For many years, genealogists have asserted that Gladys Presley, mother of the “king of rock-and-roll,” had Jewish ancestors, and that she—and therefore her son as well—may even have been a Jew by halakhic standards. Archivists have recently opened a crate containing the headstone of Gladys’s original grave, which has a cross engraved in upper right corner and a star of David on the upper left. Dan Fellner writes:
“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’s headstone on the 60th anniversary of her death, partly to dispel doubts about Elvis’s Jewish lineage.
Marchese says Elvis’s maternal great-great-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, Mississippi.
There is evidence that Elvis’s Jewish lineage meant more to him than just a symbol on a headstone. He gave generously over the years to a variety of Jewish organizations, including the Memphis Jewish Community Center, a donation honored with a plaque that hangs in Graceland today. . . . During the final years of his life, Elvis was frequently photographed wearing necklaces with the Star of David and the Hebrew word ḥai, which means life. . . . Never one to be accused of subtlety, Elvis had the necklace designed with seventeen diamonds.
Read more on Jewish Telegraphic Agency: https://www.jta.org/2021/06/24/culture/elvis-presley-was-jewish-a-grave-marker-locked-away-for-4-decades-confirms-it