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predominately Jewish, and Wyle’s education in Judaism at that time was rather bumpy because he was being educated by other thirteen-year-olds. After he got over the bruises, physical and mental, Wyle went to high school, where he aspired to become a basketball player but, lacking height and ability, decided that acting would be a safer bet.
    In high school, he was encouraged by his stepfather, James C. Katz, a film restorer, and acted in several high school plays and attended a theater program at Northwestern University. Wyle opted against college and stayed in Hollywood to study with renowned acting coach Larry Moss. He got his first part at age seventeen in the NBC series Blind Faith in 1990. His first feature film role was in the drama Crooked Hearts in 1992. He then spent time waiting tables before appearing in A Few Good Men in 1992. After that, Wyle returned to the restaurant scene and worked the tables again, and then, after three auditions for ER, Wyle started his new career as a doctor, where he stayed for ten years. Although he left ER as a regular in 2004, Wyle remains connected to the medical field and works with the nonprofit group Doctors of the World.
    He is the artistic producer of the Blank Theater Company in Los Angeles, where young playwrights can showcase their work, and now has the Second Stage Theater in his portfolio, which has produced many successful shows.
    Noah Wyle is married to Tracy Warbin and the couple has two children, Owen and Auden. He still plays basketball, only not professionally.

    NOAH WYLE CLOSE, BUT NO CIGAR
    I was raised fairly nondenominationally. My father is Jewish and I’ve been to temple and I’ve been to my mother’s Episcopalian church on Easter and Christmas. That was about the extent of my religious training growing up. I did not have a bar mitzvah, but it was a significant part of my life because all my friends did, and boy, did that have a huge impact on me.
    I think, because of that exposure to Judaism as a boy, I now have a certain sense of spirituality. I don’t know that I would attribute it to any of the major religions. I think I believe in a higher power. I do believe in grand design. About ten years ago I met a rabbi at a dinner, a fund-raising dinner for Benjamin Netanyahu. And we struck up a conversation at the dinner table. And he was about as unorthodox as an orthodox Jew could be. He broke all my preconceived notions. He was very argumentative. And he was very cynical in some ways and certainly understood my doubts and really enjoyed the debate. And he said, “Well, if you’re really curious, why don’t you give me a call? And once a week we’ll just study together for as long as you want to.” I said, “Okay, great!” I spent about three years learning with the rabbi. I was here, he was in Israel. But we’d work on the phone. And he took me in baby steps through the foundations of the religion and the concepts of the higher self and the lower self. At that period in my life, it really made quite a bit of sense to me. I consider those conversations to be the basis of my religious philosophy.
    At this point, I haven’t spoken to him for a couple of years. But it’s one of those comfortable relationships where he’s left the door open to me to ask him questions. It’s interesting. I got away from it, and it wasn’t until I had kids that it came up again in my life. I’m going to have some more questions coming pretty soon. And while I don’t think that everything I learned was only about Judaism, I do embrace a lot of aspects of Judaism.
    So, unlike a lot of bar mitzvah kids, I learned about my religion as an adult in his twenties. That’s a prevailing theme in my life. Most of my expensive education was wasted on me as a youth. I would’ve appreciated it a lot more now than I did then, that’s for sure.
    ARE YOU RAISING YOUR CHILDREN TO BE JEWISH?
    Well, they’re very young. My son’s three. My daughter’s ten months old. So my wife