A Daughter of the Hebrews Turns to Jesus, 1
Part 1: Roots: First of a Series on my Conversation to Catholicism. You can read the series on my blog, Make Orwell Fiction Again, at johannaneuman.substack.com
On March 30, 2024, the evening before Easter, at the age of 74, I will be baptized at the St. Vincent Ferrer Church in Delray Beach, Florida. No one is as surprised as I am.
I was born and raised in the Jewish faith, or maybe I should say the Jewish culture.
We honored Sabbath every week — with Friday night candle lighting and sweet Challah bread, and Saturday morning trips to the synagogue for three-hour services. As a young girl, I remember once asking my father who God was. Pausing for a moment, Seymour said, “God is your conscience. There’s a little bit of God inside all of us, but none of us is a God.” I understood little of what the rabbi was saying during his sermons, but I loved listening to the cadence of his voice — rumbling low before building to a crescendo — and I believe my love of language began there. I was so taken by the thunder of the sermons I told my parents I would grow up to be the world’s first female Jewish rabbi. My sister teased me about it for years.
In truth, mine was a sheltered childhood. No TV on weeknights, only homework. Weekly trips to the library. I remember once a local public radio station asked to interview some students in our Hebrew School class. I was among those selected. As we sat around a U-shaped table, the interviewer asked if any of us had experienced anti-Semitism. I said nothing, because I had absolutely no idea what that was.
I loved Passover. My mother prepared huge dinners for an extended family of friends. My parents — Evelyn and Seymour Neuman — had come to California from New York, after the war, newly married, full of life and ambition, but with no relatives nearby. So they joined the temple and made friends. Their circle I called family — aunts, uncles, cousins. To make room for the 20 or 30 who attended, the house was turned upside down — furniture moved out of the blue living room to make room for a giant dinner table, food prepared, tradition honored. Her table settings were extraordinary — she had a gift for decor, just so — a student of fine china and beautiful linens. But it was my father’s songs that most remembered.
With a rich voice and a knack for lyrics, he would take a popular song and rewrite the lyrics to Passover themes for annual events that became known as Seymour’s Singing Seders. He put to music the story of Exodus, the essence of the Passover celebration — the Jews leaving slavery in Egypt, wandering 40 years in the desert, before reaching the Promised Land. Now I see his songs all over the Internet — without credit but with his creative signature. Even if he had copyrighted them, he would have delighted in sharing them. My favorite was “Take Us All Out of Egypt” set to the chords of “Take Me Out to the Ballpark,” apt because Passover often fell during spring training.
Take Us All Out Of Egypt
(“Take Me Out To The Ball Game”)
Take us all out of Egypt
Take us all out of chains
Free us from slavery and cruelty
We don’t care if we never come back
For it's rush, rush, rush to the Red Sea
If we don't cross it's a shame
For it's one, two,
Ten plagues you're out
At the Passover game.
As an adult, for many years, I emulated my parents, hosting elaborate Seders for 24 from my homes in Bethesda MD, extending the circle of family to friends of different religions and races. Because, as I explained to one of my Catholic friends, Jesus’ Last Supper was a Seder. I knew nothing else about Jesus then, but I knew that.
One thing that I understood early was that the Judaism of my family was wrapped up intimately with politics. We were liberals without question — my mother, the daughter of immigrants, had grown up in tremendous poverty, often going to the neighbors to beg help with her family’s rent. She would never continence any question about what had saved the nation from The Depression. FDR was a God in our house. More, the Holocaust was always a presence in our home. We had no immediate relatives who perished in that hell — all four of my grandparents came to America around the turn of the 20th Century — but somehow we knew that Never Again meant always voting Democrat. Later I learned that it was FDR who turned away the ships of refugees fleeing Hitler, but it was not mentioned in our home, or at least not in my hearing. And when the Civil Rights Movement erupted in the 1960s, we were proud that our rabbi joined the many clergy of all faiths who went to Alabama for the Selma to Montgomery March in 1965. Rev. James Reed, a 38 year-old white Unitarian minister was attacked by white segregationists, and died. We grieved for his death.
