Norman Podhoretz, a Grateful American

It is one of my favorite stories, told in Norman Podhoretz’s 2000 book My Love Affair with America—a tale for which I told my friend Norman, who died this week at the age of 95, I am eternally grateful, as it features so often in my sermons:

In 1950, Podhoretz, a student of English literature at Columbia University, was awarded the Kellett Fellowship, allowing him to continue his studies at Cambridge. Another awardee of the Kellett, heading to Oxford, "was someone named Emmanuel Chill, whom I had never met." Podhoretz’s mother, reading of the other Kellett fellow, suddenly recalled her journey to the United States from Eastern Europe decades before. "When I came to America," she reflected, "an older girl named Ida Chiel from my village was on the same ship, going to join her husband, who was the son of Mendel Chiel. She already knew a little English, and during the trip she taught me to say, ‘How do you do, my dear father,’ so I could greet him like a regular American when we landed. Anyway, I lost touch with her after a while, but I’ll bet Emmanuel Chill is her son, named after Mendel."

Podhoretz tells us he retorted impatiently, "For Godsakes, Mom, I don’t even know if the guy is Jewish. Anyway, it’s too crazy." Yet she was undeterred, and despite her son’s protestations, she phoned Emmanuel Chill’s mother and introduced herself: "Mrs. Chill, I’m the other mother and I’m calling to congratulate you."