It is no secret that Elvis Presley had various Jewish affinities and connections throughout his life. As a teenager, for example, he lived downstairs from an Orthodox Jewish family for whom he would switch on lights on Saturdays. The so-called Memphis Mafia his running gang of friends, helpers, and hangers-on had a handful of Jewish members. He occasionally sported necklaces bearing the Star of David and the Hebrew word “chai” (meaning “life”).
But according to a new book “The Jewish World of Elvis Presley” by Roselle Kline Chartock Elvis’s Jewish connections were more than just a series of coincidences. Elvis, it turns out, was not merely passing through a “Jewish world” as an outsider but as a member of the tribe himself, one who could trace direct matrilineal descent back at least as far as his great-great grandmother. While all of these facts and many more have been revealed previously, Chartock is the first author to gather them into the pages of o