So I went to my rabbi, and I looked him in the face,
and I said, "Rabbi, tell me, how can I know God?"
And he looked at me and he was angry.
And he picked up his umbrella
and he gave me a big (whips) on the head.
He said, "That's blasphemy!
"Get out of here!"
We grew up celebrating the holidays
and keeping all the Mitzvot,
went to a Jewish school, the kippah, the tsitsiot.
But inside, I didn't know God.
And I felt that there was something not right,
that I should have some connection,
but I didn't have answers.
I saw the fighting that went on
and the hypocrisy and the backbiting.
Went through my bar mitzvah in the shul.
Then after my bar mitzvah
and I started to question more and more.
I fulfilled what every good Yiddishe mama wants from a son.
He has to be either a doctor or a lawyer.
I wanted to be the doctor.
So I'm studying hard and by the age of 16,
I was able to be accepted to medical school.
That was my dream.
But there was this growing emptiness in me.
That wasn't gonna fulfill me.
That wasn't gonna make me a whole person,
but I didn't know what to do.
For the first time in my life,
a student came up to me and looked me in the eye.
He said, "Do you know Jesus?"
That was a total shock to me
because in our home, Jesus was like a curse word.
The Gentiles and the other so-called Christians,
we thought they all hated us.
I thought the New Testament was an anti-Semitic book,
that it was teaching Christians how to hate the Jews.
I was angry with this fellow.
He's telling me that Jesus was the one
that could take away my sin.
Well I didn't feel like a sinner.
He was the one that could save me.
I didn't feel like I needed saving.
But then he did tell me
that I could have a relationship with God.
Now that started to make a little sense to me.
I wanted a relationship with God,
but I certainly didn't want it in this kind of way.
Well after toing and froing,
we spent actually several hours going back and forth
and he's telling me that Jesus is the door,
he's the way, he's the truth.
Atonement, well, I understood atonement.
Over the course of the next weeks,
this girl began to also talk with me
and she was a follower of Jesus too.
Finally, she persuaded me.
She said, "Look, start reading in this book,
"the New Testament."
And I opened it.
I was a little nervous opening,
but I started to open and I was amazed.
I started to read about Yeshua, Jesus,
and I was shocked to find he was Jewish.
I didn't know he was Jewish.
I didn't know the disciples were Jewish.
I didn't know that the whole thing was Jewish.
I thought, wow, if this is really true,
if Jesus really is the promised one, the Mashiach,
if he truly came to be the kapparah, the covering,
for the wrong I've done.
My eyes began to open and I started to realize
there was a barrier between me
and "Ha Kadosh Baruch Hu",
between myself and God.
I'm not holy enough.
I'm not righteous enough.
And if that can be taken away, then maybe I'll know God.
And then I started to study the prophecies
that talked about the one who would come,
who would be the lamb of God, he'd be like Abraham,
offering up Isaac.
I read Isaiah 53, that he was the suffering servant,
the one who was put to death for our transgressions,
that by his stripes that we can be healed.
This is what I want.
This is what I need.
I was joyed, overjoyed.
But what would my parents think?
What would the family think?
Jews don't believe in Yeshua.
And then I started weighing the cost.
What's it gonna mean for me?
Do I want to be cut off?
Nothing else matters more than knowing God.
And like Abraham Avinu, I started a walk of faith.
I said, "God, I'm looking to you to guide me, to lead me,
"and I want to follow you all my days.
"I want to give everything to you."
And I knew I'd found the truth
and I knew that I was a completed Jew now,
not just from my "Brit Mila",
my circumcision in the flesh,
but now I had a new circumcised heart, a new covenant.
If you can look at the heart of King David in the Psalms,
if you can look at these prophecies,
if you can read Isaiah 53 and see the Mashiach,
he is the one.
He will bring you that relationship
that you long for and that you're trying
through all your davening and your mitzvot to reach,
he's already reached it.
He's completed it.
Believe in him.