by Ceil Rosen
It was New Year's Eve. I was looking
out my pantry window at a star. It seemed bright and bigger than any
star
I had ever seen before, and the thought came to me, "Maybe that's
what the Christmas star looked like." Then I realized what I, a
Jew,
was thinking.
I was born into a Jewish family in Boston,
Massachusetts. My mother died when my twin brother and I were
infants,
and not long afterwards my father had a nervous breakdown. I was
raised by foster parents who were Orthodox Jews.
My foster mother kept the kosher dietary
laws.
We had separate dishes for meat and milk, and we washed the dishes with
separate bars of soap, and even used separate dish towels. We
kept
all the holidays, and on Sabbath I was not allowed to write with a
pencil
or pick up a needle and thread or a scissors. The very, very
Orthodox
would not ride in a car or handle money on the Sabbath, but we
did.
As I grew older I began to wonder why we kept part of the Law and not
all
of it.
We lived in a suburb of Boston until I was
about thirteen, then we moved to Denver, Colorado. Most of the kids in
the neighborhood were Jewish. My mother didn't encourage me to
have
Gentile friends. It you were a Jew, you were a Goy, and a Goy
just
meant one who didn't have the good fortune to realize there was
only
one God. They worshiped statues and three gods, but we had the
true
faith.
One day Moishe Rosen, a high school boy who
lived on our street, knocked on my mother's door, selling house number
signs. He asked me out and after that we started seeing a lot of each
other.
It was a teen-aged romance that blossomed.
Moishe was raised in a nominal Orthodox
family.
He mother didn't keep kosher. I would go to his house for breakfast and
have bacon for breakfast and enjoy it. We didn't discuss
religion
a whole lot--I had my views and he had his. He was proud to be a
Jew and felt that there were certain ties and roots that we wanted to
keep.
After that time I began to chafe under all
the restrictions. There was no reality in my life with God--it was
just
"learn this....memorize that...do this...don't do that." I started to
think
that maybe Mama wasn't right about all the time. I didn't think
God
loved me and I didn't love him, so in rebellion I began to tell myself
that maybe there wasn't any God. And if there wasn't any God,
then
I wasn't bound by anything; I could do what I wanted.
Outwardly I went along with what my
parents were telling me to do, but inwardly I was rebelling.
When I was about sixteen, our high school chorus gave a Christmas
pageant.
We dressed up as Israeli women and moved across the stage in a slow,
almost
modern dance movement as we sang, "O come, o come, Immanuel/ and ransom
captive Israel." While I was singing and performing I wondered if
it was possible that there was something to Jesus being for the Jews.
When Moishe and I were married, I felt a real
sense of freedom and was definitely not going to have an Orthodox
home.
We were just going to be modern Americans without any hang-ups about
religion.
The pressure of having to be religious was
off. So I began to feel a little bit freer within myself and
realized
that I did believe in God after all. I was content and happy, and
when we were expecting our first baby, I started saying prayers of
thanksgiving.
At Christmastime, 1951, Moishe brought
home an album of Christmas carols. One afternoon, while I was
playing
the record, I started to think about the words in the carol, "O Little
Town of Bethlehem": "Yet in thy dark streets shineth/The everlasting
Light..."
I prayed, "God, could it be possible that what these Christians are
saying
about Jesus is true? I'm ready to go back and be an Orthodox Jew
and keep all the Laws if this is what You want, or to believe in Jesus.
Please show me what is right." Then I got busy taking
care of the baby and forgot about my prayer. But that was the
turning
point. About a week later, on New Year's Eve, I saw the star from
my pantry window, and from then on God gave me a growing hunger to read
the New Testament.
But I was afraid to go buy one. Finally
the next summer I asked Moishe's cousin to buy a Bible for me.
She
looked at me in surprise when I said, "I want the whole Bible,
but
don't tell anybody!" She brought me a King James
Bible.
I couldn't wait for her to leave so I could start reading
it.
I turned to the New Testament and just soaked
it up like a blotter. I read about Jesus being the Son of David,
the Son of Abraham, and this struck a responsive chord in my
heart.
I thought, "What's wrong with this? Why don't we Jews accept
this?"
The more I read the New Testament, the more
I thought, "This is really a Jewish book."
I fell in love with the Person of Jesus and the things that he
said.
They rang so true that I just knew he was real. I went back and
read
the Gospels again, because I was so hungry for the Person of
Christ.
I felt a deep need to discuss these things with someone but didn't know
where to turn, and I prayed that God would help me find someone to talk
to.
One snowy January day in 1953 a lady came
to my door and introduced herself. She was a missionary with a
Scofield
Bible and tracts. A Christian family had been praying for
us
for three or four years and was moved by God to ask her to visit
us.
I was so overwhelmed that I went into the pantry where I had seen the
star
and wiped the t ears from my eyes. I didn't want her to see me crying.
Mrs. Wago began teaching me out of the
Scriptures.
As I started believing in the Person of Christ I soaked up everything
she
told me. She came regularly for a while, but
then
Moishe became upset. He knew I was reading the New Testament and
he started worrying about it. He said, "That's okay if you want
to
believe that; I don't want to believe it. Just don't tell
anybody
about it." I tried to share the tracts with him and he just
got more and more annoyed. Finally he said he didn't want
her
to come to the house any more. The weather was bad anyway, so she
teach me over the phone.
One day, while I was talking to Mrs. Wago,
Moishe came home and, infuriated, ripped the phone out of the
wall.
That didn't terminate the studies, we just kept them a little shorter.
At one point when Moishe confronted me about my beliefs I
said,
"If I have to choose between you and God, I would have to choose God.
Don't
make me choose." He dropped it because he knew I was serious.
On Easter Sunday, 1953, Mrs. Wago
arranged
for me to be taken to a church. I w anted very much to go since I
had never been to a church service. Moishe said, 'Yes, you
can go this once but I don't want you to make a habit of it, and don't
let anybody see you leaving."
I hid my hat and put it on in the car. If my Jewish
neighbors
had seen me wearing a hat on Easter Sunday morning, they would
know
I was going to church. When the minister gave the invitation, I went
forward
openly to confess and receive Christ.
Every day I prayed for Moishe. I would
stand by the kitchen sink, washing dishes, praying and crying. I
didn't talk to him about it during those weeks, because I sensed
that he would get angry again.
But I left a little booklet about heaven on the table and Moishe
read it. On a Saturday night, about seven weeks later, we were
lying
in bed talking and he said, "Heaven's not like that guy says."
Then
he caught himself and realized that he had been fighting it all
along.
He confessed to me that he believed and
asked,
"What do I do now?" So I said, "It's a good idea to pray
first."
He asked, "Would you help me
pray?"
I told him, "You just tell God that you believe in him and that
Jesus
died for your sins." He prayed and then said, "I want to go to
church
tomorrow." The next morning we went to church and he walked down
the aisle when the invitation was given and confessed Christ openly.
Moishe tried to tell his family, but I didn't
tell mine. Through Moishe telling his father, it got around to my
family. One day my mother came over and said to me in Yiddish, "I
hear you've become a Goy." I said, "No, Ma. I'm still
Jewish
but I do believe that the New Testament is true." I tried to talk
to her but she wouldn't have any of it.
My father said, "Will you go to the
rabbi?" And I said, "Yes, I'll go see him but it won't
change
my faith any." The rabbi asked us what we believed and
Moishe
told him. Then he turned to me and wanted to know my basis for
believing
and I started quoting from Isaiah and Jeremiah. The rabbi said, "You
know,
I don't have my commentaries with me; I can't discuss this with
you
properly today.
My father, I think, really wanted to know about Isaiah 53 and
there was disappointment written on his face when the rabbi couldn't
answer
questions about it. He wanted us to go back to the rabbi, but I
didn't
see that it would serve any purpose. My parents said, "Well, if
you're
not going to see the rabbi again, we'll just forget that you're
our
daughter and that will be the end of it." That was the last
contact we had with them. We heard they moved to Israel, but we could
never
track them down. I pray for them.
Moishe began to feel a real burden that
someone
should tell the Jewish people that Jesus is the Messiah. As he
was
praying about it, God used the Scriptures to say to him, "You're asking
me to send someone. I want you to go."
Summary conclusion by me---Moishe started the ministry of Jews
for Jesus, and she
shared in the ministry being a second "Mom" to many
whose parents disowned them.
(Original story published in Decision, Dec. 1976, p.4).