Rivkeh’s* Story

When Jesus Was Really Born

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<h1 class="text-white text-center">100% Jewish. 
100% Christian.</h1>
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Jumbo Intro

Celebrate The High Holiday

Who We Are

<h2>Have You Met the Real Jesus?</h2>
Some of the popular ideas about Jesus that we’re familiar with today don’t remotely capture what the original biographies of his life tell us about him.
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Have You Met the Real Jesus

Yoel and Adel Ben David live in Israel. They married when they were 20 and were involved in the Hasidic Breslov movement. Here is their story.
I was born in Israel and lived there for the first three years of my life," Yoel begins. "My father worked for a hotel chain, so we lived in the Caribbean, England and Paris over the next sixteen years, and then came back to Israel.
"My mother is a proud Moroccan Jew; my father is Scottish. My Mum was very forceful with our Jewishness. She had served with the Israeli Defense Force during the Yom Kippur War. Every time there was anything about Israel on the television, or anything about anyone Jewish, she made us aware of it!
"We were a traditional Jewish family rather than religious. We sat down every Friday night, and because my dad was not Jewish and I was the eldest son, I said the Kiddush, the blessing over the wine. We ate our meal and then, like any other family, we went into the living room and watched television. An Orthodox Jew, of course, would not use any electricity and certainly would not watch TV on Shabbat!"
Adel's background is quite different. Her parents were from Latvia and in 1978 moved to Berlin, where Adel was born.
"Was brought up in a Russian culture while living in Berlin. My mother died when I was very young, so my grandmother brought me up, and I can remember asking her, 'Am I German or am I Russian?' And she would answer me, 'You're Jewish!' As a child I couldn't understand that. On holy days we would go to the synagogue, but it was more of a social event than religious observance for us.
"I lived in Berlin until I was nineteen. Then I came to Israel and met Yoel at the ulpan [language school], and a year later we were married! I was involved in New Age philosophy, and Yoel wasn't a practicing Jew. What connected us in those early days was philosophizing about God."
Yoel continues: "In my teenage years I went to the vicar at the school in England and asked him to give me some books about God, including the Koran and some Hindu writings. The real shock for me was that he didn't try to dissuade me. As I was reading the Koran on my bed, the thought came to me that if God exists, I shouldn't really need to read these books. Rather, he should just show up.
"So I said, 'God, if you're real, show up.' And before me I saw the face of Jesus! I looked at him and I felt a presence in my room, and I felt afraid. I saw a clear vision of God—and ignored it. I decided it was a figment of my imagination.
"When I came to Israel and met Adel, we were really searching to find the truth. We decided that if we believed in God, we were being hypocritical if we didn't do something about our Judaism. We went through different stages. At first it was observing Shabbat. Then I began to study the Torah and other writings. Next it was practicing the holidays.
"We became more Haredi (Orthodox). We left the language school. We were living together, so gradually the idea of doing that and not being married seemed wrong. We were faced with a choice: separate or get married. We knew we were right for each other, so why wait?
"We approached the Breslov movement, but I still prayed in a Chabad (Lubavitch) synagogue, where I began studying Talmud with the local rabbi. I wore a big kippah (skull cap) and tsitsit (prayer tassels) and grew the peot (earlocks). I learned more about the difference between laws from the Torah and those added by the rabbis.
"As my enrollment into the army was coming up, we decided to move to Jerusalem. The atmosphere was more religious there than in Tel Aviv, so we thought we would feel more at home.
"We picked up the basics of Jewish mysticism. There are ten Sephirot or vessels in what is called the tree of life. Each time we say the name of God in the Siddur, rabbinic authorities have the name for a different vessel to meditate upon, to focus on the mystical method through which God has created the world.
