From the Freedom of Religion Foundation <read>
TV legend Norman Lear was an effective secular activist
It is important to note here that Lear was not Jewish in a religious sense. When once asked to clarify what he had meant by calling himself “a total Jew,” Lear replied: “Well, I had to have been talking culturally, because I’ve never been religious. But I am a total Jew. I don’t like prayer, per se. I like gratitude.”
From the Hartford Courant <read>
Ex-Hartford resident Norman Lear, producer of TV’s ‘All in the Family’ and influential liberal advocate, has died at 101
Lear was born in New Haven, Conn. on July 27, 1922, to Herman Lear, a securities broker who served time in prison for selling fake bonds, and Jeanette, a homemaker who helped inspire Edith Bunker. Like a sitcom, his family life was full of quirks and grudges, “a group of people living at the ends of their nerves and the tops of their lungs,” he explained during a 2004 appearance at the John F.