The political piling on of Graham Platner of Maine is an insult to all people, with many attacks being orchestrated by Right Wing/Christian Nationalist operatives weakening Women Rights for decades.

Steve Villano

Jun 12, 2026

(Dr. Christine Blasey Ford testifying under oath, before the Senate Judiciary Committee on September 27, 2018, concerning her sexual assault allegation against Judge Brett Kavanaugh. Despite Dr. Blasey-Ford’s compelling, credible, non-partison and under oath testimony, Maine Senator Susan Collins cast the deciding vote in favor of Kavanaugh’s confirmation to the US Supreme Court. Four years later, on June 24, 2022, Justice Kavanaugh—who told Senator Collins he believed Roe v. Wade was settled law, voted with the Court’s right-wing majority to overturn the 50-year old decision which gave women autonomy over their own health care decisions. It was the single most damaging blow to Women’s Rights in half-a-century in the United States. Contrast the sworn Congressional testimony—under penality of perjury—of Dr. Blasey-Ford, with the unfounded accusations made by GOP operative Lyndsey Fifield, a long-time employee of the Extreme Right Wing Heritage Foundation—the authors of Project 2025, a religious screed against Women’s Rights and Diversity, Equity and Inclusion,—which crusaded for decades for the US Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Fifield also led a group of pro-Trump Republicans to support Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court in 2018, and campaigned for Susan Collins, Graham Platner’s opponent, for Senator from Maine. Fifield’s statements were politically motivated, extremely biased, and made on social media and to the press,, where she was not under oath, nor under penalty of perjury for false ore misleading statements.)

((In a column released on June 12 across multiple media platforms, the brilliant Pulitzer Prize winning columnist Melinda Henneberger, who has written for the Kansas City Star and the Sacremento Bee , presents her perspective of “The Platner Problem: When Principles Meet Power.”

The column, which is easily accessible on Substack or via Google, could just as well have been headlined: “The Platner Problem: When People of Principle Who Care Deeply About Women and Women’s Rights are Manipulated by Malevolent Forces Dedicated to Destroying What They Care About.”

Melinda Henneberger’s writing and perspectives on life and humanity are often superb, but in the case of her writing concerning Graham Platner—in the context of decades of blatant destruction of human rights, and women’s health care equity which have been central goals of the Heritage Foundation, the GOP, Christian Nationalists and the Trump Administration—Henneberger’s writing is woefully short of facts, and long on comparisons that are not based in the lived reality of what’s going on in this country regarding economic injustice and civil & human rights—the biggest victims of which are women, the poor, people of color and the LGBTQ community.

I posted a streamlined version of this rebuttal to Henneberger’s column on her Substack page, and offer my fuller response here for my own readers. Henneberger is an important voice for all to hear, and because of her great credibility in the past, it is imperative that those of us who respect her abilities & insights, but disagree with her conclusions, speak out loudly and clearly, while freedom of expression still exists in the United States.

Here is my response, expanded for my own social media:

**

“Melinda: This column is so unscrupulously foul on so many levels. First, let’s examine some fundamental elements of fairness I expect from a Pulitzer Prize winning writer/journalist:

1. Did you go to Maine? 2. Have you interviewed Platner? His wife? 3. Did you interview Hannah Pingree, the young, progressive Democrat running for Governor? 4. Did you interview Representative Chellie Pingree, the long time women’s right advocate whose family has deep roots in the State, and she has long been a leader of Progressives nationwide? 5) Did you interview in person the ethically challenged Lyndsey Fifield, long-time political operative for the Heritage Foundation and opponent of Women’s Rights?

I expect nothing less from a writer of your stature and ability, yet you tell us you divined this perspective from a retreat, not from speaking with Maine citizens. That’s like Trump saying he knows “cheating in elections,” just because he knows it. Where’s your testing of the credibility of your sources, and your information?

Secondly, your Nader comparison is not even close to reality and ripped apart from any historical context. Yes Nader, and Susan Sarandon, were wrong in 2000, especially because the public records of Gore and Bush on all fundamental questions of human rights , and the composition of the Judiciary, were miles apart. Even those of us activists who detested Bill Clinton, and his sexual abuse of Monica Lewinsky and sense of arrogant entitlement, saw the clear difference between the political and personal philosophies of Clinton (Bill) and Gore.