"We also engaged in the mystical side of Hasidic Judaism through the writings of the founder of the Breslov movement, Rabbi Nachman. He was famous for many different sayings, among them (I paraphrase) 'all the commandments mean nothing without love.' Non-Hasids focus on the laws rather than the experiential."
For one and a half years, Yoel and Adel attempted to live a "religious" life. Despite their best efforts, they were disappointed. "I felt I hadn't found what I was looking for," says Adel. "Something was wrong. I thought that if I could find a combination of New Age and Judaism, my search would be over.
"However, everything changed when we met Judy. An elderly lady from Richmond, Virginia, she was the aunt of a friend. We invited her over and she started talking about God as though she knew him! She challenged us to read the Bible for ourselves. This was something we weren't used to. Her parting words that first night were, 'If you want to know God, just read the Torah.' Up until that time I had struggled to read it. I decided to read the Torah. In fact we raced each other to read it!"
For Adel, to distance herself from the Orthodox community was easy. But for Yoel, then serving in the Rabbinical Corps in the army, it was more difficult. He says: "When I'd finished reading the five books of Moses, I began to realize I had a problem with the daily service I had to attend in the synagogue with all the other soldiers. They were just going through the motions, saying the prayers as fast as they could. I couldn't say them that fast and mean it. So I told my fellow soldiers I would wait until they'd finished praying, then I would go into the synagogue and pray by myself."
"Meanwhile," Adel continues, "Judy became like family to us. But I worked most evenings, whereas Yoel worked during the day and had evenings free. So he would spend many hours discussing the Bible with Judy, which meant I was missing out!"
"I started reading Isaiah," Yoel recalls, "and when I got to chapter 53 I didn't understand it, so I went to see Judy. We didn't know it then, but she'd been praying for nine months for an opportunity to speak with us about Jesus. So when I knocked on her door and asked her to explain Isaiah 53, she sat me down with a cup of tea and started telling me about Jesus.
"My initial reaction was to think I'd been deceived. Why hadn't she told me about Jesus before? But as she continued talking, I started to sense what I now know to be the presence of God. I had begun to notice it when I was praying in the synagogue on my own. As Judy kept speaking, gradually the presence of God increased.
"Then I said in my mind, You know what, God? If this is true, then I'm going to go with my heart—I will believe. And at that moment, I saw the same vision that I had seen three years before, sitting on my bed in England with the Koran next to me. I saw the face of Jesus. And then I knew, and I told Judy I was ready to believe. She gave me a tiny copy of the New Testament and I took it home, where I found Adel sitting on our bed, still reading the five books of Moses!
"'Something terrible has happened!' I announced. 'Jesus is the Messiah!'"
"I thought that couldn't be true," Adel admits. "A guy came along and people followed him and that became a new religion. Was that supposed to be the truth? Call it pride, but I'd been searching so high and so deep, it couldn't possibly be that! I didn't want it to be. At the same time, I knew that nothing would make Yoel change his mind unless he really believed it.
"So I decided to read the New Testament that Judy had given Yoel, and was very surprised. I read through Matthew's Gospel and by the end I had tears in my eyes. It was not what I had expected. I couldn't find anything I disagreed with. I became upset and asked myself, How come I've not read this before? After all, I'd grown up in Germany where I could easily have read the New Testament, unlike in Israel, where religious Jews are forbidden to read it. I hadn't understood that I was a sinner and needed forgiveness. And so I too came to believe that Jesus was the Messiah."
Yoel and Adel's story reveals a deep search for God; a search that brought them together in the first place and didn't abate until they found what they were looking for.

A Hasidic Couple Encounters Their Messiah

My parents, who are originally from Detroit, Michigan, found the Messiah through the Jesus Movement" in the early seventy's. They solidified their commitment to Him some years later after moving to Seattle. Being the first of six kids I was always the first to experience things—including Yeshua. When I was around twelve, we began going to a Messianic congregation to learn more about our Jewish roots. About a year later, I carried on an old family tradition by having a bar mitzvah, but began a new tradition by giving this one a Messianic flavor. My Haftorah<a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">1</a> portion was Isaiah 1:18, "though your sins be like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow." It was only years later that the true meaning of these words changed my life.
In 1990, we moved to Israel. I was fifteen and had no idea that the most difficult time in my life lay ahead. We moved to a settlement called Neve Tsoof where I found only a handful of people my age. I was spiritually dry, and found myself seeking answers in an Orthodox Yeshivah (a Jewish place of study where someone seeking to be an Orthodox rabbi would find himself). Within eight or nine months, I was completely fed up and confused. I left feeling empty. The God I had once believed in seemed far away, if He even existed.
The following year, I was drafted into the Israeli Army and served as an armored transport technician in the paratrooper unit. However, my mind was on other things. I began playing music with Ofer, a great friend from Neve Tsoof. I was constantly playing the guitar and began drinking and so forth whenever I had the time. I had moved out of my parents' home but they knew of my ungodly lifestyle. They left gospel tracts around my room and asked many people to pray for me.
About a year after we were released from the army, Ofer and I decided to travel as most Israelis do after their years of service. Inspired by some old Jack Kerrouac books, we flew to California and soon found ourselves roaming the country in an old Ford van with a couple of sleeping bags and some very strange philosophical ideas. That year, the Lord miraculously preserved us from many hazards. One such miracle occurred in the dry hills of Arizona. I was lost with no water and after searching for our campsite hour after hour in the sun, dehydration began causing hallucinations. I leaned against a rock in the scorching sun and lost consciousness for some time. When I woke, a basin-shaped stone filled with clear cold water was sitting right in front of me. I drank, was refreshed and before long, I found my campsite. I knew God's hand was on me.
Soon after, during a certain musical performance, I became suddenly aware of an evil presence. Most of the lyrics were putting down Jesus and His message. I realized as never before that evil forces exist—and react for some reason to Jesus. I recalled that the day before we left Israel, a believer had told me, "You need to make up your mind about Jesus, because if you're not with Him, you're against Him." That really shook me up.
Upon returning to Israel, I realized that if God loved me, I wanted to be with Him. I told Him that if Yeshua could help me overcome my sin, I would follow Him always. Guess what? Yeshua not only wiped my slate clean, but He enabled me to break free of my bad habits. Only then did I understand the words of Isaiah that I read in my Haftorah portion many years before. Not only that, I discovered that my best friend, Ofer, had made an independent commitment to Yeshua as well.
Since then, I have been blessed with the most amazing wife and great relationships with my family members who so diligently prayed for me. Most importantly, I have a personal relationship with God. I now serve with Jews for Jesus where the Lord is working through me to share His love with others.
<h4>Endnotes</h4>
<a href="#_ednref1" name="_edn1">1.</a> Traditional reading from the prophetic books of the Bible which follows a reading from the first five books.

