Happy Birthday, Judea Pearl: Professor, Friend, Father Figure (Tribute)

It’s not only people who’ve had a bad run with a father that spend their lives looking for a father figure. My own father was wonderful. Empowering, loving, in many ways heroic. And since he died in 1983, I’ve also looked for one. Not a replacement, but someone who can pick up the slack. My family and close friends know I feel this way about Judea Pearl.

Before I recount the strange and, to me, unforgettable way I got to know him, let me first share a bit about him for those unaware of his great accomplishments as a computer scientist. Judea is one of the pioneers of modern artificial intelligence. His groundbreaking work on Bayesian networks and causal reasoning changed the way computers and scientists deal with uncertainty and cause and effect. A longtime professor at UCLA, Judea received the A.M. Turing Award, widely considered the highest honor in computer science.

As sometimes happens, I met Judea at a perfect moment. I’d been dividing my time between my career as a singer-songwriter and a composer for film and television. I felt lost between the two. One a dream, the other a job. At the end of a hectic and frustrating day composing music for the FOX television show Bones, around 2007, I sat down at my desk to read some emails. One stood out. Its subject line read: “Peter, You Need to Read This!” It was sent to me by a friend who knew about my obsession with Judea’s son Daniel Pearl, the Wall Street Journal reporter who was brutally murdered in Pakistan by Islamist terrorists.

My obsession was real. I thought about Danny several times a day. “Why,” I thought, “couldn’t I have been friends with this guy?” Someone who pursued his passion, who loved music, who traveled the world trying to make sense of how people lived and how they thought about the world. For himself first, I suppose, and through his writing for the rest of us.

I can’t tell you how many times these last words of Danny’s have played in my mind: “My mother is Jewish, my father is Jewish. I am Jewish.”

The email contained a link to an article on Bloomberg.com, not something I read too often. Or ever, really. The article was titled “Pakistan Is Macallan.” The tagline read: “My fondest memory of Daniel Pearl will always be those evenings when he came to my Washington office fishing for a drink.”

I had no idea what that meant, but I’d already been thinking of Pakistan. After all, that’s where my hero Danny Pearl was abducted and murdered. The article, written by William Pesek, a man I’ve since gotten to know, spoke about Pakistan’s security service, the ISI, and how it was rife with Islamists and likely troublesome for the U.S. to be so involved in its partnership with it. In about the second or third paragraph he spoke about his relationship to Danny.

Danny and I met in the mid-1990s, when we worked in the same office. We weren’t the kind of friends who’d call one another at 4 a.m. amid a crisis; we were buddies who would brainstorm on stories, swap bizarre travel tales and down a few beers together here and there. We first bonded over music — a Minneapolis musician named Peter Himmelman. We agreed he was the greatest songwriter virtually no one had heard of and we’d go to Himmelman’s concerts together, once making our way backstage to meet him.

This was one of those moments where a scrim gets lifted off the face of one’s assumed reality and something larger is revealed. I wrote to Pesek straight away. He wrote me back within minutes.

Hi Peter. It was an unexpected thrill to see your name in my e-mail box — I’ve been a fiercely loyal fan of yours for almost 20 years. Really — thanks for the note. I am based in Tokyo. As for Danny, everything you’ve read and heard about him is true — an extraordinary person and a huge loss to this world. As I mentioned in my article, my last time seeing him was in a Bombay bar and I’ll always cherish the memory. Danny and I met you very briefly in late 1995 when you played at the 9:30 Club in Washington DC. You graciously chatted with us for a few moments and even gave me a guitar string that had just busted. While Danny and I loved all of your work, we always agreed that “From Strength to Strength” is among THE best albums ever recorded … Danny also had a particular interest in your song “A Million Sides,” no doubt because he was a journalist.

Again, Peter, thanks for the note and thanks for your interest in Danny. He’d be tickled to know you were asking for him.

