JESUS LOVES YOU, my cousin Terri exclaimed to me at my bat mitzvah party at the age of thirteen. She looked straight into the camera with a microphone in her hand and told me that Jesus was proud of me. Terri had become a devoted Jew for Jesus, and she wanted me to know that Jesus did indeed love me with all his heart, soul, and mind.
What to make of all that? I loved her lavender suit and her reddish cheeks, I loved her sweet, high-pitched voice. She was older than me, but perhaps not wiser, and I shook it off as a little bit crazy and a little bit wild, but beyond that—the message was harmless enough—and steeped in love.
In high school, I played the role of a preacher in a play about Jesus called “Cotton Patch Gospel,” the musical. The entire cast was Jewish, we were all kids growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust in Skokie, but somehow our director thought that this would be the perfect play. We rocked it and sang our hearts out!
I still remember the lyrics to nearly every song, full of praise and worship. “Something’s brewing in Gainesville, wonder what it could be!” And then there was “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul and mind. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” This song was sung by a gorgeous sabra from Israel with curly hair and a lioness gaze, and we didn’t think twice about it.
We were so good as an ensemble that we took it on the road to the Illinois Theater Festival, performing the musical on stage for thousands of people in the great auditorium at the state university. I wore a blue preacher’s robe, I gesticulated with my hands, preaching the gospel of Jesus’ love, convincing and believable!
Here I was learning Torah, how to decipher the ancient Hebrew, to know when to pray while bent at the knees, and yet always surrounded by Jesus, at the same time. This would have been confusing except that my parents also preached an openness to love and the possibilities of faith.
My grandmother Isabelle always took a liking to the idea of positive thinking, an idea rooted in Christian Science, and frowned upon medical interventions of any kind, even though she was married to a surgeon who stitched up wounded soldiers in Italy for four years as she raised her three sons alone back in Chicago.
During grad school in Boston, I walked through the dimly lit hallways of the Mother Church of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and felt a strange tug toward my grandmother’s curious heart. She was a big believer in healing prayer beyond the ones we learned in Hebrew school.
This could have confused me growing up in my search for a relationship of my own with the divine, but it only brought more clarity. Rooted in Jewish traditions, I was free to roam the wilderness of faith and pick whatever flowers for my divine bouquet.
My dad used to preach the gospel of Yahweh power. My mom, the gospel of gold in the garbage heaps. I sing the gospel of the non-believer, the believer in falling in love with strangers, breaking bread with madmen and finding them quite sane, missing teeth and all.
My mom used to tell me I’d make a good rabbi, that’s not a lie. Perhaps some combination of rabbi or lawyer—I love a good fine print—so I became a poet, and then a memory merchant, swapping ancient objects for cash, saving my stash for these long months without steady work.
Thank God I have faith; it has made all the difference, if I’m honest.
One Gregorian chant was all it took for Simone Weil to feel the presence of God as proof—and poof!—believer. Similar story with other Christian mystics, how they fell into the trance of holy love by circumstance alone, a calling or a returning, who knows what to call this strange surrender?
I find peace in old churches and holy spaces of all kinds. In Naples, I met Saint Gennaro and felt immediately more at ease knowing how his story lives so fully through the city’s inhabitants. It’s always the light and these spaces that make me a believer.
Then there’s the billboard saint. If we’re to advertise anything, let it be the message of Saint Dymphna, Patron Saint of Anxiety. The seventh-century Irish princess ran away from home to escape her insufferable father. And now I’m passing her by on a busy Indiana highway, hearts connected through the mutual experience of anguish.
I can’t say I believe in every story I’m told when it comes to saints and gods, but I tend to wonder what might happen if I allowed myself to move over and make room for the love these stories bring to me.
I can squeeze in another saint as long as I can still stand on my own two feet. Or should I need to bend my knees in prayer—perhaps lay down all the way on the ground—it’s the light I’ll remember that brings me back to the story with a sense of renewed direction.
Let the light in, I mean. Let love be the only story we keep telling ourselves and each other.
What to make of all that? I loved her lavender suit and her reddish cheeks, I loved her sweet, high-pitched voice. She was older than me, but perhaps not wiser, and I shook it off as a little bit crazy and a little bit wild, but beyond that—the message was harmless enough—and steeped in love.
In high school, I played the role of a preacher in a play about Jesus called “Cotton Patch Gospel,” the musical. The entire cast was Jewish, we were all kids growing up in the shadow of the Holocaust in Skokie, but somehow our director thought that this would be the perfect play. We rocked it and sang our hearts out!
I still remember the lyrics to nearly every song, full of praise and worship. “Something’s brewing in Gainesville, wonder what it could be!” And then there was “Love the Lord your God, with all your heart, soul and mind. Love your neighbor as you love yourself.” This song was sung by a gorgeous sabra from Israel with curly hair and a lioness gaze, and we didn’t think twice about it.
We were so good as an ensemble that we took it on the road to the Illinois Theater Festival, performing the musical on stage for thousands of people in the great auditorium at the state university. I wore a blue preacher’s robe, I gesticulated with my hands, preaching the gospel of Jesus’ love, convincing and believable!
Here I was learning Torah, how to decipher the ancient Hebrew, to know when to pray while bent at the knees, and yet always surrounded by Jesus, at the same time. This would have been confusing except that my parents also preached an openness to love and the possibilities of faith.
My grandmother Isabelle always took a liking to the idea of positive thinking, an idea rooted in Christian Science, and frowned upon medical interventions of any kind, even though she was married to a surgeon who stitched up wounded soldiers in Italy for four years as she raised her three sons alone back in Chicago.
During grad school in Boston, I walked through the dimly lit hallways of the Mother Church of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and felt a strange tug toward my grandmother’s curious heart. She was a big believer in healing prayer beyond the ones we learned in Hebrew school.
This could have confused me growing up in my search for a relationship of my own with the divine, but it only brought more clarity. Rooted in Jewish traditions, I was free to roam the wilderness of faith and pick whatever flowers for my divine bouquet.
My dad used to preach the gospel of Yahweh power. My mom, the gospel of gold in the garbage heaps. I sing the gospel of the non-believer, the believer in falling in love with strangers, breaking bread with madmen and finding them quite sane, missing teeth and all.
My mom used to tell me I’d make a good rabbi, that’s not a lie. Perhaps some combination of rabbi or lawyer—I love a good fine print—so I became a poet, and then a memory merchant, swapping ancient objects for cash, saving my stash for these long months without steady work.
Thank God I have faith; it has made all the difference, if I’m honest.
One Gregorian chant was all it took for Simone Weil to feel the presence of God as proof—and poof!—believer. Similar story with other Christian mystics, how they fell into the trance of holy love by circumstance alone, a calling or a returning, who knows what to call this strange surrender?
I find peace in old churches and holy spaces of all kinds. In Naples, I met Saint Gennaro and felt immediately more at ease knowing how his story lives so fully through the city’s inhabitants. It’s always the light and these spaces that make me a believer.
Then there’s the billboard saint. If we’re to advertise anything, let it be the message of Saint Dymphna, Patron Saint of Anxiety. The seventh-century Irish princess ran away from home to escape her insufferable father. And now I’m passing her by on a busy Indiana highway, hearts connected through the mutual experience of anguish.
I can’t say I believe in every story I’m told when it comes to saints and gods, but I tend to wonder what might happen if I allowed myself to move over and make room for the love these stories bring to me.
I can squeeze in another saint as long as I can still stand on my own two feet. Or should I need to bend my knees in prayer—perhaps lay down all the way on the ground—it’s the light I’ll remember that brings me back to the story with a sense of renewed direction.
Let the light in, I mean. Let love be the only story we keep telling ourselves and each other.
