Non­fic­tion

Matthew, Mark, Luke, John…and Me: Grow­ing Up Jew­ish in a Chris­t­ian World

  • From the Publisher
September 1, 2020

An upbring­ing in the WASP enclaves of sub­ur­ban Boston gave Arthur D. Ullian an ear­ly taste of anti­semitism, and lat­er sent him on a search through Judeo-Chris­t­ian his­to­ry for the roots of dis­crim­i­na­tion against the Jew­ish people.

Fol­low­ing a suc­cess­ful career in New Eng­land real estate and a life-chang­ing acci­dent that left him par­a­lyzed at age 51, Arthur D. Ullian began to real­ize that not only did life in a wheel­chair make him feel dif­fer­ent” but he had always felt like an out­sider to some degree. This sent him on a mul­ti-year research project inves­ti­gat­ing anti­semitism from the New Tes­ta­ment to the Inqui­si­tion to the Holo­caust. He came to see that over the course of his life he had, para­dox­i­cal­ly, inter­nal­ized the pre­vail­ing Chris­t­ian view of the Jew­ish char­ac­ter” and uncon­scious­ly attempt­ed to repli­cate the social and mate­r­i­al trap­pings of those who exclud­ed him. From the world of pri­vate schools, cotil­lion class­es, sail­ing yachts, and restrict­ed clubs to the Halls of Con­gress where he suc­cess­ful­ly advo­cat­ed for med­ical research with Christo­pher Reeve, Ullian’s life is one that illus­trates the Jew­ish con­cept of Tikkun Olam, or Repair the World.” In Matthew, Mark, Luke, John…and Me‚ a thought­ful, his­tor­i­cal­ly-ground­ed, and often humor­ous mem­oir‚ he inter­weaves per­son­al expe­ri­ence with his explo­ration of the roots of stereo­types, end­ing with rea­sons to hope that his­toric Jew­ish-Chris­t­ian enmi­ties will fade and broth­er­hood prevail.

Discussion Questions