Dr. Marcus Welby was the star of a popular TV medical drama series that aired in the ’70s. As a medical student in Albany, New York, I watched the show regularly with my friends. One week during my second year of medical school, the episode was about a 19-year-old boy who was dying of a rare genetic disease, and decided to get bar mitvahed before he dies.
“Hey, Todd,” my friend Lenny asked me, “were you ever bar mitzvahed?”
“Nope,” I replied. I had grown up with zero connection to Judaism. The Meister family wasn’t just assimilated — we were beyond Reform.
“So you’re not even a man yet!” Lenny teased. “How can you become a doctor if you’re not a man?”
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