Confessions of an Irish Jew: My Faith Journey

My father told anyone who would listen that he was an atheist, a foil to his mother’s church immersion. Chanting “Jesus, Mary and Joseph,” clutching her rosary as Dad rushed our rented Ford Mustang through a Miami Beach thunderstorm, she frightened me with her fear. Dad’s business trip, our family vacation, wasn’t fun. “Oh, Mother,” Grandpa retorted, the rest of us stunned. I wanted to be like Dad, never dependent on anyone.  That stance saw me through childhood trials but left me unable to bond with adult friends or lovers until I unlearned it.

Grandpa was aloof, rigid with a ready hard hand. Dad, the firstborn in 1918, fought on behalf of himself and nine siblings to their lasting admiration. Prayer rituals sooth other souls but church stress on sin and salvation gave Dad no grace. He fled Michigan State mid-freshman year to sail the world in the Merchant Marine,  talking his way into a ship’s electrician job, then teaching himself to do it. Beneath a Buenos Aires streetlamp with a tipsy shipmate one night on leave, Dad called “Buenas Noches” as women passed, an amber glow his spotlight as if for Frank Sinatra. This went on for hours till one answered, “Buenos Noches yourself!”  I was in our car’s backseat, at age eleven, unsure what to think as Dad relished telling the tale.

Sunday Mass was as natural as spring rain for my mother. She ate fish on Fridays and pursued a predictable study program for a devout Catholic girl at Our Lady of Good Counsel, a parochial Bronx high school that fed Fordham University's verdant Rose Hill campus. Mom’s Uncle Dave and Aunt Virginia hosted after-church supper each Sunday. Adults spread to separate rooms after coffee as men cheering Notre Dame football on television drowned out women’s discussions. The men’s strength impressed me, but the women’s sharing intrigued me. My atheist father never appeared while a sense of duty made my mother attend.

The Cathedral of Saints Philip and James was Mom’s haven when her parents died young and when mine divorced. Dad's forceful presence suppressed her spiritual yearning, framing conflicts at home, whether I’d attend public or parochial high school one example. Trinity entailed chapel worship, pleasing Mom. Dad’s asserting “a solid grounding in science and math” at Bronx Science was vital if I were one day to seek public office, which swayed me at fourteen a West Side Democratic Club member active in politics. Trinity's blazer and tie requirement was also a turn-off. I sensed my mother’s regret and found fundraising form letters from Reverend Billy Graham’s ministry when I went for the daily mail. Graham, often pictured with presidents, toured the nation with televised revivals. I was aghast when she sent Graham a check. I was too immature to respect her beliefs.

Years of therapy years later, in time for the two of us to reconcile on that point, helped me see I'd been afraid to step past Dad’s shadow; how ironic that I’ve since moved toward Mom by joining a Jewish community. Church contacts had scarred me: fearing I’d sinned at age four when the priest seemed to single me out for having climbed on a hassock, the kneeling bar for prayer, to see as he motioned for all to sit; the naive rookie priest at Mom’s church whose Christmas mandate to “celebrate the good news of Jesus Christ!” belied homelessness in pews, streets and subways. I was in my thirties, upset. Dorothy Day’s “Houses of Hospitality” on Manhattan’s Lower East Side inspired me, serving those who had little, nothing or nowhere to go food, clothing, shelter, respect.  Her Catholic Worker newspaper linked Bible teachings to civil rights, and liberation theology’s defiance of U.S. imperialism in Latin America. She hosted Friday night seminars on these issues. These continued after her death, and I attended. Day’s belief in an activist church helped me recall that stories of French “worker-priests” made the church relevant for my Mom. This piqued my interest.

Fathers Philip and Daniel Berrigans opposed U.S. roles in Vietnam, Chile, El Salvador and Nicaragua. Catholic priests, they led the Catonsville Nine in pouring their blood on Vietnam-era records at a Maryland draft board. Their Plowshares Eight hammered nuclear missile parts and spilled blood on blueprints at a General Electric plant in King of Prussia, Pennsylvania, teams replicating that elsewhere, their readiness to serve jail time brave but daunting. High school peers and I did, though, charter a rickety school bus to the November 1969 Vietnam Moratorium of a half million people around the Washington Monument: Cary Frumess’ ocarina sendup of the “William Tell Overture” so right when we left, hours late. “I went off to make history,” I told the neighbor who badgered as to why “you were first out but last in on a Saturday.”

