How can a Feivel be a Buddhist?

Rebbetzin Jungreis wrote a column in the Jewish Press about her husband and the acts of kindness he performed, even to his last, when he was in the hospital, suffering from incurable cancer. She spoke about his seeking out patients and offering them comfort. One patient on the floor was a Jew named Philip who had renounced his faith and became a Buddhist. She wrote,
" My husband could not bear the thought of a Yiddisheh neshamah being lost, and as difficult as it was for him, he sought him out.
"What is your Jewish name?" my husband asked in his sweet gentle voice.
"I'm not Jewish," he answered. "I gave up Judaism some years ago, when I became a Buddhist."
"Even so," my husband assured him, "a Yiddisheh neshamah is a Yiddisheh neshamah, and remains so for eternity. Now tell me, what is your Jewish name?"
"I don't remember," he replied, his voice tinged with annoyance.
"Do you remember your Bubbie? .... What did she call you? " my husband asked.
At the mention of his Bubbie, tears gathered in his eyes and in a choked voice, he whispered, "Feivel."
My husband reached out to put his arms around him - no easy feat when you are attached to IVs.
"Feivel," he repeated, "how can a Feivel be a Buddhist?"
The other day, I read about an Israeli man who had traveled to India and had become a leading expert on Reiki. Somehow, he was able to reconnect to his Jewish roots and returned to Israel, determined to follow a religious way of life. The author writes that the secular parents of the man would have been happier to welcome their son as a Buddhist monk, rather than as a charedi man.
Thankfully, these two yiddishe neshamas were able to see the truth, and have returned to their Jewish roots.