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Sicily’s Jews have their first rabbi in 500 years. Italy’s Jewish establishment won’t accept them.
CATANIA, Italy (JTA) — Rabbi Gilberto Ventura believes his synagogue has the most beautiful view in the world. Located in the tower of a century-old castle on the slopes of Mt. Etna in the eastern Sicilian city of Catania, the synagogue is wedged between a snow-capped volcano and the sun-kissed Mediterranean sea.
The 49-year-old Brazil-born rabbi also thinks his congregation is one of the most unique in the world. It’s made up mainly of Bnei Anusim — descendants of Jews forced to hide their religious practice and convert to Catholicism after the Spanish Inquisition of 1492. Before that infamous decree, Sicily was home to tens of thousands of Jews.
The synagogue, which was first inaugurated last fall, is the result of decades of grassroots efforts by those descendants in Catania to find each other and forge a sense of community that had been lacking for centuries.
Hiring a full-time rabbi was the last piece of the puzzle, and Ventura, who has a long history of working with communities of Bnei Anusim in Brazil, was a natural candidate. He arrived in Catania in January.
“I really believe that the future Judaism in the world, especially in some places like Italy and, of course, Brazil, is connected to the Bnei Anusim, and the need to embrace the Bnei Anusim,” Ventura said.
But in an ongoing point of frustration, the formal organization representing Italian Jewry, the Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), does not recognize them as Jews.
“In the case of Catania, this strange Jewish community hasn’t passed all the steps the law requires,” said Giulio Di Segni, the vice president of UCEI.
He was referring to the fact that the community did not seek UCEI’s permission before establishing themselves under the name “Jewish community of Catania.” Per Italian law, UCEI has a monopoly on acknowledging and establishing Jewish communal life in Italy — including authority over who can use the term “Jewish community of” in formal ways.
“UCEI can’t accept this because it is too easy,” he added. “We are not against their synagogue or their way of prayer, but they cannot use the name ‘Jewish community of Catania.’”
The rooftop of the Castello Leucatia, where the community meets, has a large menorah and a view of the Mediterranean. (David I. Klein)
Catania’s Jewish community members told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency a variety of stories about their Jewish backgrounds. Some came from families that always outwardly identified as Jewish. Others identified the source of family traditions practiced by parents and grandparents who — as descendants of Jews who faced persecution for practicing Judaism — still felt the need to hide aspects of their Jewishness from the public eye.
In the midst of questions about their ancestry, the majority of the Jewish community members have undergone Orthodox conversions. But that hasn’t led to their acceptance.
Benito Triolo, president of the Catania Jewish community, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency that he first came to Judaism at the age of 40, thanks to the insight of a Jewish friend in Palermo, Sicily’s capital and most populous city. Working together, they established a Charter of Sicilian Jewry, which aimed to identify and highlight the Jewish heritage of neighborhoods across the island.
While working on that project, Triolo came closer to his own Jewish heritage, and after years of study, he completed an Orthodox conversion through a rabbi in Miami 25 years ago.
Another community member, who was born Alessandro Scuderi but today goes by the name of Yoram Nathan, first felt drawn to Judaism as a child watching news of the Six-Day War in 1967. At first, he was laughed at by other members of his family — except his grandmother, who happened to have a tradition of lighting eight candles in early winter and baking flat unleavened bread around Easter time.
Decades of study later, Scuderi also completed a formal conversion to Judaism before an Orthodox rabbinic court, or beit din.
Others had more straightforward backgrounds.
“I was born in a Jewish family,” said David Scibilia, the community’s secretary. “Frankly speaking, we were not hiding or deep in the shadows in this part of the country.”
Scibilia said that his father explained to him that he was a Jew as early as the age of four. Within their own home, they observed holidays and kept Shabbat — no easy task since Italian schools at the time of his childhood in the 1970s had class on Saturdays. He did not eat meat until he was an adult and was able to acquire kosher meat.
He said that his family had maintained their Jewish identity since the days of the Inquisition and married amongst a small group of other similar families.
“I was a Jew, but not part of any community,” Scibilia said. “Just my family was my community.”
An aerial view of the city of Catania shows the Mt. Etna volcano in the background, Jan. 28, 28, 2022. (Fabrizio Villa/Getty Images)
Scibilia explained that once he had a child of his own, he realized he did not want her to have the same lonely Jewish experience. But when he reached out to UCEI, he said he found the proverbial door to organized Jewish life shut. Earning membership in Jewish community organizations across Western Europe involves a strict vetting process, and many groups require applicants to prove their mothers’ Jewishness according to varying standards.
Scibilia’s experience was echoed by Jews outside of the community in Catania and across Italy’s south who talked to JTA — a feeling of neglect or rejection by UCEI for those who fall outside of the norms of Italian Judaism.
UCEI currently recognizes 19 Jewish communities across northern Italy and just one in the south, in Naples, which has jurisdiction over the rest of the southern half of the peninsula and the island of Sicily. The organization recognizes around 28,000 Jews in total across the country.
Scibilia noted that despite his Jewish upbringing, he has multiple certificates of conversion from Orthodox rabbis. The first came from a beit din of American rabbis from who traveled to Syracuse, Sicily, to assess Scibilia and others like him in Sicily. His second comes from the conversion court of the Israeli Chief Rabbinate, which is known for its exacting Orthodox standards.
Both were rejected by Italy’s own Orthodox rabbinate, and he was forced to stand before another rabbinic court in Italy.
“I have at this moment — don’t start to laugh — three documents that prove that I am a Jew, two Ketubah [marriage contracts] for my wedding, and so on, again and again and again,” Scibilia said.
Others’ experiences in the region have been even more fraught, he said.
“The problem in Italy, that if you try to study with any rabbi here, you can study for 20 years, maybe you can die even before you reach the end of the tunnel,” he said. “From my point of view, they are playing with the spirituality of these people.”
In a statement last year, UCEI called the the Catanians “a phantom ‘Jewish community’” and accused them of “misleading the local institutions and deluding believers and sympathizers into adhering to traditional religious rites, never actually recognized or authorized by the Italian rabbinical authority.”
“Between UCEI and the Italian republic is an agreement signed in ‘87,” Di Segni said. “This law means everything about Jewish communities in Italy is through the Union Jewish community in Italy (UCEI).”
Noemi Di Segni, shown in Rome in 2017, is president of the Union of Jewish Communities in Italy. (Stefano Montesi/Corbis via Getty Images)
Triolo said he isn’t too concerned about UCEI’s recognition.
“Ours is a process of refounding old communities that existed as early as 200 and up to 1492,” Triolo said. “Our recognition is already in our history. At that time the UCEI did not exist. We were there and we simply returned!”
No one knows when Jews first arrived in Sicily, but the Talmud tells a story that claims Rabbi Akiva, a well-known early rabbinic sage, visited the island in the early second century and told of a small Jewish community in Syracuse. Some historians believe the Roman writer Caecilius Calactinus — who was born in a town near Messina in the first century B.C.E — to have been of Jewish origin.
All agree that over the course of history, Sicily’s Jews watched as the island was traded between Greeks, Carthaginians, Romans, Arabs, Normans and half a dozen other empires. The narrative has also long been that Jewish life there ended five centuries ago, under Spanish rule.
The Spanish empire’s Jews suffered the same fate as Jews from the Iberian peninsula, who would become known to the world as Sephardim when they were expelled in 1492.
The descendents of Spain — and Sicily — spread throughout the world, establishing communities in North Africa, throughout the Ottoman empire, in the Netherlands and ultimately the British Isles and North America, as it was believed that Judaism faded away in their homelands.
Catania’s Jews disagree, arguing that many Jews practiced their religion over the centuries, in secret.
