A Jew, is a Jew, is a Jew--Touching Story Worth Reading

This week was our monthly community Shabbat dinner at shul. One of the congregants in my shul was there and it was also the yarzheit of his life partner of over 20 years. During dinner he stood and shared about him and his partner, how they found Chabad, and what my shul means to him. I will try to relay the story below because it truly moved me, made me cry, made me believe even more than I do now that there are no accidents, that all people, all situations, all things are exactly as they should be in that very moment. (oh, and I wasn't the only one with teary eyes as he told his story)

**For the sake of anonymity I'll call the man who spoke Bill and his partner James**

Bill and James had been together for over twenty years. They were both Jewish, not really obervant. James was an art dealer, and a very successful one at that. He knew how to do his work well and make money doing it.

Bill wanted to do some more Jewish things in his life so he joined a reform shul. He never pushed James into going because James just wasn't into going at that time.  Though eventually, like most couples, they compromised and grew together and one year James told Bill, "Hey, let'd do Chanukah at our home this year". And so they did.

Bill went to a Judaica store to purchase a menorah for their Chanukah party. In the neighborhood someone stopped him and handed him a Jewish magazine. He noticed that there was an article called, "Money Matters". He thought James would not be so happy with him coming home with this "religious" magazine because, as I mentioned, James was not so into the whole Jewish thing  But Bill brought the magazine home anyway because he knew James liked any articles on business and finance. It just so happens that the article made sense to James and he fully agreed with it. Oddly, it was a Chabad magazine. Odd because James and Bill were not observant and if you hadn't figured it out, they were gay.

If I remember correctly it was briefly after that they went to a Jewish market to get Chanukah foods. While going to the bakery, they passed (I think) an antique store or an auction store which had a famous painting that James was familiar with. A similar painting by the same artist had recently sold for hundreds of thousands of dollars and so James inquired inside about the painting. The painting was going up for auction with the starting bid at $500. So he got on the ball, went to the auction, and nobody was bidding; so the price dropped: $400, $300. That's when James raised his paddle and purchased the painting.

When James turned around and sold it to a collector, he made hundreds of thousands of dollars. He decided then that he should make a donation and decided to donate to Chabad because (and I think I'm missing a part of the story) of how they found the painting, in the Jewish area, buying Jewish things (or something like that). So he sent two large checks to Rabbi Kunin and to the high school. Rabbi Kunin called him up and asked. "What are you? A movie producer? A big business guy? A seller of junk?" To the last question James answered comedically, "Yeah, I sell junk". The irony was that painting was sold for nothing and made him so much money .

Some time passed and my rabbi must have been given his number, and so he called Bill and James. James answered the phone and my guess is the rabbi asked him to come to the shul and James replied, "I'm afraid rabbi I'm not really a good Jew based on my lifestyle". The rabbi's response, the beauty in this story of anything but chance, was: "I'd rather have a Hermanson than no son at our shul". (James' surname ends in -son)  What a beautiful response.

My rabbi's response was one of the love of a fellow Jew, because before anything we are Jews. As my rabbi explained , when a child was asked "What are you?". The child replied, "I'm American first then a Jew". However, this is not the case and I had never seen it this way before. No matter where a Jew goes, we eat the same gefilte fish, light the same Shabbos candles, eat the same Challah, chant the same prayers. We are first Jews because it truly IS who we are; before any country. It was a beautiful story and told far better than I just did.

In the end, James became very ill with cancer, and on his death bed my rabbi was there. The last words James' heard were the words of a Chabad rabbi saying Shema as he took his last breath.

I love being Jewish. I'm proud of our bonds. I'm proud of our community. I'm blessed to be part of such a beautiful peoplehood.