"Funny, You Don't Look Jewish"

Having the name, Kevin Patrick Kersey (yes, my middle name is Patrick), a good English/Irish name, usually means I have to explain to someone how I can be Jewish. And no, it's not through conversion.

According to Jewish Law (Halakhah), Jewishness is passed down through the mother. My maternal grandmother (Sarah Zitnick) was born into a Jewish home. Both her parents were Jews from the Ukraine. They came to America in the early 1900s. My grandmother was born in Chicago, which made her the first American in her family. She had an older brother, my Uncle Al, who was born in the Ukraine.

While the family was observant when they came to America, it did not last long. The story I heard was that they sent for my great-great-grandmother to come to America. When she got here, she was refused entry because she had an eye infection (probably something like "pink eye") and had to go back to the Ukraine. Either on the way back, or shortly after she got back, she died. This was hard on my great-grandmother spiritually and it was because of this she declared, "There is no G-d." From then on, the family, while keeping Jewish traditions, would certainly not be considered very observant.

An event happened when my grandmother Sarah was a little girl that sparked her curiosity about religion. It was around Hannukah/Christmas time and she brought something related to Hannukah for Show & Tell. Afterward, one of her classmates came up to her, slapped her, and said, "You killed Jesus." This stunned my grandmother because she didn't know who Jesus was, and she was pretty sure she hadn't killed him. She went home and asked her mother who Jesus was. Her mother slapped her and said, "Never mention that name in this house again." Sarah was slapped twice for someone she didn't know, had never met, and certainly never killed. But this did make her start to wonder who this "Jesus" person was.

After high school, she met and married my grandfather, Ralph Wooding, who was not Jewish. This did bother some in her family, and I heard that some of her family would not even walk on the same side of the street with her. But since she was not religious, marrying a gentile was not a big deal for her and her immediate family. Sarah and Ralph went on to have three children, the oldest of which was my mother.

When my mom was about 13 or so, my grandfather decided it was time they start going to church. There was a small church down the street from them, and within a few months, they had all become believers. At this time, in the 1940s, when a Jew came to believe that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah, it was accepted practice that they forsake their Jewish heritage and culture and culturally become Christian. And so my mother and her family all became "Christian", even though according to Jewish law, they were still Jewish by birth (except for my grandfather). And because my mother is Jewish by birth, then so am I (and my siblings).

Now for my dad. My father, Earl Kersey was born in a small town in Oklahoma called Oilton. He joined the Navy in WWII and served in the South Pacific. He was hoping to make the Navy a career, but contracted TB and was given a medical discharge. He felt G-d was calling him into the ministry as a Southern Baptist pastor. For some reason, he had always had a love for the Jewish people, even to the point that he prayed that G-d would give him a Jewish wife. In the 1950s, he went to a small Baptist college in Southern California, where he met... you guessed it, my mom. My mom had decided to go to the college because her boyfriend at the time said he was going to go there. He never did, but she met my dad there, and they were the first couple to be married in the chapel of California Baptist College.

While her Jewishness was never a big deal for my mom, it was for my dad. When I was in my early twenties, my dad told me about a man named Zola Levitt, and a movement called "Hebrew Christianity". This sparked something in me to learn more about my Jewish heritage. In my studies, I learned of Messianic Judaism, which had evolved out of Hebrew Christianity.

Hebrew Christianity began in the 1800s as Christians of Jewish birth began to believe that accepting Jesus did not mean they had to deny their Jewishness, and that believing that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah was in fact, a very "Jewish" thing to do. Messianic Jews took that even further and believed that not only was it Jewish to believe in Jesus, but that it was incumbent upon them to retain Jewish religious traditions and cultural identity. They started referring to Jesus by his Hebrew name, Yeshua.

As I learned more about Messianic Judaism, I felt this was the path I should take. Even though I was raised "Christian", I believed it was the right thing for me to reclaim my Jewish heritage and began living as a Jew. Instead of observing Christmas, Easter, etc., I now began observing Passover, Rosh haShana, Yom Kippur and the other Jewish holidays.

I met my wife (Roni) at a Messianic conference and we were married under the "chuppah"at a Messianic synagogue. We go to Shul (synagogue) Saturday mornings and observe the Jewish holidays. When I was in my 40s, I finally had my Bar Mitzvah.

And that is why a man named Kevin Patrick Kersey is very much a Jew. I know some in the Jewish community will not accept this, but my beliefs are between me and G-d, not me and the Rabbis, and they are the result of extensive study. And that is why, even though my name is not Jewish, I am a Jew.

If you would like to understand the foundations for my beliefs, I would encourage you to read some position papers that my Rabbi has written. You can find them here:

http://bethelnyc.org/category/theology