If there were few Catholics in Story City, there were no Jews.  Well, there was a moment of ambivalence for the good Protestants when Abe Mezvinsky, a Jewish grocer from Ames (and the grandfather of Chelsea Clinton's husband), opened the town's first supermarket.  But he didn't live in Story City, and somehow convenience and practicality trumped "moral qualms."  At about that time I went off to the State College of Iowa (now the University of Northern Iowa).  I have always had nothing but affectionate memories of my time at SCI, though recently, looking back, I don't think I got a great education there.  I remember only two professors that were outstanding (one more for his lovable eccentricity than for what he taught), and the atmosphere in the English department was extremely chilly.  The chair was a pompous blowhard to put it tactfully.  I'm not unbiased, as he gave me a C in Shakespeare.  When I went to talk with him about the grade, one of his three secretaries informed me that he never met with students.  We were all so naive that we accepted that as if it were normal.  There was no advising, and when it came time to apply to graduate schools, I had no understanding of the process.  I applied only to Virginia and Duke, and, although I was accepted at both, I couldn't begin to meet the tuition costs.  The only faculty member who took an interest in my plight was a new Jewish American literature professor, Joel Salzberg, who steered me toward large public universities that had teaching assistantships.  So I wrote last minute applications and chose the University of Oklahoma for no particular reason that I can remember.

If I was happy during my three years at SCI, I loved my six years at OU.  First of all, the atmosphere in the department, which I assumed would be like that at SCI only perhaps even more formal, was the complete opposite.  The professors were friendly, open, and relaxed.  The department chair, Victor Elconin, was a courtly, elderly Jewish professor (and later my disseration adviser) who was always available for both serious and informal chats.  At the time, OU had a very large Jewish population.  There were three Jewish fraternities and three Jewish sororities, all with their own houses.  After Oklahoma and Texas, the next highest states sending students were New York, New Jersey, and Illinois--almost all of the students Jewish.  The best and most influential professor I had was David Levy in the history department.  He had co-edited the letters of Justice Brandeis; that sort of project fascinated me and later helped lead me to undertake the years long project of co-editing Karl Menninger's letters.  For a naive, small-town Iowa kid, my new Jewish friends and professors seemed to represent a different world of sophistication.  Friday nights, the Hillel campus center was a  hip place to hang out.  I had my English and French department friends--a wonderful, smart, lively group; my gay friends (I had finally come out, and in the era of "if it feels good, do it," coming out had been relatively easy and a huge relief); my hippie friends; and my Jewish friends (there was quite an overlap between the last two groups). 

Jill, a student in the first class I ever taught and a friend still, taught me dozens of Yiddish words and phrases, and, since I love languages, I remember them all.  When it came time to do my disseration, I chose Bernard Malamud.  I spent the year before actually writing reading Jewish American literature--from Bret Harte (surprise! Mark Twain said of Harte that he was "a liar, a thief, a swindler, a snob, a sot, a sponge, a coward . . . [who] conceals his Jewish birth as if it were a disgrace"), Abraham Cahan, Henry Roth, and Michael Gold through the great explosion of Jewish literature after WWII, both popular (Wouk, Wallace, Uris) and literary (too many to begin listing).  Malamud was a perfect dissertation subject: a small but interesting body of work and a finite amount of criticism.  I had an original thesis, which I rode to death in the disseration, novel by novel, story by story, in completely old-fashioned, straightforward explication.  Once it was finished and defended, I put it in a drawer, and I've never looked at it again. 

Years later, I met my brilliant and militantly atheist Jewish friend Norma; she prides herself on being the second of three generations of atheist (more than just secular) Jews.  She was kicked out of AOL chatrooms after infuriating the members of a Jewish forum.  She used to worry about the strangers I met in gay chatrooms; I worried more about her after reading some of the vitriolic and threatening responses she got from religious Jews to her arguments.  Norma's daughter-in-law (Julia Sweeney, "Pat" from the old SNL) was named Atheist of the Year, some years ago at a convention of atheists in Kansas City.  Who knew we had conventions?  Norma thought I was incredibly amusing: a sheygetz from the Midwest who knew more Yiddish than almost anyone she knew.  Once, to my great pleasure, she compared me to the Jewbird of Malamud's story of that name--a scraggly black bird, resembling a crow, who appears in the apartment of a New York Jewish family, announcing that he's a Jewbird.

But I didn't finally convert.  I talked to the rabbi in Norman about conversion, but being attracted to culture or history or personalities isn't the same as believing.  And I didn't believe. 

Since 1990, all the important men in my life (with one exception) have been Muslim, both Arab and non-Arab (Pakistani, Iranian).  It's important to remember, I think, in our highly charged policitcal atmosphere that only 20% of Muslims in the world are Arab.  So no one can say I haven't been exposed to Western religions--and have rejected them all, as I have the whole notion of god, theism, and religion.  No god, no heaven, no hell, no soul, no spirit--but yet another posting on the subject next time.