A Christian Missionary’s Journey to Judaism – Shannon Nuszen

[Music] As you can probably guess from the title, I was not born Jewish. I was born to an evangelical Christian family. Not just any evangelical family. My father was an Assemblies of God minister, fundamentalist Christian. Quite a few years ago, I was dedicated to bringing Jewish people to know about Jesus. Since then, I have made a 180 and my life is now dedicated to warning you about some of the most deceptive tactics being employed by the church today and showing you how and why more than a quarter of a million of our Jewish brothers and sisters are in the clutches of the church today. I was taught to be a missionary from a young age. I took the mission very seriously. When the doors of the church were open, I was there. If there was a mission available, I was part of it. I started the first Christian student union in my high school. And bringing as many people as I possibly could to Jesus was a goal that I set for myself every single day, especially somebody like you. If you're Jewish, why? You probably have no idea what it meant to somebody like me because a Jew. Wow. That was the highest achievement that a missionary like myself could ever hope to accomplish. Because although evangelical teachings have a very world focus, the Jews are definitely prioritized. I'm going to give you a little bit of insight into the mind of a missionary. The study of end times is huge. Those who identify as Christian right conservative Christian Zionists, they are obsessed with bringing about the second coming of Jesus. It was a commandment from Jesus himself towards the end of the book of Matthew. He was speaking to a Jewish audience when he said, "You will not see me again until you say, "Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord." So, ladies and gentlemen, you are holding up the show. As a Christian, my world was very neat. It was simple, black and white. There was good, there was evil. I was taught to believe that the Jews rejected Jesus because of this supernatural veil that they had over their eyes, an unnatural spiritual blindness. They just couldn't see. In my church, we were taught that the Jews collectively turned their back on God. It was very simple. The Jews willingly and knowingly turned their back on their own Messiah, the very Messiah that they brought into the world. They willingly rejected him and worse, they killed him. I was taught as a Christian that it was my mission to bring the the news of the Jewish Messiah to the Jewish people and that if I was faithful in this, God was going to allow that supernatural veil to be removed from their eyes and they would see it. That was the path that I went down. I didn't know many Jews at the time, but I did know a little bit about the Jewish people. They're proud. You've probably met a few, whether religious or not, even if they know very little about Judaism, their stance is almost always, "I was born a Jew. I'll die a Jew." And oh boy, are they stubborn. Even God calls his own people stubborn and stiff necked. For this reason, the church gave intensive training coaching on how I could overcome this Jewish pride. these natural defenses that Jewish people have. I joined classes at the JCC. I took an Israeli dance class, an oon class. Why? Because it gave me the opportunity to meet Jewish people to become a familiar face in the Jewish community. I volunteered at events. They came to depend on me. I delivered meals on wheels to the elderly. It's very easy to share the gospel with somebody who is so lonely that they will talk to you about just about anything if you'll just sit with them for a few minutes. When I say the word missionary, you probably think about those people screaming on the streets or the guys passing out tracks on the street corners. Obviously, they're not very successful. In fact, I don't think that there's a single person, a Jewish person, who's ever been converted by one of these encounters on the street. Some of you here today might tell me that you've never encountered a missionary, but I bet that's not true. You see, the most successful missionaries aren't the ones yelling on a megaphone for you to repent. They're your everyday churchgoers, your neighbor, your college roommate, your friend at work. And that was the most important part of my training to become a friend. We are unfortunately living in a time where each one of you probably knows somebody, a friend or a co-orker, somebody who is converted to Christianity. If you were to ask that cousin, that friend, how did it happen? It's never through the efforts of a professional missionary. In nearly every case, it's basic social interactions. A friend. So many people tell me that they have a friend, but that's a Christian that but they've never tried to convert me. And I'll tell you, the friends that I made, the Jewish people that I connected with, they never felt like I was procilitizing them. And that was easy. You bring about the subject