My Journey in Christianity

​Born in New York City on November 6, 1939, I was the third generation of Jewish Americans in my family. All four of my grandparents had arrived in the United States in the last decade of the 19th century: two from Belarus, one from the Ukraine, and one from Romania. Three of them were Ashkenazim, or German Jews, while the fourth, my paternal grandfather from Romania, was a Sephardi, or Spanish Jew. Both my parents were non-religious. My father had had the strict Orthodox version of the religion beaten into him as a boy. So once a man, he remained an ethnic Jew from Brooklyn but would have nothing to do with the religion. My mother, a farmer’s daughter and the eldest girl among eleven children, came from a non-religious family and stayed that way until her death at 95. Consequently, my encounters with the Jewish faith were mainly through periodic visits to my paternal grandmother, the daughter of a Jewish official and a rigorously faithful Orthodox Jew. When my 13th birthday approached, she apparently had told my father that if “the boy” were not bar-mitzphahed, she would curse Dad from her deathbed. I was totally unprepared. So, my father bribed Grandma’s rabbi, who in effect did my part in the ritual. Oy!

My Christian journey began with our African American housekeeper when I was a toddler. She was a loving person and, to my child’s mind, the best and strongest person in the family. She stayed with us until I was 16. She would tell me about Jesus and the music and spirit in her Black church. We would listen to the Goerge Beverly Shea Bible Hour on the radio. I wanted to go to church with her, but my parents never let me. Then, when I was 12, my parents sent me to an American Baptist-affiliated boarding school, Peddie in central New Jersey. It was the early 50s—I graduated in 1956—so we had required daily chapel, monthly Sunday “convocations,” weekly Sunday-evening vespers (we boys called it “The Holy Hit Parade” since we got to choose our favorite hymns to sing), and a required Bible class. Of all the people in the Scriptures, I liked Jesus best but felt I couldn’t allow myself, since he was the property of “the other team,” what my parents referred to as “the Goyim [Gentiles].”
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From Peddie I went to Yale, where in freshman year I attended Christ Church, the ultra “high-church” Episcopal parish, replete with smells, bells, a rood screen, and even a “rector” from Hartford who spoke with a phoney English accent. I loved the old language, the misty environs, and the ritual. But when I found out how right-wing the parish leaders were, I decamped for occasional “low-church” services at Yale’s Battell Chapel (United Church of Christ, Congregation). During my junior-year exchange in Germany, I attended both Catholic and Protestant churches in Heidelberg, and, back at Yale for grad school I spent over a year with a Jewish youth group, Atid, in a vain attempt to gain a foothold in my ancestral religion. (As an undergraduate, I would occasionally attend Jewish Friday-night Shabbat services and even on one occasion had a thrilling encounter with the young Reb Zalman Schacter-Shalomi, charismatic even then, who later founded a new, eclectic branch of Judaism called Renewal. After my marriage in 1963 to Simone Hannelore Zimmermann, a German woman I’d met during my year abroad, I was baptized and later confirmed as a liberal (now ELCA) Lutheran, which I remained for 38 years. Both our daughters were likewise baptized and confirmed Lutherans. Having met Catholic priests and nuns whom I admired, I was confirmed Roman Catholic in 2004 in liberal Hawaii. When I moved to Boulder, Colorado, however, Catholic churches in the rigid Archdiocese of Denver were too much for me. Having as a widower met and married a New England woman who grew up Congregational and was a practising Quaker, I found that we could compromise on the Episcopal church, where I was also confirmed, and we have been happy, active members of Boulder’s historic Saint John’s “broad church” parish the last dozen years. So thanks for joining me on this short recounting of my Christian journey. I love and am grateful for being a Jewish Christian. I feel I’ve now found the right religious place for me.

A so-called STROSS, a cross superimposed onto a Star of David—a perfect symbol for me.