It is no secret that Elvis Presley had various Jewish affinities and connections throughout his life. As a teenager, for example, he lived downstairs from an Orthodox Jewish family for whom he would switch on lights on Saturdays. The so-called Memphis Mafia — his running gang of friends, helpers, and hangers-on — had a handful of Jewish members. He occasionally sported necklaces bearing the Star of David and the Hebrew word “chai” (meaning “life”).
But according to a new book — “The Jewish World of Elvis Presley” by Roselle Kline Chartock — Elvis’s Jewish connections were more than just a series of coincidences. Elvis, it turns out, was not merely passing through a “Jewish world” as an outsider but as a member of the tribe himself, one who could trace direct matrilineal descent back at least as far as his great-great grandmother. While all of these facts — and many more — have been revealed previously, Chartock is the first author to gather them into the pages of one book, to contextualize them historically and sociologically, and to add deeper understanding and nuance to Elvis’ Jewish life story based on information the author garnered from a half-dozen or so interviews she conducted with first-hand sources.