of faith in everyday discussions. Whether it be a conversation about an illness, difficulty with our kids, marriage, you do it in such a way that they're the ones to bring up the dis the questions. Although through every discussion, I was intentionally leading them to bring up these questions because when you're a friend, you're no longer a missionary. I hope you hear me when I say that. I began to perfect my interactions with Jewish people when I learned how to incorporate their traditions into my own practices. I learned a whole new way of speaking, a new way of presenting the gospel because let's face it, the name Jesus Christ and images of crosses don't invoke invoke any warm and friendly feelings in Jewish people. There's actually a verse in the New Testament for more deceptive tactics. I'll read it to you. It's And to the Jews I became a Jew that I might win the Jews. To those who are under the law that I might win those who are under the law. To the weak I became weak that I might win the weak. I become all things to all men that by all means I would save some. In other words, you look like, you speak like, you dress like, you do whatever it takes to bring that person to Christ. There are training manuals on that. I I brought one here today is how to share the Messiah. It is a a useful manual on the Jewish culture, the Jewish people, what not to say to a Jew, and more importantly, what to say to a Jew in order to bring about a conversation about the Messiah. In the middle of this is this handy little card that you can take a take around with you in case you encounter a Jewish person. On the left side it says do say. On the right side it says don't say. This is uh how to change the language so that it's more palatable. We'll go through a few. Don't say Jesus Christ. That doesn't sound very Jewish. Instead say Yeshua or Messiah Yeshua, his Hebrew name. Don't say Christian. They use that term amongst themselves but never when speaking to a Jew. Every Jew knows that converting is a bad thing. So they'll tell you to become a completed Jew, a fulfilled Jew, or more common today, a messianic Jew. They say don't come to church. We can't get Jews in sh. They're not going to church. Instead, say come to a meeting of Bible believers because that sounds nicer, doesn't it? Don't say New Testament. instead instead say new covenant or brites in in Israel. I mean you get the idea. Basically the goal is to change the language and make it more palatable for a Jew to accept. But the fundamental beliefs of Messianic Jews are in every way Christian. You simply take everything about Jesus. You repackage it with a Jewish wrapping. You incorporate Jewish symbols, Jewish icons, you throw in Jewish traditions, and you've got a Jewishy Jesus. The extent of this is shocking to people who have never encountered it. For instance, a messianic pesak seder. It may have all of the appearances of being Jewish, but I assure you it's not. If you were to look at a messianic hagada, you would find out that they believe that the wine represents his blood. The three matzas represent the trinity, the father, the son, the holy spirit. The matzas represent his body. You know that there are holes and stripes in the matzah. They will tell you that this represents the beating and the piercing of Jesus. Even the part of the seder where we break the middle matzah, they say that also represents Jesus, the crucifixion because the New Testament says his body would be broken for you. The afikomen, you know that in the beginning we hide it. They say that represents the death. We wrap it in a white cloth. They say that represents the white shroud for burial. You know, we bring it back at the end of the seder. They'll tell you that that represents the resurrection or the second coming. Every aspect of the messianic movement is entirely Christian. It's just wrapped up in Jewish symbols and icons. Every tradition that we hold sacred has been hijacked to make it appear make Christianity appear more Jewish. You will hear arguments like, "But Jesus was a Jew. The apostles were Jews. So accepting the Jewish Messiah is the most Jewish thing you can do." But what would cause a Jew like yourself to actually go so far as to cross the lines and join groups like Jews for Jesus? Their message is very compelling. I used it myself. They'll tell you, "Nobody's perfect. We're all sinners. None of us can possibly stand before a holy God in our sinful, blemished condition. We don't have a temple. We can't have sacrifices today. And without a perfect sacrifice, they'll tell you, we're simply not worthy. But by accepting their Messiah, we would be forgiven because he was the sacrifice and he bore the punishment for us. There is a uh New Testament verse that says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only son that whoever believes in him, he should not perish but have everlasting life." There are a lot of people in this world who simply feel alone, unloved. You'd be surprised how