Al Kasha at his home with his two Oscars

But then a miracle occurred in his life and his world turned upside down.

In a recent interview I did for the Safe World’s Good News IPTV Channel at the Ninth Annual Praise Brunch held at the historic Beverly Hills Hotel, with his wife Ceil at his side, he agreed to talk about his battle with agoraphobia and his career.

Al Kasha began by saying, “I was known for writing love songs for disaster pictures…”

His wife Ceil laughed as she added, “Al was known as the master of disaster.”

Close by as we talked was Debbie Boone, and I asked him to re-live the time when he was her musical director, yet wouldn’t leave his home.

“I suffered with agoraphobia, which is the fear of leaving your home, and so Debbie used to come over to the house, but Jesus Christ healed me of that.

“I was a very difficult person to live with; trying to be perfect, but only God is perfect.”

On his website – www.alkasha.com – he describes what led up to his illness.

“I enjoyed a fruitful career in New York during the musical heyday of the 60's with hits from artists ranging from Elvis to Anthony Newley,” he said. “In 1968, I moved to Hollywood to pursue a musical career in the motion picture business.

The bondage of achievement  

Winning the first Oscar for “The Morning After” with Sonny & Cher

“Even though the world gifted me with Oscars and other tokens of recognition for my work, my whole life was based on the bondage of achievement. I never truly felt the peace which I had once assumed would accompany that kind of acclaim. Always striving for the next plateau produced only emptiness inside me. The striving was to satisfy others: my mother, my father, friends, producers...never for my own creative joy and satisfaction. My goals lay in the having, not the doing.

“This workaholism and striving resulted in depression and illness, which manifested itself in a disease called agoraphobia, a paralyzing fear of being in open, public places. At the height of my success, I had won two Academy Awards for the themes songs from The Poseidon Adventure and The Towering Inferno. However, during this period, my father was dying of cancer, and the burden of balancing work and personal life became completely overwhelming.

“I reached a point where I could barely leave my house. My marriage, previously happy, was falling apart. I started psychoanalysis, which gave me neither comfort nor solace, until I reached a point of total emotional paralysis.

“I separated from my wife for a month, and during this unhappy time I began to reevaluate my life. I remembered conversations I had had over the years with friends in show business who had embraced Christianity. Their healing words seemed to come back in a stronger, more meaningful way. I sought solace in that wisdom, and started to think about spirituality for the first time in years. On a Saturday night, after being separated from my wife for nearly a month, my sense of loss and desolation became terribly acute.

“I couldn't sleep and flipped through the channels on the television disconsolately. I hit upon channel forty, the Trinity Broadcasting Network. A replay of Robert Schuller's ministry was on, and he quoted a scripture that turned my life around: “God's perfect love casts out fear.” (1-John 4:18-19) This struck me, as I certainly knew what it meant to be paralyzed by fear, and something in my spirit reversed it and I said to myself that fear also casts out love. I got on my knees, placed my hand on the television and began to pray. In my prayers I said, “If there is a Jesus, please reveal yourself.” A tremendous heat overtook me, an all-enveloping warmth. I was in an air-conditioned apartment where the windows were glued shut and suddenly they began to shake and open, and a light poured in... a blinding light. I felt a powerful pressure in my chest. I couldn't breathe. I knew something beyond my comprehension had taken place.

“The next morning I accepted Jesus...alone, with no other people ministering to me. That morning I felt peace driving for the first time in a year. I went to the house on a weekly visit to my daughter Dana, and did not tell my wife of my experience. Strangely enough, she mentioned to me that a mutual friend of ours, Pat Hollis, whom I hadn't seen for a while, was coming over and they were going to church. I had never been in church except for weddings and baptisms. As a matter of fact, Ceil had converted to Judaism when we were married. However, that day, I told her that I wanted to join them at church. (She had since given her life to Christ.)

“I stuck to my commitment that I had decided to go. Pat Hollis was a Born Again Christian, and that afternoon we all went to church.

“On Sunday, October 8, 1978 at a Vineyard Fellowship, I reconfirmed my vows in front of witnesses and so did my wife. Since that time, my life has changed greatly, to the point where I can comfortably travel and speak to groups about agoraphobia and the deliverance of fears as well as about being a Christian living in Hollywood. In January 1984, I was ordained a minister.

“That same year, the weekly Hollywood Bible studies that we had originated became so big that Ceil and I started a church, the Oasis Christian Fellowship. Now the Hollywood Bible Study has grown, through the inspirational ministry of Tim Storey, to reach over a thousand people monthly. I continue to speak at Churches, universities and executive ministries around the world and teach song writing around the country. I write songs and musicals with both Biblical and secular themes, such as the score for “China Cry” and the theatrical stage phenomenon “Seven Brides For Seven Brothers.” I have also written several books, including a pamphlet on agoraphobia called “Faith Over Fear.”

Now back to the interview at the MFI event, I asked Al Kasha if he now described himself as a Messianic Jew.

“Yes,” he said. “I’m a Messianic Jew. I was born Jewish and I still feel like I’m Jewish, but I believe in Jesus Christ as my Lord and Savior.”

After his healing from agoraphobia and his conversion, Al Kasha began conducting a Bible study for Hollywood insiders (and people like myself) in Beverly Hills where he taught the scripture in a unique Jewish style – he reminded me of Woody Allen teaching the Bible – with his two Oscars on his piano. I went to several of them.

Hollywood stars and the police…>

Al and Ceil Kasha with Donna Summer and her husband Bruce Sudano

I asked Al Kasha who were some of the people who would attend and he replied, “Donna Summer and her husband Bruce Sudano, Bob Dylan, Nell Carter, Steven Seagal, Marilyn McCoo and Billy Davis Jr., and Dan you came too,” he said. “The police showed up a few times during our meetings when they heard all this holy music being sung.”

Now a Southern Baptist minister

What makes Al Kasha unique is that he is now an ordained Southern Baptist minister, possibly the only Jew with this distinction.

“It came about through Jess Moody who was then the pastor of the First Baptist Church of Van Nuys,” he said. “I had great admiration for him and after I was brought to the Lord through the television ministry of Robert Schuller, Jess Moody was the one that turned who really turned my life around. He used to say, “What’s a Jewish boy doing in a Baptist church?”

He later studied for the Southern Baptist ministry and was ordained.

I then asked Ceil Kasha how she had seen her husband’s life change.

“He has changed dramatically,” she said. “For two years, because of his agoraphobia, he wouldn’t leave the house; in fact, he wouldn’t leave his room. I had to serve all his meals in his room. He could not even get out of that door.

A phobic family

“He turned our entire family into a phobic family. Then one night I just said, ‘Father God, I can’t do this; You’ve got to help me. You’ve got to get this man up and out of the bed and heal him.’ I got on my knees and fell flat on my face and a friend of mine came over and prayed with me and, from that moment on, Al was healed and he was able to get out of the bedroom, go down the stairs and actually walk into the living room. When we saw him, we were so shocked.

“It took a few weeks and then he finally went out the door. A few more weeks after that we got him on a plane and he was completely healed and now he’s flying all around the world with the ministry of our Lord of Jesus Christ with His healing and His blessing.”

I then asked Al Kasha why he has stayed in Hollywood when so many Christian criticize the movies produced there.

Shirley and Pat Boone at the MFI event (Photo: Dan Wooding)

“The question that many are asking is: ‘Do Christians belong in Hollywood?’ The simple answer is: ‘As long as there isn’t too much Hollywood in the Christian,’” he said. “We desperately need Christians in Hollywood to bring on the values that are important, especially for our children and our children’s children.

“I hope that in some way in some small way that I’ve contributed to that and I know that Pat and Shirley Boone and others have too. But we need more and more people who want to financially back good wholesome pictures. What’s good will last and what’s not good will not last. So they should back the things that are really going to last for a long time.

“My works have lasted because I have decided to do things that I’m proud of and that the Lord would be proud of.”

Note: I would like to thanks Robin Frost for transcribing this interview.

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Dan Wooding is an award winning British journalist now living in Southern California with his wife Norma. He is the founder and international director of ASSIST (Aid to Special Saints in Strategic Times) and the ASSIST News Service (ANS). He was, for ten years, a commentator, on the UPI Radio Network in Washington, DC. Wooding is the author of some 42 books, the latest of which is his autobiography, "From Tabloid to Truth", which is published by Theatron Books. To order a copy, go to www.fromtabloidtotruth.com. danjuma1@aol.com.

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