In American Judaism, there was a strange interregnum that probably started around the 1920s and lasted (I’m guessing) into the 1960s. This phenomenon had a name, assimilationism.

My childhood occurred smack in the middle of the assimilationist tide. I consider myself a victim of it.

My father was the son of immigrants from Eastern Europe, my mother the granddaughter of immigrants from Germany and Hungary. (In the subtle forests of Jewish sociology, these are big differences. The German Jews behaved like royalty; they treated the Litvaks, like my dad’s father, as low-rent, arrivistes, “greenhorns”.) My father was rather keenly aware of his identity as a Jew, my mother much less so. Both were nonreligious, nonobservant, secular Jews.

Even so, they were married by Rabbi Louis L. Mann at Chicago Sinai Congregation and they were members there too. They visited Sinai in person seldom more than twice a year, on Yom Kippur and Rosh Hashanah. But they sent their kids.

Sinai Temple, located on the South Side in the University of Chicago neighborhood of Hyde Park, was among the wealthiest, most prominent, most influential Jewish congregations in the city. It was also, along with its North Side counterpart Temple Sholom, among the most aggressive in erasing the outward signs of Jewish tradition. At Sinai ca. 1950:

– Services were on Sunday. There were no Friday-night services. (FYI to non-Jews: The Jewish sabbath starts on Friday night.) I don’t remember any Saturday-morning services either.
– No Bar Mitzvah nor Bat Mitzvah on offer. I was confirmed.
– Beyond the Sh’ma, there was next to no Hebrew in the services.
– There was a choir — a good one. I seem to remember an organ too. No cantor. I never even heard of cantors until I was a teen-ager.

Little wonder my friends and I referred to it as “St. Sinai the Baptist, the friendly church by the lake, for all Christian Jews.”

Little wonder I grew up confused.

I visit friends’ synagogues and feel as out of place as if I were in a mosque. I had no idea what the services, in Hebrew, were about. And as far as the davening men in tallis and tvillim, they could have been Tibetan monks.

The s— really hit the fan when I went to work for The AP. My beloved editor and mentor, the late Joe Dill, also liked having nasty fun of the ethnic variety. He kidded me about my Jewishness on a daily basis. These taunts and torments would have amounted to anti-Semitism in anyone but Joe. Even so, they left me at a total loss. I could either laugh them off, or draw myself up and act insulted. The former felt like a betrayal of my Jewishness — but the latter would have required me to embrace it.

I wasn’t prepared to do either thing. I was prepared to assimilate.

This confusion I felt as a kid and a young adult finds its way into the pages of To Love Mercy. The Steve character, modeled on me, is as confused about his Jewish identity as I was. But Steve has his friend Sass to help him work things out. There they are, a 10-year-old white Jew and an 11-year-old black Christian, son of an evangelical storefront preacher, having theological discussions about kosher hot dogs. By the end of the novel, they’ve both come to a deeper understanding of themselves and their world than that of their parents.

I wish, in my growing-up, that I’d had an experience like that. Instead, I had to write a novel about it.

Over the years, I’ve had deep conversations with myself about Jewishness and related topics. (The existence of God, for example, is always good for at least a few minutes of thought.) I’ve decided that I’m a Jew true blue, through and through, whatever that means.

It doesn’t seem to mean I’m religious; nor does it seem to require a belief in a God who cares and is paying attention. It certainly doesn’t lead me to live in service to the 613 Mitzvot, or holy laws, that some others feel are the essence of Judaism.

But there’s another precept of Judaism, to be found in Micah (6:8), with which I feel quite comfortable. It’s the injunction to do justice, to love mercy and to walk humbly with thy God.

I take that last clause metaphorically, to mean that it’s my obligation as a Jew — and as a person — to live by a code of ethics, or anyway try. The Golden Rule, something I associate with Christianity, is a good starting place for an ethics code. And here we come to the point of this meandering note.

We Americans live in a Christian society — that is, a society whose dominant culture, mores and values are influenced more by the Christian majority than by any other religion, sect or belief system. (Note to G. Bush: It’s not a Judeo-Christian society. Us Jews know when we’re being shmeichel‘d.) Back in my parents’ and grandparents’ day, when Jews were starting to succeed big-time as Americans and wanted only more of the same, some thought the road to success was to shuck those yarmulkes, lop off those paes, eat bacon for breakfast, and pass for Gentile.

But somewhere down deep, they were still Jews and they knew it. Thus arose comfy places to worship and send their kids — places like Temple Sinai and Temple Sholom.

But guess what. Sinai wasn’t a total loss.

While I was snickering at it behind its back, it was teaching me certain valuable lessons. Social justice. Compassion for the underdog. Using one’s head for something more than a hatrack. These are things Jews (some Jews anyway) stand for, and I stand with them.

The Sinai of 2006 is a far different place than the Sinai of 1946. It moved from Hyde Park to the near North Side — a huge leap into the unknown that resulted in a total shakeup of the place. The congregation now includes many more young families, childless couples, many singles, even (reflecting the neighborhood) a fair number of gays. (Did you know: Prior to 1965, there were no homosexuals in America.) In a world where the melting-pot concept has been rejected and ethnic pride has taken its place, where most religions have moved back toward the traditional, Sinai now has Friday night services, there’s more Hebrew in the service, and your kids can be Bar or Bat Mitzvah. But there’s still that strong commitment to social justice.

Now, you’re gonna love this next one.

At 10:30 Sunday morning, Dec. 3, at Chicago Sinai Congregation, 15 West Delaware Place, guess who is the featured speaker?

The irony is delicious, of course, but the mission is deadly serious. I don’t know yet what I’ll say to this new Sinai Congregation, but I’m already thinking hard about it. I guess this blog posting is a first draft.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. I had an hour-long interview on XM Satellite Radio Channel 169 on Tuesday night with host Jan Summers, but the booking came up just 12 hours before the show so I wasn’t able to notify you. However …

– Washingtonians can stop by Barnes & Noble-Bethesda on Saturday, Aug. 19, at 6 p.m., where I’ll be appearing with other local authors, and …

– Chicagoans can catch me on “Chicagoing” with Bill Campbell on ABC-TV Channel 7 (WLS-TV). The segment will air at 11 a.m. Sunday, Aug. 20.