Meet Aaron Abramson

As my husband, Stewart, says, we met while I was on staff with Jews for Jesus in the summer of 1984 in New York City. We were both handing out pamphlets—Stewart with another organization called Chosen People—in front of Bloomingdales on 59th Street in New York City. From that moment I thought, "He is perfect for me." You see I had determined to marry a Jewish man who shared my belief in Yeshua. From such a small marriage pool, God heard my prayer!
A few years later I was living in New Jersey. Although I was not at that time working with Jews for Jesus, I wanted to hand out pamphlets in New York City. My congregation leader suggested I call Stewart, as he was looking for volunteers to do just that. After our first outing, I wasn't sure whether I was more interested in handing out pamphlets or in Stewart! Nonetheless, we continued hitting the streets each Saturday. Finally, after one of our outings, Stewart invited me to dinner and a movie. On that first date Stewart said, "If you can see yourself married to me one day, we can continue to date. If not, this is our last date." It took me a moment to process what Stewart had just said. Then, I admitted I could surely see us together in marriage. We were engaged within a few months. In 1986 we were married in Summit, New Jersey.
From the beginning Stewart and I had foundational things in common. We shared a faith in the Jewish Messiah. We both came from Jewish homes with no intermarriage. And we both had a deep love for our Jewish heritage that included a desire to raise children in a Jewish lifestyle that reflected our faith.
But let me go back now and tell you how a woman raised in a Jewish home came to be telling other Jewish people about Jesus.
I was born in 1953 in Detroit, Michigan. My parents, Jerry Tilleman and Lois Faren Tilleman, were both Jews of European background. Their families immigrated to the United States through Canada in the 1940s. I have three siblings. Debra is the oldest, born in 1951. I followed in 1953, then Mark in 1958 and finally Michael was born in 1960.
For most of my childhood our family lived in Grand Rapids, Michigan. My great-grandfather, Morris Singer, was an Orthodox Jew from Russia. He was my mother's grandfather. I spent all of my summers in Detroit with Grandpa Singer and his widowed daughter, Rose Joffee. Aunt Rose was like a mother to me. I observed my grandpa wrap tefillin and pray each morning, chanting in Hebrew and davening. I would sit quietly across the room in a rocking chair and "daven" in time with him. All I knew was that Grandpa was talking to God. I wanted to talk to God like my grandpa did, so I imitated him. I didn't understand any of it; I just believed God was real.
By her 24th birthday, my mother had four children and wasn't equipped to raise them. Mom did not have parenting skills and did not have the support of her family or community. My dad, Jerry, was a master plumber. He worked out of town a lot, leaving my mother alone with four young undisciplined children. We attended a Reform temple, and three of us four kids went to Jewish education classes each Sunday morning. We attended synagogue regularly until I was confirmed at age thirteen.
Then, our family fell apart. My mom left home to make a new life for herself. She was worn out and felt she was a failure as a mother. She just didn't know how to relate to her own children. When Dad was home, he yelled and screamed at mom and at us. Mom just couldn't take the stress anymore and she left us when I was in third grade. So now it was dad and four unruly children. Dad continued to work long hours and the four of us were left to care for ourselves. He would leave us money to walk to the grocery store for food. The next five years we moved at least five times, and Dad had a series of girlfriends. Our Jewish education came to an abrupt end, as did our family life. My sister Deb and I were in survival mode. We were charged with cooking, cleaning and caring for our two younger brothers. Mom would visit us once a week for about an hour at the house when Dad wasn't there.
Those five years were tumultuous. Dad had a terrible temper; he was angry and took it out on us. He kept dating women in the hope of finding a replacement "mom" for us, but each relationship ended badly. I am not sure how many times Dad got married. But a few of his wives left quite an impression. There were suicide attempts by one wife, pot smoking in our house by another and fistfights between that wife and myself. It could be a movie on the Lifetime Channel (I will spare you).
