David N. Weiss grew up in Ventura, California.

His father, whom Weiss dubs “Mr. Holland basically, from 'Mr. Holland's Opus,'” was a high school band teacher.

A registered nurse, Weiss's mother taught the first Lamaze classes in California. One of her more memorable students, according to Weiss, was Bob Denver of “Gilligan” fame.

Weiss was always the clown, organizing neighborhood shows, which he would produce and direct. One in particular was a “brilliant” pantomime to the James Taylor hit “You've Got a Friend.” “It was funny, yet poignant,” Weiss says.

“At the bottom of all this, I was looking for attention. I’d jump high in the air and land on my behind just to make everyone laugh.”

To Weiss then, “being a Jew wasn’t a religious thing; just Chagall paintings, the Holocaust, and trees in Israel.” Toward the end of high school, Weiss became a born-again Christian.

“I yearned for deeper meaning. I had heard the story of Abraham, who understood from a young age that there must be something bigger than idols, bigger than the sun, moon and the stars. Abraham resonated with me. I’d wake up in the middle of the night, wondering what happens when you die; wondering if there was more to life and the universe. It seemed terrifying to me, if life just ends when you die.”

But Judaism, as Weiss knew it then, didn't address that issue. “There was no patience when I asked about heaven or the afterlife,” he says.

Though he learned the basics of Jewish history - which made him popular with the Christians – he didn’t connect. “Out of 2,800 students, only seven of us were Jewish, and nominally so. All my close friends went to church.”

When his parents divorced, Christianity took root even more, as families embraced him and his brothers, offering support. “The upside to Christianity is, if you want people to join your club, you'd better be inviting,” Weiss says.

Weiss spent the next few years pursuing the Christian religion as a youth minister. He enrolled at Pepperdine University to study theater, and worked at local theaters, where a film director told him to try film school. Weiss applied to UCLA. His was one of 60 applications accepted out of 600. When he was accepted, his church ordained him as a missionary to Hollywood.

Several projects came from that time, including “a wacky born-again Christian film, kind of a cross between 'Ghostbusters' and 'Oh G-d!'”

That film got the attention of the industry, and Weiss soon had agents knocking at his door.

So he wrote a “wacky born-again Christian action movie” that was never made, but was read by a Mormon producer. The producer liked the screenwriter's style and hired him to write a “wacky born-again Mormon” film.

That movie was never made, but the script was sent to another famous Mormon in the industry - animator Don Bluth. Bluth asked Weiss to go to Dublin, Ireland, to do a rewrite for a movie Charlie’s Friends - later known as All Dogs Go To Heaven. Weiss ended up spending two years in the Irish city.

While in Ireland, Weiss met a young animator by the name of David Steinberg. “He was the first observant Jew I ever met,” Weiss says. The two debated Jewish-Christian issues. Weiss tried to challenge Steinberg's beliefs, but was unable to do so.

“Those discussions put a chink in my armor,” Weiss explains. “His theology was complete.” So Weiss took a leap of faith, so to speak, and attended services at an Orthodox shul. “I was overwhelmed by the beauty of the tradition that was hidden from me,” he says. It was then he realized his “Christian theology wasn't holding up as well as I thought.”

Teaming up with David Stern, the partners got a job with Nickelodeon, which was getting ready to send one of its movies back into production. That movie was the “Rugrats.” The success of the movie prompted the studio to hire the team to run the TV show of the same name. “The first thing I wrote after I left the church was the 'Rugrats Chanukah Special.'”

“I met Michael Medved, the film critic. I thought he was Christian from his writings, because I'd seen him quoted in Christian magazines. I met him at a film festival, and he was wearing a yarmulke! He invited me to his house for Shabbat lunch. It was gorgeous, the shul, the families and the children. I met my wife during this time, and we took introductory Judaism classes.”

“I still kept going to church, trying to incorporate Judaism into my Christianity. I went to shul on Saturday and church on Sunday.”

“But then I realized something had to give, and Judaism was becoming much more meaningful. Besides, they were getting annoyed by me at church, because I was starting to pick holes in the theology, and objecting to what seemed to me anti-Semitic bible passages.”

“I'm still a Hollywood guy, but not in the sense that I'm out at parties all the time. There's actually a large group of Orthodox script writers. And it's been surprisingly easy being observant in Hollywood, with no particular challenges in terms of scheduling or whatever. When we went to Cannes for the premier of Shrek 2 there were some events on Shabbat, but there's rarely a conflict.”

The 45-year-old show business veteran lives happily with his wife of 11 years, Eliana, and their two children, Chanah, 8, and Sammy, 6.

And yes, he is raising his children Jewish.

Courtesy of Jews for Judaism