The process was lengthy and had many facets, some of which are the subject of short essays that I have written over the last several years and published on this website. In chronological order, these are the events that, in retrospect and distilled through the lens of time, now seem most relevant to where I am now.
I am the youngest of a family of six children, five of whom survived to adulthood. Fourteen years separate the births of my brother and me with three sisters and a still-born in between. We were raised as Methodists by an active church-going and loving mother and a father who was deeply spiritual but never attended church except for weddings and funerals. His “church” was the Masonic orders.
On both sides, going back to the 17th century, the family comes from religious German-speaking ancestors originating in the Alsace and Wuertemburg regions of Europe. On the maternal side, the family arrived in Maryland in the mid 1700’s as part of devout Lutheran immigrants seeking refuge from the wars and turmoil of Europe. They were founders of several of the earliest Lutheran congregations in Maryland around Hagerstown.
On the paternal side, the family was part of a pietist Lutheran sect that emigrated to the Odessa, South Russia region near the Black Sea in the late 1700’s and first decade of the 1800’s where they established ethnic colonies and prospered until the rise of Slavic nationalism in the 1880’s. They were excommunicated from the Lutheran Church, which they viewed as insufficiently pious, because they held their own services in their homes, believed that the world would end in the early 1800’s and, among other reasons, emigrated to Russia to be near Israel at the end of days. They came to the Dakotas, a region similar to the Russian steppes, starting in the 1880’s. They continued their ethnic religious communities through the third decade of the 20th Century.
Religion, and questioning the role of religion, have always been a central part of my life. During my confirmation class, taught in part by the wife of the pastor, I noted the different stances among the four gospel stories and opted for a particular reading of Mark that essentially eliminated any special attribution of divinity to Jesus. The message of Jesus in Mark, as I then understood it, called on all people as the children of God to recognize their own small spark of divinity and behave accordingly to each other. This did not go over particularly well. But for the kindly intervention of the pastor, I might never have been confirmed. In retrospect, I think it safe to say that the good reverend appreciated and favored both the curious and the rebellious child.
In Helena, Montana there were very few Jewish families. The only Jew I was aware of happened to be a good friend of my father, but I had no idea what it meant to be a Jew, except that the Jews were the people in the Bible stories. Of course, I was partial to the childhood version of the story of David, which focused almost exclusively on slingshots and bringing down evil giants, neatly summarized in a song my Aunt Lucille sang to me every time I saw her.
When I came to the east coast to go to college, things changed. Most people I met assumed that I was Jewish, which generally translated into a positive impression of being more intelligent and informed than I am. Most of my close friends at college were Jewish, though generally more secular than religious. I ended up majoring in philosophy and, within the major, focusing on ethics, value theory and justice. I continued to explore the relationship between the sacred and the secular aspects of normative issues in courses on biblical hermeneutics, zen discipline and the history of ideas. This led to a graduate school fellowship, initially designed for aspiring theologians but re-designed for those interested in teaching at liberal arts colleges. My Shakespeare professor, a secular Jew, was the first to bring the Danforth to my attention, though all of my professors seemed to think that it was a perfect fit for me. I started a doctoral program, but quickly realized that I was not especially interested in a totally academic life.
This trend toward increasing influence in my life by secular Jews continued in law school, where my closest advisers and mentors were all secular Jews. When I began the practice of law itself in Washington, DC most of my close friends and professional colleagues were Jews, for the first time including more observant Jews.
I began to re-examine my religious life, or more accurately the lack of it, in 1993 when my father died. I knew then, very clearly, that something was missing. But I could not reconnect with the church of my childhood.
Judaism entered my life in a much more significant way in 1998 and 1999 when I went through a divorce and then met my wife, Sarah, and her very observant, warm and welcoming modern orthodox parents. And then after that, I met legions of Sarah’s friends and relatives, equally warm and welcoming. In some ways it felt very much like the family I grew up in, and in all ways interesting and embracing. I was not ready, at that time, to explore deeply a commitment to Judaism, but I very quickly became deeply committed to my new family. Our wedding was performed by a reform rabbi, and I became familiar with some of the rituals and symbols of the form of a Jewish wedding. My mother and all of my siblings came to Baltimore, and the two families found much in common. We were all delighted by the confusion of many guests who mistakenly assumed that my brother, with his long grey beard, avuncular nature and portly demeanor was the rabbi who would preside at the wedding.
Leading up to the wedding and afterwards I read two books in the “Dummies” genre. One was on Catholicism since my son had decided that his identity came from his Irish Catholic mother and his Peruvian Catholic nanny and her children, who were his best friends. He went through a tutorial and was baptized, confirmed and took confession on an Easter Sunday. A long time client and close friend from Chile, a prominent member of Opus Dei, became his godfather, and his nanny his godmother. The other was on Judaism, and was recommended to me by Rabbi Mitchell Wohlberg as good starting point.
Sarah and I lost our mothers within a year of one another. Sarah’s mother died first and unexpectedly. Sitting shiva and coping afterwards with the loss for ourselves and my father-in-law drew us much closer together. He had never so much as boiled a pot of water in his life and now was faced with the daunting task of maintaining a kosher kitchen. All of the formidable resources of the Beth T’filoh congregation, and many of his life time friends from the ultra orthodox and modern orthodox community, converged at once to resolve this and other problems of grieving and adjustment.
Sarah immediately stepped into her mother’s role at the beginning of every Shabbat, conducted by telephone. We talked with my father-in-law at least three times during the day, sometimes more frequently. We made many more trips to Baltimore for the day and often overnight. In all ways at all times she honored her father and the memory of her mother. In our travels throughout Europe and Japan, we never failed to find a synagogue, a Jewish quarter and, especially, a haggadah for my father-in-law’s collection. Watching and listening to them light the candles and say the prayers made me more mindful of something very important missing from my own life. On one Super Bowl Sunday at half time, I began to do “telephone church” with my mother. We started with Genesis reading alternate passages from parts that I selected and then talking about them. Because of the stroke and her failing health, my mother had significant short term memory problems, but no trouble at all with long term memory, passages from the Bible or songs. On that Sunday and subsequent Sundays, she repeatedly (and suspiciously) asked, “Why are you doing this?” I evaded an answer for about two months, and then told her about the beginning of Shabbat. Her response, without any sense of irony: “I love Sarah. I knew she would make a good Christian out of you.”
My father-in-law turned 91 on December 24, 2010. Sarah and I celebrated our tenth anniversary in July. This year her birthday coincided with Shavuot. The time had come.
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