These were terrible years filled with fear and a sense of not belonging to anyone. Three of the four of us eventually moved out of our dad's house to live with our mom and her new husband in south Florida. As long as we laid low and didn't make too much noise, we had a roof over our heads and clothes to wear. Through all of this I always prayed to God. I would mostly just cry in my bed and ask him questions. I didn't understand how to live in my circumstances. In high school I started using all kinds of drugs. I managed to graduate in 1972. Then I got in a car with a friend and drove across the country and landed in San Francisco.
For the next eight years I wandered through various jobs, relationships and some college courses. But I was on a spiritual quest. I wanted to know the God my grandpa Singer prayed to. I started going to a Conservative temple, but found it unfulfilling. Then I started reading eastern philosophy and religion. I would go to bookstores, sit in the section where spiritual books were shelved and read anything that grabbed my attention.
One day, I picked up two books someone had left in my apartment, a Bhagavad Gita (Hindu Book of Knowledge) and a Bible that included a New Testament. I lost interest in the Bhagavad Gita but kept reading the Bible. Eventually I found myself in the New Testament. I really thought Jesus was very cool.
Eventually I prayed and asked God to give me a sign if Jesus was the one I had been searching for. The next day a neighbor gave me a book to read, The Late Great Planet Earth. I read that in a day. Soon after that, my landlady talked with me about Jesus. She had never done that before. Within 24 hours of that conversation, a customer at the restaurant where I waitressed was in a conversation with the people at her table about Jesus. I was eavesdropping. She noticed and asked me if I was a Christian. I told her I was Jewish, and she asked me if I had ever heard of Jews for Jesus. It was at that moment I remembered tearing Jews for Jesus posters off of a telephone pole years before. I had told my friend these people were liars, that you can't be Jewish and believe in Jesus. But I gave this woman my phone number and a woman named Martha from Jews for Jesus called me.
I began meeting with Martha weekly. My biggest dilemma was reconciling the idea that my wonderful Grandpa Singer was in hell. But over a few visits we settled it. And I knew I had to accept Jesus as my Messiah. I did so on May 20, 1980.
My life drastically changed. I began to attend weekly Bible studies at Jews for Jesus. One of the staff also met with me weekly one on one to teach me the Bible. Then a married couple in the congregation I started attending invited me to live in their house as a part of their family. It was a process, but I stopped using drugs and God did a lot of healing in my life and heart. Within a year, Jews for Jesus offered me a scholarship to attend a Bible college on the East Coast, and I never looked back.
Stewart and I have been married more than a quarter of a century now. We had a honeymoon baby in May 1987, nine months and four days after our wedding —Melissa Ruth. I remember counting her fingers and toes and thanking God for giving us a healthy baby. We lived in the Bronx at that time. Soon after, Stewart was asked to lead a Messianic congregation in Connecticut. Each Friday afternoon we would pack up our sweet Melissa and drive to Connecticut for Shabbat services. I taught the children and led the music while Stewart led the Shabbat service. The congregation began to grow. Soon we moved to Connecticut and our congregation, Joy of Israel, solidified. In 1989 Jonathan Samuel was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut. Our second child was healthy and perfect too! I won't try to recount all my life since then, but our two great kids are grown up now and living independently (maybe they can tell their story one day too), while Stewart and I continue to tell other Jewish people about Yeshua.
I think if I had not come to believe in Jesus I most likely would not be alive today. But I have found in him a very abundant life!