Many of us ripped into Nader for being so narrowly focused on corporate influence in both parties, and being blind to the difference between the two Presidential Candidates on social justice issues, human rights, environmental justice, and the composition of the nation’s Federal Courts. Your brief plane ride of epiphany next to Nader, ignores all nuance and the depth of those differences, as Nader did. And, to make matters worse, you are doing the same kind of shallow, out-of-context reasoning that Nader did, which gave us George W. Bush, the War in Iraq, Justice John Roberts Justice Samuel Alito, and the cratering of the US economy costing millions of people their homes and livelihoods..

Before we even get to Susan Collins sell out of women by enabling Brett Kavanaugh, an accused sex offender, to become a Supreme Court Justice, it’s important to note that It was George W. Bush, guided by Karl Rove, Nicole Wallace and Steve Schmidt, who gave us John Roberts and Sam Alito, two of the most destructive voices on Voting , Civil and Human rights since Justice Roger Taney and his decision on Dred Scott. Nicole Wallace, who now Podcasts on “The Best People,” along with Schmidt, a self-righteous, self-aggrandizing scold, led the campaign out of the White House to put both Roberts and Alito on the Supreme Court. I’m not even mentioning their cheerleading for Sarah Palin. They were merely doing what they were told by their boss—indefensible from a moral standpoint, especially when two decades later the extraordinary damage done by Roberts and Alito, has ripped apart the US Constitution and this country’s desultory attempt to civilize itself on Civil Rights.

Even such a civil rights advocate like Joe Biden bears responsibilty for enabling the Supreme Court to be poisoned by not giving Anita Hill’s testimoney enough credibility, nor giving her Congressional protection, and running away fron the false and performative “racism” claims pushed by Clarence Thomas—himself an enemy of civil rights for others— and the deeply cynical forces of racism in this country—not unlike what’s being done by the Heritage Foundation and Christian Nationalists on the matter of misogyny right now, in Maine. Those groups of trolls and troglodytes wrote the book on mistreating women, winked at rape and sexual harassment laws, undermined women’s economic equality, and are actively working to turn the clock back in this country to before the time women were granted the right to vote.

Some of us, going back 30 years, excoriated Biden for his abject failure as the then- Chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Mario Cuomo, with whom I worked at the time, was furious over Biden’s failure to use his position to defend Anita Hill and her testimony, and his outrage of such terrible timidity on Biden’s part came close to pushing Cuomo to overcome his personal misgivings, and run for President.

You ignore all of this history going back some 30 years, which made Susan Collins support of Kavanaugh—even more egregious—despite her constant blathering of giving nothing but lip service to the urgency of maintaining the health care and human rights protections of Roe v. Wade.

Some of us who crusaded for a Women’s Right to choose going back over 50 years, to when New York State passed it’s liberalized abortion law in 1970—3 years before Roe. v. Wade—find Collins caving in to 50 years of women’s health care, and civil rights progress, unconscionable—not to mention her 90% voting record in concert with the most misogynistic federal administration in US history.

NONE of that forgives Platner’s stupid , offensive decisions about insensitive,, tough-guy tattoos, unacceptable sexting, and misognyistic comments. Yet, you repeatedly glide over the clear political motivation of his primary accuser, a GOP right wing operative, out of the Roger Stone school, who worked for the most anti-women GOP organization of the past 40 years, the Heritage Foundation.

I suggest you re-readProject 2025, it’s attacks on DEI, on women, people of color and the LGBTQ community. To write as much about Platner’s past—without examining precisely where his primary accuser is coming from, is not “victim blaming”—since her public support for Heritage, Kavanaugh and Collins make her far from an innocent victim. Fifield is a perpetrator of pernicious policies against women’s rights. She is no Virginia Roberts Giuffre, and Platner is no Jeffey Epstein, Donald Trump or any other of the malevolent misogynists and pedophile protectors who have changed laws and bastardized institutions—like the military—to flagrantly discriminate against women. How can you ignore those actual, practical, catastrophic consequences of Lyndsey Fifield’s well-funded political activity over the past decade?

NONE of this occurs in a vacuum, nor without historical and personal context, yet you continually bulldoze all of that concering Collins, and her political and financial cronies campaigning against Platner, under the guise of “misogyny” when their own actual enacted policies have caused grave harm and been violent to women’s rights These duiplicitous, cynical, abusers of fairness and justice gave us Thomas, Roberts, Alito and Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court; covered up the Epstein files and Trump’s involvement in them, ripped apart Roe. v. Wade protections at the federal level and in state after state, and are working hard bury women’s rights back to the Dark Ages, How can you ignore all this?

Finally, your writing fails to mention the other major source of opposition to Platner coming from AIPAC, because of his outspoken opposition to Israel’s Genocide in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon, his strong statements about cutting off all US military aid to Israel, and his determination to lead the Democrats into taking a powerful anti-war position. With Susan Collins unblemished record of supporting the past four wars, and of unquestioningly doing AIPAC’s bidding on Israel, how can you not examine this as a motivation to bring Platner down, and disenfranchise the voters of Maine?

As a superb journalist, I am suprised you have not questioned the integrity of the New York Times assigning reporter Katie Glueck, a past “AIPAC Activist of the Year” to cover BOTH the NYC Mayoral Campaign of Zoran Mamdani—where support for Israel was a key issue—AND the campaign of Graham Platner for Senator from Maine, when his criticism of AIPAC and Israel—and Susan Collins slavish support— is very well known. How did that egregiouis violation of journalistic integrity escape your notice? Does it matter to you that the Times reporter has a political axe to grind against Platner, as does the Heritage Foundation operative whose unverified statements Glueck relies upon? How can the working women and men of Maine not feel that cultural elites outside of their own communities and billionaire-backed financial interests are working overtime to keep them down?

I challenge you to layout, side-by-side, what Platner has done and said about women, next to what Brett Kavanagugh (and Justices Thomas, Roberts & Alito) have done.

I challenge you to research and write about the extraordinary destruction of human and civil rights, of women’s health care, and economic justice, being implemented right before our eyes every single day by the Heritage Foundation, Project 2025, Christian Nationalists, and the Trump Administration, and their enablers, like Senator Susan Collins.

In an extraordinary hour-long interview with the New York Times (and available on YouTube) Scott Pelley recounts in detail the story behind Bari Weiss’”Murder” of CBS News’ 60 Minutes.

Steve Villano

Jun 07, 2026

(YouTube cover photo of the New York Times interview with Scott Pelley. Please click on the link BELOW these two introductory paragraphs to get direct access to the Interview.)

I struggled for days to write something that mattered about the Bari Weiss-driven “murder” of 60 Minutes, the flagrant $16 million bribe the old ownership of CBS paid Donald Trump to get the Paramount merger approved, and the importance of high-integrity journalists, like Scott Pelley, to the truth, to honest and fair jounalism, and to the very essence of dermocracy itself.

Then Pelley gave this video interview to the New York Times, answering all those questions, and making anything any of the rest of us have to say on the subject not relevant. So, I am making this full and remarkable interview available to all of my readers/viewers, right here. I urge you to spend the time viewing this incredibly important event in our country’s history, and consider it the final hour-long episode of a full, truthful, and no-holds barred episode of 60 Minutes with Scott Pelley:

A new documentary film entitled “Mario” premieres at the Tribeca Film Festival next week. I had a front-row seat observing Mario Cuomo for 8 years, and my unedited film still runs in my mind.

Steve Villano

May 30, 2026

(Mario Matthew Cuomo, r., speaks with my son, Matt Villano, following an exhibition basketball game in 1990; the inscription on the photo says “Matt, You make the shirt look good!” (photo by Ted Kaplan).

The brilliant Kunhardt Film Family—father Peter W, and son’s Teddy & George—have produced the first, first-rate documentary about former New York State Governor Mario Cuomo debuting at the NYC’s Tribeca’s Film Festival on June 4, 2026, at the School of Visual Arts (SVA) in Manhattan.