Regards, Willie

This all happened on a Friday, just before Shabbat. I got Judea’s email address from Pesek and made arrangements with Judea to meet with him and his wife Ruth the following Sunday. To my surprise, he lived not far from me.

I often think about Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink, how our first impressions of a person, a piece of music or a painting contain almost everything we need to know. How, even before our intellect gets overly involved, we absorb something essential. What I gleaned from Judea in those first moments wasn’t the great and lofty scientist. It was the warm, open embrace of a human being who seemed to have in his grasp a kind of grace that felt rare. In that sense, he reminded me of my own father, who died the day after I turned 24. I thought, This is someone I want, and need, to know.

It would be wrong of me to claim this feeling as my own. I know for a fact it’s shared by many people, and with good reason.

Judea and Ruth had come to our home on several occasions. One of those was a Thanksgiving dinner in 2008. The Mumbai massacre was unfolding, and the news was just coming in. Judea and Ruth had just returned from Washington, D.C. and come straight to our home. They’d met with President George W. Bush that afternoon at the White House. I recall Judea saying, “People think he’s not very bright. But spending time with him I’ve come to see how mistaken they are.”

The reports from Mumbai didn’t yet include details of the gruesome murders of the two young Chabad emissaries, husband and wife, slain in front of their infant son. But Judea and Ruth seemed to know. It was a pogrom, a repeat of what’s happened to Jews many times in history, both ancient and recent. I studied their faces as the turkey was served. It was, needless to say, a somber holiday meal.

Since the atrocities of 10/7, Judea has been among the most credible and resilient advocates for Israel, fighting not only against the scourge of antisemitism, but against what he’s rightly termed Zionophobia. Born and raised in Israel, he has no doubt lent courage to thousands of Israel supporters through his advocacy, but I can only attest to the inspiration he’s given me in my own advocacy. I can’t overstate the importance of this.

Judea, I should mention, is an upbeat, playful person. His eyes shine with mischief and he loves to sing. He does an impeccable imitation of a trumpet, and he’s a good improviser too—in the Louis Armstrong mold.

One recent Shabbat, Judea and I lingered at our table after my wife had gone to sleep. He carries with him a small suitcase full of different Jewish and Israeli things. “It’s my mohel case,” he jokes. In it are copies of original letters of Theodor Herzl and Ben-Gurion and a notebook full of z’meirot, old Jewish songs, which I suspect Judea is a little frustrated that I know so few of. What can I say? I grew up with Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles. After singing a few songs, we got on the subject of Israel and Jews in general. As the mood changed, I said, “You obviously have a perspective on this situation that most people don’t have.”

The professor’s a smart guy. He knew exactly what I was alluding to. “But with Danny it was different,” he said. “It was a specific incident, a specific tragedy. Now it’s the whole world.”

Indeed it seems to be.

I’m pretty sure Judea has no idea how much respect I have for him. I think it goes beyond respect. The relationship I’ve been blessed to forge with Judea is a treasured thing, something that propels me forward in a very real way. Something that literally changes the way I act in the world. For the better I hope. Knowing that I’m affiliated with such a person changes the way I think about my place in the world, and along with it the responsibility that entails.

He’s not my father. He has his own children. But being a father myself, I can say with certainty that kind of influence, the positiveness of it, the tenderness of it, is fatherly — the very nature of fatherhood. When I say I am “blessed” with our relationship, I mean truly blessed. Blessed by God, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, the same God that Judea and I have quibbled over, I, an aspiring believer, and he a… well, I’m not sure what he’d call himself. And maybe lacking a definition, at least for something beyond definitions, is a perfect thing to leave out.

One thing I am sure of: Judea is inarguably a proud Jew, a steadfast member of this multi-millennial Jewish Peoplehood. The other is that I love the man, plain and simple.

Judea, if you happen to be reading this, please accept the prayers of my family and me for excellent health, boundless happiness, continued success in all your endeavors, and for true and lasting peace for Am Yisrael and all humankind.

Happy Birthday,

Peter