FROM:

http://www.aish.com/spirituality/odysseys/The_Jewish_Evangelist.asp


" The Jewish Evangelist
by Tikvah (Sonya) Claar
Raised as a Christian evangelist, one woman finally succeeds in converting a Jew -- herself.

On a sweltering summer day in 1970, I was born to a Scotch-Irish father and a mother without a history: She was adopted as a small child and raised by devout Protestants in Kentucky. Two years later, my parents converted to the Baptist faith and my father began studying for the pastorate at a Liberty Bible College in Lynchburg, Virginia. I would spend the next 30 years as a preacher's kid, devoted to Christianity and evangelism. Little did I know that I was on an odyssey that would return me to my long-lost heritage.

I was always fascinated by the Jewish people, but the only things I had heard about them were in Sunday school stories. The first time I saw them, I was seven years old. My father rented a prophecy film for his church and he previewed it before it was played for the congregation. The narrative claimed that the Jewish people were soon to be killed in mass numbers as the "Second Coming" approached. The camera panned over a large group of worshippers at the Western Wall. I hadn't been paying much attention until that moment, but when I saw those people praying with fervor, I had the feeling that I was looking at relatives I had never met. I suddenly wanted to be among them, and I cried inconsolably when I was told that they were all going to die because they didn't believe in the Christian "messiah."

I couldn't stop thinking about them after that, and began having dreams of standing among them, looking up at the adults around me. One man who wore a beard would always reach his hand down to me, and I would put my small hand in his and feel very safe. That dream recurred throughout my childhood years, but I wouldn't begin to understand its meaning for a very long time.

Our church engaged in door-to-door evangelism each week and I followed along with my parents. One night, a woman answered the door and quickly said she was Jewish and was not interested in their literature. She shut the door and my parents cried because they believed that she, one of the Chosen People, would perish. I remember dragging my feet as they retreated down the front sidewalk, and wishing I could go inside the home of that Jewish family.

As the years passed, my fervor for the Jewish people grew. My relatives didn't know what made me so single-minded in my focus. Why wasn't I passionate about the people from China and Africa that I saw in missionary presentations? Why the Jews exclusively? Most of them decided that it was an eccentric level of compassion, but as I grew into adulthood, some suggested that perhaps I had been "called" to evangelize the Jewish people.

My parents eventually divorced and my father left the ministry. The years of trauma and suffering that followed left me disillusioned and experiencing a spiritual crisis. I married to escape a miserable home life at the age of 16. I began to question everything I had been taught, and spent several years ignoring spirituality completely.

In my mid-20s, I decided to study theology and try to learn more about the Jewish people. I wanted to restore some purpose to my life. I had been disillusioned with the church and only read the Bible at home. I didn't know why, but I always found myself reading the five books of Torah. I spent hundreds of hours studying tapes and books by some of the most prominent Evangelical Christian apologists. I became very knowledgeable regarding Christian fundamentalist doctrine and returned to my childhood commitment to fast and pray for the salvation of the Jewish people. I became increasingly convinced that I was supposed to evangelize them.

In 1996, I heard about a Christian ministry that was distributing a recording from Israel of some traditional Hebrew songs. I desperately wanted to hear the Hebrew language, so I ordered the tape.

The day the tape arrived, I quickly played it and the first thing I heard was a recording of the moment when the Temple Mount was recovered by the Israelis on June 7, 1967. I wept tears of joy as I listened to the blast of a shofar after nearly two millennia of Jewish alienation from the place where Solomon had built the first Temple.

The next soundtrack was something I didn't recognize, but it gripped me so strongly that I listened to it until I could sing it. I began to sing it each morning and before I went to bed at night. It was a personal prayer to the God I had not yet discovered but constantly yearned for. I didn't learn until years later that I was reciting the Shema.

EMAIL REVELATIONS

In 1998, my husband and I relocated to northwest Ohio. My mother took care of my children while I embarked on a career as a restaurant manager. I began attending a nondenominational church and became more religious than ever. However, I became increasingly uncomfortable during church worship services, and during the last service I attended, I felt as if I was suffocating and left early. I never returned. I knew something was horribly wrong, but I didn't know what it was. Why had I never been able to remain in any church I attended?

I was quickly promoted at work and within two years, I was offered the opportunity to take on my own store. It was the thing I had been working long hours for, but the Almighty had other plans for me.

My mother and stepfather were forced to move far away because of a job change, and I was suddenly left with no childcare for my young children. After all my hard work, I was forced to resign and return to my role as a homemaker. I decided to make positive use of the time by taking over my mother's volunteer Bible-teaching job at a local retirement community, and my desire to reach the Jewish people came rushing back with overwhelming fervor.