The multiple Emmy Award winning family film team—which has made many HBO Original documentaries— has a long and superb track record of making movies that matter about individuals who have had a positive impact on improving our lives. Their filmography includes docs about transformational leaders like Barack Obama, John McCain, Gloria Steinem, and the Founder of the Equal Justice Initiative, Bryan Stevenson. This new film, entitled “Mario” fits squarely into that genre.

“We are trying to make moral leadership the core of many of the films we do,” said Peter W. Kunhardt, now 73, who founded the Kunhardt Production Company in 1987 (now Kunhardt Films) with his father, Philip Kunhardt, Jr., and his brother, Philip Kunhardt, III.

The Kunhardt family, which dates back to Peter’s great-great-grandfather who was a Major in the Union Army in the Civil War; his great grandfather Historian Frederick Hill Meserve; and his grandmother Dorothy Meserve Kunhardt, who wrote the classic children’s book, Pat the Bunny, merits an HBO documentary about their own unique place in U.S. history. Peter Kunhardt himself—not to be confused with his son Peter, Jr., who has run the Gordon Parks Foundation for the past 15 years—worked on ABC News “20/20” for a decade before founding the family film company in 1987.

“What we are really after is the kernal of character who is universal, whom people can identify with, which is the driving force within someone,” Peter Kunhardt told Westchester Magazine (November 18, 2018, “Reel to Reel,” by Gale Ritterhoff’).

The Kunhardt’s could not have found a more fitting person to apply their storytelling knack to for “moral leadership,” than Mario M. Cuomo, whose unshakeable sense of values, integrity, morality and personal purpose was the focus of my book “Tightrope: Balancing a Life Between Mario Cuomo & My Brother (Heliotrope Books, NY, 2017) I have since published a number of articles profiling Mario Cuomo as the “Anti-Trump.” One such story appeared in the Albany Times Union at the time of Trump’s first Inauguration in January, 2017. Link here: http://socialvisionproductions.com/2017/mario-cuomo-the-anti-trump/

I wrote the book (and many subsequent articles) because I became increasingly infuriated when I was asked at weddings, Bar Mitzvahs and every event where people knew I worked with Mario Cuomo, if it was true that Cuomo opted out of running for President because he had “mob connections.” Time after time, that thoughtless comment triggered me, and I transformed into the skunk at many “garden parties” by pugnaciously retorting “you wouldn’t ask that question if his name didn’t end in a vowel.”

I decided it was time for me to tell the story as only I could: that I knew from first hand experience that Cuomo had NO mob connections, because I did, and that my brother’s mob associates, considered Mario Cuomo “untouchable,” because of his impeccable integrity. Then, when people asked again, I could simply say, “Read my book,” and walk away from them, with my temper a bit more in check.

In Tightrope, (pages 118-120) I detailed my first-hand observations of the moment, in my judgement, that I knew Mario Cuomo would never run for President:

“ In early September, 1986, the Governor was already in a testy mood. His re-election, vb was never in doubt, but he was no longer having fun. The press, led by the New York Post,was pummeling (his son) Andrew’s law firm for allegedly doing business with State agencies, and for accepting clients who were seeking to curry favor with the Governor by hiring a law firm in which his son was a partner.

Halfway to the speaking event we were headed for (I sat in the unmarked State Trooper’s car directly behind the driver) the car phone rang. It was Andrew. I watched Mario Cuomo pick up the phone and listen quietly to his son for several minutes, deeply massaging his forehead with the large hand that wasn’t cradling the phone to his ear. Suddenly, the Governor staeted shouting into the receiver.

“What do you mean you’re a liability to me? What kind of talk is that? You’re tired, you’re working too hard on this campaign and you need some rest. Don’t let me hear you talking like that,” Mario Cuomo said to his oldest son, slamming down the car phone into it’s cradle.

There was complete silence in the car for a few moments. Finally, the Governor spoke, seething with anger.

“Imagine that. My own son, thinking he’s a liability to me. This is some god-damned business,” Mario Cuomo said. “You go into government because you try to do some good, and what do they do? They attack your kids. They spread rumors that somehow you must ne connected to the Mafia because your name ends in a vowel. And for what? All because you want to serve? At what price? And when did my kids ever agree to pay the price.”

I watched him look out of the passenger-side window of the black, unmarked State Police car, his anger barely contained and knew at that precise moment that Mario Cuomo would not run for President of the United States; he would never subject his children to the brutality of a Presidential campaign.

