Mamoo

My family comes from all over Europe. We left in the first wave of Jewish emigrants, around the turn of the century. If you have ever seen 'Fiddler On The Roof', that is basically our story. The Cossacks burned our villages in the name of Christianity, and we had nowhere else to go but America. My great-grandparents left Russia with nothing but their clothes, their children, and the Sabbath candlesticks that now sit on my mantle.

Like so many other Jewish families, we quickly adapted to the American lifestyle. Each generation was a little less traditional than the last. When I was born, we were what is known as 'reform' Jews. We did not keep Kosher, or say our daily prayers, but we belonged to a synagogue and maintained our belief in the one true God.

I attended Hebrew School, where I learned to read the Hebrew letters, and at 13, I was Bar Mitzvah'ed. I was told that my reading of the scriptures was beautiful, even though I had no idea what any of it meant.

I was fairly comfortable in my beliefs. I had never had reason to question; never felt the need. I dismissed Christianity because I knew enough about it to see that the 'Christians ' I knew were hypocrites.

They claimed to worship this Jesus, who taught love and peace, yet they were no different from me. I knew what Christianity was. It was an excuse to hate Jews and pretend that they were better than us. Most of them had no idea what their own scripture said. I'll never forget being 12 and having a discussion with a friend who had just found out I was Jewish. He began a long speech about how awful Jews were, how we had killed Jesus. I said, 'but your Jesus was Jewish.' And he responded, 'Maybe in your Bible!'

It wasn't until college that I started to question my harsh judgement of all Christians. I made a friend named Matt. Matt was a different kind of Christian, than I had met before. He would admit when he had stumbled. He would study his Bible. And he spoke of Jesus like a friend, not a distant God.

The people he worshiped with were different too. They were really trying to do what their scripture taught. They made no pretense about being perfect, just that they were trying. They also had a different attitude towards me. Until now, all the 'Christians' I knew had either condemned me as lost beyond salvation, or used every breath to try and save me. These people just shared their faith, and respected me for mine.

My friendship with Matt grew, and eventually, he and I and two other guys moved off campus and got an apartment together. I continued to associate with his friends from church. They invited me to join their softball team, and they even asked me to give a talk on Judaism to their Youth Group.

Then, in the middle of my sophomore year, disaster struck. Both of my parents were killed in a plane crash. It was as though my whole life came to a screeching halt. I won't go into too much detail, since that is not the point of this story, I will just say that I felt extremely sad and very empty.

Family and friends gathered to comfort me. But, as is usual, after awhile the comforting ceased, and it was time to get on with my life. I sought solace in my faith, but found little. I kept waiting for a call from the Rabbi, or an invitation to Sabbath dinner; some form of reaching out from the congregation. It never came. I finally realized how little love they had when Passover came. Let me start by explaining that on Passover, it is customary to eat dinner with the front door open. This is so that strangers will feel that they may come and celebrate. So here it was: the day when we welcome strangers, and not a single invitation was extended. Not a call, not a card, nothing. I was left to eat dinner with a roommate who happened to not have plans that night.

It was at this low point that I decided that I needed to get to know God and not rely on other people to show Him to me. For the first time, I decided to read the scripture for myself. And in so doing, I made a terrible discovery. Most of what I had been taught was just tradition. It was not scripture. This started my first battle with doubt. Who was God? What did He want from me? How did I get to know Him?

Then I had a wonderful experience. Many of my friends have argued about whether it was a vision or a daydream; whether it was from God or from my subconscious. Either way, it served its purpose. There I stood on a dark cliff, looking out into a deep black void. Then, way off in the distance, deep in the nothingness, I saw a speck of light. The light came closer and closer, until I could make out the figure of a man hanging on a cross. I knew it was Jesus. I could hear him calling to me, but I could not make out the words. He was either saying 'accept me' or 'reject me', but I could not tell which.

For two days I struggled with it, asking all kinds of questions of my friends. I was trying to make the Old testament and the New Testament fit. How could Jesus be God if God was God?

Then a friend loaned me a book. It was called 'Betrayed.' It was about a Jewish man who's daughter becomes a Christian. It showed his study through the two Testaments and presented an idea I had never considered. The idea that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. The two Testaments were really one book. It seemed to make sense, but if it were true why didn't the rabbis know it? Then I came to Daniel chapter 9. It was an astonishing prophecy. Daniel foretold the return from Babylonian captivity, the rebuilding of the Temple, the coming of Messiah, and the destruction of the Temple. Had I read that right? Messiah would come BEFORE the second Temple was destroyed? That was in 70 AD. Either Messiah came before 70 AD or Daniel was wrong. I had reached a moment of truth. Either generations of my fore-fathers were wrong or Daniel was. I had made my decision. God's prophet could NOT be wrong.

But who was it? Could this Jesus of Nazareth really be the Messiah? Matt took me to Tom, the minister at his congregation. We had met several times, and I respected his intelligence. He showed me how God's redemption plan worked. How it all made sense, from the Garden to the Cross to me. But, most important, he showed me that it WAS my Jewish God he worshiped and that those who had told me otherwise were wrong.

As much as I hated the idea, I was beginning to believe that it was possible. But I still had my trump card...the Trinity! The most basic tenet of Jewish faith, the thing that separates it from all other faiths, is its belief in the existence of only one God. The I Am. The God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob. The God of my fathers. Christians believed in three gods; the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. It could not possibly be the same God. But Tom explained that this was a misconception. He said that all three were part of the same God. He showed me Old testament verses about God's Spirit, and God's Son. One yet three? How is that possible? Then Tom gave me the answer that no other Christian ever had. He said 'I don't know. But if God can create the universe in 6 days, who am I to tell Him that He can't be 3 things at the same time?'

So this was it. A blind acceptance of a physical impossibility as fact. Then it finally made sense. This was what God wanted from me. He had taken me 95% of the way to Him, but the other 5% was up to me. This was what was missing from my old set of beliefs. FAITH! He wanted me to believe what He said, simply because He said it...even when it didn't make sense. I had made a decision. Jesus was the Messiah. The God of Christianity was the God of Judaism. I believed; I truly believed. 'What do I do know?' was all I could think to ask. Then Tom showed me Acts chapter 2. Here I saw Jews, like me, asking the same question of Jesus' disciples. And there was my answer. Repent and be baptized. Start over as a new person, with God inside, taking control. So I gave myself to Jesus. That very night, Matt baptized me into the Body of Christ. After I dried off, Tom asked me how I felt. Through tear-filled eyes, I answered that I felt like the weight of the world had been lifted from my shoulders. 'It has,' he said,'It has.'