I mean what does a guy say
about his story?
Dr Seif, Professor Seif,
Officer Self, Sergeant Seif...
Pastor, Rabbi, whatever...
you know I've carried all those titles
I never in a million years thought of that.
Well a hearty Shalom to all of you
Jeffrey Seif here.
That's how Jews say it in Texas.
Seif is a German name.
My mother and father met in America.
Mom was smuggled out of Nazi Germany
by nuns.
Mom died in a mental hospital because
we could get mom out of Germany
but couldn't quite get Germany out of mom.
I went to Jewish school
I went to the Jewish Community Center
after school.
I lived in a Jewish neighborhood
and had Jewish friends.
I didn't know there was
really anything but being Jewish.
One time about 12 or 13
I'm walking down the street
and these two girls, they yelled:
"Hey you dirty Jew, you killed Christ!"
I remember that vividly.
I don't know - I didn't understand
what Christians were all about.
My parents sent me to a yeshiva
a religious Jewish school
and it was strict
it really didn't mediate life to me
and I wasn't interested in Rabbi Hoffman
I was interested in Avi Hoffman
You know, being a hippy!
I pushed away from Judaism
not out of any dislike for Judaism
but just part of my own
quest for discovery.
Well, I'm 16 years old laying in bed
my mother comes in and tells me
to clean up the room
and I give her a hard time. She says,
"Well if you don't like it you can leave!"
So I left.
Running away from home
hitchhiking to California
happened just like that.
Couple of weeks later I'm in San Francisco
meditating
in Haight Ashbury in the park.
That's when I got my first exposure
to Christians that were okay.
You know they were nice.
They were gracious. They'd give me a ride.
They would want to give me a meal...
You know I realized there were Christian people
out there in the world
that were kind of cool.
It's really important in the Jewish world
you know 'education is king', but
I was just high all the time in high school.
I just drifted through
with a lot of D's and F's you know
I just wasn't on anyone's
most likely to succeed list...
It's kind of like roadkill
on the highway of life.
I was in Pennsylvania
and I was walking down the street
and a guy with hair down to his waist
comes up to me and gives me a pamphlet
and wants to talk to me about Jesus
and I say look man, you know,
"I'm Jewish I don't believe in Jesus."
And he said "Why not?" I said
"I don't know, I just don't".
He said, "Jesus was a Jew,"
"give it a second look."
And then he whips out a Bible and
shows me stuff in there
and I was just amazed.
The virtues of kindness, love, compassion
toward your own and toward the
the brother from another mother
are in the biblical text in the Hebrew Bible
But it comes forth much clearer
in the newer covenant
where one understands that
the God of Israel isn't just
about extending grace to Israel
it's all about the world.
And that's the story from the get-go.
you know when the Lord
speaks to Avraham, and he says
"Through you all the families of the earth"
"will be blessed."
There's a way to get the grace out
global!
When I discovered Israel's Messiah
and asked Yeshua
asked Jesus in my heart
that mediated such life, such energy.
This whole new starburst of enthusiasm,
this new approach to life,
whole new beginning there.
I wound up getting an associate degree
a bachelor's degree
two master's degrees
and two doctoral degrees
and became a college professor.
I never saw that in the stars.
I took a sabbatical from teaching
and went to the police academy
just donating services as a police officer.
And I do that to this day as a director
the Associate Director
of a police academy in Dallas.
It's a rather odd combination people think:
the religious thing in the one hand
and the streets on the other but
to me it's all about helping people.
There's lots of problems in this world
I want to be part of the cure.
When I look at the first few
chapters of the Bible, I wrap
yellow crime-scene tape all around it.
I mean you haven't read five minutes
into the Bible till you realize that
sin has made its entrance
onto the stage of the human drama.
At the end of the day, we all
have a little bit of Adam and Eve in us...
You know I believe that God
so loved the world that He sent
His Son into the world and He didn't
just come into in general,
he wants to come into our world
in particular.
I know the real me.
I really don't think I'm all that much now...
and I know I wasn't a whole lot
when it when it all began.
Man looks at the outward appearance
but God looks at the heart
and as much as God was gracious
to see potential in me - not just problems
would it be that I'm more capable to see
that in others, and would it be that
we all were minded to discern
what is good and beautiful in people,
not just what's disappointing.