“Ah, the whole thing stinks,” Mario Cuomo said, waiving his right hand as if chasing away a fly, swatting his frustration into the air; brushing away the stench of stories which hurt his son and his family, and gagged him. With one wave of his large hand, he pushed aside any of the tightly reasoned arguments being advanced in favor of a “Cuomo for President” campaign in th next (1988) Presidential election.

“Mario Cuomo understood how news, rumor & innuendo worked better than any American politician of his time. He knew that a story, no matter how far-fetched, took on a life of its’ own, once reported and repeated. . .The damage was often subliminal, a mere suggestion to a jury quickly withdrawn, and it became impossible to erase from public consciousness despite detailed rebuttals or outright denials. All that was necessary for the phony charge to pass for fact, was for it to be repeated over and over again, until it became one with the Cuomo name, indivisible.

“Above all, he would not allow his children to be maligned by anyone or used as props in the no-holds barred media reality show which political campaigns were quickly becoming. His family had not asked for a life in public service; he had, and he would stand as a bulwark against their being bullied. I loved him for leaping to Andrew’s defense, and admired his certainity in being an unflinchingly protective father.”

In the Tribeca Film Festival synopsis that accompanies the information about the Kunhardt’s documentary “Mario,” one line jumps out and underscores the truth I observed first-hand over eight years:

“As he finally ends his political life and turns more deeply to family, Cuomo’s story is more than just one of leadership, but one of love, empathy and commitment to service that goes beyond a chronicle of political life.”

Only a multi-generational film-making family like Peter Kunhardt’s, with deep roots in American history, a passion for moral clarity, a track-record of uncovering universal “kernals of character” and with a fierce loyalty to those they love, could do justice to telling the story of the humanity of Mario Cuomo.

Trump gets his “Steel Asylum” for Balls.

Steve Villano

May 27, 2026

(What’s the difference between a billion-dollar Ballroom, a Wrestling Dome, a “Steel Asylum”, and a Chicken Wire Cage for “cagefighting?”)

A HAIKU FOR HUMAN COCKFIGHTING:

Billionaires’ Ballroom

Meant to hold big Balls,

Now cages

Shriveled Scrotums.

Everything about Trump and his fanatical followers makes a mockery of the things our fathes, our brothers, and ourselves carried to war and home.

Steve Villano

May 25, 2026

My father was an Anti-Fascist,

A child of immigrants

who worshipped free elections,

And not some flaccid erections of impotent potentates,

Who pump themselves up

On the deaths of humans and institutions great,

Unlike themselves.

My father curses you from his grave,

You bottom-sucking losers, depraved

Beyond redemption, not to mention how

Deprived you are of any shards of soul,

You democracy desecrating terrorists,

Humanity’s black holes.

My father didn’t want to leave three kids

But yet he did, to fight the Fascists and keep

Us safe from hate-filled fanaticism, intent

On killing mothers & babies, and tearing them apart,

Brutally separating families, for sport, & lack of heart.

My wife’s uncle, at 20, had reasons plenty to stay home

And not run off to Rome, to spend his youth fighting Nazis

So grotesque they pissed on Jewish graves, including his own,

Dug deep into Europe’s hills, before The War was won.

And now, you whine, you feces-smearing Trumpholes,

White faces contorted into masks of hate, and vicious howls,

Tearing down the delicate democracies Veterans’ blood sealed,

Defeating & containing destroyers like you for 75 years,

You chin-thrusting shills for criminals & cretins, you pig squeals.

My father and his fellow GI’s curse you from their graves,

You fucking, insane, deranged inanities,

Depraved more than the jackals

Who eat the entrails of dead soldiers, children and civilians,

Growing fat, feasting on the flesh of others, sisters, brothers,

In the crassness and crapulence of your full inhumanity.

The soldiers of freedom’s fortune, here and abroad,

Curse you from their graves, you failures, knowing the courage of their brave

Friends who, of all colors and faiths, came together for a cause,

Not simply for applause, revenge, nor profit, but to save the world,

From avaricious, hate-dripping, garbage pails like you.

