Unlikely friendship across boundaries

HOLLADAY - Theirs wasn't the most likely of friendships. He was a priest, living in a monastery, who had grown up on a farm in Eritrea and studied in Cairo, Egypt. She was an Israeli Jew, the daughter of Polish immigrants who had escaped Europe just before World War II. Thirteen years, plus language, religion and cultural gaps, separated the two. And yet, from the day they met on a bench outside Hebrew University in Jerusalem, the man now known as Bishop Makarios of the Coptic Orthodox Church and Ruth Lewy, nee Silberberg, have been dear friends - despite the lives and miles that have separated them. "I've known him more than 43 years," says Lewy, 62, with a laugh. "I know him better than my husband."

Late last month, Makarios made his first visit to Utah, the state Lewy has called home for 30 years. They overlapped in Israel for five years in the 1960s, but have lived in different worlds ever since.

Straight-backed and with hands folded, Makarios wears his formal regalia - a long black robe, the rounded hat reserved for bishops, a thick gold chain bearing an image of the Holy Mother. Lewy plays host to her guests, scurrying between her Holladay living room and kitchen, her hair pulled back in a high bun.

When she was 19, and Makarios - then known as Father Petros - approached her for help deciphering a course lecture, her dark brown braid was so long she sat on it. "He used to pull my pigtail . . . like a bell to let me know he was around," she remembers.

She was doing undergraduate studies at the university, and he had arrived from Egypt to pursue a master's in Old Testament and Islamic history. With creative hand signals and his quick grasp of the Hebrew language, the friendship flourished. She was fascinated by his background, which was unlike anything she'd ever known.

"At that time [in Israel], there was not much association between Jews and non-Jews," says Lewy, a former educator who grew up in a conservative Jewish home. "When we met, I was so naive that you can't imagine."

Makarios, then a 32-year-old monk and priest who had been ordained in Cairo, was eager to learn from her, too.

"The more a person knows [about other religions], the better he can know his own," says the bishop.

His voice is soft, his words polite and he prefers not to speak about himself. To hear it from him, his 75 years have been pretty straightforward.

"From the beginning, I went to school in order to serve the church," says Makarios, whose undivulged birth name was given up when he became a monk, long before Lewy met him.

His story, however, is more complicated than this, his friend says. Yes, he's a church authority and a private man few are lucky enough to know. But he also went underground with freedom fighters in the 1970s, working toward Eritrea's independence, not earned till 1993. There were threats to his life, years of hiding in the desert, extended gaps in their communication that has been sustained, for the most part, through letters and phone calls.

By way of London, where Makarios was brought from the desert - "literally with the clothing he wore," Lewy says - he was given a scholarship to study theology at Princeton University. Later came the Fulbright to do work at Harvard.

Just thinking about the millions of books that fill Harvard's library, Makarios - a U.S. citizen who wears an American flag pin on his flowing black robe - says, "This country can be paradise on Earth."

This friendship with Makarios hasn't belonged just to Lewy, an only child, but it is one her whole family has forged. The bishop, who looked out for her like an older brother, was the one who told her to marry Rafael Lewy, her husband of 40 years.

"I like him. Marry him," the mother of three remembers him saying.

Makarios was at the Lewys' wedding, even at Hadassah Hospital in Jerusalem after their first daughter, Vered, was born. Years later, he spoke at Vered's wedding. When Ruth Lewy's parents were alive and living in Borough Park, a Jewish Orthodox community in Brooklyn, he was a frequent guest in their home.

Daughter Daphna Rivera, 31, who lives in Salt Lake City, stops by her parents' house to see Makarios. They embrace and laugh like long-lost family. Lewy says later that the bishop asked Daphna's children to call him "Saba" (Hebrew for "grandfather") Makarios. In the Holladay living room, conversation is peppered with Hebrew, one of seven languages Makarios speaks.

In 1991, Pope Shenouda III called then-Father Petros to Egypt, where he was appointed Bishop Makarios and became a member of the Coptic Orthodox Holy Synod, the church's highest body. A full-time emissary for the Coptic Orthodox Church, Makarios served in Eritrea before moving in 1997 to New Jersey, where he is now stationed with the church's Archdiocese of North America. He is one of four bishops covering the continent.