I immersed myself in Philip Berrigan's Prison Journals of a Priest Revolutionary and Daniel’s The Dark Night of Resistance. They were prolific authors with moral integrity. I  scanned the Village Voice, the Workshop in Nonviolence’s WIN Magazine and lamppost flyers near NYU, Columbia, and large churches to learn where Father Dan would speak, crisscrossing Manhattan, Brooklyn and Queens to hear his guest sermons. His brother was Baltimore-based, but I traced the biographical arcs of both lives, wondering where I’d fit in.

Tattered Catholic Worker newspapers and used books from Broadway’s Strand store came along on the A train to the temporary room that I rented far uptown in the then Irish section of Inwood. Crowds dissolved as I rode hours home from community organizing with NYPIRG’s Citizens Alliance in Queens or with Brooklyn’s Flatbush Tenants Council. When Dan Berrigan asked, “What have you read lately that was interesting?” as we by chance crossed paths on Broadway near Mom’s apartment, I had much to report. It thrilled me to spot him, a dynamic pulpit figure whose slight build, cap and pallor made him easy to miss on the street. I saw him again; we spoke twice by phone. He extended a study group invitation that I, thinking it might get me arrested, declined. His books were safe though unsettling, so I drank cheap Chilean wine, sat cross-legged on the sidewalk mattress I’d found, under the autographed George McGovern poster and Tree of Life India bedspread I’d nailed to the wall, read on through the night and dreamed of utopia.

The city’s wasteful materialism shocked me when I came home from the Peace Corps in South Korea. I resolved as I sat in cafes watching snow fall to leave the first rung of a U.S. Senate career ladder with Missouri Senator Stuart Symington in Washington and on McGovern's last South Dakota campaign. I surmised that I'd done more good striving across cultures than through legislation.

“That’ll be a drop in the bucket,” Dad said, “but perhaps everything’s a drop in the bucket these days.” I’d thought he’d relish my news; he’d literally fought his way along Brooklyn’s Red Hook docks as a union organizer in the ‘40s, earning a partly healed broken nose. It dawned on me as we strolled from the lavish Bull and Bear Restaurant, a haven for Wall Street executives, that Dad’s values had changed through a legendary advertising career; “Winston Tastes Good Like a Cigarette Should” and “To be crisp a beer must be icily light, lively and golden, precisely right…” for Ballantine Beer were his ideas.

Like Joe Kennedy with a young JFK, Dad had his heart set on my running for office, and my Senate staff service convinced him I could. Dad, in an elegant suit while I’d dressed up by adding a blazer to blue jeans, offered a cocktail to affirm my adulthood. I’d reenter government within seven years as the Brooklyn Borough President’s race and ethnic relations adviser, but I had to explore other “change the world” venues.

I read Zen books and tried writing haiku, but “The leader rises/ he decries the policies/ of the government,” a fifth-grade creation, is the only one worth recalling. I internalized the Korean humility encountered in Peace Corps as I went house to house or between storefronts among African Americans along Northern Boulevard, inviting locals’ hopes and concerns – which shaped our local NYPIRG chapter’s summer job, traffic light and supermarket boycott projects. Long hours, slight pay and some danger made it noble work till six men jumped me, searched my shoulder bag to ensure I neither bought nor sold drugs and wasn't a cop undercover.

I rejected my mother’s faith plus my father’s early rebellion and later complacency. Yet I honored their Irish heritage and with Sharon Kosakoff, my partner, explored the Emerald Isle – its mighty clouds, crashing waves, rugged coastline, flying fingers of tin whistle players. There were thatched roofs and church relics. Cows poked their heads through windows at breakfast, but Julia McQuillan’s story, which the Irish Times disclosed, disrupts charming memories.

Devoting her life to acts of penance, she wrote into her will that parishioners would bury her beneath their church aisle so that trampling feet would extend her self-flagellation. This namesake’s traumatic tale crystallized my negative church connotations. I shivered perusing her story and even tense up as I write this. Stony church ruins strewn across a pure sand beach at the Aran Island called Inishmore conjured more appealing daydreams of Druids lighting bonfires.