My father fought the Fascists,

As did 300,000 fellow US Vets who perished,

And 700,000 more who bore bullets in their spines & rumps,

Fighting to save Democracy from soul-less, anti-human terrorists,

Storming the halls of Congress, Kristallnacht every night,

Taking orders from tyrants, like Orban, Hegseth & Trump.

My father, a Veteran of a foreign war,

Anti-Fascist, anti-racist, memorialized for his love,

Of family, of life, of the struggle it takes to survive,

Who believed fighting inhumanity everywhere,

Would keep us safe, forever, here,

Would keep us free, protected and alive.

Don’t mouth the words of memory when you have none;

Don’t invoke their struggle when you’ve not known one;

Don’t wave some jingoistic flag under which he fought,

Don’t think his sacrifice is something that can be bought.

I spit on you from my father’s grave,

And the burial grounds, of the poor, like him,

Fertilizer for rich men’s wars,

Plowed under for patriotic reasons, long ignored,

While you fake love for what’s free and brave,

For power, and for profit, and because, because…

You never learned how to behave, like a human.

Israel has changed dramatically since 1980, lurching toward a Far Right, Fundamentalist, Ultra-Nationalism. Does the Judaism to which I converted 46 years ago still exist?

Steve Villano

May 22, 2026

I am a Jew.

I speak for no other Jews but myself.

I converted to Judaism 46 years ago today, drawn to a set of beliefs not threatened, but strengthened, by rational questioning and debate; that found beauty in acts of faith and generosity, small and large; that understood, from centuries of experience, the insanity and inhumanity of exclusion and demonization; and was built on the bedrock of fundamental human decency, dignity, love and the preciousness of life.

Which is why, despite the current collapse of democracy in Israel and the careening of Israeli leadership into a fundamentalist, nationalist chasm not unlike those in history responsible for the slaughter of millions of Jews, I was shocked by the depth of hatred aimed at me for criticizing the Netanyahu government’s abandonment of the fundamental principles of Judaism and human rights.

Early last month, I wrote on an Instagram posting by Chris Cuomo of News Nation, that: 

“I am a Jew.  Netanyahu’s extreme Right Wing government is an attack on all of us.  A fundamental tenet of Judaism is advancing humanity; the present Israeli government is setting humanity back.  On Holocaust Memorial Day when we Jews say “Never Again,” we mean never against us again, nor against any other people—including non-combatant Palestinians.  We are not attacking Israel; we are attacking inhumanity…”

While more than 250 readers/viewers agreed with my statement (including a reminder that the IDF’s own Code of Ethics, prohibits a disproportionate response to an attack) respondents from Israel and the United States alike (some of whom may have been Bots) piled on.  A sampling of some comments:

1.    “Whose side are you really on?”

2.    “You’re calling for the death of your own people.”

3.    “Thanks for showing us what the ‘Judenrat,” did.  Jew.”

4.    “Sad to see a fellow Jew who is product of Hamas propaganda.”

5.    “Here we go with the “as a Jew” comment.”

6.    “So, you’re one of those ‘Self-Hating Jews? You’re a fraud.”

7.    “Palestinians must be slaughtered. We are dealing with psychopaths.”

8.    “You’re not a Jew. Villano is anything but a Jewish name.  Putz.”

9.    “You probably love US garbage pails like Biden & Schumer.”

10. “Why don’t you just Convert—OUT of Judaism?”

The Judaism I converted to 46 years ago, was a far different Judaism than the false faith being practiced by some Extreme Right Wing and Ultra Nationalist Jews in Israel and the United States today.  It was the Judaism articulated by Israeli writer and activist Fania Oz Salzberger, daughter of the great Israeli writer Amos Oz, who writes that:

“God does not belong as a political entity telling us what to do; what to teach; where to invade.”

Menachem Begin was Israeli Prime Minister at the time I converted, and while he was more conservative than Israel’s Labour Party leaders of the previous 30 years whom I revered, he had just, 2 years earlier, been a signatory to the Camp David Accords, along with US President Jimmy Carter and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat—an historic peace agreement which earned all three leaders the Nobel Peace Prize.

