c. 2003 Religion News Service

WANAQUE, N.J. _ In Campofranco, Sicily, it is unusual for children to grow up to become rabbis.

But as a teenager in the midst of the Roman Catholic community, Antonio Di Gesu cultivated a deep passion for Judaism that eventually led him to rabbinical school in New York.

Now he’s the newly appointed student rabbi at Wanaque’s Lakeland Hills Jewish Center, a small synagogue unwittingly developing an unusual reputation for hiring spiritual leaders who were raised Catholic.

Di Gesu, 36, is the second of the temple’s past four spiritual leaders who grew up Catholic and converted to Judaism. Rabbi Justin Lewis, who worked at the shul in 1999 and now works in Ontario, also grew up Catholic.

The notion of a rabbi who has converted intrigues some temple members, but shul officials said they neither seek nor avoid converts during the hiring process.

“His (Catholic) background is especially interesting, but it wasn’t the reason we hired him,” said Debbie Schweighardt, temple president. “We have to hire someone based on whether he’s good for our congregation. Our style is warm and relaxed.”

True, some at Lakeland Hills chuckle at the thought their rabbi’s last name means “of Jesus,” but those interviewed from the Conservative congregation said Di Gesu’s Catholic background is a bonus, supplementing his deep knowledge of Judaism, his amiable demeanor and his sense of humor.

They also respect him for having persevered through the rigorous Orthodox conversion process he went through in Italy.

“The fact he chose this religion rather than was just born into it really says a lot about his love of it,” said Penny Safane, a current member. “He seems to have a kind of natural spirituality and a genuine love of Judaism. It’s not at all apparent that he ever practiced any other religion. He even looks Jewish.”

Judaism considers its converts as authentically Jewish as people who were born Jews.

“People who choose to become Jewish not only become part of the Jewish present, they’re accepting the Jewish past as their own, and they commit themselves to creating a Jewish future,” said Rabbi Charles Savenor, admissions director at the Jewish Theological Seminary’s rabbinical school, where Di Gesu is a second-year student.

The seminary accepts people who have converted as long as they have been Jewish for three years.

“We want people to really know what it is to be Jewish before they begin to dream about what kind of rabbi they want to be,” Savenor said. “You need to get in sync with the Jewish community.”

Di Gesu, who said he speaks fluent English, Hebrew, Arabic, Italian, French, Dutch and modern Greek, said he knows about Jewish life and rituals and hopes his Catholic background will help him work with the temple’s interfaith couples, approximately 25 percent of the families.

He said he has witnessed first hand how families can struggle with interfaith questions.

His parents, he said, strongly resisted his conversion at first but ended up supporting him. Along the way, there were arguments resulting from such misunderstandings as a relative in Rome using Di Gesu’s Passover matzo to make a sandwich with ham, a meat forbidden by Jewish dietary law.

A former altar boy who enjoyed reading about archaeology as a child, Di Gesu said he began leaning toward Judaism 20 years ago, “by chance.”

“I was 16, and one day, June 23, 1983, I woke up with the idea I had to learn Hebrew. I broke my piggy bank and started traveling around Sicily looking for a Hebrew grammar book. I found one, and taught myself Hebrew that summer … (working) nine or 10 hours a day.”

Without informing others in his Catholic community, he began saying selected Jewish prayers, avoided pork products, and even fasted for a day in the autumn, because he didn’t know the date of Yom Kippur, the Jewish Day of Atonement when observant Jews do not eat or drink.

At the University of Rome, he majored in ancient Semitic languages and attended Friday night service at a synagogue. After serving a year in the Italian army, he took a job with the Board of Jewish Communities in Rome.

There, a rabbi asked him to fill in at a Jewish funeral service in Naples. He did so, winning the admiration of the local Jewish community. Though lacking a rabbinical degree, he received special permission to lead a congregation in Naples for three years.

He arrived in the United States in the late 1990s and taught Hebrew at Jewish Day School before enrolling at Jewish Theological Seminary.

Seminary officials said they do not know whether the number of converts at rabbinical schools has risen or decreased _ Judaism frowns upon keeping such records, they said _ but that rabbis who had converted from other religions can help congregants see Judaism through a new lens.

“People’s journeys to Judaism, (their) embracing it in a ritual sense, and their formal conversion, those experiences are usually very compelling to the congregants and community members whom those individuals will lead,” Savenor said. “The spiritual journey that these individuals have gone through can really strengthen Jewish identity.”

DEA END DIAMANT