Next Week in Jerusalem

While I was at Penn State, I had a really close friend named Linda. She was (is) Jewish, and one day referred to me as a "Jew wanna-be." Actually, I forget whether it was "Jew wanna-be" or "wanna-be Jew." I also don't remember what exactly I’d said or done that inspired her to grant me that appellation. Nonetheless, she used it often in referring to me, and one year, for my birthday, bought me a book entitled, "Hooray for Yiddish."

Perhaps ironically, after graduation, Linda went on to marry a gentile dude to whom she is still happily wed.

A few years later, in 1992, on the day I arrived at Ft. Sill, Oklahoma for Field Artillery School, I met a fellow Marine named Joel, who would quickly become one of my closest lifelong friends.

Joel was also Jewish and, at the time, a Democrat who’d recently cast his mail-in ballot for Bill Clinton. He later converted. (I mean from being a Dem. I can confirm he's still Jewish.)

One of the reasons Joel and I hit it off was that we were both political junkies, and we'd watch Crossfire together on CNN almost nightly. It was sorta' funny, but once the hosts announced the topic, Joel and I would debate it ourselves, barely listening to the program we were tuned into.

Not too long after we'd met, seemingly out of nowhere, Joel casually referred to me as "Jew-wannabe" or "wanna-be Jew." Again, I forget which one, as well as what aspect of my behavior caused me to once again merit that title. So, when he said it, I paused for a moment before asking him, "Wait a minute. Did I tell you about Linda at Penn State calling me that?"

"Who's Linda?" he replied.

It turns out that I'd never mentioned her to him. He reached his conclusion entirely on his own.

So, two different Jewish friends of mine —who’d never met one another—each determined the same thing — that there was something about me that seemed to indicate that I wished I were Jewish.

In 1994, I deployed to the Mediterranean, aboard the USS Inchon with the 24th Marine Expeditionary Unit. After spending a lovely month in Mogadishu, Somalia, we sailed back north, into the Med, and to our first liberty port of Haifa, Israel.