Full Strength, Original Recipe
I was born Sicilian. The Catholic part was not a decision. It came installed. I am not a cafeteria Catholic. I am not a Christmas-and-Easter Catholic. I am not one of those Catholics who says, “I disagree with the Church on ninety-seven percent of its teachings - but I absolutely love the architecture.” I am Roman Catholic. Full strength. Original recipe.
I attended a Catholic grammar school, a Catholic high school, a Catholic college - and a Catholic graduate school. Sixteen consecutive years. I did not receive a Catholic education. I served four tours. By graduation, the Catholic Church had more invested in me than IBM ever would. And IBM gave me a pension. I knew exactly who I was. Sicilian. Roman Catholic. And, whatever else happened in my life, absolutely, positively - not Jewish.
Then somebody spun a bottle. Remember that game? An empty Coca-Cola bottle spins around, stops in front of somebody, and suddenly your romantic future is being decided by recyclable glass. The bottle stopped in front of Carol. A beautiful, brilliant, incredibly hot Jewish girl. Apparently, God had outsourced my romantic destiny to Coca-Cola. The chemistry between us was immediate. Very immediate.
One afternoon, beside a creek deep in the Pine Barrens of South Jersey, Carol and I became extraordinarily well acquainted in the back seat of her enormous, gas-guzzling 1973 Chevrolet. When I say enormous, I mean that car was so big they could have held the Last Supper in the back seat - and still had room for valet parking.
The Chevrolet witnessed a great deal of enthusiasm. But by sunset, the car itself needed to go to confession. Eventually, we decided to get married. This created what the Vatican might call an administrative complication. We needed a priest and a rabbi willing to participate in the same wedding without either one calling headquarters. We discussed conversion. There was only one possible direction that conversion was going - and it was not going to be Carol becoming Catholic.
I would have to become Jewish. I understood that a genuine conversion requires study, commitment and faith. But I also knew what kind of convert I would be: Jewish on the paperwork. Catholic in an emergency. You cannot spend sixteen years in Catholic schools and simply switch religions. That is not conversion. That is a hostile corporate takeover.
Nevertheless, Carol and I met with a rabbi in Poughkeepsie, New York. Five minutes into our first meeting, the rabbi decided to test the sincerity of my proposed conversion. “Jerry, imagine that you have been in a horrific accident. You are lying on your deathbed. You have only a few hours left to live.” This was five minutes into the meeting. We had not even been offered coffee.
The rabbi continued: “You have very little time. Who do you want us to call - a priest or a rabbi?” I said, “A priest.” “Actually - as many priests as you can round up. Why take my chances with just one?” That concluded the conversion process. The rabbi did not need a second interview. He had discovered what sixteen years of Catholic education had produced: a man who was open-minded about religion - but unwilling to gamble with eternal damnation.
Carol and I married anyway. She remained Jewish. I remained Catholic. For more than half a century, we have created an open, loving marriage in which neither of us has ever demanded that the other become somebody else. We also created enough combined Catholic and Jewish guilt to power a small American city.
Sicily, Steel And Malta
Fast-forward to 2019. Our entire family flew to Carini, Sicily, for the wedding of my favorite niece, Kristin, to a wonderful Sicilian man named Vito Candela. That is his real name. If I had invented the name “Vito Candela” for a Sicilian wedding story, an editor would have said: “Jerry, could you try to be a little less obvious?”
The wedding was held at a magnificent venue hidden behind enormous steel walls. Not a wooden fence. Not decorative iron gates. Steel walls. In America, we control the guest list with an RSVP. In Sicily, we use metallurgy. I am not perpetuating a Sicilian stereotype. I am merely reporting the architecture. The celebration lasted several days because a Sicilian wedding does not have an ending.
It has survivors. Every time I thought dinner was over, another waiter appeared carrying another course. At an American wedding, the arrival of the cake means the reception is almost finished. At a Sicilian wedding, the cake means you have reached intermission. When I said, “No, thank you, I’m full,” nobody regarded that as an answer. They regarded it as a medical condition the family intended to treat.
By the time we left, Kristin and Vito had been married long enough to have their first argument about the thermostat. After several days of Catholic relatives, industrial fortifications and enough food to alter Sicily’s elevation, Carol and I left for Malta. I assumed the next part of the trip would involve less security. I was wrong. Unbeknownst to me, Carol had hired a Jewish woman to take us around Malta, show us its Jewish heritage and explain why each place was important.
She had also arranged for us to attend Saturday-morning services. Carol is an engineer. Engineers do not take vacations. They execute project plans in attractive locations. I thought we were going sightseeing. Carol had scheduled an immersive interfaith educational program - with transportation. On Saturday morning, our guide drove us to an ordinary-looking apartment building. Then she drove around it again. And again. And again.
Nine times. I am not exaggerating. Nine complete circuits of the same building. She explained that we had to make certain nobody was following us. Jewish communities have genuine and deeply serious reasons for taking security precautions. I understood that. But after the fourth circuit, my Sicilian imagination took control of the vehicle. By the sixth circuit, the GPS said, “Recalculating.”
By the ninth, it simply said, “Jerry, I don’t want to be involved.” I no longer believed we were attending Saturday services. I believed we were being recruited by Mossad. And if somebody had followed us through all nine circuits, he was either dangerous - or desperately looking for parking. We got out of the car and walked as inconspicuously as three people who had just circled a building nine times could possibly walk.
Our guide rang the entrance bell in a particular pattern. Short. Short. Long. Short. Or perhaps it was long, short, long. I don’t remember. I thought I was attending a religious service, not attempting to launch a submarine. Eventually, a security guard let us inside. We took the elevator to the fourth floor. The guard opened one door, quickly closed it, looked up and down the hallway - and then opened another door.
