President Barack Obama’s Jewbellish score just went up one point. Israel Today is reporting that the president’s brother-from-another-mother (literally) is Jewish. I guess no gentile family is perfect 😉

Israel Today:

Barak Obama’s autobiography seems to be as complex as the president himself. Tzach Yoked, writing in Maariv this week, exposed to Israelis, perhaps for the first time, that among the American president’s eight half-brothers is one, Mark Obama Ndesandjo, who is Jewish.

Obama’s father had four wives – two Kenyan-born women and two white American women, the Christian mother of Barak Obama, Ann Duham, and the Jewish Mother of Mark Obama, Ruth Baker. Ruth was born to a Jewish family that immigrated to the United States from Lithuania. She married Obama Sr. in 1964 and moved to Kenya. Ruth divorced her husband after seven years of abusive marriage.

Though by no means religious, Mark Obama is proud of his Jewish identity. “My mother is a liberal person who did not keep the religious rituals,” he said. “However, she always taught me to be proud of the fact that I am Jewish … as far as I am concerned, the main aspect of my Jewish identity does not stem from performing the religious rituals and prayers, but out of a strong sense that I am Jewish. It is something that you simply feel, a strong sense of secular Jewish identity that my mother gave me … she is the woman who taught me what’s important in life, who helped me to understand Torah, taught me music, helped me with my studies.”

Mark Obama recounts that contrary to what President Obama has said, they first met in 1988, and not in 2007. Asked why the president hadn’t told the truth about their meeting, the Jewish sibling said his older brother was probably ill-advised by political advisers. Nevertheless, it would seem that Mark adores Barack, even though, as he claims, the president has failed to be in touch with his brother for several months now.

Mark Obama went on to marry Liu Xuehua and has been living in China for the last 12 years. He is an accomplished pianist and published the semi-autobiographical novel “Nairobi to Shenzhen: A Novel of Love in the East.”

Mark, who has adopted China as his home country, is a vivid testimony of the complexity of Jewish identity. Born to a black Muslim father and a white Jewish mother, raised in Kenya but educated in the United States, half-brother to a president whose own religious identity is far from clear, Mark Obama is no less Jewish than any other child born to a Jewish mother. If anything, he well represents the crisis of secular Judaism.

This form of Judaism, as can be found also in Israel, wants to maintain Jewish identity apart from the Jewish faith. In America, where society is overwhelmingly non-Jewish, secular Judaism is on the decline due to a high rate of intermarriage. If anything can be learned from it is, as Israeli President Shimon Peres said just recently, that as far as Jews are concerned, state and religion cannot be separated.

If you judge Hollywood by celebrity names, you’d think Jews never made the cut (there’s a bris joke in there somewhere.) For some reason, most of the Jewish sounding Hollywood names belong to gentiles who changed their names to fit in. The gentile-named celebrities are often Jews trying to fit in with the gentiles trying to fit in with the Jews. OY!

Here’s a list of some classic name changes that our friends at JSpace put together of Jews trying to lower their Jewbellish Score:

7. Albert Brooks

Real Name: Albert Einstein

The need for a name change was probably obvious at an early age for this American-born Jew, who would later go on to become a leading comedic actor and stand-up act. Over his long career, Brooks has made a name for himself as favorites of the likes of Johnny Carson and “Saturday Night Live.”

6. Woody Allen

Real Name: Allen Konigsberg

Famed director Woody Allen has become a household name due to such smash hits as “Annie Hall” or more recently, “Blue Jasmine.” Brooklynite Allen, born Konigsberg, has a strong Jewish connection too, as both his parents were second-generation Jewish immigrants.

5. Larry King

Real Name: Lawrence Harvey Zeigler

The longtime late-night talk show host is also a Brooklyn native, like his fellow funnyman Woody Allen. King was born in 1933 to Orthodox Jews who had emigrated from Russia.

4. Bea Arthur

Real Name: Bernice Frankel

Everyone’s favorite “Golden Girl” was born in New York in May of 1926, the second of three daughters of Jewish parents. As a Jewish child growing up Cambridge, Maryland, Frankel faced anti-Semitism from her peers, according the Jewish Women’s Archive.

3. Natalie Portman

Real Name: Natalie Herschlag

Famous for her portrayals of everyone from Anakin Skywalker’s love interest in the “Star Wars” prequels to the neurotic, talented and ultimately doomed prima ballerina in the “Black Swan,”Portman goes by her grandmother’s maiden name. Born in Jerusalem in 1981, Portman is arguably one of the most recognizable Jewish actresses today, something that is both a blessing and a curse. “Like, every Jewish role comes to me,” the actress told Marie-Claire magazine in November.

2. Harry Houdini

Real Name: Erich Weisz

The world-famous magician and escape artist was born in 1874, in Budapest, Hungary, although for years he would claim he was born in Wisconsin, where his family later moved. Houdini was one of seven brothers and sisters, and his father was a Jewish rabbi.

1. Gene Simmons

Real Name: Chaim Witz

Although he would later found classic 1970s rocker group KISS, Simmons was actually born in 1949 in Haifa, Israel. For most of his childhood, Simmons was raised by his single mother, Flora, a Hungarian Jew and Holocaust survivor whose family perished in Nazi concentration camps. Simmons and his mother eventually moved to New York City, where he learned English and began to become interested in the music scene.