Likelihood of Success

JTA:

Robert Novak, the conservative columnist whose scoops broke many a career, made his reputation as a journalist by being unafraid to attack his ideological brethren.

The same dynamic underlay the contentious and at times ugly relationship he had with fellow Jews.

The article then goes on to cite when would appear to be rather tepid examples of this “ugliness,” which frankly did not compel me.  Being critical of Israel is not ugly, when it is intellectually honest.  I didn’t see, in their presumably well culled selection, any particular demonstration of dishonesty or “ugliness” — which is not to say that Novak didn’t have  a bias, and a point of view, about Israel and its Jews that were influenced by factors other than his famed fearlessness in calling a spade a spade.  This would put him in the category of 98% of humanity.  But he was no Pat Buchanan.

So was one of those “factors” his conversion to Catholicism?:

He cooperated in 2003 with the Washingtonian magazine in a feature about his conversion to Roman Catholicism five years earlier, and said that although he joined a Jewish fraternity in college, he was turned off by Judaism.

“I found the same thing in Judaism as a young boy as I did later in the Unitarian Church and then at the Episcopal Church,” he said. “They seemed very ungodly. The clergymen seemed very secular.”

Following his conversion, U.S. Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.) reportedly quipped,  “Well, we’ve now made Bob a Catholic. The question is, can we make him a Christian?”

Hm.  Someone say “ugly”?  Now, Moynihan himself was, of course, a Catholic (of sorts), and if he hadn’t been you might take that the wrong way (you might not know this, but many evangelicals and other Protestants don’t consider Catholics “Christians”).  But this remark could also be taken another wrong way — namely that Novak, once a Jew, will always be a Jew.   Again, Moynihan was not only not an anti-semite, he was a philosemite.  So that’s not what he meant.  Not exactly.  But clearly there’s something about the pushy, annoying, dialectically-minded Jew that is peeking out here, and his embodiment of this classic, well, archetype surely haunted Novak.

Taken as a whole, though, the story here is one of a good-hearted if intense person with a strong and independent moral sense, an inclination toward conservative values and sensibilities, and a wish for a meaningful and demanding relationship with God.  A lot of Jews, especially talented ones, fit this description.  Some find their way back to their heritage; some are so turned off by the watered-down “ungodly” clergy and “religion” of liberal Judaism that it is only repellent to them and seek a link to a greater whole, to spirituality and to transcendence elsewhere — sometimes cults, and sometimes established brands such as Buddhism, socialism or Catholicism.

This last one, the Roman Catholic church, has been a path chosen by other similarly-situated Jews, though almost never ones who have been exposed to their own heritage in anything like full.  If they’re conservatives, they’re impressed by what they think is a range of features that are attractive to righties: the demand for complete commitment; a heirarchical and authoritative — if not authoritarian — clerical and ideological structure, with recourse to a received oral tradition that is not open to casual or lay interpretation or “evolution”; a concept of a God Who is, while both personal and universal, will meet man halfway but not more, and will not permit Himself to be remade in his image.

Well, that last part is where Jews reckon Catholicism erred seriously, obviously, and mainly here endeth the lesson.  It is a common enough phenomenon — I think immediately of just two examples, utterly unrelated in any sense except in this category of my mind, namely Lewis Lehrman, the Rite-Aid magnate and would-be Governor of New York, and the engaging and earnest Dawn Eden, erstwhile headline-slinger for New York tabloids and until last month (I have just learned) an important figure, it seems, in the world of Catholic blogging.  But it is a shame that so many of these talented, passionate, spiritually-minded Jews have abandoned a heritage they never really knew, seeking what I must believe were values and a spiritual experience not only made just for them but which, in fact, made them who they are.

Why must I believe that?  It’s because of the old (I’m thinking 1940’s or ’50’s) Jewish joke that goes like this (I’ve edited it a little from the version at the link to make it, well, better):

Three Jews who had recently converted to Christianity were having a drink together in a posh WASP country club.  They started talking about the reasons for their conversions.

“I converted out of love,” said the first, and noticing the dubious looks on his friends’ faces, he continued, “Not for the Church, mind you; for a Christian girl.  As you both know, my wife insisted that I convert.”

“And I,” said the second, “I converted in order to rise in the legal profession.  You probably know that my recent appointment as a federal judge may have had something to do with my new religion.”

The third man spoke up.  ”I converted because I think the teachings of Christianity are superior to those of Judaism.”

“Are you kidding?” said the first man, spitting out his drink.  ”What do you take us for, a couple of dumb goyim?”

It’s a joke, okay, and it’s about schizophrenic world-view and self-image of American Jews, not “the goyim.”  And the topic is more than a blog post, or any one I’m going to write today, can manage.  But as it applies to Robert Novak it is unsurprising that the JTA’s report, seldom the work of people intimately acquainted with Judaism’s “teachings,” much less its way of life, and whose main religion is probably best identified as reflexive Israel-boosterism (not to be confused with Zionism), would miss the real, sad story.