easily these arguments work with young people. Young people who feel that despite who and what they are, that somebody loved them enough to die for them. That message resonates for a lot of broken people. Unfortunately, I was successful in this and today that hurts me very much. These techniques worked on less affiliated Jews. So, how did I get to where I am now? Well, my problem came about when I encountered more religious Jews. I was fascinated with the Orthodox world. I was inspired by the commitment they had to all of their traditions and their rituals. It was like God was always central in their world. But I'd been taught that all of those rituals were empty. They had no meaning. That Jews didn't really have a relationship with God. Not like a Christian does. They can't. Because as a Christian, I knew it was impossible to have a relationship with God without the forgiveness of sin. So to me, I could not think of anything more beautiful than to bring a religious Jew to have a relationship with his Jewish Messiah. Jews didn't feel the same way. I discovered I was also taught that Jews didn't really read their Bible and that rabbis actually forbid them from reading certain chapters. So, as I turned my focus into reaching religious Jews, I was surprised that they often were quite knowledgeable about their Bible, and they weren't going to fall for my emotional plea or my repackaging of Christianity with a Jewish flavor. To reach these Jews, I had to learn to argue the text, the verses, the Tanakh that I knew proved that Jesus was the Messiah. In my mind, I knew that if I could just get a religious Jew to look at these texts, that that magic would that veil would be magically removed and they would see it just as clearly as I did. It was not easy. Many of them would blow me off and not give me the time of day, but occasionally I'd get one to talk to me. You probably know some Jewish people who get excited when they see a missionary because they like to mess with them. I definitely encountered those. Some of them had dabbled in counter missionary work and knew some of the arguments and they seemed armed with Q cards with everything I came to them with. They'd say things like that verse is mistransated or you're taking that out of context. Which I thought was absolutely absurd. I'd come back to them and tell them, "You're just regurgitating what your rabbis tell you, and if you just look at it yourself, you'd see I seem to be getting nowhere with them." I realized just like I had learned to change the language, I was just going to have to find another way to present the gospel. So, I started to try to prove their arguments wrong. They say it's mistransated. I'm going to go back and I'm going to learn the Hebrew of that verse. They say it's out of context. I'm not only going to quote the one verse, but I'm going to I'm going to learn the whole chapter or the whole book if I have to so that I can prove it in context like they insisted. I thought that by turning the tables on them, I would at least get them to look at the text with me. to do this against the advice of my church. I began to study from rabbis who understood the text. And as I began to understand what the Jewish people believed, I was stunned. I began to understand why the church leaders advised me against this because I couldn't control the cracks that began to appear. But I wanted to prove the Jews were wrong. I was determined. Obviously, that didn't work out so well because I was taught to believe that Jews were blinded. They were bitter. They were just filled with hatred of Jesus. It was the only explanation that made sense. But the one thing that I was never taught in church, the one message that was never conveyed to me in Sunday school was that the Jews didn't believe in Jesus because they look at the text and they simply draw a very different conclusion. And now I know why. Because I would have asked just like any Christian would have asked, why? How can the people who produced the very prophets who prophesied about a Messiah reject him? Why would they, the ones who you would think know the text better than anyone? After all, you read it in its original original language. Why would they draw a different conclusion? Before this, my world was neat, complete, well-rounded. We, the Christians, particularly my denomination, we had the truth and everybody else was wrong. To my absolute shock and horror, I learned that those verses that I was using to bring Jews to Jesus, they were in fact mistransated. They were taken out of context and in some cases completely made up. That discovery was like an atomic bomb in my life. But when I began to learn Torah, when I began to learn what the text really said, I couldn't get enough. When I learned Torah without my Jesus filter, it was so beautiful and so inspiring. The deprogramming process wasn't so easy. The foundation of absolutely everything I believed to be true had crumbled. I no longer knew what to believe at all. But Torah