There was a flicker of hope in the air, that a nearly 30-year constant state of War between Israel and Arab nations could be taking a pause, and could, perhaps, lead to a more permanent peace in the region.  Centuries old and seemingly irreconcilable differences over geography, demography, faith, ancestry and ancient rights of land ownership could be navigated if there was a willingness on each side to reach some livable accommodations with the other—and if the humanity of each side was respected.

If Menachem Begin, a leader of Israel’s armed revolutionary group for Independence the Irgun, who was labeled a “terrorist” by the British forces he fought for freedom, could shake hands with a sworn enemy of the State of Israel like Sadat, who led Egypt in the 1973 Yom Kippur War to retake the Sinai Peninsula which Israel had occupied since 1967—anything was possible.

There was great hope in the air for peace between Israel and some of its Arab neighbors, in the Spring, of 1980.  And, there was great hope in my life, that, after years of searching, I had found in Judaism, a set of ethical, humane, spiritual teachings and practices, in which I could believe, and rationally act upon.

I was a father of a five-year old son at the time when I chose Judaism as my new faith, the faith of his mother.  The hierarchy of my previous faith, Catholicism, had long since turned away from me by blindly supporting the American War in Vietnam, opposing equality for women, insisting that the promise of life was more important than life itself, discriminating against individuals because of their sexuality, and refusing to accept AIDS patients into their hospitals, and hearts, because of an outdated, and inhumane, concept of “sin.”

I spent years studying other faiths, and gravitated toward Judaism because of its grounding in reality, as well as spirituality; its’ fundamental commitment to repair the world (Tikkun Olam), and its’ insistence on refusing to wallow in darkness, and always, always work toward hope and the better side of human nature.

Converting to Judaism is not done on a whim; Jews have certain requirements for those they choose to let in.

After reading an article in the late 1970’s by the great Reform Jewish leader, Rabbi Alexander Schindler (the founder of ARZA, the American Reform Zionist Association) welcoming non-Jewish spouses in interfaith marriages to become Jews, I decided it was time to accept his invitation, and begin my journey toward Judaism. 

 It was a decision  which did not make my mother, a devout Catholic happy.  In fact, when I informed my mother I was converting to Judaism, she wrote me a letter in which she expressed how “heartbroken” she was; and that the announcement of “your becoming a Jew is not something I am proud of.” 

“I will never accept your decision to change your religion,” my mother wrote to me  six months before my Conversion to Judaism took place, on May 20, 1980.   In reality, it took years for her to become “comfortable” with my becoming a Jew.

We joined a large Reform Jewish Congregation in Albany, N.Y., and I came under the tutelage of a leading Reform Rabbi, Rabbi Martin Silverman, a disciple of Schindler’s, who guided me in my readings on Jewish history and Judaism.

Rabbi Silverman, whose wife, Phyllis, taught with mine in the Albany Public Schools, was already a remarkably courageous figure within the American Reform Jewish Community.  In the late 60’s and early 70’s before the Roe v.Wade  US Supreme Court decision which declared abortion to be a fundamental privacy and healthcare right of women, Rabbi Silverman had a secret compartment behind the sacred Torah Scrolls in the Chicago-area congregation he headed.   In it, he kept files of illegal abortions he’d helped women obtain, as well as a list of doctors willing to perform them.

Along with many other rabbis, ministers and priests across the nation, Silverman was a member of the Clergy Consultation Services, an underground network of fearless clergy, dedicated to protecting the life of the woman, first and foremost.  That was, after all, an essential teaching of Judaism—that the woman’s life was of paramount importance, and even if an abortion was necessary to protect the life of the woman, up to the moment of birth, abortion was a required medical procedure under Jewish Law, as well as in the Old Testament. 

Rabbi Silverman’s daughter, Amy Cohen, Executive Director of the Massachusetts Adoption Agency Adoptions with Love, and an advocate for women’s reproductive rights, told the Jewish Journal of Greater Boston: 

 “If someone was pregnant and couldn’t have or didn’t want the baby, he counseled women of all faiths and ethnic backgrounds about their predicament, explained what an abortion entailed, and then he’d refer them to where they could get a safe abortion.”

Cohen described her father as a “liberal, forward-thinking person, always involved in people’s rights.”

