Judaism, Interrupted

Walking along damp station platform of the London Underground, the ad posters on the yellow bricked wall finally grabbed my attention. Fifteen identical adverts, framed in aluminum all lined up along the wall with white block-lettering on a heavy black background.

It read “KLAVAN” and the name of some book. I had never read any of his books, never really heard of this author, and I don’t know why the name stuck in my head – yet that was 5 years ago and I had since forgotten about it.

Till yesterday.

Once again this author’s name jumped out at me – from the most unlikely of places, an op/ed piece on the Arutz Sheva website, “Why G-d Chose the Jews?”

What in the world did this author have to do with Arutz Sheva?

His bio was interesting enough:

Andrew Klavan is the award-winning author of such bestselling crime novels as True Crime, filmed by Clint Eastwood, and Don´t Say A Word, filmed starring Michael Douglas. His essays have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Los Angeles Times and elsewhere.

A quick google and I found that his article was originally from the LA Times and reposted on the A7 website. His homepage biography was too funny,

“Klavan attended the University of California at Berkeley for a year but dropped out when he discovered the sixties were over. He was one of the very few people at Berkeley who actually did discover this.”

especially how he met his wife:

Returning to UC Berkeley for a few years to pick up his diploma, he also picked up an extremely attractive hitchhiker named Ellen. Spying her as he was walking to is car, Klavan jumped into the antique vehicle, drove across a lawn to beat the one-way grid, dragged the poor girl off the street and abducted her for more than twenty years, forcing her to bear his two children, Faith and Spencer. So let that be a lesson to you. Ellen turned out to be the daughter of Thomas Flanagan, then chairman of the Berkeley English department, a fact which may account for Klavan’s graduation. Thomas Flanagan later went on to become an award-winning novelist, also named Thomas Flanagan

Browsing his website, I learned that he was a horror, mystery and detective novelist -- some of his books did better than others; he’s been published in newspapers as well.

Returning to google, I searched for this author and Judaism…or Jews…or Israel…and the main connection was still his recent article, “Why G-d Chose the Jews?”

Nothing on his website connects him with the Jewish people, Judaism, or anything remotely connected to Judaism. How does someone come to write an article like this which got rave reviews everywhere? Something in him must have connected to Judaism…or reconnected?

Google Found it. The Christian blog equivalent of the “Not the Godol Hador” – The Questioning Christian (dare I say, lehavdil?) provided the missing link for me.

December 25, 2004
An Atheist Converts -- But for the Wrong Reasons?

Yesterday's Wall Street Journal features a column by Andrew Klavan, a former atheist who was baptized into the Episcopal Church this year. He took that momentous step, not because science suggests the existence of God, but because of "the human experience of God's presence."

The presumption of atheism seems to me to be at the heart of all scientific reasoning about religion. And as I'm someone who loves and believes in science, it was a major stumbling block for me most of my life. After all, why would anyone believe without proof in that for which there is no evidence in the first place?

Delving a bit deeper on the web, it becomes obvious that author went from Judaism to Atheism, to his recent baptism within Episcopalian Christianity.

His op/ed article reads very well…Jews were created to be a “…Villainy Early Detection System for everyone else.” If you hate the Jews, you must be evil.

“If it's some clown who thinks the Jewish state should be pushed into the sea, or that the Jews killed Christ, or are conspiring to subvert the world economy or the government or the media, I beg you to consider that you might be wrong. There is no shame in changing your opinion. Falling into step with wicked fools - that's shameful, and it's dangerous, too. God gave you an early detection system. Use it.”

As any reader of my blog knows, I actively try to convince people of the centrality of Israel to the Jewish experience and outright encourage Jews to move here to Israel. It really pains me when the concept of aliya is not even a blip on some people’s radar.

However, if the lack of aliya awarenes is painful, the following is far worse -- a pro-Judaism article from a disenfranchised Jew, who left the fold, returned to religion…yet the wrong one?

This person’s great-grandparents were probably respected rabbinic figures in Europe, in the best yeshivot…yet in the span of 80 years their offspring couldn’t find the answers, didn’t find the answers, or didn’t want to find answers. They probably didn’t read the Not the Godol Hador website to go “off the derech”…yet they return to religion, via extrapolated belief of "the human experience of G-d's presence,” in the framework of...Christianity? Is this the advocacy we really want?

Is Israel the answer?

There are no guarantees in life…but I firmly believe that Israel is still your best bet to retain your family’s Judaism, and your own.

Jameel a.k.a. Bernie Kleinman

In London for 24 hours.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael