“In this fascinating and personal book, Dr. David Weill takes us on a journey to understand his Jewish identity and heritage. It can be a guide for anyone who is searching for an elusive sense of belonging.”
—Walter Isaacson
A heartfelt memoir about the search for religion and identity
“I’m not Jewish.” For years, that’s what David Weill told anyone who asked about his religious background. Yes, his father was a Jew who had left Nazi Germany as a boy. But his mother was a Southern Baptist. Growing up in New Orleans, religion wasn’t something his family discussed, let alone practiced. As an adult, he developed a fervent zeal and profound devotion to his work as a specialist in organ transplants. Transplantation was all he needed to define and fulfill him—until a crisis shook him to the core.
As a boy, Weill’s only experience with religion was when he accompanied Deborah, the family’s domestic help and his second mother figure, to her all-Black Baptist church. As a young doctor, he fell in love with Jackie, a nurse from rural Iowa and a devout Catholic. Much to the chagrin of her parents, they were married in a Dallas hotel rather than a church. After settling in Palo Alto, close to Stanford University Medical Center where Weill headed the heart and lung transplant program, their two daughters were baptized and confirmed at a local Catholic church. When his oldest daughter, Hannah, was around ten and asked him why he never joined them at mass on Sundays, he told her, “I’m not Catholic.” She looked at him, brow furrowed, and raised a question that would prove to haunt him, “What are you then?”
TELL ME I BELONG follows David Weill’s search for the answer. In 2015, after the simultaneous unraveling of his carefully crafted career and the death of his father, Weill began to doubt everything, including his purpose in life. While grappling with emotional pain and sinking deeper into despair, he began to suffer perplexing physical symptoms. In his moment of crisis, he was seized by a strong desire to practice a formal religion. But for Weill, the real question was, Which religion? Eventually, he chose Catholicism and was baptized at age fifty. He found solace in heart-to-heart talks with a priest and his daughters’ happiness at having the whole family at church together. Everything was fine—until 2020, when he learned that his mother had converted to Judaism right before marrying his father. He was born a Jew. And in the eyes of the Jewish faith, he would always be Jewish. That realization sparked his second quest. In an interview, David can talk about:
· What drew his mother, a native of Selma, Alabama, to Judaism—partly because, to quote her, Jews “always seemed like such practical people,” and largely as a rejection of Baptists who preached love for all God’s children and practiced racism.
· His father’s complicated sense of being Jewish, which he viewed as a source of pride for its association with smart and successful people while remaining wary of being ostracized or stigmatized for the religion he was born into.
· His determination, with the help of investigators, to learn more about his grandfather’s time imprisoned in the Buchenwald concentration camp, and the role of his famous relative, the composer Kurt Weill, in orchestrating his family’s escape to the United States.
· His heart-wrenching trip to Berlin, accompanied by his daughter Hannah, to find his father’s first home, and the inner work of defining himself.
Ultimately, David Weill made peace with who he is and where he belongs. “I am not turning away from Catholicism as much as I am embracing Judaism, because it is mine, always was,” he reflects. “It just took me a while to get there.”
DAVID WEILL, MD, is theformer Director of the Center for Advanced Lung Diseases and the Lung and Heart-Lung Transplant Program at Stanford University Medical Center. A sought-after advisor to various transplant programs across the country, he also serves on the Board of TransMedics, a company focused on improving availability of donor organs. Dr. Weill has also served on several non-profit boards including the Tulane Medical School, Xavier University of Louisiana, SFJAZZ, the Isidore Newman School, the New Orleans Center for Creative Arts (NOCCA) Foundation, NextGen Personal Finance, and the Bellevue Literary Review. Dr. Weill’s writing has appeared in the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Salon, Newsweek, the Chicago Tribune, STAT, the Washington Post, The Hill, LitHub, Tablet, The Times of Israel, TODAY.com, and the Los Angeles Times. His previous books include the memoir Exhale: Hope, Healing, and Life in Transplant (2021) and a novel, All That Really Matters (2024). He lives in New Orleans. For more information, please visit davidweill.com.
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TELL ME I BELONG
A Journey Across Faiths and Generations
By David Weill
Publication date: December 9, 2025
ISBN: 978-1454961833; $24.99 Hardcover
Union Square & Co.
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