From a Washington Jewish Week
article on a United Jewish Communities conference in D.C. last March that Gregory addressed:
NBC
chief White House correspondent David Gregory talked about how he
discovered the importance of Judaism in his life. In a conversation
with [Erica] Brown [scholar of the Jewish Federation of Greater Washington], with whom he has been studying Jewish texts since
September, Gregory recounted how he was brought up Jewish ‹ son of a
Jewish father and non-Jewish mother ‹ with a sense of "peoplehood and
tradition," but not much "theology or spirituality." But, with the
encouragement of his non-Jewish wife, it was "enough to carry me to a
sense of identity" and give him a desire to "probe further" the
question of "Why be Jewish?"
"What I decided was [that] what mattered was not just a sense
of actual knowledge" or attending High Holiday services, "it was to
understand how to live Jewishly … [and] find daily meaning in
Judaism."
So now "Shabbat has become a lot more important to me" as a way
to "stop and think about what matters most to me … what kind of
father and husband I want to be." And he says a bedtime Sh'ma with his
children as a way to model Judaism for them and "create a Jewish
narrative in their lives that's not just obligatory."
David, how does this engagement affect your views of the Jewish state?
