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44nd viii

Was Linda McCartney
a victim of the gene
that increases the risk
of breast cancer in
Ashkenazi Jewish
women?

ERIC J. GREENBERG
Special to The Jewish News

IV

hen it came to supporting
causes she believed would
make the world a better
place — protecting ani-
mals and the environment — Linda
Eastman McCartney was quite vocal.
But when it came to her own reli-
gious and ethnic heritage, she was
extremely private.
So many fans never knew that the
woman once accused of helping break
up the Beatles was Jewish.
But an investigation has found for
the first time that Linda Eastman
McCartney, an acclaimed photograph-
er and wife for nearly 30 years of one
of the 20th century's greatest com-
posers, Paul McCartney, was definitely
Jewish, the granddaughter of a promi-
nent Jewish Cleveland family.
McCartney died last month at the age
of 56 after a three-year battle with
breast cancer.
The probe found that McCartney's
mother was the late Louise Lindner,
daughter of prominent turn-of-the-
century businessman Max Joseph
Lindner, who founded the largest
women's specialty clothing shop in
Cleveland in 1908.

Eric J. Greenberg is a sta writer at

"The Jewish Week."

5/8
1998

98

Lindner, born in New York City in
1874, was a member of The Temple,
the major Reform temple in
Cleveland. He was a president of its
men's club, according to Cleveland
researcher Stanley Lasky.
Lindner also was active in the
Jewish Welfare Fund and a director of
the Oakwood Country Club, the
Jewish club.
"He was definitely involved with
the Jewish community of Cleveland,"
Lasky said.
His wife was the former Stella
Dryfoos, born in Fremont, Ohio, in
1872. The couple were married in
1910 in Cleveland by Rabbi Moses J.
Gries of The. Temple, according to the
marriage certificate.
The family was the toast of
Cleveland's Jewish community as phil-
anthropic clothing manufacturers,
according to Arlene Rich, president of
the Jewish Genealogical Society of
Cleveland.
"They were very prominent in run-
ning Cleveland's Jewish community,"
Rich said, noting that Stella's sisters
married rich synagogue builders Julius
Feiss and Eugene Hays.
After selling his company, Lindner
became a buyer of women's apparel for
the May Company.
The Lindners were buried on Aug.
8, 1947, at Mayfield Cemetery, oper-

Paul and
Linda
McCartney
in happier
days.

ated by The Temple. They had one
daughter, Louise. She gave birth to
Linda on Sept. 24, 1941, in Scarsdale,
N.Y.
McCartney's father was Lee
Eastman, who had changed the family
name from Epstein. Eastman was a
noted entertainment lawyer for,
among other clients, the songwriter
Harold Arlen. The family had no rela-
tionship to Eastman-Kodak. Louise
Eastman died in a plane crash when
McCartney was 19.
McCartney attended Sarah
Lawrence College and the University
of Arizona, where she was married
briefly and had a daughter.
But it was her second marriage that
triggered worldwide headlines and
broke the hearts of millions of teen
rock fans.
Her 1969 marriage to the cute
Beatle in a brief London civil ceremo-
ny started possibly the most successful
marital musical partnership in pop
history.
"Whether or not she was practicing
[Judaism] in any way or had any con-
ventional religious convictions is
something nobody knows because the
McCartnevs have always been very
private about it," said New York Times
music critic and Beatles expert Alan
Kozinn.
"Basically, the most one can say is

that she came from a Jewish family,"
said Kozinn, an Orthodox Jew and
author of The Beatles, a critically
acclaimed 1996 biography.
The McCartneys named their
youngest daughter, an up-and-coming
fashion designer, after her Jewish
grandmother Stella.
There are spare anecdotes about
McCartney acknowledging her
Jewishness. Kozinn recalled a story
from a Jewish friend who attended a
Christmas party where McCartney
was present.
"At one point, he said to Linda,
`Here I am the only Jew at an X-mas
party.' She said, 'There are two of us
here.'"
Ironically, she was felled by a dis-
ease that appears to target a dispropor-
tionate number of Jewish women of
Eastern European descent.
Geri Barish, a Beatle "fanatic" and
director of "One in Nine: The Long
Island Breast Cancer Coalition," said
McCartney's death is distressing
because McCartney was "a prime
example of someone who lived right:
she avoided animal products, she exer-
cised, cared for body and was spiritual
in her work."
Barish said she was concerned that
women at risk for breast cancer
would "give up" taking precautions
seeing that McCartney was unable to
beat the disease. She urged them to
continue the fight, and push for
more investigation of environmental
toxic pollution and its relationship to
breast cancer.
Barish was shocked when
informed that McCartney was Jewish.
She said her death raises new ques-
tions about breast cancer gene muta-
tions, some of which increase breast
cancer risk for Ashkenazi Jewish
women. "Her death should be the
final wakeup call ... for better and
more biochemical research, more
accurate and safer screening and an
all-out effort on prevention."
"You can't keep your genetics pri-
vate," Barish observed.
Paul McCartney, 55, has asked peo-
ple to donate money to cancer
research, among other charities, in his
wife's name. ❑