Jesus Was Very Cool!

I was born in Czechoslovakia in 1935. Our family owned one of the largest textile factories in the Czech Republic. In 1940, when the Germans occupied this area, they first took the industrialists, and my father was sent to the Warsaw Ghetto. We never saw him again.
In September of 1942 all the Jewish people from Prague were deported and everything was taken away from us. My mother had prepared us to immigrate to England, but soon the borders were closed and we couldn't get out anymore. We were sent to Thereseastadt, a horrible ghetto, and stayed there 16 months. My memory of that time has become quite blurred, but I do recall that I was sick all the time and developed a terrible skin condition. I also remember being very hungry and eating a meal once a day of dirty soup made out of potato peels and a piece of bread.
We were then sent to Auschwitz in a cattle car. There, my mother saved my life by always getting me an extra little piece of bread. I was just a little girl, yet we had to stand in front of the barracks in freezing cold for hours and hours. There was electrically—charged barbed wire everywhere. I remember praying, "God, I know I will surely survive this."
<img class="size-large wp-image-87567 aligncenter" style="max-width: 480px;margin: 25px auto;" src="https://live-api.jewsforjesus.org/wp-content/uploads/holoucaust-art-instalation-sanfrancisco-featured-850x480.jpg" alt="" width="100%" />
In the beginning of 1945, the bombings in Germany were so intense that they needed a few prisoners from Auschwitz to clean up after the phosphorus bombings in Hamburg. We had been in the family camp for six months already and our time was up; we were going to be sent to the gas chambers. A car came from Berlin to take a certain amount of prisoners to help clean up after the bombings. We stood before Mengele and my mother put a big sack over me and he couldn't see me, because she had put me between people, so I was pushed through and I survived once again.
We ended up in Bergen-Belsen at the end of the war. The Germans' plan was to have us all there so that as the allies advanced to dynamite it, no one would witness what had happened there. When we arrived there were no more barracks left, so we were pushed in on top of deceased bodies. One morning I woke up to the roaring of tanks, and realized the SS must have run away. The English and French came in and immediately set up temporary headquarters. My mother dragged me in to talk to them, but she collapsed and I fell unconscious as well.
I had been in a coma for five days with typhoid fever and all sorts of other infections. My mother had been in a different barrack, but somehow found me. We were sent on a hospital ship to Sweden and we convalesced there. In August of 1946 we came to America by boat. I got private tutoring and eventually became a maternity nurse. I married and had a wonderful daughter named Nina.
I did not enjoy going to synagogue when we arrived in the United States, and I would never step into a church. I was always praying, though. God had been with me in some very dark hours; I had been so desperate, and He was always with me.
One day I saw David Brickner on the street, handing out some literature. I walked over to him, crying, and said, "How dare you? How dare you, a Jewish boy, what are you doing?" I showed him the number on my arm ¡ I was so upset! Whenever I saw the Jews for Jesus on the street, I would literally push their hands away. I was hurt. I was insulted.
I had a friend at that time, the doorman in my building, who told me about Jesus. I told him that I was Jewish and did not want to hear about Jesus. He said once, "We are all children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." I replied, "Every Gentile is an anti-Semite." But I asked him, "Take me to your church on a Sunday." I went with him and it didn't mean anything to me. The minister told me, "In life, everything is fate."
I soon heard that they were having Lev Leigh from Jews for Jesus at the church, giving a Christ in the Passover presentation. He had once been a Lubavitcher, and I thought, "That's impossible." I wanted to meet him; I was so perplexed. But the service had to be cancelled because of the weather, and instead the pastor gave me Lev's phone number at the Jews for Jesus office. Within half an hour he was in my office, explaining the gospel to me. I said, "How can you believe this as a Jew?" I had been such an independent thinker; nobody could brainwash me into believing. But I was searching for the truth, and Lev showed me different things in the New Testament. I realized that Jesus had never been anything else but a Jew, and I accepted Him into my life.
Today I am very outspoken about my faith. After Auschwitz, what do I have to lose?

