My mother, Dorothy, was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio by Romanian and Hungarian immigrants. My Bubby kept a kosher home with two kitchens. My father, Leon, was born in Sosnowiec, Poland, right near Auschwitz, in 1905. He immigrated to the United States in 1918. His parents spoke only Yiddish and I met them twice. One of those times, my grandfather was wearing tefillin.

I was born in the Bronx on December 1, 1947. Incredibly, my father took home videos of my bris. It was a heck of a party, although I didn't enjoy it much. My parents spoke Yiddish to each other, thinking we didn't understand - but we did.

When my father immigrated to the U.S., he learned to speak English, went to law school and passed the New York Bar in 1932, right in the middle of the Depression. He found a job as a traffic judge, which he didn't like. Eventually, he joined the Veterans Administration. During the war, he was part of the Office of Strategic Services, the forerunner of the CIA.

In 1953, when I was four years old, we moved to Philadelphia. For $7,000, you could buy a house, and the GI Bill paid for it! A year later, we moved to Levittown, one of the first modern American suburbs. We had our own home and it was glorious.

My mother was stubborn and in many ways, the ultimate Jewish mother. I wanted to play sports, but that's what the gentiles did. To make matters worse, they played on Saturdays, so I couldn't go.

I was teased constantly for being Jewish. When we walked to Shabbos services, kids threw rocks at us, yelling, "Kike" and "dirty Jews." We couldn't fight back because, "Jews don't do that."

I went to Hebrew school twice a week and I didn't want to go. What I did instead, was to go to communion with the Catholic kids. So I grew up being Jewish, doing Jewish, and hating Jewish. I wanted to forget about the old-country and just be an American.

I hated my name, Elliott - a Jewish name. And Oppenheim was the worst name ever because of the association with Oppenheimer and the atomic bombs.

My bar mitzvah loomed, and when I told my mother I didn't want to do it, she responded with such loving and memorable words: "I don't care what you think - you're going to be bar mitzvahed." the detente came when I said, "OK, I'll do it but then I'm never going into a synagogue again."

When the bar mitzvah finally came, it was clear that the "bar" was for the parents, and the "mitzvah" was for the kid. I was the poster boy who was going to become a doctor. It had no spiritual meaning for me.

Eventing, 2006, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

After high school, I went to Occidental College in Southern California. It was 1965, the era of drugs and rock and roll - of which I did it all. Then I went to medical school at UC Irvine.

My mother made it clear that if I married a gentile, it would kill her - so that's what I did. After fifteen years of marriage, two kids, and a medical practice, we got divorced.

One day, in Santa Fe, New Mexico, my wife and I were cleaning out the garage, and I found an old, dusty trumpet case. It brought me straight to my childhood, when I learned to play the trumpet in third grade. In tenth grade I started taking lessons at the Curtis Institute in Philadelphia My instructor was Sigmund Hering, a Holocaust survivor and the and the principal trumpet player of the Philadelphia Symphony. He loved me. He used to say in his thick Yiddish accent, "Oppenheim - you work so hard. Let's see if we can make music."

Through him, I met Leonard Bernstein, Leopold Stokowski, and Pablo Casals - I was hanging out with the Philadelphia Symphony as a kid! I thought this was normal - I had no idea I was meeting the world's greatest musicians.

So thirty-five years later I found this trumpet. I cleaned it up, put in the mouthpiece, and my life changed. Within a year I was playing in orchestras.

Because of the music I was playing, I found an affiliation with a church in Santa Fe as their trumpet player. The pastor, Ben, was very kind to me and didn't mind that I was Jewish. He said, "If you like this Lutheran thing, why don't you get baptized? we really like you; become one of us!"

I told him, "The problem is, I don't believe in G-d." He said, "That's okay; just take what you want."

I like the trumpet playing, the sermons, and the quiet of the services. Also, at that time, my marriage declined. She thought if we did a recommitment ceremony, it would bring us closer.

The whole congregation, about two-hundred people, got all tizzied up about the ceremony. Ben explained to me that I just needed to have my head sprinkled with water, drink the consecrated wine, and receive the sacrament. The I would be a Lutheran; I would be one of them.

The day came. I was all dressed up, and so was my wife. I was preparing the piece I was going to play at th eservice when a voice came to me. It was G0d. I felt a vibration on my forehead where we put on the tefillin. I hadn't put on a tefillin since my bar mitzvah.

The voice said:

"Eliyahu ben Moshe, I am G-d speaking to you. Do you know who you are? I have been with you your whole life. What you have achieved is not your doing. I have kept you strong. You cannot do this."

"But I don't want to be Jewish."

"You can't 'un-Jewish.' Your skin your muscles, your brain is Jewish. Even if you become a Lutheran, you're still jewish."

I was very angry. "Why are you disrupting this? Why?"

"Because you're one of us. You can't do this. We love you and we want you. Even if you do this, it will have no true meaning. You are a Jew."

I didn't remember much Hebrew, but I said, "Shema Yisrael Adonai Eloheinu Adonai Echad."

I am a Jew!

I told the pastor, "Go on with the ceremony, but I'm not doing this. I really like playing the trumpet here, but I am not a Lutheran. I am Jew."

I left Santa Fe and enrolled at the University of Oregon to study trumpet and eventually got a master's degree in trumpet performance.

While I was at the University of Oregon, I went to a Passover seder. I suddenly remembered my mother's dying wish to me: "Honey, there is only one thing I want you to do: say Kaddish for me."

Elliott at Chabad of Missoula's Chanukah celebration in 2018.

It has transformed my life.

No matter how big of a macher you are, that doesn't make you Jewish. What matters is your spirituality and how you live your life. I understand that my connection to G-d is by putting on tefillin and wearing my yarmulke. You know? Being a Jew.