Why Paul McCartney Should Be Known as 'The Jewish Beatle'

Given Paul McCartney’s apparent love affair with all things Jewish — including collaborators, business associates, girlfriends and wives — the title of the artist’s 2013 album New could well be meant as a transliteration of the all-purpose Jewish word nu.

Recently, McCartney was in New York with his wife Nancy Shevell who is not in fact the first Jewish Lady McCartney; that honor belonged to McCartney’s first wife, Linda Eastman. Born in New York City and raised in Scarsdale, N.Y., Linda Eastman was the daughter of Lee Eastman — the son of Russian-Jewish immigrants, born Leopold Vail Epstein — and Louise Sara Lindner.

When Linda Eastman and McCartney’s daughter, Stella McCartney, became a fashion designer, she followed family footsteps into the rag trade; her maternal grandfather, Max J. Lindner, was founder of the Lindner Company, the largest women’s clothing store in Cleveland, Ohio. Lindner was a member of the most prominent Reform temple in Cleveland and president of its Men’s Club; active in the Jewish Welfare Fund and in the Jewish country club; and a major philanthropic force in Cleveland’s Jewish community.

McCartney married Linda Eastman in 1969, and the two famously stayed together as one of rock music’s most stable, loving couples until Eastman’s death in 1998 due to complications from breast cancer. They made music together: first, on the album “Ram,” the cover of which pictures McCartney grasping two ram’s horns, and subsequently, in McCartney’s post-Beatles group, Wings.

Linda’s father, Lee Eastman, was an entertainment lawyer who represented McCartney after the Beatles’ long-term manager — coincidentally also an Epstein, named Brian (but no relation) — passed away. McCartney’s choice of his father-in-law as manager was famously opposed by fellow Beatle John Lennon, who favored the former Rolling Stones manager Allen Klein. The dispute over management of the Beatles (which pitted a Jewish lawyer against a Jewish accountant) became a major factor in the ultimate dissolution of the Fab Four.

Source: thejewishnews.com

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