It takes exceptional talent to lose your way on a single-road route to the zoo — with a yakking GPS, no less. But we have loads of experience and pull it off with aplomb. The estimated 15-minute ride takes well over an hour, and by the time we pull into the parking lot, the kids have completely lost faith in ever seeing the leopards.

This is a family-owned discovery zoo near Hunter Mountain, with homemade pens and overpriced animal feed. My brother-in-law gets chummy with the owner, a man with friendly blue eyes and several chins, and they jestingly haggle over admission prices.

“You guys are Jewish, yeah?” the man asks.

Yay for hooked noses and haggling skills. I stuff Snak-Paks into little hands and coax whines into silence. We’re not making a chillul Hashem before we’ve reached the first exhibit.

But then… what is he saying?

“I’m Jewish too,” the zookeeper tells us proudly. “My name is Kushinski.” His blue eyes sparkle with amusement. “Can you find a more Jewish name than that?”

Automatically, I relax my grip on my toddler’s hand. Kinsmen! Give it a few minutes and my husband will cajole him to don tefillin. Kushinski.

This begs for a game of Jewish Mishpachalogy. I screw up my face and venture a guess. “Polish?”

Kushinski does sound Polish. Does he hail from Lodz? Krakow? Warsaw? Or Russia, maybe. Aren’t all “ski” names of Russian origin?

The man chuckles and his chins shake. “No, not Polish.”

His daughter, a beautiful girl with flowing blond hair sitting behind the counter breaks into a grin. I picture her tanned face in a sheitel, lighting Shabbos candles. Surely my kids can wait a bit longer to see the tigers. These are tinokos shenishbu!

“So where are you from?” I ask.

“Germany.”

Germany. Hmm. Do I know any German Jews?

My brother-in-law doesn’t appear very emotional about discovering this long-lost brother. He’s still hondling, and Mr. Kushinski still isn’t budging. “Over five years old is regular admission. And that’s seven dollars for the carrots.”

Oh, who cares? What’s a few dollars between family? I summon my most casual voice. “Do you keep Shabbos?”

“What?”

“Shabbos. You know, Saturday, lighting candles Friday night. Do you do that stuff?”

“Oh, no.” He chuckles. “I’m not Jewish. I was just joking.”

Joking, ah. So much for my baal teshuvah Shabbos guests. Very funny.

And then it hits me. He’s not Jewish. And he is German.

My fingers freeze.

“You’re from Germany, like, you were born there?”

He blinks his blue eyes, his blue, blue eyes. “Yes. My parents, my grandparents, we’re all German.”

His daughter with the flowing blonde hair, the blonde, blonde hair, smiles and nods.

One minute Mr. Kushinski is an estranged Jew. The next minute he’s a Nazi.

(Excerpted from Family First, Issue 597)