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Former Neo-Nazi
Converting to Judaism
JARRAD SAFFREN | STAFF WRITER
F red Cook, by his own admis-
sion, is a man in search of an
identity. From his teenage years through
his early 30s, he fi lled that void with
neo-Nazism. But over the past decade,
he has grown to fi ll it with Judaism.

Cook, 43 and a Philadelphia resi-
dent, has spent the past year-and-a-
half converting to Judaism through
Congregation Rodeph Shalom on
North Broad Street. In July, his beit
din will rule on his conversion. If the
three religious authorities accept Cook
into the faith, the convert will enter the
mikveh. He already wears a Star of David
necklace with the star hanging where
his swastika used to be: above his heart.

“It’s been a pretty amazing journey,”
Cook said.

It started when Cook was a teen. As
he put it, he grew up “with no iden-
tity whatsoever.” All he knew, per his
grandmother, was that he was German.

But when his family moved to an Irish
neighborhood in South Philadelphia,
the German kid did not fi t in.

“Th ey were like, ‘Hey, you’re not
Irish,’” Cook recalled.

At 13, Cook was looking for a crew,
and he found one on South Street.

Cook’s friend told him to come hang
out with his friends. It turned out to
be a group of seven or eight skinheads.

Th ey were not affi liated with an
organization. Th ey would just listen
to loud music and fi ght with “sharp
skinheads,” or skinheads of non-white
races, according to Cook.

Th e Philadelphia native liked that his
new friends welcomed him and made
him feel comfortable.

“It was something to latch on to,” he
said. But once he latched on, he did not let
go. One particular incident became a
point of no return, according to Cook.

As a student at Horace Howard
Furness High School, a girl asked Cook
on a date, and he said no. Th en, as the
convert explained it, she told other stu-
dents that he called her the “n word.”
Cook estimates that 13 kids responded
by jumping him and hitting him in the
back of the head with a piece of brick.

He spent two or three days in a
coma and emerged with a steel plate in
his head. To this day, he said, he still
has memory issues. Aft er the incident,
Cook’s skinhead friends started walk-
ing him to school.

“I took things more serious than a
bunch of guys goofi ng around,” he said.

Using America Online, Cook entered
chat rooms and started talking to other
white supremacists. He got connected
to William Pierce, author of the rac-
ist and antisemitic book “Th e Turner
Diaries,” and David Lane, who coined
the line repeated by all white hate
organizations, according to Cook: “We
must secure the existence of our race
and a future for white children.”
Th e convert even did security for
former Ku Klux Klan Grand Wizard
David Duke during his appearances in
Philadelphia. Eventually, Cook worked
his way up to the chief of staff posi-
tion for Jeff Schoep, the leader of the
National Socialist organization.

But in a high-ranking position, Cook
started to get calls from friends about
how their white brothers appeared to
have Black friends in Facebook pic-
tures. As he kept getting these types
of calls, Cook came to a gnawing real-
ization. “I started to see it as people looking
for enemies because there were none,”
he said.

Cook understood that the identity he
had found and cultivated was hollow.

So fi nally, he told Schoep that he had
to step down.

“I gave up on that identity,” he said.

For years aft er leaving, Cook stopped
trying to answer the identity question.

He focused just on trying to be a good
person and on building a family with
his wife.

But in December 2020, he took a
DNA test and learned that he was 30%
Jewish. He reached out to the Jewish
Federation of Greater Philadelphia and
got a box of books in return.

He started reading and became
“obsessive,” he said. Since then, he
has read 80 books on Judaism, joined
Rodeph Shalom and com-
mitted to the conversion
process. Rodeph Shalom Rabbi
Eli Freedman called it “a
shock” when the former
neo-Nazi first reached
out to him. But the rabbi
embraced the convert any-
way and saw that he was
genuine. “When someone decides
Judaism is the path for
Courtesy of Fred Cook
them, they have a Jewish Fred Cook
soul,” he said.

Cook also works with
Schoep, a reformed neo-Nazi himself Schoep said. “Now we’re on the right
who did a talk at Drexel University path and trying to do good.”
in November, at Schoep’s organization
As Cook put it, his mission now is
Beyond Barriers, which works to com- “tikkun olam.” JE
bat extremism.

“We were on the wrong track,” jsaff ren@midatlanticmedia.com
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