I sent in my dna for 23&Me. Turns out I'm 81.6% Ashkenazi Jew, 14.7 Middle Eastern and then bits of other things. (From what I am reading, the portion of Middle Eastern DNA is typical for Ashkenazi Jews.

I never really knew where I came from, never asked, because no one in the family ever talked about the good old country. Probably because the old country wanted them to leave. I don't really know, I need to do some research and pay attention to more history. But I do know that my greatgrandparents probably were have lucky to come here, or they would have had a 2/3 chance of being "deported" and then murdered by Hitler.

Before Hitler, there were about 9 million Jews in Germany, then they murdered 6 million of them. My great grandparents, I am pretty sure, had already left, my grandmother was born here in 1914 if I have it right.

I've always thought of myself as "culturally" a jew, but really not a religious one. And really never thought about what THAT mean either.

Here's something from Wikipedia

"Culturally, an Ashkenazi Jew can be identified by the concept of Yiddishkeit, which means "Jewishness" in the Yiddish language.^[104] Yiddishkeit is specifically the Jewishness of Ashkenazi Jews.^[105] Before the Haskalah and the emancipation of Jews in Europe, this meant the study of Torah and Talmud for men, and a family and communal life governed by the observance of Jewish Law for men and women. From the Rhineland to Riga to Romania, most Jews prayed in liturgical Ashkenazi Hebrew, and spoke Yiddish in their secular lives. But with modernization, Yiddishkeit now encompasses not just Orthodoxy and Hasidism, but a broad range of movements, ideologies, practices, and traditions in which Ashkenazi Jews have participated and somehow retained a sense of Jewishness. Although a far smaller number of Jews still speak Yiddish, Yiddishkeit can be identified in manners of speech, in styles of humor, in patterns of association. Broadly speaking, a Jew is one who associates culturally with Jews, supports Jewish institutions, reads Jewish books and periodicals, attends Jewish movies and theater, travels to Israel, visits historical synagogues, and so forth. It is a definition that applies to Jewish culture in general, and to Ashkenazi Yiddishkeit in particular."

Here's the whole wikipedia entry; 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ashkenazi_Jews

Interesting, huh?