was my baseline. And as I came to grips with the fact that I could no longer trust my Christian Bible, it became the only thing that I could depend on. Perhaps the hardest part of the transition was the loss of relationships. You see, when a Christian rejects Jesus, they're no longer accepted in those circles. As I began my to share my crisis of faith and what I was finding with those people around me, they weren't as understanding as I thought they would be. The only thing that mattered to them was that I was rejecting Jesus. And I swore to them that although I might not believe the same, I might not go to church all the time, I was still their friend. Although I might stop going to church, we could still get together after I would meet them for coffee. We can still be friends. But word got around and the pastor of my church sent out a notice to the entire congregation. In it, he quoted a few verses from the New Testament I wasn't so familiar with at the time. One who denies Christ is the Antichrist. In Christianity, that basically meant I was the devil. The difference between you and me is that you just don't know any better. You could still be saved if shown enough love and persistence from a Christian. But somebody like me who knew Jesus and rejected him, that's an apostate. And there's no redemption for such a person. Another New Testament he was sure to include was that one who denies Christ is not welcome in your home. You're forbidden to have them sit at your table. This hurt a lot because my best friend's wedding was just around the corner. Not only was I told that I'm no longer part of the wedding party, I was asked to not be on the premises. Emotionally, I was falling apart. I lost every friend I had. Relationships that I knew were indestructible had suddenly been severed. The unconditional love that had been preached about my whole life didn't apply to an apostate like me. I found myself very alone. And after experiencing so much loss and humiliation, the last thing I wanted to do was to tell my parents. I love my parents dearly. I have always shown them respect. I couldn't bear to disappoint them or for worse for them to feel that I was dishonoring them in some way. So while I pursued learning Judaism, I hid it from my parents. They assumed that my attending synagogue was part of my commitment to evangelize the Jewish people, to infiltrate their communities. When they visited, I would turn books backward. Anything with Hebrew writing, I would hide it. I avoided religious discussions. But there was one Friday night that I will never forget. I had been learning intensely that day. I had every translation out. I had my notes laid on there on the table. That night, a Friday night, I went to a conservative synagogue for for Shabbat. And during the service, I had my phone off, but my father left a message and he told me he was coming over, that he had a meeting in the morning and he needed to be in the area. He was staying over. I had absolutely no warning. Absolutely everything I did not want him to see was going to be the first thing that he saw when he walked into the in my house. I wasn't sure whether I should rush home and try to beat him there and and and hide it or was it hopeless and I should just take my time and process how am I going to explain myself? Sure enough, he was already there. And as I walked in, he was sitting at the table looking through my studying. And he motioned for me to come sit next to him. I felt like a 5-year-old child ready to get a lecture. In a very concerned voice, he said, "Look, it hasn't gone unnoticed that you have changed the way you dress, you change the way you eat." Besides a minister, my father was also a very military man. and he went into law enforcement, became a detective. He told me, "I've seen this before. I know what's going on here. It's obvious to me that you're getting involved in a cult." He informed me that we're going to start learning together and we're going to straighten this out and I'm going to get you out of this. We're going to get through this. I tried my best to explain to him that that's not the case. And that in my quest for answers to some questions, I I just found some really troubling things. As we looked through a couple of them together, he didn't have any immediate answers, which I could tell bothered him. But he knew that somehow I was reaching the wrong conclusions and that we were going to get these answers and that he would get explanations and that we would come back to this at another time. I gave him some audios that I was listening to. I I gave him my notes. I thought for sure that was going to buy me at least a week before we had to broach the subject again. As my father went into the guest room where he was staying, I could tell that he was deep in thought. I went to bed, but I was certainly not sleeping. I could hear that rabbi's voice playing in the next room. Every time the rabbi revealed an important point, something shocking, I'd hear the tape stop. I'd hear the flipping of pages. I was worried. Is my dad getting angry? Is he listening? Does he understand? At 3:00 in the morning, there was a knock on my bedroom door asking if I was awake. And of course, I was. My father sat quietly on the edge of my bed, and he didn't say a word. I wasn't sure I wanted to know what he had to say. But I waited for several minutes, and he sat in a catatonic stare at the wall. And I asked, "Daddy, are you okay?" He answered, "He's right. That rabbi, the Jews, they're right." I looked up every reference and the rug has been pulled out from under me. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. He He turned to me and he said, "What do we do now?" I cried. He cried. I told him that's where I'm at. I explained to him that me and my children want to convert to Judaism. My father has since left the church. He's no longer a minister. For him, he told me that it was enough to put that behind him and that he no longer subscribes to that. But to learn a whole new religion, a new culture, a new language, it's too much for him. He identifies himself as a Ben Noah. And today he's one of my biggest fans. My mother, her reaction was very different. I used the analogy of the matrix to explain what I had discovered. I told her I felt like I'd been unplugged, and what I'd found, I just simply can't unsee it. frustrated. She told me, "Plug me back in. I don't want to hear it." And I know what she was thinking. I know what she was feeling because the church doctrine on hell is terrifying. The repercussions of rejecting Jesus are severe. The teachings about what will happen at the end times are horrifying. I had nightmares as a child that the rapture might happen and I'd be left behind. There's an old movie series that we were we would watch in church about being left behind. If you don't take the mark of the antichrist, you'd be beheaded with a guillotine. The images of a w a wicker basket to catch the head are burned into my mind forever. I wasn't allowed to listen to secular music or watch Disney movies because of their influence. But these films were more terrifying than any horror movie that Hollywood could come up with because it wasn't fiction to us. These were real consequences. If you die not believing in Jesus, your fate is torture, hell, damnation. So my mother cried. I was going to hell and I was taking her grandchildren with me. It was more than she could handle. We've made sort of a peace along the way and we simply don't get into discussions that I know will hurt her and that's okay. My relationship with her is more important. But I'm standing today in front of you as a convert, a Torah observerant Jew who is now dedicated to protecting Jewish communities against aggressive missionaries. missionaries who are desperately seeking to convert you, your children, your grandchildren. For years, I didn't speak about my past, especially when I moved to Israel. I didn't want to be known as a convert. I didn't want my children to be viewed any different. So, for 10 years, I worked behind the scenes supplying information to a counter missionary organization that was working with the Israeli government. When I would go to Israel, I would occasionally speak in private meetings in Knesset or with Jewish leaders, but for the most part, never publicly. That changed in 2020 with CO. I decided to update the statistics that I had gone over five years earlier when I made aliyah. When I first arrived in Israel, the numbers of Jews who identified themselves as Messianic believers was 15,000 and there were over a 100 Messianic congregations. In only 5 years, I watched that number double. In 2020, the new estimates were that there were between 30 to 40,000 Jewish believers in Jesus and more than 300 congregations and organizations, mostly Hebrewspeaking. There are now more than 200 Israelibased websites that are dedicated to converting Jews to Christianity in Hebrew and in Russian. My husband is in an emergency physician. He has a skill set that makes it obligated for him to act when he's needed. Whether we're on vacation and he's sitting in his bathing suit, if he hears the call, is there a doctor? He has to run. I am not proud of my past. But it does give me a unique skill set. I feel pulled to do more and to speak out in order to warn Jewish communities about the very world that I came from. And today it feels like an urgent situation. I founded Benu, a nonprofit organization that monitors missionary activity worldwide. And for the past few years, we've exposed some of the most shocking cases of infiltration into the Jewish community. non-Jews disguised as hered taking on leadership positions, performing sacred Jewish rituals, some of them with tremendous hakic ramifications. I'm often asked, "But why did you choose Judaism? What aspects of Judaism caused you to convert?" It's hard to narrow that down to just a few. And as I remember growing up, questioning was not only discouraged, it was seen