother, Yetta, one of nine children, was, allegedly, the rebellious one. Yetta also had some serious cognitive and psychological issues, possibly caused by physical abuse at the hands of her father. Though, he was the community shochet: a highly trained and very well respected male who ceremoniously slaughtered the animals to be properly kosher and fit for consumption by Jews.
     At my mother's birth, she was immediately placed into an orphanage and Yetta was then institutionalized for the rest of her life. She died in 1985, outliving my mother by one year. Absolutely nothing is known about my mother's father, though he may have been a soldier going off to WWI. (Jane would have been conceived in May, 1918 with the armistice being signed that November.)
     Right here, I should inject that some of what I write about my mother (and father) is gleaned from much family folklore. My mother was a  pathological liar in addition to her other numerous psychiatric diagnosis and personality disorders. It's in talking with distant relatives over the course of decades that my family has created some sort of possible biography. However, what the real truth is, no one will ever know.
     One definite truth though is it's difficult to overstate how much shame, embarrassment, trauma and drama an unwed mother would have brought to her family in the Orthodox Jewish community in 1918. Try to imagine it even today. If you're unfamiliar with Orthodox Judaism, replace that denomination with today's strictest, most puritanical Evangelical Christian, Mormon or extremist Moslem. Indeed, in some Islamic countries today, death of the unwed mother-to-be at the hands of her own family, occasionally makes the international news.