A MATTER OF SPIRITUAL CUSTODY

In 1984 I fought a custody battle for my older son.  The litigation and final results were first covered extensively by the Miami Herald, and eventually the story went out on AP and found its way into newspapers that ranged from the New York Times (then a credible publication), down to tabloids like the Weekly World News. CNN also covered the results (which they saw as right up there with Big Foot and UFOs).  I did not then feel that I could publish a totally factual account of the struggle with real names because I feared it would be fuel for my ex-wife to use in court against me; so I wrote the fictionalized novel found on this page to at least preserve the general sense of the issues involved.  At the time I was just beginning to move away from Christian and Muslim ideas about Jesus, and settle in on a more traditional (and finally Orthodox) set of beliefs.  This book also documents what I learned about a number of false messiahs within Judaism, and clarifies why movements based around them failed.  For more about the real struggle, see Vatican and Hitler.