Some Notes on Encounters with Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons
©2022 by John P Hewitt
Listening to SiriusXM a few days ago (“60s Gold,” if you must know) I learned from the helpful DJ that I could soon expect a visit from the Jehovah’s Witness ladies, who have been notably absent for the past two years. The pandemic, it seems, led them to cease door-to-door solicitation, but on September 1, 2022, they would take to the sidewalks again. When they appear at my door, they will doubtless ask if I have heard the good news about Jesus. I will want to say something devilish — “Yes, but it’s fake news.” Exercising self-restraint, however, I will tell them ours is a Jewish household, decline their Watchtower handout, and wish them a good day as I smile and close the door. They are so sincere that I cannot bring myself to be unkind. Besides, they have found purpose in their lives, and who am I to challenge it?
When the Jehovah’s Witnesses hit the streets, Mormon missionaries will not be far behind. They have their own earnest good news to deliver, and although they are not on the same team as the Witnesses, they play in the same league. A few years ago, in fact, they held an unscheduled match on the sidewalk in front of my house. From the west marched two Witness ladies with their armloads of Watchtowers. From the east came two Mormon boys with white shirts and narrow ties, evidently engaged in their two years of missionary work. They came within a few yards of one another in front of my house. The Mormon boys deferred to the ladies, who approached my door first. I greeted them with a smile and offered a pleasant “no thank you” in response to their news. They turned and left, nodding to the Mormon boys, whose turn it now was to offer their good tidings.
I have a soft spot in my heart for the Latter-Day Saints, notwithstanding their history of racism and patriarchal sexism. They have managed to transform a bizarre theology based on their libidinous leader Joseph Smith’s purported translation of gold tablets, which only he could decipher by looking through stones, into a respectable religious denomination. Their quintessentially American, zany religious beliefs and practices inspired a quintessentially American campaign of persecution and violence directed against them. And they built an empire in the American west, complete with theologically correct street layouts, and only sometimes employing the violent tactics others had used against them. Their youth sally forth into the world to spread the news, which seems to lean toward family values and the LDS lifestyle, and to downplay accounts of Welsh-speaking indigenous Americans greeting Jesus on his visit to the new world.
I smile at the Mormon boys and tell them that we are Jewish and not interested in converting. As I do so, I realize that in their eyes we are the Gentiles and they the chosen people. That’s mildly amusing and slightly disconcerting. They have the cheeky habit of posthumously converting our ancestors into LDS adherents and marrying them into their families, which many Jews have found offensive. As I see it, unless you think those activities have some magical effect on the lives of deceased conversos, there is nothing to worry about. Retroactive conversions and marriages are strange, to be sure, but the oddities of LDS theology are features, not bugs.
After the Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormon missionaries have left my doorstep, I find myself wondering what they thought of the encounter. Do they feel they have needlessly missed an opportunity to score a first-class conversion of a Jew into a Pentecostal or Mormon saint? It’s one thing to sway someone in despair into finding solace in Jesus, or to persuade someone convinced the world is falling apart that their Methodism isn’t up to the task of saving the world, or at least keeping kith and kin safe. But surely, I think, Jews must be the big prize! If only they had pressed harder. Have they perhaps learned that Jews generally do not wish to be converted to Christianity, and so have a tacit understanding they are to be treated politely and left to their unsaved selves? Perhaps they are so nonplussed by seeing a Jew in real life that the only thing to do is beat a polite but hasty retreat.
Thinking of these encounters reminds me of other occasions on which I have encountered the bewilderment non-Jews sometimes manifest in their encounters with Jews. A few years ago, we were staying in a cabin at the Old Faithful Lodge in Yellowstone National Park. I had gone outside our rustic abode to retrieve something from our car, which was parked next to the cabin. As I was unlocking the door, an older man standing next to his nearby car (with Indiana plates) said to me, “You must be a Unitarian!” This left me baffled and speechless until he pointed at the back of my Honda CR-V, which had on it the outline of a fish that looked a bit like the identity-signaling Jesus fish that some Christians attach to their cars. My fish, however, had rudimentary legs and the body carried the word “Darwin.” I don’t know why my tribute to evolution would lead anyone to think that I was a Unitarian. Perhaps in this man’s view I was using the symbol as Christians would use it, but with the sort of modification an unbelieving Unitarian might make. Or perhaps he was a Presbyterian or Lutheran so scandalized by the Darwinian fish that he felt that only a scurrilous Unitarian would display it. Perhaps he just had it in for Unitarians.