as dangerous. Faith, I was told, meant believing without questioning. In fact, the more unbelievable something is, the more faith it took to believe it. And I was taught that that was a good thing. Now, boy, did I have faith. I believed it with all my heart. The New Testament teaches that if you have faith as small as a mustard seed that you can move mountains. When I was seven years old, I lost my hearing completely in one ear and 20% in the other due to complications of a surgery. The doctor said it was impossible, but I prayed for years. I knew that my hearing would eventually come back. When I was nine, my grandmother passed away. I was devastated, but I had faith. Absolute unshakable faith. I knew that she would come back. After all, I read the people in the New Testament. They'd been resurre resurrected. So, I prayed all night before her funeral. I was certain that I was going to wake up and I'd find out she was alive. but she wasn't. And then there were the faith healers. I went to so many of these events. I watched people supposedly being healed, knee pain, debilitating headaches, back problems, getting out of their wheelchairs, and walking across the stage. I was a tiny, scrawny little kid, and I walked around. I walked across so many of those stages for my own healing. And for some reason, nothing was happening. I started wondering, why aren't my prayers being answered? What was I doing wrong? Does God not love me? Then the questions became deeper. How come all of these healings aren't things that really can be verified? How come we don't see amputees legs grow back before our own eyes? How come they're only taking places on stages and not in hospitals or children's cancer wards where they're really needed? It couldn't be faith because I had faith. Absolute faith. And when I started to ask these questions, I was shut down. Don't you question God? The Bible is the divine word of God, and to doubt is sin. So, I learned to push these questions down, but they never really went away. Years later, as a missionary seeking to convert Jews to Christianity, I met religious Jews that challenged my faith. They asked questions I couldn't answer, but I had faith, and I knew they were wrong, and I was right. I just had to seek out the right answers to come back at them with. The answers that I found changed everything. So my answer to why I came to Judaism, what drew me to this flame is questioning. The ability to question. Learning is one of the things I love most about Judaism. And that questioning isn't only allowed, it is expected. Moshe doubted himself and he argued with God. Abraham questioned and challenged God. Y of Job, he demanded justice. The entire Talmud is volumes of debates, rabbis arguing over every little detail of Jewish law down to the smallest, most obscure points. And it's not because they don't have faith. It's because they have faith. This completely flipped my understanding of what faith was. Faith is not about blindly accepting something. It's about engaging, wrestling, seeking, and through that strengthening your relationship with God. I questioned everything. and my quest for answers is what drew me into that flame. If I had not set out the answers to those questions, I would not have the deep connection with Hashem that I am so thankful for today. And let's be honest, we are all wrestling with a lot of questions right now. Life in Israel has been unimaginably hard lately. I've been to more funerals in the past year than I can count. We buried my own nephew, Binyamin Erley, who's only 21 years old. There are still hostages suffering in unbelievable conditions, things we can't imagine. I've seen horrors that I wouldn't wish on anybody, and I don't have answers for that. And yet, I have also seen beauty. I've seen miracles. I've seen terror attacks that should have s succeeded and they didn't. I've seen a level of unity, unity among Jewish people that I never saw before October 7th. I've seen people reconnecting to their roots and finding meaning and purpose. People that nobody knew were Jewish are suddenly standing up and proudly identifying themselves as Jews. And sometimes I see beauty in the most unexpected places. A while back, a woman reached out to me on Facebook. She told me she followed my page because she hates me. She found my work exposing missionaries offensive and she wanted to prove me wrong. We'd argue back and forth and at some point I realized that she was Jewish. She had converted to Christianity when she was in college and she had no idea what Judaism really was. After October 7th, she reached out to me again and she said, "Despite our past disagreements, I want to offer my condolences to about your nephew. He was killed in Gaza one month after the war." And that small act of kindness led to a real conversation, one that lasted for days. She started asking me about Judaism. And I answered her questions one by one. She started realizing she didn't know anything about her own heritage. And slowly