We were sharing Casey memories the other day, and I forgot to tell one of my stories about him.
Casey always thought I was Jewish. At first I didn’t notice it, probably because it’s pretty easy to live in New York and not notice Jewish cultural references as being anything other than New Yorky. In his last months, he suddenly ran with it. We’d never discuss actual religion, and it snuck up on me, so it’s not like I explained his mistake at first. So, he’d work in, say, little Yiddish expressions or some reference to overcoming Antisemitism, or something about temple. While he had completely missed the mark, he was actually very supportive, I would say even celebratory of what he imagined my faith to be, and he really believed in this entire world I lived in involving bagels, smoked fish, Yeshivas, the Sunday New York Times, perhaps the scholarly study of the Torah and the historical injustices that my people had overcome.
Since he was so supportive, it became really hard to let him down. But finally one day, and I think it might have been the last time I saw him, we were standing around while the smokers smoked during refreshment and Casey was making some reference to, I don’t know, the times I put on my schmata and went out to fight Antisemitism with Woody Allen, and after confused looks began to spread, I finally had to say, “Someone needs to tell Casey that I’m not Jewish because at this point, I don’t have the heart.”
I felt bad. Here was this Irish knucklehead who was into Aleister Crowley going the extra mile to relate to what he imagined was my very mainstream faith because he really cared enough about a friend to try to relate on that level. It does say a lot about Casey. If he was right or wrong, or you were right or wrong, once you were his friend, he had your back.