PETA KROST MAUNDER
His relationship to the local Jewish community is so close, some of his cousins were even educated at King David Linksfield. While some of them have emigrated, others are living in Johannesburg and Cape Town.
King David alumnus Joel Levy – who initially discovered he was related to Drake – spent three years living in Israel before settling in England 22 years ago.
Although he is a dentist by profession, he has much more than a fascination for genealogy. He has dug deep into his own family background, which is how he discovered his kinship with this year’s newly anointed King of Music.
Drake, a black Jewish Canadian rapper, won 2017 Billboard Music Award’s top artist and took home a record 13 awards at this year’s ceremony in May. He is the Billboard Music’s biggest single award winner ever and his awards this year include: Top Male Artist, Top Billboard 200 Artist, Top Rap Artist and many more.
When the SA Jewish Report told the story in June of how this Rap king was Jewish, Levy alerted the newspaper to the fact that Drake was his cousin.
Levy has been involved with the Jewish Genealogy Society in Great Britain for 10 years – having been the society’s vice chairperson for some years – and often give talks there.
He discovered that his and Drake’s great-grandparents were siblings, thereby making the superstar and the dentist third cousins. While Levy hasn’t met Drake, he had a family reunion in Toronto, Canada, in May 1999 when he met Drake’s now late grandparents – Ruby (Reuben) and Evelyn Sher.
“Drake wasn’t there and neither was his mother, Sandy Sher,” says Levy, who at the time knew nothing about Drake. “When I was discussing doing the family tree with them, they spoke of their grandson, Aubrey Drake Graham. I didn’t know who he was or that he was famous, although they may have assumed I did. Neither of us said anything about it.
“Drake was very close to his grandparents, particularly his grandmother. He mentions her in a number of songs,” says Levy. He featured her on his hit album Take Care, when he rapped: “I heard they just moved my grandmother to a nursing home/ And I be actin’ like I don’t know how to work a phone…”
On an unreleased song called “The Winner”, he uttered: “Yeah, and in the name of Evelyn Sher/I’ll forever forgive anybody that never was there/For me, no other woman could ever compare/My angel I hope heaven’s prepared for whenever you there.”
On “Look What You’ve Done”, he toasts his mother in the first verse and then his uncle in the second, then turns the mic to his grandmother who apparently talks to him from her nursing home, saying over the beat of the piano: “All I can say Aubrey is, I remember the good times we had together and the times I used to look after you and I still have wonderful feelings about that. So, G-d bless you, and I hope I’ll see you.”
Drake even named his upmarket private members-only club in Toronto, Sher Club, after his grandparents.
Levy explains that Drake’s parents, Sandy and Dennis Graham – a well-known African American musician – were divorced. Drake, who is Jewish, having attended a Jewish day school in Toronto and had his barmitzvah.
“I went to a Jewish school, where nobody understood what it was like to be black and Jewish,” he has reportedly said. “When kids are young it’s hard for them to understand the make-up of religion and race.”
Drake also identifies strongly with his black cultural roots, according to Levy.
Levy says: “When I told my sister’s children that Drake was related to them, they started screaming with excitement.”
Levy’s sister Coreen Crown, who lives in Johannesburg, says: “When Joel told us, I was totally amazed. Now, it is surreal. When my kids went to school and told their friends, nobody believed them. My husband teases me that my cousin is on the radio when Drake is playing.”
Levy explains he first became interested in genealogy when he worked on a Holocaust project at King David High School. “My mother’s family was wiped out in Lithuania and I wrote down a list because I wanted to know their names, so they weren’t nameless. I wanted them to be remembered.” While his mother’s side had a sad history, his father’s side gave him plenty to work with.
His father’s mother’s side had been in England and Wales since 1823. So, after he left Israel after making aliya, one of the drawcards about moving to England was that he would have a good chance to resume doing his family tree.
While working on his family tree, he discovered that there were five Sher siblings on the other side; two women, Anne (Chassel) and Liebe Michle; and then three men, Beryl, Morris and Louis who were born in Lithuania between 1873 and 1891.
“My grandparents – Tzippa (Gavendo) and Israel Sher – were first cousins because the daughter of Liebe Michle married the son of Beryl. This was quite common for people from Lithuania of that generation.”
Morris Sher – Liebe Michle and Beryl’s brother – was Drake’s great-grandfather and was the father of Ruby (Reuben) Sher, his grandfather. “Rueben was first cousin to my grandfather and grandmother on my mother’s side,” says Levy. “He is my third cousin and his mom and my mom are second cousins.”
Levy explains that his grandfather, Israel came to South Africa in 1930, before the war broke out in Lithuania. His grandmother followed two years later.
“My grandfather only knew of an aunt, Chasia, who went from Lithuania to Canada. “Back in the 1940s, someone in our family went to Canada to meet the part of the family that went there and apparently they had lots of children. One of Chasia and Sam Miller’s granddaughters – Gail Faust – was also doing the genealogy of the family. She and I found each other around 20 years ago.
“Until then we only knew of her grandmother, Chasia, but she told us that there were two other brothers that went to Canada, Morris (Drake’s great grandfather), and his younger brother, Louis.
Levy is not holding his breath to meet Drake because of his fame. For him, it is much more about connecting with all the members of his family and completing the family tree. Some of the younger members of the family, however, would love to meet their famous cousin.
Crown, however, would love to have Drake over for Shabbat. “I would love for him to see how special our traditional family Shabboses are. We don’t really mind that he is famous, but he is family and we are a very family-oriented family. And he is one of us and for that reason, we would love to meet him.”