I acquired a computer as a timely gift from an old friend and eventually located the Jerusalem Post via the Internet. I began writing letters advocating for Israel, and Jewish people began flooding my inbox with emails expressing appreciation and suggesting ways that I could use my writing to help. I made several Jewish friends, but I was quickly abandoned when I began to ask questions about the Christian claims.

I began writing to politicians as a pro-Israel advocate, and I was motivated further by death threats I often received from Israel's enemies when my letters were posted on the Internet. I wasn't afraid; in fact, I was overjoyed to finally have a chance to express the passion that had burned within me from my earliest childhood memories. During a phone conversation with my mother, I told her that if I could bring one lost Jew back to God, it would be a greater accomplishment than anything I could ever do in my lifetime. I was about to have my wish fulfilled, but not in the way I expected.

One day, I opened an email from a Jewish man who had seen one of my letters on the Jerusalem Post. I began to embark on a mission to find out what made the Jewish people shun my religion, and this man was the only one I had encountered who was willing to answer my questions when I inquired. I had waited so long for this opportunity. I knew I was obligated to proselytize him, but I found myself unable to do so directly. I concluded that I must be a coward and felt very guilty.

Over the following weeks, I sent him numerous claims via email that Christian missionaries use as "proofs." I asked him about Psalm 22, Daniel 9, Isaiah 53, Isaiah 7:14, Zechariah 12-14, and other passages that I had studied for many years. To me, they were certain proofs that the Christian faith was the only faith, and anyone who rejected it was eternally damned. I had to find out why knowledgeable Jews were unfazed by such seemingly sound evidence. Imagine my surprise when every point I made was quickly refuted!

My confusion grew, even though I had been told that Jews could not see the "truth" because they were "blinded" by the devil. I knew that if I wanted to reach the Jewish people, I must study Judaism and learn to read the Hebrew language. I began with the Internet, and eventually, I stumbled onto Rabbi Tovia Singer's website called "Outreach Judaism." I printed out his questions and answers, his chart on the "new testament," and his articles on Martin Luther.

Over the course of one week, I devoured all of the information, looked up the verses in question, and my entire theology collapsed like a house of cards. Not only did I face the undeniable evidence that I was caught in a life of idolatry, but I was plunged into a deep depression upon realizing that Martin Luther, the hero of the Protestant movement, had hated the people I had spent my life loving. I wrote to Rabbi Singer and apologized to the Jewish people as a whole, pouring my heart out about the responsibility I felt for being a part of such a shameful history.

CONVERSION PROCESS

I continued to correspond with the other Jewish man and eventually decided to convert (in spite of his adamant protests). I read every book I could get and learned how to read Hebrew. I acquired a Chumash and a Siddur and began praying the Jewish prayers. I kept my studies secret from everyone around me for months. The more I studied, the more unquenchable my desire for knowledge became.

I lit Shabbos candles for the first time in the spring of 2002. I felt as if I had done it before and the act seemed natural and familiar. When I uncovered my eyes and looked at the flames, I felt a surge of joy, peace, and contentment unlike anything I had ever known. I still did not understand why the Judaism that I was quickly adopting felt more like I was uncovering something hidden within than adapting to a foreign way of life. It was time to begin the official process.

I contacted a rabbi in Toledo, Ohio just after Passover. The Seder Massacre in Netanya had made me realize beyond question that I wanted to join in the destiny of the Jewish people, come what may, and I knew I could wait no longer to make a final decision. The rabbi was wary, yet agreed to meet with me.

I was nervous and fearful that day. Just before I left for the hour-long drive to Toledo, an email from Rabbi Singer arrived. It said that I was not to blame for being raised in another religion, and he offered to help in any way he could. I don't know why I printed it out and took it with me. It contained my original email and his reply. The timing was perfect.

When I met with the rabbi, he asked me to explain why I was there. I choked on my words. I felt so unworthy because of my past. I ended up giving him the email from Rabbi Singer. Tears kept trying to spring from my eyes because of my sense of guilt. I knew that I was willing to give up everything I had ever known for the prize of being irreversibly committed to Torah. He smiled after reading it, reassured me that I was forgiven by God, and agreed to help me study for conversion, while constantly reminding me that I would have a very restrictive life and I should reconsider. Yet as the months passed and I became increasingly observant, I felt more free than I had ever been.

UNVEILING THE PAST

The backlash when my family discovered what I was doing was terrible. My mother was hysterical and fearful that I was giving up my only chance of salvation. She pleaded with me to change my mind, told me I was condemning my children, and warned me that I would be killed by the coming "antichrist." My stepfather told me that all Jews were going to hell. News spread through the grapevine like wildfire, and I found myself in the midst of a firestorm of emails, phone calls, and exhausting debates.