Losing All; Gaining All

<img class="alignnone size-large wp-image-87073" style="max-width: 600px;" src="https://live-api.jewsforjesus.org/wp-content/uploads/emmanuel-family-picture-850x480.jpg" alt="" width="100%" />
The cover photo above, circa 1910, is of the Persian maternal ancestors of Emmanuel Mebasser. The man with the white beard is Ruben, Emmanuel’s great-great-great-grandfather. Back row: far left, Tallah, his great-greatgrandmother; middle, with hat, Mashiah, his great-great-grandfather. Mashiah means Messiah.
<blockquote>
<img class="wp-image-47788 size-medium aligncenter" src="https://live-api.jewsforjesus.org/wp-content/uploads/tomb-of-ester-260x300.jpg" alt="Hakim Musah was an elder in a synagogue in Hamedan. Pictured above is the Tomb of Esther in Hamedan, Iran." width="260" height="300" />
Hakim Musah was an elder in a synagogue in Hamedan. Pictured above is the Tomb of Esther in Hamedan, Iran.
</blockquote>
<h3>My maternal great-great-grandfather, Hakim Musah, was an elder in a synagogue in Hamedan, Iran, in the mid-1800s.</h3>
One Sabbath day, a Russian missionary came to the synagogue and spoke to Hakim, who was greeting people at the door. He asked him, “Did you know that the Messiah you are expecting has already arrived?” and told him that Jesus was the Messiah. Hakim was so upset that he slapped the missionary in the face and threw him out of the synagogue.
Because Hakim was well known in the community, the missionary learned where he lived and went to visit him at his home. Because of Iranian hospitality, he invited the missionary into his home and served him tea and something to eat. Sharing from the Hebrew Scriptures, the missionary showed him prophecies about the Messiah that he believed had been fulfilled in events recorded in the New Testament regarding the life, death and resurrection of Jesus. The missionary continued to visit Hakim until, over time, my great-great-grandfather came to believe in Jesus as the Messiah of the Jewish people.
<img class="wp-image-47790 size-full aligncenter" src="https://live-api.jewsforjesus.org/wp-content/uploads/davoud-norolla-ehteshamzadeh-1.jpg" alt="David Ehteshamol Hokama, born circa 1870, with his son, Noorola. David is the son of Hakim Musah, Emmanuel’s maternal great-great grandfather." width="300" height="448" />
My paternal grandfather, Azizolah Mebasser, was the son of Shimon, a rabbi in the city of Kashan, Iran. Azizolah came to believe in Jesus because he attended a very prominent high school run by Christian missionaries in Kashan. Until 1920, Iranians did not have last names. They often took on the names of the towns they were from to distinguish themselves. Instead, my grandfather chose the last name “Mevesser,” which means “bearer of good news” in both Hebrew and Farsi. He spent his life telling others about Jesus, or “Isa<a href="#_edn1" name="_ednref1">1</a>,” as we call him in Farsi.
<h3>Fleeing Iran... for “Tehrangeles”</h3>
Jewish faith in Jesus was handed down from generation to generation on both sides of my family, so my parents are Jewish Iranian believers in Jesus. I was born in Tehran, Iran, in 1978. The Islamic Revolution took place when I was three months old. My parents knew that Islam in Iran would bring trouble to Jews and Christians alike. So, we fled and moved to Los Angeles or, as the 800,000 plus other Iranians there like to call it, Tehrangeles.
Not only was life in Tehrangeles an extension of life in Iran for my family, but we also held on to our Jewish traditions and identity. I grew up knowing what God meant to me because my family read the Bible and celebrated Jewish holidays together. Passover was my favorite holiday, and it wasn’t until later in life that I realized the Iranian Jewish celebration has a different flavor than it does for the rest of world Jewry. I was shocked that other Jews did not know the tradition during the singing of “Dayenu” of whipping one another with giant green onions—to the point of getting bruises!
<blockquote><img class="size-medium wp-image-47796 aligncenter" src="https://live-api.jewsforjesus.org/wp-content/uploads/mebasser-family-300x187.jpg" alt="An Iranian get-together at the home of Mr. and Mrs. Mebasser (Emmanuel's paternal grandparents) in Tehran, Iran" width="300" height="187" />
In Iranian Jewish culture, we don’t have family get-togethers with fewer than 40 people. We take forever to say goodbye. Whenever we were at a family gathering, my parents would tell my brothers and me, “We are going to leave now. Get ready.” And I would tell my brothers, “We’ll be here another hour and a half,” because my parents would say goodbye to each person individually and end up having extended conversations with all of them.
</blockquote>
<h3>A good life wasn't enough; something was missing.</h3>
Because of my parents’ faith, I grew up knowing who the God of the Bible is. I enjoyed a good life as an Iranian, and as a Jew. I tried to obey the commandments in the Scriptures, but I felt I was lacking something. This became evident in my life in public schools in Los Angeles, where survival was a major feat of sustained anonymity for me, from dodging gang wars and declining designer drugs, to ducking away from the sexually promiscuous culture of my classmates.
