Confessions of a Jewish Priest: From Secular Jewish War Refugee to Physicist and Episcopal Clergyman

The Confessions of a Jewish Priest are the reminiscences of Gabriel Weinreich, a secular Jew who was born in Poland and moved to the U.S. as a young adolescent during World War II thus narrowly escaping the Holocaust. The book follows Weinreich as he becomes an American, twice-husband, father, and an award-winning scientist, and shows how his subsequent journey toward Christianity and ordination to the Episcopal priesthood do nothing to impair his sense of Jewishness. In addition to telling a compelling life story of a boy from an eminent Jewish family, the book takes us on a journey into Christianity as perceived by a Jew who began as a complete atheist--but realizes later in life that he never really was an atheist after all. A beautifully written book combining the author's remarkable insight into Christian spirituality and his journey out of the horrors of the Holocaust's beginning in his native Poland to finding himself called to be an Episcopal priest. His perspective evolves from a mix of his Jewish tradition--having come from a non-religious family in which his father was a preeminent scholar in Jewish studies--and a world view based on reductionist thinking and rationalism that characterized his years spent as a distinguished university physicist. A wonderful book that will leave you inspired and filled with hope. --Duncan G. Steel, The Peter S. Fuss Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and Physics, The Harrison M. Randall Laboratory of Physics, The University of Michigan Confessions, in the classic Augustinian sense, is indeed the genre of Weinreich's reflective account of his fascinating journey from a Jewish childhood in Poland and resettlement as a refugee in New York City to a career in physics, and then ordination as an Episcopal priest. Lacking in any 'convert' repudiation of his roots and upbringing, . . . marked by fresh, 'out-of-the-box' theological perspectives, this book is a pleasure to read. --Harvey H. Guthrie, Dean Emeritus, Episcopal Divinity School This is a remarkable story about my dear, original, creative, childhood friend Gabi. His was a conversion from secular ideals of a vanished world to spiritual and ritual Christianity, without relinquishing his Jewish identity. Many Jews converted to Christianity in the modern age, but we have very few witness accounts of the spiritual process, written with such knowledge of both worlds and such disarming candor. --Benjamin Harshav, J. & H. Blaustein Professor of Hebrew and Comparative Literature and Professor of Slavic Languages and Literatures, Yale University Gabriel Weinreich, born in Poland into a prominent Yiddish-speaking family, is Professor Emeritus of Physics at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and a retired Episcopal Priest. He resides in Chelsea, Michigan.…