Tell Me Where I Belong (Review)

It came as quite a shock to Dr. David Weill, a prominent heart-lung transplant surgeon, when he fortuitously discovered he was Jewish. Although it is not unusual for a Jew to be a mosaic of disparate parts, Weill learned that his religious origins were not only dissimilar but also highly unusual.

In his recently published book, Tell Me I Belong, Weill, a resident of New Orleans who is married to a devout practicing Catholic, said it astounded him to have discovered that he is a descendant of generations of rabbis, a Southern Baptist mother, a German Jewish father, a Klan member, and was profoundly influenced by a Black church-going second mother.

Although his wife and daughters were Catholic, he never joined them at mass on Sundays. When his young daughter asked why he never went to mass with them he responded, “I’m not Catholic.” As children often do, she had a follow up question, “What are you then?” That was the spark that ignited his search for where he belonged.

Weill’s grandfather was Jewish and managed to leave Germany, as did those Jews who saw the handwriting on the wall once Hitler took power. As Walter Laqueur, a Holocaust survivor, said, “The pessimists, left, the optimists stayed.” Fortunately for Weill, his grandfather was a pessimist.

During his journey to find out where he belonged, Weill found particularly appealing a statement the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks made, “Judaism is an extraordinary this-worldly, this-life-focused religion.” Rabbi Sacks argued that other religions stress the rewards and punishments of the afterlife, while Judaism focuses on the practices and deeds of this life. He also maintained that whereas other religions stress the importance of beliefs, Judaism values action over dogma. The insights about Judaism Weill acquired from Rabbi Sacks nourished a hunger his soul sought to satiate.

He also discovered that despite there being only fifteen million Jews in the world, comprising less than 0.2 percent of the world’s population, there is a disproportionate amount of hate and violence directed against Jews. After the massacre of Jewish Israeli civilians on 10/7 by Hamas terrorists, he was shocked and appalled by the moral depravity of college faculty, the ill-informed nature of students, and most disconcerting were university administrators of Ivy League colleges, who danced around the question as to whether calling for the genocide of the Jews was considered a hate crime.

All the absurdities were put in stark relief by a community more concerned about “appropriate” language, and correct pronoun usage, than the moral travesty occurring on their quads and within their halls of ivy. He noted that the mantra of “From the River to the Sea” was a call to eliminate the only Jewish State and “Globalize the Intifada,” an obvious dog whistle to annihilate all Jews, no matter where they lived. Weill relates that during an anti-Israel demonstration he asked a protestor about which river and sea was he chanting. Because the sanctimonious, self-righteous protestor did not have a clue, he snapped with a resounding, “Fck off,” expletive. It was not an unexpected rejoinder, for it is typical of those whose have nothing of value to contribute to a conversation, to resort to vulgarity.

While searching his lineage, Weill discovered that his Catholic mother had converted to Judaism before he was born. That discovery awakened within him,  “dos pintele yid” which means ‘that little point of a Jew’ which resides within the soul of every Jew. It is that eternal spark of Jewishness that persists undiminished, no matter how rigorous one’s efforts may be to extinguish it. Even Jewish atheists will not allow the glowing ember of their cultural Jewishness to die out. No matter the mask one wears or changes a Jew may make to their name, they cannot flee from who they are. He discovered that Judaism is more about how we behave than what we believe, for that defines the kind of person we will become.

I highly recommend reading Weill’s book, and by doing so you can accompany him on his fantastic journey to find out where he belongs.