The first door led to the laundry chute. It was probably completely innocent. But by then, the spy movie inside my head was in its second act. I decided the laundry chute was a decoy escape route. I expected Judi Dench to step out of the kitchen and hand me an exploding prayer book.
The Man With No Hebrew Name
Instead, we met the rabbi. He took us into an anteroom and handed us prayer books. He gave me a prayer shawl and several things I had never seen before. I did not know what they were. I did not know where they went. I did not know whether I was holding any of them upside down. I put on the prayer shawl with the confidence of a man assembling IKEA furniture without instructions:
Backward, upside down - and deeply suspicious of the extra pieces. Normally, this would not be a problem. Whenever Carol and I enter unfamiliar territory, she quietly whispers instructions: “Stand up. Sit down. Turn the page. Stop touching that.” Marriage is having a personal technical-support department that sleeps next to you. I threw the shawl over my shoulders, tried to look as relaxed as a Roman Catholic wearing unfamiliar Jewish equipment could possibly look, and followed the rabbi into the next room.
This was not a synagogue. It was an apartment. We had just walked through the kitchen and entered what would ordinarily have been the living room and family room. The furniture had been placed around the perimeter. A raised wooden platform stood in the center, and on it was the open Torah. There were eleven men in the room.
Ten Jewish men. And one Jerry. At that moment, nobody appeared to know the difference. Including Jerry. Then I saw the curtain. This was an Orthodox service. The women sat on the other side. Including Carol. My technical-support department had just gone offline. I was alone. A Roman Catholic Sicilian embedded inside an Orthodox Jewish service - with no instructions, no training and no emergency contact.
One by one, the rabbi called the men forward using their Hebrew names. A man would step onto the platform, lean toward the Torah and use a beautiful silver pointer called a yad. “Yad” is the Hebrew word for “hand.” The pointer has a tiny hand at the end with one finger extended. To a Jewish person, it is a sacred instrument used to follow the Torah without touching the parchment.
To a Sicilian, a hand with one finger extended is not a religious instrument. It is a complete sentence. I privately named it the “go-fungool pointer.” That is not the official theological translation. The rabbi called another Hebrew name. A man stood, walked to the Torah, accepted the pointer and completed his portion. Then another Hebrew name. Another man. Another reading.
These were not secret names. I understand that now. But sitting there without Carol, surrounded by a language I did not understand, my imagination decided everybody was using an alias to protect his family in case the apartment was raided. Nobody was willing to use his government name. One man finished. Then another. Then another. And slowly, I realized something.
There was only one person left. Me. I did not read Hebrew. I did not have a Hebrew name. I did not know which direction the prayer book opened. And Carol was behind a curtain without her Secret Service earpiece. The rabbi leaned over and quietly asked: “What is your Hebrew name?” “Jerry.” The rabbi stared at me. Then he tried again:
“No. What is your Hebrew name?” “Jerry!” For the third time, he asked, “Your Hebrew name?” So I did what every Italian does when somebody does not understand him: I increased the volume and separated the syllables. “JER-RY!” The rabbi studied me for a moment. Then he asked the one question nobody had apparently considered before allowing me into the apartment, dressing me for the service and seating me beside the Torah:
“Are you Jewish?” “No.” “Roman Catholic.” Full strength. Original recipe. The room became so quiet I could hear sixteen years of Catholic-school nuns saying: “We told you not to spin that bottle.” That was when the house lights came on. The show was over. The curtain separating the men and women opened, everybody came together, and Carol and I finally confessed the truth.
We were tourists. Carol was Jewish. I was Catholic. We had sincerely come to experience a Maltese Jewish service and learn about the community. We had simply overlooked one tiny administrative detail: Telling the rabbi that the Sicilian man dressed for the service was not actually Jewish. Nobody called the police. Nobody contacted Mossad. And, fortunately, nobody threw me down the laundry chute.
I later learned that the name Jerry can be written phonetically in Hebrew and is still pronounced Jerry. So my name successfully converted. I did not. I looked at Carol. Carol looked at me. I did not need to speak. Every married person recognizes the international facial expression meaning: “Please explain to these people what you have gotten me into.”
Marriage Is Translation
That morning in Malta captured our entire marriage. Carol and I never became the same. She did not leave her Jewish identity at the door when she married me. I did not surrender my Catholic faith when I married her. Instead, we learned to enter each other’s sacred rooms with curiosity, affection and respect. Sometimes with grace. Sometimes with understanding.
And occasionally through a laundry chute. I began my life certain of one thing: I was not Jewish. I am still not Jewish. But Jewish life became part of the life I love because it is part of the woman I love. That empty bottle did not point me away from my faith. It pointed me toward a woman whose faith would enlarge my world.
Marriage is not conversion. Marriage is translation. It is having someone beside you who whispers, “Stand up. Sit down. Turn the page. Stop touching that.” But sometimes the curtain closes. Sometimes you are left alone in an unfamiliar room. And then you discover how much of the other person’s world has already become part of you. If that Poughkeepsie rabbi asked me his deathbed question today, my answer would still be:
“Call a priest.” “Call several.” But now I would add: “Call a rabbi too.” After more than half a century of interfaith marriage, I refuse to arrive at heaven without both sets of paperwork. And if that rabbi leans over and asks, “What is your Hebrew name?” This time I will not panic. This time I will know exactly what to say.
Jerry. It may not be Hebrew. But after more than half a century, I know exactly what it means. Carol’s husband.