I found Tim Pat Coogan’s IRA history and Bobby Sands’ hunger strike diary at Kenny’s Bookstore in Galway while Sharon purchased Irish folk tales, tunes and poems. We almost bought a Bodhran, the traditional round frame drum, but feared, when the novelty wore off, it would languish in a living room corner at home. We delighted in joining travelers debating books over pots of tea for hours at the Literary Arts Café. I learned there that ex-IRA man Joe Doherty was incarcerated at New York’s Metropolitan Correctional Center near City Hall in Manhattan despite court decisions affirming his right to seek political asylum; our New York radio interview and correspondence affirmed my Irish freedom notions.

“Irish Republicans in occupied Ireland are at the forefront of the struggle to establish a democratic system of government with a constitution and bill of rights like your own for the protection of all Irish citizens, north and south, Catholic and Protestant,” Joe wrote in Standing Proud, his memoir. “We in Ireland are greatly influenced by your Bill of Rights and seek to create a similar document in building a pluralist society and ending a colonial, sectarian regime.”

Irish idealism resonates with Jewish values of Tzedakah and Tikkun Olam that I found in the synagogue to mend our broken world through large and small compassionate and just actions.

Those Jewish – indeed universal – ideals drove Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel to march with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Alabama, present him to the Central Conference of American Rabbis in Chicago and endorse his seminal address at Manhattan’s Riverside Church against the Vietnam War. It compelled the martyred Andrew Goodman, Michael Schwerner and James Earl Chaney to risk and sacrifice  their lives for Civil Rights in Mississippi’s Freedom Summer. Who better than the Irish or the Jew to tame our savage species?

I was taught as a child to think big. “I am going to be President of the United States,” a wrinkled loose-leaf sheet declares in my then-cramped cursive script. “My interest in politics began when I was seven years old while watching a television show called the ‘Swamp Fox.’ It was the story of Francis Marion’s guerrilla struggles against the British in the American Revolution. It led me to read books about American history and consequently about politics.” That eighth-grade homework claim points out that at P.S. 179 I’d served several terms as Class President.

“You’re destined for great deeds. I can feel it. Can you feel it, too?” asked Mary Ward, an elder colleague on Missouri Senator Stuart Symington’s staff when I was his youngest legislative aide in Washington with forethought my norm.

Our adult children in our different time seem present-centered. Their pragmatism comes from Sharon; I’ve only gained it with age. Endless wars, corrupt politicians, looming climate change, the 9/11 attacks and how the Democratic party’s elite rudely cast aside Bernie Sanders took the sheen off their idealism.

I envy their clear-eyed approach but cherish Judaism’s gifts of context and community.  Life is hard though life is good, resilience accrues from the challenge. We light the Chanukah Menorah to commemorate the Jewish victory over the Syrian Greek regime of Antiochus, and the miracle that a day’s worth of oil lasted eight nights to illuminate the recaptured temple. Passover recalls the liberation from Pharaoh’s rule in Egypt. We reflect, atone for transgressions and renew our commitments during Days of Awe. Comfort lies in our life cycle.

I first climbed the Brooklyn Heights Synagogue’s brownstone steps when Sharon answered a local newspaper’s call for synagogue chorus members. She loves to sing so I supported her venture, dressing up while distancing myself from religion as if I were going to Carnegie Hall. Yet I swayed to the rhythms, basked in warm welcomes, and picked up the prayers by osmosis. We began going on non-choir nights, sharing values, seeing friends. I admired Sharon for exploring her Jewish heritage – first through a musical tribute to her late grandfather Reuven Kosakoff, an acclaimed and prolific composer, then her rigorous B’nai Mitzvah studies.

I yearned to move forward as she had but ran away from such thoughts while unsure of my identity. Fearing she’d leave me behind, I plunged into a course “Introduction to Judaism” but showed up without having read the material. That brought guilt and remorse, spilled out to Sharon and Rabbi Rick Jacobs in turn. I lay claim to the little I knew of my County Antrim ancestors’ Northern Irish traditions

“It seems that I’m searching but I don’t know what for” I said when the Church’s clammy hand grasped me that Christmas. It shocked me to want to attend. “Keep going, it’s out there,” Rick replied, “the ‘December Dilemma’s a common occurrence.” I cast aside his assurance but ensuing events proved him right. Rabbi Jacobs today as the Union of Reform Judaism’s President, leads 850 inclusive congregations across the United States and Canada from a post commensurate with his wisdom – even as I note that an entangling spider web of political pressures seem to constrict the best selves of prominent figures.