When people at school invited me to take part in any of the above, I told them I didn’t want to. When they asked me, “Why?” I responded, “Because it’s wrong,” and they called me a “goody two-shoes.” I really didn’t understand why I couldn’t do those things, except I knew the Bible said they were “sins.” On those rare occasions when I challenged my friends as to why I should join in with them, their only answer was “because you can.”
This surface-level morality was good enough for me to cruise along in life until the summer before my senior year in high school, when my best friend, a believer in Jesus, asked me to help him lead a Bible club at school. Until then, my faith, or what there was of it, was more my parents’ than my own. Now that my friend was asking me to share my faith with my classmates and lead people in studying the Bible, I had to be sure I knew what I believed.
<blockquote>
People I talked to about Jesus challenged my faith, questioning the validity of the Bible. They asked me questions like, “How could a loving God send someone to hell who’s from some remote land and has never heard about Jesus?” I began to ask myself, How can I really know and understand God if I don’t question Him and the Bible and find out for myself what is true?
</blockquote>
<h3>The key to my emptiness</h3>
I wanted to know that God was real and what He wanted from me. I began to ask people who seemed to have genuine relationships with God how I could hear from Him. They told me to read the Bible and pray and seek God with persistence, and He would reveal Himself to me.  I took that challenge. Around that time, the youth leader at my congregation, who taught my friends and me from the Bible, sat us down and asked, “How many of you know that if you died today, you would go to heaven?”
I searched my soul and considered the weight of his words. I had read through the entire Bible with my family, but when it came down to it, I really didn’t know whether God would accept me.
<blockquote>
In the New Testament I had read that Jesus would descend from heaven and gather his followers at the sound of the shofar (1 Thessalonians 4:16–17). I often dreamed that I heard that trumpet call: I would start to ascend into the sky toward Jesus, but then I would hit my head on the ceiling of my bedroom and be left behind! Even in my dreams, I knew that I had not completely entrusted my life to Jesus.
</blockquote>
So, when my youth leader asked me if I knew whether I would go to heaven, I told him I didn’t know. Then he reminded me of this passage in the New Testament: “... if you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved” (Romans 10:9). I prayed with him that day to acknowledge Jesus’ death as the atoning sacrifice for my sins. I knew in that moment that God had accepted me.
<h3>If it was good enough for King David, it was good enough for me. But I had to live it out!</h3>
I chose to follow God with all my heart. I began to read the Bible again, not just as a portion of Scripture to cross off my checklist, but as the living and breathing Word of God. I knew that the faith of my forefathers—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and King David, whom God called a man after His own heart—was my faith too. I found a greater calling in life, not just a list of rules to follow.
Upon this realization, I told my friends that the reason I would not take part in their rebellious actions was not just because the Bible said not to, but because those actions would hinder my relationship with God and distract me from my heart’s desire to follow Him.
<blockquote>
People began to see a change in me and even respected me for my faith. While I was not looking for my peers’ approval, those who knew me—although they didn’t agree with my reasoning or my faith—defended me when others scoffed at me for not taking part in their sex/drugs/no rules lifestyle.
</blockquote>
Moving into adulthood, the more I aligned my dreams and desires with the teachings of Jesus, the clearer my path became. My purpose now is sharing God’s love and the good news about the Messiah Jesus through my actions and words. The faith of my forefathers—including my grandfather, who chose our last name Mebasser (“bearer of good news”)—has become a legacy I proudly uphold.
<img class="size-medium wp-image-47802 aligncenter" src="https://live-api.jewsforjesus.org/wp-content/uploads/persepolis-ruins-kourosh-the-great-209x300.jpg" alt="Ruins from Persepolis, the palace of " width="209" height="300" />
<h3>The greatest challenge leads to the greatest adventure.</h3>
I know that the question, “Who is Jesus?” is a challenging one for our Jewish people. But the more I learn about the Hebrew Scriptures and my Jewish heritage, the more I see how God planned all along to send the Messiah Jesus as the eternal Yom Kippur sacrifice for our sins.
For so long I wanted to hear God’s voice. I sought near and far. I prayed and prayed. I listened, I pleaded, I called out. And the Lord answered me. These words of Jesus really spoke to me when I was searching: “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you” (Matthew 7:7).
Ask God today with an open heart if Jesus might be the Messiah and listen for His response. I know He will meet you just like He met me.
<blockquote>
Emmanuel works as a web evangelism innovator in the San Francisco Branch of Jews for Jesus.
</blockquote>
<h4>End Note</h4>
<a href="#_ednref1" name="_edn1">1.</a> The Quranic name for Jesus, Isa, is pronounced in Farsi as Eesaw.  The name comes from Jesse (Eshai,) as in the Stump of Jesse as a name for the Messiah.

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