Over the last number of years, I had to think deeply about my situation. When I was a child my father actually left it up to me as to decide if I'd get a Jewish education or not. I originally decided "NO". Then, one fine day when I was living in Carnarsie (between '65 and '67) someone handed an ad to me for Hebrew school education. It featured a Jewish tough guy, smoking a cigar, with a certain type of cap and workman pants and shoes.

For some reason, I was bitten and I went back home to my parents screaming about how I wanted to enter this school program. They taught me some intial prayers (bruchas), like "Modeh Ani" which thanks G-d for restoring my soul in the morning, etc.. The woman who led the classes also told us that if we loved singin' praises unto the Lard on earth, we'd love it even more when we got to Heaven.

One of the guys in the class used to make real fun of her and stick his butt out at her and make noises, pound the wall hard, etc.. She hated him. I thought it was funny and so did the other students.

Now this happened almost 40 years ago and it was an after school program for children from non-orthodox homes led by a religious organization. As Chabad Lubavitch was the only org doing structured outreach back then, it must have been one of their programs.

I was living in Crown Heights until I was 6 years old and I already had a big mouth about proseletizing non-Jews. There was a kid in my neighborhood named Eric, who was a target of my efforts. I tried, unsuccessfully, to convince him that Santa Claus was bs, and he acknowledged that but refused to leave Christianity.

Let's fastforward to '67 when I came to Long Island and started shooting off my mouth about Yiddishkeit in the Taukomas Elementary School in Wyandanch. Two years later in the 4th grade I was confronted by some nazis and anti-Semites over my simply lighting a Chanukah Menorah. It had to be Chabad that triggered all of this.