Then, at least as much as now, the idea of Jewish identity was only little more than a decade removed from the Holocaust and the establishment of Israel.

Childhood American Jews like me, in a very loosely ‘conservative’ home that knew of ‘kosher’ but did not practice it, that spoke ardently of ‘shul’ but never attended, and lived in that sunny strip of paradise at the western end of Route 66 where The Biz was proudly ‘run’ by Jews, had as many non-Jewish friends as Jews and was surrounded by Catholics, Methodists, and Mormons.

Some of my ‘serious relationships’ were with Jewish girls, but moreso with a Christian Scientist, two Catholics and a Baptist. What can I say? Would David Mamet consider me ‘treffe’?

All I know is that this song reverberates deeply where the poetry of things within me lies, and any ‘sectarian’ spin a good many Christians clearly would want to put on it I leave aside. It might have been estranging to be a Jew in a country some considered (and still consider) ‘Christian’, but it might disorient those with fundamentalist ideas to know that there is a mythic reach to some things nominally Christian that goes beyond dogma.