Rabbi N. Spector with one of his students...

"Excuse me, Rebbe, excuse me. I have a question. Is it permitted to put on tefillin if you are not circumcised?"

The time: Winter, 5737 (1976).... The place: the Jewish Students' Cafeteria in Paris....


I looked at the young man standing in front of me -- tall, handsome, very French, very serious. My thoughts returned to an incident 13 years beforehand when I was a student in the military academy in Texas speaking with one of my teachers.

"Mr. Spector, do you realize what a wonderful tradition your people possess?" I looked at my teacher, a learned and successful man who was not Jewish. What is he asking? What does he want from me? Confused, I lowered my head and mumbled, "No, sir, I do not have any idea."

What could I have answered him? I grew up in a very small Jewish community in Texas. My background in Judaism was very poor. And the worst part was that until that moment I had never paid any attention to how little I knew about my people, the Jewish tradition or why I was Jewish.

My memory jumps to a few years later, when I had already begun to take my spiritual condition seriously. It was the year 5726 (1967), and I was studying in Yeshivah University in New York. Suddenly, I realized how far away from my tradition I still was, How far away from being religious. There were so many more just like me....

I remember an argument between myself and one of the other students in my class at the time. He was claiming, "Without a course, how is it possible to hold a conversation about religion with a non-Jew?" And I thought to myself, "How is it possible to talk to another Jew?"

I looked at the French student standing in front of me, and I said, "Please, sit down. I'll be glad to talk to you."