My parents, and the people I called aunts and uncles, had personal memories of seeing “Jews Need Not Apply” on job postings or business front doors. Growing up without riches, they went to movies — Hollywood made them elegant in those days — to see how the wealthy lived. I always thought my mother and my aunts were determined to defeat anti-Semitism by acting like the ladies they saw in those films. They would adopt the beautiful places settings and silverware, the camel hair coats and bobbed hair and magically they would be accepted. I thought it sweet. I used to quip that we were the only family I knew that served Hanukah latkes on Herend china.
I had a Bat Mitzvah at 13, the supposed age of adulthood. My memories are mostly painful. Mastering enough Hebrew to read the weekly portion of the Torah was not a problem — years of afternoon and Sunday Hebrew classes assured that I could handle the reading. Somewhere in my soul I knew that this familiarity with language had not tested my faith. It was just assumed, like my father’s prayer shawl, a familiar sight.
The problem was that after the reading I was required to address the congregation with my interpretation of what the words meant. My portion that May morning (if my internet sleuthing is correct, that’s week’s Torah reading was Bechukotai) and it was about rules — of food, body, soul. For weeks I struggled with what it all meant. So many laws, commandments, and even threats if we strayed — what did it all mean?
My Bubby, who had extended into spring her usual winter trip from New York for the occasion, reassured me, “Don’t worry, it will get written.” My grandmother had been born in Austria, and had fed her five children in Brighton Beach with a small catering service, because my grandfather, raised in Russia as a rabbinical student, was too proud to work in a factory as other immigrants did. I adored Bubby, not least because she was chubby like me. Also, her strudel was extraordinary.
The Bat Mitzvah speech was written — but to my everlasting shame, it was written by my mother, who turned all those instructions into a meditation on right and wrong. We were called to obey all of God’s rules so that we would become more ethical. It was a good interpretation, but it was not mine. Only later did I understand that all of these rules of the Old Testament, so many, and so resented, had helped lay the groundwork for a revolution against the Jewish hierarchy, led by a carpenter from Nazareth named Jesus, who preached love for others. I wondered whether Judaism’s High Priests of ancient wisdom, with the power to punish infractions in religious, civil and criminal courts, had — like any ballooned bureaucracy — overplayed their hand.
The other painful memory of Bat Mitzvah was the essential question of California life — what to wear? Trips to the department stores with my mother — a fashion plate who prided herself on being lean — were always a trauma. She wanted me to dress classic, to hide the bulges. I liked to express myself in colors and shapes. But my lumpy physique meant nothing looked well. Finally I chose a wholly inappropriate white dress with a pinched waist (my only good feature) and a balloon skirt, like a New Look outfit by Christian Dior. With curly hair and my father’s distinctive Roman nose, I resembled a mismatched ensemble — my features and body told one story, my dress another. It is silly, I know, but religion was no match for my discomfort.
For years after that, my religion became a sometimes activity. The family attended the High Holidays — Rosh Hashanah, when you begin a 10-day period of contemplation of sins, ending on Yom Kippur, when you fast and atone for them. At our temple, Adat Ariel, these holidays were a fashion show — a play on the “Sunday Best” of our Christian neighbors — followed by an elaborate meal for family at Aunt Roz’s house. I was a yo-yo dieter, with a body either fat or thin, rarely in the middle. When I was fat in my early 20s, I often skipped these occasions. It did not occur to me until later in life that I overate out of emotion, and that I resented the injunction to fast. More rules!
By the time I discovered St. Vincent Ferrer Church , I was thin, having learned to listen to my body’s hunger signals before eating, and having eliminated sugars of all kinds from my diet, and also doing intermittent fasting. Finally living in a lean body that my mother would have cheered gave me confidence. Becoming a Catholic posed challenges of a whole different nature. One night in class — on any given Tuesday there were six to ten of us at the Rite of Catholic Initiation for Adults — I observed to Deacon Greg, our teacher, that I was too upset to continue on this path toward conversion. After the savage terrorism of Hamas against Israelis on October 7, I said, it seemed a bad moment to leave my team, to desert the Jews.
Wisely, he said nothing.
To Be Continued
OMG! What a cliff hangar!
You experienced such a secure and loving childhood surrounded by your tight knit group . 💕
Now you are praying to the same God. You have added the Holy Spirit and Jesus.
Your self evaluation is something inspirational!
Fascinating!