I looked up in the sky.
Was God really in this?
I was kind of afraid.
Am I gonna lose my Jewishness?
I was raised in the DC area.
Conservative Jewish background.
First thoughts of God came to me
when I was in my elementary school years.
And, I just remember talking to my grandfather.
My grandfather was from Paris,
and was there during World War 2.
He fought in the French resistance.
He was captured a number of times.
I used to be amazed at the fact that he survived the war.
Much of my family perished in the holocaust,
and as saddened as I was by that,
I used to think, listening to him,
that it was a miracle that he survived.
It made me think that God had a special purpose for him.
And somehow, I was a part of that.
I went off to college.
I just was very directionless, smoking pot,
hanging out with people
that really weren't helpful to my soul.
What was the purpose of life?
What was the meaning of life?
I had a bad experience at one party.
I was very drunk and I felt like I was gonna die
from the drinking and I remember calling out to God,
and making a deal, that if I just could make it
through the night, then I would change.
That summer, I returned home.
I found a new crowd that was doing cocaine,
being another way of escape.
And, after a few weeks of that,
I woke up one day and asked myself,
"Why am I doing this?"
Life felt empty.
I couldn't figure out why I was doing
what I was doing, and I said,
"This has to change."
I started working a construction job.
The bricklayer that I was laboring for,
was a big, burley guy from the inner city of Chicago.
Larry went around handing out these pamphlets.
Larry was probably three times the size of me,
so I felt like, if Larry was giving me this piece of paper,
I needed to read it, keep it.
A few weeks later, Larry asked me if I'd read it.
And so, I went home, I read this gospel tract.
It was a simple tract.
It was about the reality of sin, and the remedy for sin.
That seemed pretty simple.
But, you know, as I read those couple of pages,
I didn't understand it.
And I thought, if I'm a college guy,
and I can't understand this, there's a problem.
As I read the tract over and over,
the Holy Spirit began to convict me of sin.
And, one day, the light bulb came on that I was a sinner.
And, I needed this atonement.
I needed this savior, this atonement
that the tract talked about.
What didn't make sense was,
how did my Jewishness fit into this savior,
this Jesus who was the atonement for my sin?
And, I was kind of afraid.
Am I gonna lose my Jewishness?
So, I prayed specifically to the God of Abraham,
Isaac and Jacob.
As soon as I prayed that simple prayer,
I looked up in the sky and I saw Jesus.
I saw Jesus up in the sky.
God confirmed to me that the prayer I made was okay.
That Jesus was my atonement and the remedy for my sin.
When I got home to my dad's apartment,
I tried explain what had happened.
I just felt like I now had this relationship with God.
He just kind of, patted me on the back,
said, "That's great."
My stepsister lived in the apartment with me.
She was in the room right next to me.
When there was an opportunity, my stepsister Carol
gave me her Bible, said,
"Hey, do you want my Bible?"
And, I began to read this Bible.
Every night, I'd go in my room and I'd read the Bible,
and I just began to have this relationship with God.
From Genesis, all the ways through the New Covenant,
the Word of God leapt off the pages and spoke to me,
and my relationship with the Lord grew.
I felt like I understood our people in terms of our culture.
But, in terms of finding meaning and purpose,
I knew as a Jew, that one needs atonement.
I believe the Jewish scriptures tell us
that there would be a Messiah
that would atone for our sins one day.
And, I believe that Messiah is Jesus,
whose blood atonement, whose death, whose atonement
is the covering for my sins.