 After my guided, independent study with Rabbi Silverman, I was considered to be ready to participate in a “Conversion class” sponsored by the Capital District Board of Rabbis, with Rabbis of all denominations of Judiasm—Orthodox, Conservative, Reform—participating. 

Teaching the Conversion course, was the diminutive Susie Isser, no more than five feet tall–who was trained in the law and had escaped from Austria just before the Nazis made it impossible to leave.   An immigrant to the United States in the late 1930’s, Isser—a Jewish, female attorney– found the door to the American legal profession slammed shut to her, a similar story to the one recounted decades later by Ruth Bader Ginsburg.   

So, for 20 years, to help support her family, the brilliant Susie Isser scrubbed floors, and taught Hebrew Sunday School, one day per week.  Her son, Dr. Raymond Isser, went on to become Chair of the Judaic Studies Department at SUNY Albany, my undergraduate alma mater, where my wife and I met. 

Word of Susie Isser’s passion for teaching and her commitment to a humanitarian Judaism—and to the State of Israel—spread throughout New York State’s Capital District.  In her class, the Jewish spouse was required to take the six-month long conversion class along with the spouse converting to Judaism.  Among our fellow students, was an Iranian Jew, and his non-Jewish spouse—both of whom had just escaped from Iran before the Ayatollah and a cabal of fundamentalists had taken over that country.

In her lessons on Jewish history, Susie Isser cried when she spoke of growing up with a Tzedakah Box, found in Jewish homes throughout Europe, being filled with pennies each day, year after year, to support the development of a homeland for Jews—with the promise of no discrimination against any faith, and legal protections and respect for all human rights.  In fact, those human rights protections, became key elements of the UN Charter which created Israel in 1948.

That was the Judaism I converted to in 1980, and it’s mission to advance humanity and repair the world, while not perfect, was carried out in spirit and substance by a succession of Israeli governments, from Begin’s to Yitzak Shamir’s, to Shimon Peres’, to Yitzhak Rabin’s. 

 That Judaism was violently attacked with the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995, by an Ultra Right Wing Nationalist disciple of convicted Jewish terrorist Meir Kahane, who was himself killed by an assassin’s bullet.

That Judaism began its slow slide toward assisted suicide, with the election of Benjamin Netanyahu, for the first time in 1996, and his repeated pandering to and enabling of the poisonous growth of Ultra Nationalist & Extremist groups throughout Israel by placing them in key Israeli government positions of extraordinary power—including power over religious matters, such as questions of “Who Is A Jew?”

Many of Kahane’s ultra nationalist adherents are now, nearly 30 years later, in key Israeli government positions, including Bezalel Smotrich, the Israeli Finance Minister with oversight responsibility for the West Bank, arrested on terrorist charges in 2005 by Israel’s Shin Bet for plotting to block Israeli withdrawal from Gaza; and, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s National Security Minister, convicted multiple times for supporting terrorist organizations, and according to The New York Times investigation on Israeli extremists, published on Sunday, May 19, 2024, threatening  the life of  Yitzhak Rabin “ in front of TV cameras in 1995,” two weeks before Rabin was murdered. 

Rabin was murdered at a Peace rally, where he was speaking on behalf of the Oslo Accords—the US brokered peace agreement in 1993 between Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization—which advanced the long held US foreign policy objective of a two-state Israeli/Palestinian peace settlement.

My Judaism, like Rabin’s, is one that believes in diversity, equality, inclusion, humanity and love, and a sacred obligation to repair the world.  My Zionism, like David Ben Gurion’s, Theodore Herzl’s, Amos Oz’, Susie Isser’s, and Yitzak Rabin’s is a Humanist Zionism, in which a State of Jews could only be a liberal democracy, NOT an exclusionary Nationalist Zionism. 

As Fania Oz Salberger has so eloquently said:

“Ben Gurion, the child of Socialist Zionists and of old Labour, and Theodore Herzl, a liberal, BOTH believed that Arabs AND Jews had to be part of Civil Society.”

That was the fundamental premise upon which Israel was founded; that was the basis of the international agreement which created the State of Israel 78 years ago; and that was the pluralistic, humane, loving, generous and intellectually honest faith to which I converted 46 years ago this week.