Boston

ONE of the more hotly contested issues in the Massachusetts Senate race between Scott Brown and Elizabeth Warren has been Ms. Warren’s claim that her mother was part American Indian. Ms. Warren has only family lore to back up her claim, and Senator Brown, accusing her of opportunism, has demanded proof. But as Ms. Warren counters in her own ads: what kid asks her mother for documentation?

I can sympathize. Growing up, I never questioned my mother’s claim that our family was descended from the Spanish dukes of Albuquerque.

My mother is fiercely proud of her royal ancestry. A Sephardic Jew who traces her lineage back to 14th century Andalusia, she swears the dukes were Jewish until forcibly converted during the Inquisition. She believes we are entitled to a castle in Spain, and possibly own property in New Mexico. The property claims never really mattered to me, though. What was important was that her story helped me define myself as a Jew and a citizen of the world.

Our royal genealogy isn’t my mother’s only story. She also likes to tell about how, as a student at the University of Havana, she was caught in the crossfire on the day when henchmen for Fulgencio Batista, the Cuban dictator, murdered the president of the University Student Federation. She says she had been in class and ran outside to see what all the commotion was about.