How I Came To Be A Jew

I

I am a baptized Jew. And none of this was by choice. We don’t ask to be born or to whom, nevertheless, I was born a Jew. My mother was not Jewish by birth. In fact, her background was about the furthest you could get from Jewishness.

Alice Comer Lide – Lide is thought to be the anglicization of the Welsh surname – was born in Florence, South Carolina in 1932, the youngest of four sisters. Her father was a country doctor, and her grandfather a Baptist minister. Her ancestry on her father’s side can be traced back to before the Revolution in the Colonies; her mother was of Scots-Irish heritage. She debuted at the age of 13.

Her first words were of the roadside signs she read while passing in the car. She and her next elder and closest sister Anne were thought to have genius level intelligence. Anne would graduate from Chapel Hill, Phi Beta Kappa in physics, and be recruited to work on radar development right out of college by the War Department. Alice took a more circuitous route. She graduated nursing school in Greensboro, North Carolina, she would work as a journalist for Newsday, as a private detective (where she reportedly carried a .38 caliber pistol in her purse), and briefly attended divinity school. My father, who joined the Air Force to avoid the draft and then got himself a general discharge by refusing to bathe, shave, or cut his hair, was not considered a prime catch by her mother, and remains a black sheep to this day. They settled in the East Village where he would try to be a screenwriter (credited with an early episode of Mannix), and she would raise my two brothers.  

At some point in 1966-67 she converted to Judaism. She was also in and out of mental institutions going back to at least 1963. I know this because when I asked my father where he was when President Kennedy was killed he told me he was in the lobby of the hospital visiting my mother where she had been committed. It is believed she suffered from schizoaffective disorder, although little was known of the disease at the time and there was no effective treatment. Her delusional structure involved “demons” with whom she conversed and who sometimes pursued her. Indeed, they would pursue her to her death, as she threw herself in front of a subway car in April of 1971. I was 3 ½  years old.

No one really knows why she converted to Judaism. Was it part of her mental illness; did she want to know more about the demons who visited upon her? Perhaps her foray in divinity school had not answered. Maybe, living in the East Village amongst Jews from many sects had drawn her in and provided the spiritual home she sought but had not found elsewhere. It should be noted that her father, after earning his medical degree, had worked for a time in the intake center at Ellis Island in the early twenties, where he would have seen the mass egress of the Eastern European Jews fleeing the pogroms of that time.

II

So, although I was born a Jew in Beth Israel Hospital, I would not be raised one, having lost my one connection to that faith. After Alice’s passing I went to live with my Aunt Anne in Florence; my two brothers were taken in by our Aunt Margaret, the eldest sister,and her husband in Larchmont, New York. It was during this time that I was baptized in the Episcopal church there at the behest of my Uncle Nick, although my belief is that my grandmother was involved, probably in a misguided attempt to, “wash the Jew off me.” My father would have to take my uncle to court to regain custody of me. This was quite the considerable proposition, as my uncle was a Democratic state Senator in South Carolina and an attorney, but dad got a Black ACLU Lawyer to represent him pro bono so back to New York I went. My stepmother had to come get me as my father was not allowed in their house. 

I always knew I was a Jew, although I did not know what that meant. In second grade, I had told some school friends. When they asked me if my family kept kosher, I said, yeah sure. I remember getting called out for bringing a lunch to school that was not kosher. I didn’t talk about it much after that.

My stepmother was active in the Trinity Lutheran Church on West 100th Street, but my father was decidedly non religious and we brothers would never be forced to go there for services. If anything, I am a lifelong agnostic, never an atheist but really more of a pagan. I’ve always felt a deep spiritual affinity for nature, one of the many things I share with my wife, Merideth. 

III

It was Merideth who introduced me to the Shul of New York. Like so many, it was the music that drew me in. My first introduction to our community was the annual Shul Band concert. Over the last couple of years, I have accompanied Merideth to Friday night Shabbat and High Holy Days at the beautiful Orensanz Center and online. I felt at home sharing in this community with my now wife Merideth. More than a few of you from the Shul were at our wedding, where Rabbi Susan officiated.

Hazzan Adam once spoke of responsibility around intentionality, which resonated with me particularly. He said, in effect, we are our behavior. So as I began to learn the prayers and blessings of our faith I began to enjoy the ritual of it, the community, the spiritual release, and the breathing space of meditation and prayer. Did attending services, repeating the prayers, lighting the candles, and observing the high holy days not make me a Jew by themselves? Perhaps, but I did not feel it as tangibly Jewish. It was more of a nondenominational universal communion, not a specifically Judaic religious experience.

Then, not long ago, Adam hosted an adult Bat Mitzvah ceremony for one of his students, Tif, during a Shabbat in person service at the Orensanz. After Tif had read her Parshah – Chaya Sarah – she circled the congregation with our Torah and all were encouraged to kiss and touch it. Like the Hakafa of our wedding, as we circled our beloved seven times, binding us one to the other, the congregation was bound to the Torah. This is when I began to feel really like a Jew. Hazzan Adam talked about how the same principle applied to the Mezuzah we attach to our door post, that is in the Sh’ma Israel we recite for Shabbat, this home is a place of refuge and justice. I am a Jew, therefore, I am a place of refuge and justice. I will do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with my God (Prophet Micah, 6:8).

~ Isaac Van Wilson