No one ever had a bigger impact on Sunday morning breakfast conversation than Walter Anderson.
Anderson is top gun at Parade, the venerable magazine delivered with 335 Sunday newspapers across the country. Over his 20-plus years as editor, publisher and CEO of Parade Publications, Anderson revitalized the magazine, taking it to new heights (it now reaches 78 million readers every week).
He’s traveled the world, covered historic events and written several best-selling books. He counts statesmen, scholars and movie stars among his friends.
Yet for decades, Anderson kept a secret from the world, a secret he felt comfortable disclosing only recently.
Anderson is now revealing his Jewish origins.
That fact alone wouldn’t normally ruffle feathers in this day and age. But considering his history (raised in a Christian home, married to a Catholic woman), and that he kept quiet about his Jewish background for more than three decades, the revelation is a big deal.
Anderson chronicles his spiritual and professional evolution in a new memoir, “Meant to Be,” a project he considers “the most important thing I’ve done in my career. For the first time, everyone who knows me will understand why I’ve been so interested in certain issues, including Jewish issues,” he said on a recent visit to San Francisco.
In “Meant to Be,” Anderson recounts his childhood with an alcoholic father, and his struggle to survive in a tough Mount Vernon, N.Y., neighborhood. He also describes his shock after his dad’s funeral learning that the man in the coffin was not his father.
During World War II, Anderson’s German Protestant mother had a torrid love affair with Albert Dorfman, a Russian American Jew. But since good girls in the 1940s didn’t leave their families, she eventually put the affair behind her. Her husband never knew the truth.
But that didn’t stop the senior Anderson from treating his “son” like an unwanted pest. Regular savage beatings made Anderson’s life a living hell.
Somehow, he managed to pull through, thanks in large measure to a love of reading. Recalls Anderson, “I’m probably the only kid in America to have cut school to go to the library.”
Though he dropped out of school, Anderson went on to serve in the Marine Corps during the Vietnam War and later launched a successful career as a journalist. His passion for books and writing finally had an outlet, and he made the most of it.
When Anderson’s mother told him about his Jewish origins, she dropped another bombshell: He also had a Jewish half-brother somewhere out there. But she made her son promise never to reveal the truth, a promise he reluctantly kept for decades.
As the years went on, he did confide in his wife, Loretta, and Nobel Prize-winning writer Elie Wiesel, who became a trusted friend. “Having Elie as a mentor has been an indescribable treasure,” says Anderson. “He’s one of the most powerful influences in my life.”
Anderson became a giant of American journalism. He also led the charge in various charitable endeavors, most notably in the field of literacy.
However, his Jewishness remained under wraps. It wasn’t until an emotional visit to the Ukrainian killing fields of Babi Yar, standing on the sacred ground where so many Jews perished, that Anderson knew in his heart that he identified as a Jew.
“I was just not comfortable as a Christian,” he says. “As a child, the reason I rejected God was that God was the Father. I had one already and I
didn’t want another one, considering the kind of father I had.”
He lived quietly and privately as a Jew, studying Torah and lobbying for Soviet Jewry. But it wasn’t until after the deaths of his siblings that Anderson, then age 55, felt he could finally search for his half-brother and, ultimately, come out as a Jew.
A private investigator easily tracked down his brother, Herb Dorfman. Turns out the half-brothers had a lot in common. Both became high-powered New York executives in media; both were happily married family men.
And when they finally met, they bonded with surprising ease. Says Anderson: “He completes me.”
His own grown children were excited to meet new relatives, and one of Anderson’s daughters has even delved more deeply into Judaism through her college studies.
Now, Anderson hopes to inspire others with his life story. “We all experience disappointment, loss and tragedy,” he says. “But we define ourselves by the choices we make.”
What does he say to those who might question the authenticity of his Jewishness?
“I don’t think I joined a group with a membership application,” he says. “I can’t allow others to define me as a human being. I am who I am.”
“Meant to Be” by Walter Anderson
(256 pages, HarperCollins, $23.95).