In 1837, my ancestor, Shlomo-ben-Yaarnkel ha-Cohen, was walking the streets of Szypliszki and he was depressed. For most Jews depression is the default position, expressed with a big ‘oooyyyy’, but for Shlomo this was more defined. He was poor. Not just, like boat-person refugee poor, not like homeless-in-Britain poor, not even ‘how am I ever going to pay my energy bill’ poor. Shlomo had nothing. His family didn’t even possess a tv, they were so poor. Ok, so 1837 probably wasn’t a good year for tv anyway, but he wouldn’t have had one, even if they had been invented. Because he had no money. And no food. And a family at home. Who all prayed three times every single day to a God who apparently never came to visit their little shtetl in Poland. Probably got held up in Warsaw. Shlomo walked past a baker’s shop and the wonderful smell stopped him in his tracks. “But I have no money for bread!!!”, he thought, “and 14 hungry children at home with no food!!!” (contraceptives cost money in Poland and ‘go forth and multiply’ was a biblical imperative, even though basic addition and subtraction might dictate otherwise.) So this deeply religious, observant man, who’s morals came from that very bible itself, stole a loaf of bread from the store! O.H.G.!!!!! (that’s ‘oh His God’, because He was much stricter than My one).

And here I sit, just 17 generations later and now saddled with the immense weight of the guilt of his deed. How can I ever be forgiven? How can I repay? And should I just, like, give a tenner to every baker in Eastern Poland? Or just make one single payment to all of Poland of, say, 57 million quid?

Oh, but hang on, half my descendents were murdered in Polish pogroms later that century… hmmmm… I better work out a discount on the reparations I offer. And cousin (very distant) Avram had his house burnt to the ground in 1869 by drunken Cossacks, that’ll cost a few bob…

An ex-MP called Antoinette Sandbach has been ‘named’ on a list of ‘descendants from the slave trade’ and is demanding to ‘be removed from it’. And you have to ask ‘why?’ So she lives on a massive estate in Wales paid for with money associated with… the slave trade!!!! But ‘am I my great-great-great-great-grandfather’s keeper?’ Should the grandchildren of Nazis be imprisoned? Does the statute of limitations pass on through countless generations once the crimes reach a certain level of modern-day traction?

I’m not saying Antoinette should be proud of her ancestor or ’embrace her inner slaver’ but it happened. It can’t ‘un-happen’, so however you write your lists of ‘descendants’, and for the pathetically little they really represent, history is history. The slave trade was the most disgusting, terrible thing ever, but judging it by modern standards is unworthy and denying involvement is even worse.

Happy Thursday

A xxxx