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By Yvonne Greenberg
 LA JOLLA, California — In From Ghetto to Ghetto: An African American Journey to Judaism, Dr. Ernest H. Adam’s new book, he movingly describes his childhood living with his family in squalor in a basement apartment in Harlem, his coming of age during the Black Power Era as a young adult, and his journey to Judaism. He converted to Conservative Judaism, fittingly had a Bar Mitzvah at age 50 on Martin Luther King’ Jr.’s birthday, and converted to Orthodox Judaism four years ago.
The 62 year-old Adams, who earned his doctorate in clinical psychology from Columbia University and his law degree from New York University, delivered a serious lecture sprinkled with humor at the JCC on November 8th as part of the San Diego Jewish Book Fair.
Adams, his mom (who became a Jehovah’s Witness), dad, and two sisters lived in The Basement, which was also inhabited by mice, roaches, leeches, and had leaking pipes. It had a putrid smell because it was where garbage was dumped. As bad as The Basement was as a place to live, his parents always tried to keep it clean and livable.
He spoke of first encountering racism at the tender young age of 10 during the Jim Crow Era, when, craving a hamburger, he was unable to enter a White Castle restaurant because, as the sign outside warned, “Whites Only.” He retrospectively determined that the assassination of JFK, which occurred when he was 17, had a profound impact on him. He went to an Automotive Trades High School, which he admittedly had no interest in. In fact, his teachers told his parents that he was too intelligent for that school. After high school he went to work on Wall Street and sported a large afro and wore dashikis to emphasize his Black identity.
He was admitted to NYU as an undergraduate, where he suffered “an intellectual crisis of confidence,” because he felt he was unprepared academically even though he did well in the required courses for the university.
At NYU Law School, he met Meyer Goldstein, with whom he became good friends. Like all good relationships, Adams’ and Goldstein’s friendship flourished because of a mutual capacity to listen and hear, but not judge. His friend’s father, Rabbi Baruch Goldstein, survived Auschwitz but his family perished in the Holocaust. “I could see that Blacks in the United States were
subject to the biological theory of race, just like the Jews were subject to such a theory in Germany during the time of Hitler.”
Adams attended Friday night dinners with the Goldsteins “but I couldn’t understand why they had to light the candles and not just turn on the lights.” The rabbi treated Adams like a son, once telling him “even if I had another child I couldn’t do any better.”
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Two of his Jewish friends warned him that Orthodox Judaism was racist and rigid, but he discovered that to be untrue, and found the Orthodox to be very welcoming to him.
Adams believes the Torah is the heart of being a Jew and persuasively made the case during his lecture that God’s helping the Israelites was the first example of affirmative action.
During his initial conversion to Judaism from being a “stone cold atheist," the Rabbi asked Adams whether he had been circumcised. When he replied yes, the Rabbi responded, “Thank goodness!” “In 2005, he converted to Orthodox Judaism. He has visited Israel eight times and has always been well-received there.
Q and A
Why did you chose Judaism when there are other universal religions?
“The Goldsteins opened the door to me. I attended many life cycle events where I got to see Jews up-close- and-personal and these encounters destroyed myths that I had about Jews and Judaism. There is no rational reason why I chose Judaism. I just did.”
In a personal interview he clarified that he belongs to both Conservative and Orthodox synagogues.
He is married to Karen Ruth Sander, a white, Jewish-born Reconstructionist, who at first felt uncomfortable attending the Orthodox services because she didn’t understand Hebrew, but really liked the people. They had a child together, Eliot Akiva Adams, who will be two years old next month.
Adams stressed that they both make compromises with regard to Judaism, except that Adams insists on a kosher kitchen.
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