At one point I said "Well, what do you think of Jesus?
"Do you think he was the Messiah?"
That just really aggravated him it made him angry.
How can you expect me to believe in a God
in who's name my people have been killed?
I don't care if it's true I will never believe in Jesus.
And that conversation ended
with me walking home down the mountain in the dark.
It was not a pleasant encounter.
I grew up in a loving Jewish family.
My mom and dad were very actively involved
in the local synagogue
and we were there pretty much every Friday or Saturday.
We celebrated the holidays at shul
we celebrated Passover at home
and my Jewish identity meant a lot to me growing up.
I decided to go to college where I majored
in fashion photography and then after I worked
in the photo industry for a couple of years
I decided to fulfill my lifelong passion
of learning how to ski.
I drove myself to Aspen Colorado where I knew no one
got a season pass and started skiing.
Aspen was heaven on earth
and that's where I wanted to live the rest of my life.
And so it was there during my second ski season
that I met a young woman from Kansas City, Missouri.
Perhaps the most curious person I've ever met in my life
in fact she has a journalism degree
from the University of Missouri.
She began talking to me about her faith in God
and she told me that she was a Christian
and I said "Oh that's nice, I'm Jewish."
She kept asking me questions.
Do you believe in God?
Well, what's he like?
Is he personal?
Does he wanna have a relationship with you?
What? What do you mean "What's he like?"
And I said, "You know he's other, you know
"and we're here, we're down here
"he's infinite, we're finite."
She kept asking me questions about God
and about what I believed about God and why I believed it
and the more questions that she asked me
the more upset I would become with her
I would get angry with her I'd get angry with her
"How can you expect me to believe in a god
who's name my people have been killed for 2,000 years?"
She appeared to me as being narrow mindedly dogmatic
but it was over time, as she asked me questions
about what I believed and why I believed it
it began to occur to me that maybe I was the one
who was narrow minded and dogmatic.
I knew Jews don't believe in Jesus.
I knew you can't be Jewish and believe in Jesus
but the more she pressed me to explain
why those things were true
the more I realized I didn't know other than because.
After she left I decided well,
I'm gonna start reading the Bible for myself
to see what it says.
And so of course I wouldn't go anywhere near
the New Testament because I knew for a fact
that the New Testament was "goyisha bobe meshius"
it was Gentile grandmother stories
and everybody knew it was anti-Semitic
and so I would have nothing to do with that.
And so I decided okay I'll start reading in Genesis.
What I discovered was that the God of this woman
was my God, was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.
That really touched me it really challenged me inside
because it made me realize that I didn't know my own God
or at least I didn't know much about him.
As I read more of the Bible,
I began thinking more about my relationship with God
and it got to a point where I actually started
to pray personally you know like talk to God.
God if Jesus is the Messiah
and you want me to put my faith in Him
then I'm willing to do that but only if it's true
'cause if it's not true, the last thing I wanna do now
is to worship a man and be an idol worshiper.
I began to really think about what it meant
for me to become a believer in Jesus.
You know, what would my parents think?
And what would my brothers think?
What would my aunts and my uncles and my cousins
what would 90% of my friends
at least my friends from New York think?
It was like I was thinking about this
and it was as if I heard a voice in my head say to me
"Danny that's right, the choice is between following me
"and everyone and everything else."
If God is God, He's boss, you do what He says
and if there's a cost involved, it's worth it.
This woman came back at the end of the summer
and she brought with her,
when she came back she brought with her a book
that a friend of hers her best friend, had given to her
and the title of the book are you ready for this?
The title of the book was "What's a Nice Jewish boy
"Like You Doing in the First Baptist Church?"
All of the questions I kinda had floating around in my head
that I wasn't willing to ask directly
were addressed in the book.
Jesus was Jewish and the Apostles were Jewish
and all of the New Covenant the New Testament books
were written by Jews.
To this point I had never still opened
the New Testament scriptures but reading this book
I began to read them for myself for the first time.
I grew up in a neighborhood that was mixed Jewish
mostly Jewish and a lotta Catholic
and so for me Jesus and the New Testament was associated
with those kids and the hatred that I got from them.
And I was shocked to discover the exact opposite
I discovered a Jewish man addressing Jewish topics
in a Jewish way who taught love for your enemies
love for all people not the kind of hatred that I saw.
And this Jesus who was the god of the Gentiles
who hated the Jews began to evaporate
because he didn't exist.
And I finished the book and she says to me.
So, what did you think of the book?
I thought for a minute
and I said, "It was good I liked it.
"I think it's gonna help me explain some things
"to my parents."
And she was completely taken off guard
and she said, "You mean you believe
"that Jesus is the promised Messiah of Israel?"
And I said, "Yeah."
She says, "Now you believe that He died on a Roman cross
"as a payment for your sin?"
And I said, "Yeah."
And she said, "And you believe that by trusting in Him
"and what He did for you on that cross
"your sins are forgiven and you have new life with God?"
And I said, "Yeah!"
After I had come to faith in Jesus, it took me a few months
to build the nerve to tell my parents about it
'cause I knew it would be hard for them.
His parents did not take it well.
My mother's response was just classic.
"Don't talk to me about Jesus don't tell me about Him
"I will never believe in Jesus
"I was born a Jew, I will die a Jew
"I don't care if it's true I will never believe in Jesus!"
You gotta love God's tenacity with His people.
Even as He sent someone into my life
to tell me about Messiah, it was people who knew Messiah
who helped my mother come to faith
at the age of 86 years of age
and I had the most awesome, awesome privilege
of leading my mom to faith in Messiah.
You may be wondering about the identity
of this very curious Shiksa from Kansas City
this journalist who had such a profound impact on my life
and yes, what are you guessing is true.