Makarios' visit to Utah was brief; it only lasted a few days. But having him in her home was a gift for Lewy. They reminisced, talked politics and history, and she dared him to quote passages from the Bible from memory, which she says he did, without flaw. The gift he gave to her when he arrived: An elaborate copy of the Tanakh, Judaism's Holy Scriptures.

But when it came to his own observance, she says Makarios kept it to himself. He sat in the guest room one morning, listening to a recording of Song of Songs. Rather than wear his cross, he kept it on the bedside table. Not because she asked him to, but because he chose to.

"He's very sensitive to other people's feelings [and] never forces his beliefs. . . . He's always said that this is not his duty," Lewy says. "And we always agreed that we didn't have to agree. We respect that. That's what I love about him."

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Bishop Makarios is a member of the Coptic Orthodox Holy Synod, the church's highest body. He is stationed in New Jersey with the church's Archdiocese of North America.

An apostolic church believed to have been founded, in the first century, by St. Mark the Evangelist in Alexandria, Egypt.

* The original Christian church of Egypt and one of the oldest Christian Orthodox churches.

* Part of the Oriental Orthodox Church family, a group of six ancient Eastern churches - including Armenian, Syrian and Ethiopian - that split in A.D. 451 over beliefs surrounding Jesus Christ's nature. Not to be confused with Eastern Orthodox churches, such as the Greek and Russian Orthodox, which split off from the Roman Catholic Church in 1054.

* The Christian monastic tradition began with Coptic Orthodox "Desert Fathers," starting with St. Anthony around the fourth century.

* Egypt was once a Christian nation, and Alexandria a theological center.

* The Catechetical School of Alexandria, founded around A.D. 190, is the oldest catechetical - which means instruction by the question-and-answer method - school in the world.

* After the seventh century Arab invasion, church followers diminished, becoming an Egyptian minority around A.D. 850.

* Over the years, and with the recent rise of Islamic fundamentalism, members of the Coptic Orthodox Church have experienced persecution.

* Rooted in Egypt, the church spread in Africa, the Middle East and - as a result of more recent immigration - to the Americas, Australia and Europe.

* Among Coptic Orthodox practices: They fast more than other Christians, observing forms of fasting 210 days a year.

* The Coptic language, derived from ancient Egyptian, thrived as a spoken language from A.D. 200 to 1100. Today it is still used for liturgical purposes.

Who are the Copts?

* Modern use of the term "Copt" or "Coptic" refers to Egyptian Christians.

* Worldwide numbers of Coptic Orthodox Christians are disputed, with figures ranging from 9 million to as high as 60 million - the bulk being in Egypt, Ethiopia and Eritrea (though the latter two now have their own patriarchs).

* Members account for, conservatively, less than 6 percent, or about 4.65 million, of Egypt's total population of 77.5 million. Even so, they are considered the largest Christian community in the Mideast and the largest Arabic-speaking non-Muslim group in the world.

* Pope Shenouda III is the 117th Pope of Alexandria and Patriarch of the Holy See of St. Mark. In 1973, he was the first Coptic Orthodox pope to visit the Vatican in more than 1,500 years. During the visit, he and Pope Paul VI signed a declaration, establishing a joint commission for dialogue.

* Since Pope Shenouda III's succession in 1971, the Coptic Orthodox Church has expanded worldwide. In North America alone, the number of churches has jumped from just four to more than 100. The first two Diocesan bishops for the United States - one based in Dallas, the other in Los Angeles - were installed in 1996.

* The U.S. Copts Association, based in Washington, D.C., estimates that there are more than 700,000 Egyptian Christians in the United States, the majority of whom are considered Coptic Orthodox.

* The 2000 U.S. Census reported 280 Utahns with Egyptian ancestry, but there is no registered Coptic Orthodox Church in the state.

* A famous Copt: Boutros Boutros-Ghali, former secretary-general of the United Nations.