Stephen E. Smith taught international law at Northwestern University School of Law. Over the last three decades, he headed various civic and religious organizations, from the Jane Addams Hull House Association in the 1980s to the First Friday Club of Chicago, a monthly lunch and lecture for those looking to intertwine their work and faith lives, where he had just finished his second term as president.
Mr. Smith, who was Jewish, was known to wrap himself in his tallis, or prayer shawl, for Friday night Shabbat services. As the Torah scroll was passed from congregant to congregant, Mr. Smith would embrace it, press it close against his chest and kiss it.
“As if it were a wife,” said his friend Rev. John Cusick, director of young adult ministries for the archdiocese of Chicago.
Yet every Sunday, in the front right pew at Old St. Patrick’s Catholic Church, as Cusick preached the 11:15 a.m. mass, there would be Mr. Smith. He and his wife, Eileen O’Farrell Smith, were among the pioneers in Chicago’s vibrant Jewish-Catholic interfaith community.
Mr. Smith, 57, died after a 14-year battle with brain cancer on Thursday, May 1, in Rainbow Hospice Ark in Park Ridge.
“Steve found his Jewish spiritual identity as an adult,” Cusick said. “I always claim that I’m his rabbi, and [Rabbi Allen] Secher is Eileen’s priest. He’s never been any less Jewish because he hung around Old St. Pat’s. He never was a Christian. He was a Jew. Yet he could come and he could pray with us. He wanted his children to understand both their traditions.”
Mr. Smith’s fluency in two religions, and his comfort in synagogue or church, amplifies how “amazing things can happen spiritually when someone doesn’t have to be your enemy,” Cusick said.
Two weeks ago, knowing he would soon die, Mr. Smith called Cusick and asked if he would preach at his funeral. He also asked that the funeral be held at Old St. Pat’s.
“This is a first,” said Cusick, who will be joined by Secher for the Jewish prayers. “I am not doing a eulogy,” simply looking back on someone’s life. “I am preaching. And what do you preach? You preach God’s presence.”
Mr. Smith, the son of a Boston postal worker, was always proud of having graduated from the Boston Latin School, the oldest public school in America.
He attended Boston University and Washington University School of Law and moved to Chicago after law school. In private practice, his clients included a Brazilian steel company. He joined the Northwestern faculty as an adjunct professor in 2000 and three years later became a senior lecturer.
In 1983, he was on the board at Hull House when he met O’Farrell, who worked at WFMT-FM, the classical radio station where the group held its meetings. They married and joined the Jewish-Catholic Dialogue Group that met at Old St. Pat’s.
The Smiths were among the handful of couples who in 1993 started a religious school for children being raised in both their Jewish and Catholic traditions, his wife said. That school now teaches 120 children, kindergarten through 8th grade, from some 75 families, using classrooms at Old St. Pat’s. It also has spawned two satellite schools.
In addition to his wife, Mr. Smith is survived by a son, Bennett; two daughters, Nora and Lilliana; and a brother, Robert.
Visitation will begin at 6 p.m. Tuesday in Old St. Patrick’s Church, 700 W. Adams St., Chicago, followed by a memorial service there at 7 p.m.
———-
bmahany@tribune.com