Arguments abounded with various family members, and my life became an exercise in stubborn determination. Somehow, the Almighty gave me the strength to hold fast as the conflict increased. I kept reassuring my mother that I loved and honored her, but I had to do what I knew was right.

During one of the intense conversations with my mother, I received information about her biological family that I hadn't known before. I began putting the pieces together and researching. The evidence began to fit together and I slowly began to realize the shocking truth... I was the fifth female descendant in a long line of Jewish women who had assimilated more than 130 years ago! My mother quickly regretted the fact that she had told me what she knew and later denied everything. The trail ran cold when I tried to find paperwork to prove the overwhelming circumstantial case, so I took the information I had to my rabbi. He consulted with other authorities and the decision was made that I would go to the mikveh and settle the issue of my identity once and for all.

The concern shifted in part to my five children and I began teaching them about Judaism. The three oldest were not interested in it, but the youngest two began to learn eagerly.

During a conversation with my rabbi, I told him that I didn't know why I had spent 31 years not knowing who I was. I grieved over all of the wasted years, but he reminded me that I had found out at the right time... after I had decided on my own to commit to Torah. My mother could not blame herself for giving me too much information, as I had already begun conversion before I knew.

My great-great grandmother had decided of her own free will to disappear into the Gentile world for an unknown reason, and I had been permitted to choose of my own free will to bring my family tree back to its roots. I later learned that my mother's mother was the granddaughter of the Jewish woman who assimilated. She had a hard life in a poor area in Appalachia, where her forbears had migrated from Holland to the Carolinas and eventually into Kentucky where the Jewish tradition disappeared. Her mother married a non-Jew, and the family broke off from its roots.

My grandmother was uneducated and a young woman when she was stricken with tuberculosis in 1947. Her husband had died in a coal mine, and four of her six children had died from pneumonia or rickets. She was aggressively proselytized by local church authorities and told that she would never see her lost children if she didn't convert and accept baptism. She was baptized one week before her death. My mother was four years old. Eventually, she and her sister were placed in a Christian foster home.

As I pulled back the curtain that hid the past, I was utterly amazed that I was, through miraculous "coincidences," given the precious opportunity to come home. Everything I had felt as a child now made perfect sense. My "eccentric compassion" was no longer eccentric, but the inner cry of a kidnapped Jewish soul.

MIRACLE OF RETURN

On January 7, 2003, I stepped into the waters of the mikveh. As I submerged, I remembered being placed under the baptism waters by my father at age six. I was finally, mercifully, closing the door to my religious past and beginning life anew. I vowed to obey Torah for the rest of my days. The joy and sense of belonging rose in intensity and the identity confusion I had lived with for so many years evaporated with every promise I made. I recited the Shema at the end, and thought of all the years I had spent singing it, not knowing what it was. Scenes from my childhood years flashed through my mind like a slideshow, and I now fully understood all of the unexplainable feelings I had lived with for so long. My joy was indescribable when the rabbi welcomed me at long last as a daughter of Israel. I was given the new name, Tikvah Shulamit.

I have faced alienation and anger from friends and family, been abandoned by all former Christian friends, and have lost everything except what matters most. But the joy of knowing what the Almighty has done for me overshadows the daily battles I must face

My ex-husband investigated the evidence and decided to become a Noachide, a non-Jew who commits to fulfilling the Torah's seven basic laws for all mankind. He is the grandson of a Pentecostal preacher and faces the same opposition from his family. My younger children will be raised as Jews without the counter-influence of Christianity.

I later learned that the correspondent who first answered my questions had become discouraged and had not been observant for several years before encountering me by "coincidence." As a direct result of my barrage of questions, he was forced to dust off his books and delve into a deep study of Judaism. It resulted in his return to full observance.

The odds were astronomically against me finding out who I was and returning to Torah, but God heard my prayers for the reconciliation of the Jewish people by saving me, among others. The Torah is priceless beyond description, and every page contains the underlying promise of God's unfathomable love for His people. I now understand personally how profound and individualized it is.

The miracle of my return is not just for my benefit, however. As I learn more about my fellow Jews who are assimilating at a high rate, and the spreading effects of missionizing on young, vulnerable Jews, I realize that my story must be told, and my years of training in Christian evangelism have armed me with the knowledge to warn others. A branch that is broken from the olive tree can be grafted on again, but at great price. Only one who has lost everything can understand the precious heritage that is all too easily discarded today.

Someday, I want to set my feet on the soil in Israel and know that I am finally home to stay. It seems an impossible dream now, but I have learned that there is no such thing as "impossible" for the Jewish people. I can never praise God enough to recompense His amazing kindness."

- posted by Izak @ 3:14 AM