Triolo and others in the community formally inaugurated their synagogue in October. It was furnished with Torah scrolls donated by the Ohev Sholom synagogue in Washington, D.C.
The synagogue is situated in the tower of the Castello Luecatia, an early 20th-century structure built by a merchant believed to be of Jewish origin. The building was granted to the community by the city’s municipality.
“So they had the people, they had a synagogue, but they needed somebody to teach,” Ventura said.
The community meets in the Castello Luecatia, an early 20th-century structure built by a merchant believed to be of Jewish origin. (David I. Klein)
Ventura, who is Orthodox, may be the island’s first permanent working rabbi in over 500 years, but it’s not his first time working with Bnei Anusim.
Back in his native Brazil, Ventura was the leader of the Synagogue Without Borders, an organization through which he served 15 communities in Brazil’s north that were made up of descendants of Jews who came with the first Portuguese colonists to South America and who ultimately had to hide their identity as the Inquisition spread to the New World.
His work there put him in conflict with Brazil’s Jewish establishment, too. But Ventura is unfazed.
In Brazil, he founded synagogues and summer camps and built mikvahs and yeshivas across the country’s north. Since 2015, he has facilitated the conversion of hundreds of Bnei Anusim, bringing them back into the fold of mainstream Orthodox Judaism.
“I am a teacher since I was 21 years old,” he said. “Now I am 49, along with my wife. It’s one of the things we love to do, and know how to do. To teach Jewish philosophy, to teach Torah, to teach Tanakh, to teach the story of the Jews in Brazil, and now we are starting to teach the story of the Jews in Italy, the story of the Inquisition etcetera.”
In Castello Leucatia, he leads Shabbat services with the energy of a gospel preacher, pausing between prayers to explain a verse, teach a new tune, welcome latecomers, or simply to allow the congregation to talk.
Catania community members are shown at a recent gathering. (David I. Klein)
“This is what’s most important,” he remarked during one such lull on a recent Friday night. “That they get to talk and be a community.”
Ventura had organized a Shabbat event for other Jews across Italy — from Naples to Turin — who shared his belief that the future of Judaism was in communities like the one in Catania.
“Our point of view of Judaism is that we have to be a part of society, we don’t have to insulate ourselves, we believe that Judaism has a lot to contribute to society,” Ventura said. “In Brazil, we have a lot of connections with people from the periphery, in the favela and other communities, immigrants, Indians, etcetera. So that is something we want to establish here, to teach the people a Judaism that brings good things to the wider society.”
Ventura isn’t the only one working with such communities in southern Italy. Across the Strait of Messina, Jewish life has also been on the rise in Calabria — the toe of Italy’s boot — thanks to an American-born rabbi named Barbara Aiello.
Aiello, though raised in Pittsburgh, is of Calabrian descent. She returned to the land of her ancestors in the early 2000s and began working with the Bnei Anusim there, ultimately establishing a synagogue called Ner Tamid del Sud, meaning “eternal light of the south.”
“Until now, nobody took care of Judaism in the south of Italy,” Scibilia said while looking out at the Mediterranean from the terrace of Castello Leucatia.
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House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries calls for ‘dramatic change’ in Israel policy
(JTA) — U.S. House of Representatives Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, a New York Democrat poised to become the chamber’s speaker in January, called for a significant shift in the U.S.-Israel relationship but stopped short of opposing defense partnerships.
“The status quo is unacceptable, and we need dramatic change,” Jeffries told reporters at a Thursday press conference.
Jeffries expressed a need for such change with respect to the West Bank, to Gaza and to a memorandum of understanding with Israel over military aid set to expire in 2028. That agreement, signed by the Obama administration in 2016, pledged $38 billion in military aid for Israel from fiscal years 2019 through 2028.
President Donald Trump has said he will wind the aid down before it is set to lapse, citing Israel’s unpopularity, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also backs ending military aid and replacing it by strengthening U.S.-Israel military cooperation.