I found my words: “No, I am a Jew.” No beating around the bush for me, my words implied, take it or leave it, that’s who I am. Was I intentionally abrupt? I don’t know. In a country in which Christian is the default identity, the only question for this man was perhaps what variety of apostate I might be. My answer seemed to throw him off balance, and now he was without words. Clearly, he didn’t anticipate anything like my answer. Something like “oh” or “really” came out of his mouth and he wished me a pleasant day and hastened away.
Please notice that I did not say, “I’m Jewish,” which is how I would normally announce my identity. The suffix “ish” is so attached to some words that we take them for granted as the normal way of self-identification. “I’m a Jew” throws an identity in the other’s face, as do similar expressions, such as “I’m a Swede.” Adding the “ish” softens the delivery just a bit, making the identity a tad less “in your face,” perhaps even approximate, as in “we’ll meet for lunch noonish.” The next step towards disclaiming an identity is to say one is of this or that descent. “I’m of Jewish descent,” or the somewhat more emphatic “My parents were Swedish” serve notice that one’s identification with the tribe in question is limited. I suspect that no one has ever heard Methodists say they are “Methodish,” nor Mormons say they are “Mormonish.” They see no need for approximation or soft-pedaling.
More recently I found myself in a church in Denmark, conversing with two Lutheran gentlemen from Nebraska. I know they were Lutheran because they announced this fact, more than once, and moreover they were apparently to some degree movers and shakers in the Nebraska Lutheran world. They were deeply impressed by the sanctuary, and clearly the ball was in my court to express the appropriate sentiments of awe. The only conceivably Lutheran-relevant thing I could think of was to tell them that years ago a Jewish community of which I was a member held its annual High Holiday services in a local Lutheran Church. I didn’t mention the fact that reciting a Torah blessing with a giant cross looming overhead gave me a case of the willies. I just said that I had very warm feelings toward the Lutherans for making their sanctuary available to us. “You’re Jewish?” one of them said to me. “Yes,” I said. His response was immediate: “What’s your name?” Speechless for a moment, I replied, “Jack.” “No,” he said, “I mean your last name.” “Hewitt,” I said, and then I couldn’t resist: “Why do you ask?” “Well,” he replied, “you said you were Jewish, so I just wondered about your name.” I think my quizzical expression and the tilt of my head made him feel a bit embarrassed, and the conversation ended.
OK. I went on my way and they theirs. Perhaps, I thought, my looks didn’t confirm their stereotype of an older Jewish man, so they wanted to me to validate my claim with at least a Jewish-sounding name. If so, I disappointed them by announcing a very English-sounding name. Should I have pointed out that there have been Rabbis with the surname Hewitt, and that Don Hewitt, who ran the CBS news program “Sixty Minutes” was decidedly Jewish? One of his forbears changed the family name from Hurwitz to Hewitt, so I should perhaps have lied to the Lutherans and said my name was Hurwitz. Or perhaps Roosevelt, just to test them, or Soros, to yank their probably conservative chains a bit. In any case, I felt like I had been challenged to prove my identity. As a converted Jew, I’ve experienced variations of that sort of challenge from time to time from other Jews, who wonder implicitly how authentically Jewish I could possibly be. But there in Roskilde, Denmark I was, somewhat more explicitly, being challenged by a pair of goyim. I mean, really!
For now, I’m keeping watch for the Watchtower ladies and doing a bit of LDS missionary spotting when I’m out and about. They’ll come, I know they will, and I’m ready for them. No hiding behind the curtain until they go away. No making fun of them, for they are engaged in work they feel called to do, and it’s no skin off my back. And, in spite of temptation, no engaging them in extended discussions just to egg them on. I’m not into bad faith.