Matthew, Mark, Luke, John...and Me: Growing Up Jewish in a Christian World

An upbringing in the WASP enclaves of suburban Boston gave Arthur D. Ullian an early taste of antisemitism, and later sent him on a search through Judeo-Christian history for the roots of discrimination against the Jewish people.


Following a successful career in New England real estate and a life-changing accident that left him paralyzed at age 51, Arthur Ullian began to realize that not only did life in a wheelchair make him feel “different,” but he had always felt like an outsider to some degree. This sent him on a multi-year research project investigating antisemitism from the New Testament to the Inquisition to the Holocaust. He came to see that over the course of his life he had, paradoxically, internalized the prevailing Christian view of the “Jewish character” and unconsciously attempted to replicate the social and material trappings of those who excluded him.


From the world of private schools, cotillion classes, sailing yachts, and restricted clubs to the Halls of Congress where he successfully advocated for medical research with Christopher Reeve, Ullian’s life is one that illustrates the Jewish concept of Tikkun Olam, or “Repair the World.” In Matthew, Mark, Luke, John...and Me — a thoughtful, historically-grounded, and often humorous memoir — he interweaves personal experience with his exploration of the roots of stereotypes, ending with reasons to hope that historic Jewish–Christian enmities will fade and brotherhood prevail.