But when asked about recent demands from Sen. Chris Van Hollen to remove provisions on defense collaborations with Israel from the National Defense Authorization Act – the model of what Netanyahu hopes to sustain – Jeffries responded that he hadn’t spoken with the senator. Van Hollen, a Democrat from Maryland, plans to challenge Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer leadership of the Senate Democratic caucus when Democrats take over the chamber in January.
Instead, Jeffries said that “things have to dramatically change over in the Middle East,” without elaborating on the details of such changes. He stressed the importance of ensuring “a safe and secure Israel living side by side as a Jewish and democratic state with an independent Palestinian state that provides dignity and self-determination for the Palestinian people.” Netanyahu and much of the Israeli public oppose the establishment of a Palestinian state.
While Jeffries noted that he wasn’t saying anything he hasn’t “previously said publicly,” his decision to reiterate this need for change following the election as Democrats are set to seize control of Congress demonstrates how the party is adopting a more critical posture on Israel.
This past summer, Jeffries wrote to colleagues urging them to reject an amendment proposed by Rep. Thomas Massie, a Republican from Kentucky, that would have cut military aid to Israel. While a slight majority of Democrats voted in favor of the measure, it was defeated after getting no Republican support aside from its sponsor.
Jeffries had argued at the time that “there are more decisive ways to achieve the urgent change necessary when it comes to the far-right Netanyahu government,” warning that Massie’s amendment would have restricted Israel’s ability to confront Hamas, Hezbollah and other terror groups.
Nonetheless, Jeffries also noted in the letter that the Obama-era memorandum of understanding “expires imminently,” and that “a meaningful change in direction is needed.” Writing that Israel has a robust economy and is capable of paying for its own weapons, he said that future security arrangements “should be structured consistently with defense agreements that exist with our other Western allies.”
Since writing that letter in July in the lead-up to the midterm elections, Jeffries focused primarily on domestic issues and didn’t often address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. On Thursday, however, the topic was back on the table.
“We’ll work as a caucus to make sure that we can bring about the just and lasting peace that Israelis and Palestinians deserve,” Jeffries said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post House Democratic leader Hakeem Jeffries calls for ‘dramatic change’ in Israel policy appeared first on The Forward.
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Ahmed Moor, John Fetterman’s first challenger, envisions ‘Palestine-Israel, from the river to the sea’
(JTA) — When Ahmed Moor started his freshman year at the University of Pennsylvania in 2002, he remembers navigating an atmosphere of Islamophobia around the one-year anniversary of Sept. 11.
He recounted how as he was exiting a derelict math building known for what Moor described as its “dungeon-like” interior, he overheard a kippa-clad student commenting on the grossness of the neighborhood, noting that “it’s not like Ramallah or anything.”
“It was a tough environment,” Moor said, recalling that during a campus protest in 2003 against the Iraq war, he was met with “Go home, terrorist” and other such slogans. “You kind of build a muscle around that early on.”
More than two decades later, the 42-year-old Palestinian American writer is now Pennsylvania’s first candidate to announce a 2028 bid for Democrat John Fetterman’s U.S. Senate seat – running on a platform of dignity, equal rights and affordability.
Though still two years away, this high-stakes race could change how much support Israel gets from the Democratic Party. Fetterman, who hasn’t declared if he will run again, has irked many fellow Democrats by joining Republicans on certain issues, particularly in defending Israel, but has also maintained a powerful voice in a caucus that has held just 47 seats for the past two years. But that influence may soon dissipate, with the Democratic caucus poised to have at least 55 out of 100 seats when Congress convenes in January.
Regardless of whether Fetterman chooses to run, for Moor – a Democratic Socialists of America member from Philadelphia – to secure the seat would require a dramatic shift in voter trends across purplish Pennsylvania.
Moor enters the playing field with radically different stances on Israel and foreign policy from those that Fetterman has espoused. Moor’s priorities include stopping the funding of wars and trimming the military’s budget in general, as well as many domestic issues that Fetterman has historically supported, such as universal healthcare and childcare and affordable housing.
“The DSA presents a really good opportunity for the Democratic Party to re-energize, reinvent itself,” Moor said, describing the DSA as “a blood transfusion.”
An avowed anti-Zionist, Moor wants economic sanctions against Israel and to hold the country’s leaders accountable for what he alleges are war crimes. Ultimately, he said he hopes to see the development of one “Palestine-Israel” state that has equal rights for all — a dream that he said is rooted in American principles of emancipation.
Born in Gaza, Moor moved to Philadelphia as a child and went on to earn degrees from both Penn and Harvard, and started a career in finance. He then switched to journalism, reporting in Beirut and Egypt for The Guardian and other outlets, and co-editing the book “After Zionism: One State for Israel and Palestine.” He also spent many years in Jordan, where he launched a peer-to-peer lending organization, before returning to Philadelphia in 2021.
Looking back at his years as a college student, Moor recalled experiencing some “ambivalence about being an American, the promise of life, liberty, pursuit of happiness, the equality before the law,” particularly while he felt like people viewed him as an outsider.
But he said that things began to look up when he joined the Free Palestine Action Network, a fledgling campus group that existed before Students for Justice in Palestine.
Turning to the situation in the Middle East today, Moor said he still has family members in Gaza, as well as some in the West Bank. Many of his relatives in Gaza, he added, were killed during the war.
He noted that his aunt “was diagnosed with cancer and died a very painful death shortly after that because the hospital itself was destroyed.”
In the future, Moor said he would envision “all of Palestine-Israel, from the river to the sea” as one state with equal rights for “Jews, Palestinians, Druze” and everyone else, including “all of the East Asians who work there, who built lives there.” Lebanese areas currently under Israeli military occupation would go back to Lebanon, while the Golan Heights, captured by Israel in 1967, would go back to Syria, he added.
The leaders of this hypothetical state, according to Moor, would need “to represent everyone who lives under its authority,” with the Knesset legislating laws, the military serving all the people and Palestinians earning a right of return.
Moor compared the current phase of this conflict to mile 15 of a marathon: “Every footfall from here to the finish, 11 more miles, is painful.” Crossing the finish line, he argued, will require “the emancipation of the Palestinians, the right-sizing of our understanding of equal rights, where Jews don’t have superior rights in that country.”
Whether Moor’s Middle East positions will resonate with Pennsylvania voters when they choose their next senator in 2028 remains uncertain.
“If we look at the surveys leading up to the election, that issue didn’t come up a great deal,” Berwood Yost, a public policy expert at Franklin & Marshall College, told JTA. “It was the concerns about personal finances and economics and affordability that were largely driving voters.”
Daniel Hopkins, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania, told JTA that although the conflict is “highly evocative and emotive,” his polls have shown that “relatively few voters rank it as an important issue,” except in deep blue Philadelphia.
Yet even if the conflict doesn’t have a direct influence on most voters, Hopkins said that its divisiveness helps candidates distinguish themselves from rivals. For example, he continued, a stance on this subject can often serve as a shortcut to other views.
“The issue partly functions as a within-party issue that helps certain Democrats differentiate themselves from other Democrats,” he added.
For Moor, the idea of maintaining the status quo, which he described as preserving alliances just “to shore Israeli apartheid” would be inconsistent with American ideals.
He rejected the notion of a possible path forward with Gadi Eisenkot, the leader of Israel’s opposition bloc, who recently received a mandate to form a government to replace Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition.
“Jewish Israelis are confronted with a difficult frame now,” Moor said. “They don’t have any credible leaders who aren’t also implicated in genocide or massive war crimes.”
Asked if he considered Hamas militants to be war criminals, he responded that “everybody who’s committed a war crime is a war criminal.” But he argued that naming Hamas as such would be irrelevant, as the Israeli military had already killed most Hamas combatants, including former leader Yahya Sinwar.
Fetterman was still posting on X this week about “disarming Hamas,” noting that “this vote and voice will always follow our special ally.” Fetterman’s office did not respond to a request for comment.
Moor characterized the senator as “in the rearview mirror for Democrats,” adding that “Fetterman’s story is finished.”
Hopkins, from Penn, disagreed with that conclusion, pointing out that “no one knows whether Fetterman will seek reelection,” and that if he does so, it’s also unclear “whether he will do that as a Democrat.” Hopkins acknowledged, however, that the senator’s vote would be less powerful when it comes to legislating because of the decisive Democratic majority.
As for other possible candidates, Hopkins is looking at potential contenders such as U.S. Rep. Chris Deluzio, who represents southwestern Pennsylvania residents in Beaver and Allegheny counties, including some Pittsburgh suburbs. He also named Conor Lamb, an attorney who served in Congress from 2018 to 2023.
Yost, from Franklin & Marshall, cited these names as well, while noting that “Fetterman has alienated a number of people in his party.”
“There’s been increasing dissatisfaction among his base, including people who voted for him,” added Yost, who directs the college’s Center for Opinion Research and its Floyd Institute for Public Policy.
But Yost also stressed that “running in a state like Pennsylvania for an office like the U.S. Senate is a significant undertaking” that requires large amounts of travel, networking and fundraising.
“Starting now is not a bad idea,” he said. “Two years will be here before you know it.”
Although voters might not be “dialed in” to the 2028 elections for a while, Penn’s Hopkins added that “now is the period of time when candidates are beginning to jockey.”
“One strategy by declaring early might be to try to tell other contenders who would be in your lane, ‘Hey, I’m in this lane,’” Hopkins said.
As for the chances of a Democratic socialist in a swing state like Pennsylvania, Hopkins didn’t rule Moor out but said that “any such individual would have an uphill climb.”
Another Democratic socialist who Moor said he finds inspiring, Chris Rabb, recently won a U.S. House seat in Pennsylvania, but he did so in a heavily Democratic district of Philadelphia, Hopkins noted.
“Pennsylvania has not often nominated candidates who are on the extremes of their party,” he said.
But Yost also acknowledged that “these days, people want to see non-politicians running,” so Moor’s novice status would not necessarily create a barrier to his success.
Despite his relative inexperience, Moor said he is reaching for the Senate seat due to his passion for foreign policy. He said he has concrete ideas for optimizing the military, by deflating a “bloated weapons program,” focusing more on drones and then reinvesting in both jobs programs and climate resilience initiatives.
Recognizing the mammoth expense that running in a state like Pennsylvania involves, Moor said that his fundraising efforts have started out strong, with a lot of “small-dollar” contributions, including from many Jewish donors.
Asked if he had a message for Jewish voters, Moor said that he would convey that “we’re Americans first” and that he believes “in the dignity agenda for all Americans.”
“Poverty is indifferent about whether you’re Jewish or Palestinian, Black, white, whatever,” he said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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What Muhammad Ali taught me from his Jerusalem hotel
The one time I got to talk to Muhammad Ali was a summer evening when I was working at one of my favorite college internships — in the McClurg Court newsroom of WBBM Newsradio 78, the Chicago affiliate of CBS Radio.
The scene came to mind earlier this week when I released a new audio documentary called Broken Hologram about Ali and his brief stint as a Broadway star. But back then, I was one of a quartet of interns who included a cool girl from Hyde Park named Gwen Billings with whom I occasionally took lunch at a nearby hot dog stand and discussed important news figures like, say, Depeche Mode and The Smiths. There was also Linda, a hard-nosed news reporter in the mold of Holly Hunter in Broadcast News. Sometimes she came around to my cubicle and took sips of my Dr. Pepper. Not in a flirtatious way, more in a proto-Daniel Day-Lewis “I drink your milkshake” kind of way. There was a fratty guy named Scott who wore a class ring from (redacted). He went on to a lucrative career, just not in journalism. There was one other dude; he was from Crown Point, Indiana, but that’s just about all I remember.
My job consisted of answering phones, ripping wire copy from the AP and UPI machines, getting sources on the phone and calling every major fire and police station every night to see if there was a story to be reported (“Hi, Sergeant Kupka, it’s Adam from WBBM: Do you have anything working in your area?”).
Even though every sergeant told me the same thing every night, I kept calling because that’s what journalists do: You keep making the calls. In fact, I did pretty much whatever was asked of me, and turned feisty only when one of the few asshole reporters tried to get me to run downstairs to the loading area to fetch him a “Green Streak” edition of the Tribune so he could check on his stocks or intimated that my job description should include making him coffee.
“Sure could do with a cup o’ coffee right now, Adam.”
“Cool, why don’t you make yourself one?”
Note: The individual referred to is decidedly not John Cody, a truly great man who remains a friend to this day. (Fun fact: During Vietnam, John worked for Stars & Stripes alongside Seth Lipsky, founder of the English language edition of the Forward)
Nor am I referring to sports reporter Rich King, a prince of a man who always offered to get people sandwiches from the White Hen Pantry (“Anyone need anything from ‘The Hen?’”).
Sometimes, when the news day got super-slow — for example, when Notre Dame football coach Lou Holtz was in the studio doing a live call-in show — I passed the time by trying to guess the usually ridiculously easy passwords for the WBBM staff’s new computers and snooping in the reporters’ early version of email in a futile effort to find anything interesting. Apologies to the late Dale McCarren (DMC123).
I was working the evening shift when the top news story was about Father Lawrence Martin Jenco, a Catholic priest from Joliet, Illinois, who had been taken hostage in Beirut while he was working for a relief agency. Muhammad Ali was part of a delegation that had flown to the Middle East to try to arrange his release.
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My supervisor was a terrific guy named Duane Gray, an African-American Conservative who was big on conspiracy theories (“You should read this book. It’s called The Terror Network.”). He was a great manager and colleague who made sure that we kept to the schedule and that traffic, weather, sports and news headlines always came right when they were supposed to. On this particular night, Duane gave me a mission: “Get ‘The Champ’ on the phone.”
“Uh, how do I do that, Duane?”
“Call every hotel,” he said.
He scrawled a list of hotels in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem on a legal pad and I started calling Information to get their numbers. Advantage of working for a CBS affiliate: You got to make all the long-distance calls you wanted.
How many calls did I make? What were the names of all the hotels? I have no idea. But I do remember that one of them was the King David Hotel in Jerusalem because this time, when I asked to be transferred to Ali’s room, no one said, “Sorry, no one here by that name.”
Ali picked up. His voice had that raspy quality it got after he retired from boxing. “Hullo?”
“Hi, I’m calling from Newsradio 78. I was hoping one of our anchors could speak with you.”
“You’re calling from Chicago?” he asked.
“Yeah.”
“Man,” Ali told me, sounding weary but amiable. “It sounds like you’re calling from right next door.”
Duane could be a wise-ass and a cynic, but now he was star-struck. He sprang to his feet. “Is that the Champ?”
I nodded.
Duane grabbed the phone. “How’re you doin, Champ? You’re gonna be on with Dale McCarren. I’m gonna patch you through, Champ.” He gave me a hearty high-five.
Some time later — perhaps after a week, perhaps after two — when Madonna was in town for some concert, movie junket or photo shoot and Duane told me he wanted to get her on the air, I knew exactly what to do.
After I got her on the phone at her hotel and transferred the call to Duane, he shouted: “This kid,” he said, complimenting both me and his own managerial talent, “has the best news instincts of anyone in this newsroom!”
“Hello, Madonna?” Duane said into the phone. “You’re gonna be on with Dale; let me patch you through.”
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