ARTS&LIFE
Elvis Presley on The Milton Berle Show, June 4, 1956.
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Up!
A grave marker locked away for four decades reveals Elvis Presley’s Jewish roots. DAN FELLNER JTA
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he large crate sat unopened in a 20,000-square-foot warehouse here for more than four decades, concealing a littleknown fact about one of America’s cultural icons. Inside was the headstone of Elvis Presley’s mother, Gladys, which had been stored in the Graceland archives along with 1.5 million other items since 1977. And on the upper left side of the long-unseen marker — designed by Elvis himself — is a Star of David. Yes, the King of Rock and Roll had Jewish roots. The headstone, which was taken from storage only in 2018, is now on display at the sprawling complex in Memphis where Elvis lived from 1957 until his untimely death 20 years later at the age of 42. It sits in Graceland’s Meditation Garden, just outside the mansion and a few feet from Elvis’ own grave. Stories of Elvis’ Jewish heritage have long been in circulation, but when it comes to a legend like
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Presley — whose death is not even considered settled fact in some quarters — it’s not always easy to separate fact from fiction. With the headstone now on public display and an accompanying sign proclaiming, “Gladys’ Jewish heritage,” any lingering doubts can finally be erased. “There was a lot of mystery surrounding it,” said Angie Marchese, Graceland’s vice president of archives and exhibits, and the one who came up with the idea of unveiling Gladys’ headstone on the 60th anniversary of her death, partly to dispel doubts about Elvis’ Jewish lineage. “The star is on it, so it answered a lot of questions that were out there.” JEWISH ANCESTOR Marchese says Elvis’ maternal greatgreat-grandmother was a Jewish woman named Nancy Burdine. Little is known about Burdine, but it’s believed her family immigrated to America from what is now
Lithuania around the time of the American Revolution. According to Ancestry.com, Burdine was born in Mississippi in 1826 and died in 1887. Burdine’s great-granddaughter was Gladys Love Smith, who married Vernon Presley in 1933. Two years later, Gladys gave birth to Elvis in Tupelo, Miss. The family moved to Memphis when Elvis was 13. The Presleys once lived in an apartment directly below the family of Rabbi Alfred Fruchter, the first principal of the Memphis Hebrew Academy. The rabbi’s son, Harold, who now lives in Maryland, said that Elvis actually served as the Fruchters’ “Shabbos goy,” a non-Jew who performs household tasks for observant Jews that are normally forbidden on the Sabbath. Fruchter said his parents “never had even an inkling” that Elvis had Jewish roots. “If they had, they would never have considered asking him to be a Shabbos goy,” Fruchter said. Elvis was especially close to his mother, who died of heart failure in
