my mom has a plate hanging up in her kitchen that I always think of. It says "to be afraid is to believe more in evil than it is to believe in God."
I didn't know my ancestors were Jewish until I looked at our family tree. Names were totally changed in early 1900's to very American sounding names. Abraham started going by "Eddie". Catholic religion was adopted. We assumed this was because of anti-semitism at the time, but don't know for certain. I was raised Catholic, we were surprised when we dug into it.