“My father was an ardent Socialist, almost a Communist.
Once I visited the places in Spain where he fought in the civil war as a volunteer in the International Brigade.
I read Lenin before I read the Bible.
It wasn’t very fashionable when I became an Orthodox Jew.
Nor was it easy.
I felt like the character in the Kafka novel who wakes up one day and discovers that he has become a cockroach.
I had always despised those Orthodox people. I really disliked them.
I used to throw stones at them.
And then one day I woke up and discovered that I belonged there.
It was a shock.
I don’t know if I have ever really gotten over that shock.”
–Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
From Pebbles of Wisdom from Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz
