October, 1962. Johnny Carson became the new host of “The Tonight Show”. The Cuban Missile Crisis brought us to the brink of nuclear war with the Soviet Union. And I was an eleven-year-old Hebrew School student at Temple Beth Shalom on the south shore of Long Island.
Three afternoons a week I was car pooled to this house of worship ostensibly to learn about the history of my people. My teacher was an elderly Old World gentleman named Rabbi Nathan Levitats who spoke English pretty much the same way that I spoke Chinese…not well. Still, he taught us bible stories and because the Hebrew name for Alan is Avraham, which is also the Hebrew name for Abraham, I immediately felt a special kinship with that Old Testament figure known as the “First Jew” because of his belief that there was only one God.