My conversion to Judaism, looking back, seems inevitable. The decision erupted, a brilliant before-Rosh Hashanah flash as I read alone while loved ones slept at midnight. A soft red chair embraced me near the living room’s piano at which Sharon and I’d seen Reuven in his own home play Mozart Sonatas from memory. I cradled Rabbi Irving Greenberg’s The Seasons of the Jewish Year on my knees…. and read…. till Elie Wiesel’s voice spoke from memory: “Open the Talmud, turn to any page, and you will find a friend.” He’d lectured at the 92^nd Street Y, Sharon and I in the balcony, his late-night words compelling.

It was my holy vision now.  Attending services as a BHS member had enriched me beyond expectation, Judaism’s arms beckoned, and at last, I’d embrace them. At 12:22 I knew I’d convert.

An interim Cantor called my first sermon “a beautiful Midrash.” That moved me but I felt underwhelmed. It was the first lay-led summer service after Rabbi Jacobs’ farewell, and his shoes were too large to fill.  I’d sent him a passionate argument against the Persian Gulf War that he’d asked me to share, but I felt pressure to lace my views with his insights. Upset by the war, missing him, hands jammed in pants pockets, I pressed on with remarks.

An olive branch from Rick’s successor redeemed me.

Rabbi Sue Ann Wasserman led me through conversion’s formal process, but I felt stunned when her cheery phone voice invited me to deliver the sermon for our synagogue’s yearly Dr. King observance. “Isn’t it just so right?” she encouraged, aware that I’d coordinated Howard Beach and Crown Heights coalitions after racial conflicts and mobilized communal aid for a Caribbean American couple whose newly purchased home had been firebombed in Canarsie. I embraced Sue Ann’s comment, speaking firmly to hide my surprise.

The Dr. King Sabbath services, on a frigid winter night, so excited me that I was steaming! My throne-like chair on the Bimah, of carved black burnished wood, could barely contain me as I surveyed the sanctuary, full for the special occasion. Sharon, the evening’s lay Cantor, led freedom songs and prayers until my speaking turn. When I rose, I somehow felt in my element, that I had a calling and was walking on water! I experimented with tone and pacing as I moved through my text. I gestured visibly throughout our sacred space. I was “on” and wanted to go on and on to keep that feeling alive. I caressed the closing line.

At last, I’d “given back” to our community. I’d carved my niche as a congregant. Sue Ann’s gift had made me feel whole.

I’ll immerse myself in books, I, grateful, pledged at our first lunchtime study session at a now defunct diner. I’d explore the Reform Movement’s history, the works of Primo Levi, Judith Plaskow, Irving Howe and Eugene Borowitz (who Sue Ann suggested) plus the Torah! I sought a challenging intellectual encounter but struggled to keep up with ambition.

Torn between intent and reality, I dribbled three months away till Sharon, at dinner, extracted a status report. Scattered readings with firmer worship interests had, I said, forged an emotional conversion. Praying at home as a family mattered to me. So did synagogue worship. I’d found myself telling people elsewhere that I proudly belonged, I reported. Perhaps expertise was unnecessary, as was pleasing the parents who insisted I find fame and fortune. I needn’t obsessively prepare to perform as I did for graduate school’s oral exams. Judaism weighed who I was not what I knew, I’d discovered. But would Sue Ann agree?

I’m wary of stubbing toes when scaling mountains. Success somehow surprises despite all I’ve done. I sat among forty Peace Corps recruits in a San Francisco hotel’s plush ballroom, awaiting passports for our South Korea flight, for example. My new friends, thrilled at the prospect, were joking, laughing, bonding; I silently sat with the tension I’d felt in eighth grade when the principal read aloud entrance scores to the vaunted Bronx High School of Science. But I passed that exam and got my passport! I tried both times to “act cool.” It was a piece of cake, baby!

With Sue Ann I felt that I’d failed, but she couldn’t have been more affirming because, she said, I’d been living a Jewish life with Sharon. She and I, Sue Ann added, should explore conversion’s family impact. I would then write reflections to discuss with a three-Rabbi panel. Rituals our forebears prescribed awaited once the Rabbis approved, till at last “in the determined spirit of Yaakov ben Avraham v; Sarah, who wrestled with angels and whose Hebrew name I choose,” I could in a ceremony with extended family and friends “enter the Covenant with God and cast my lot with the people of Israel.”