she started making her way back. Today she's no longer a Christian. She's returned back to the truth and beauty of the Jewish faith. On YouTube, you can find a video of a missionary going around college campuses asking Jewish students, "What does it mean to be a Jew?" Almost every student gives the same answer. It means my parents are Jewish and that I don't believe in Jesus. That's it. That's the number one answer. That's what they knew. But being Jewish is so much more than not being something else. It's a relationship. It's a mission. We're taught to be the light to the nations, to take care of each other, to lead by example. While other religions focus on the afterlife, heaven, hell, 70 virgins. Judaism is about life here now, making the world a better place. Another story. A while back, a young Jewish doctor reached out to me. He was engaged to a Christian woman and her father was a pastor. He was being pressured to accept Jesus before he would allow his him to marry his daughter. He told me, "I don't know much about Judaism. My family never really went to synagogue, but I just feel like it's important and that I shouldn't let it go." So, he had a plan. He thought since I used to be a Christian, maybe I could convince his fiance that his Jewishness wouldn't be a threat to their relationship. Of course, I did not take that direction. Instead, I turned the conversation back to him. I asked, "Why does Juda Judaism feel so important to you? What do you believe? What do you know about?" As we started talking, he couldn't stop. I called in for backup, a colleague of mine, a rabbi, and together on a Zoom call. We spent two hours discussing the oneness of God, how Judaism rejects intermediaries, how human sacrifice is an abomination. And I watched something incredible in this young man. He barely knew anything about Judaism before, but he was lit up with curiosity. By the end of the call, the rabbi asked him to cover his eye and say the smile with him. And then he told him, "Welcome home." A few weeks later, we learned that they broke off the engagement. He started learning Torah. He connected to a local shul. He even joined a cola And now just a couple months ago I got a message from him that he was celebrating his fourth semium four. That is the power of being drawn into the flame. That is the power of asking questions because Torah isn't just a book. It's a conversation. It's a relationship. It's how we engage with God. How we seek answers. how we struggle with the hardest questions in life. And that's what makes it real. Even in your own relationships, it's only through really engaging with the other person, discovering how they think and how they feel about any given subject. That's how we truly get to know a person. When we learn Torah, we're not just reading words on a page. We're actively engaging with God. It's not about having all of the answers. It's about being on the journey about searching, learning, discovering new insights. Every time we open a safer, every time we debate haka, every time we challenge ourselves to grow, we are stepping into a relationship with God that is deep, dynamic, and alive. Engagement. It's about making Torah personal, making it a part of your daily lives and letting it shape the way we think, the way we speak, the way we act. And the mitzvot, they are not just rules. I get asked, especially by religious Jews that want to know that the life of a religious Jew is not so easy. A lot is required of us. It's expensive. And I'm asked all the time, "What about all the rules and restrictions? Wasn't that hard?" But they're not rules to me. They're ways to connect with God. Lighting Shabas candles, keeping kosher, giving sedanka, these aren't just obligations. They are love letters to God. Every mitzvah is an opportunity to bring holiness into the world. As a Christian, I was taught that all of these rituals and traditions that Jews have that they were empty and that they don't have a relationship with God like I did. I could not have been more wrong. Jews have a relationship with God like nobody else on this planet. And when I look at the meaning behind every mitzvah, I have yet to hear a boring answer. And I'm not afraid to ask. I'm sure at the beginning I got on some rabbi's nerves because you know how the kid on a drive keeps saying, "Are we there yet? Are we there yet?" That was me saying, "Why? Why? Why?" regarding every mitzvah. I went to a sparty shul and they were about to make kdish and I noticed that he poured a few drops of water into the wine. He was very kind and he delayed kdish for just a little bit to explain to me that it was a min and that the wine represents judgment. And when we're faced with so much judgment, we asked that God sprinkle a little bit of mercy. I melted. I loved that. The muza, I asked why. One of the explanations I heard was it's a blessing on every Jewish home. We're instructed to pause for a minute as we kiss the muza and we in doing so separate ourselves from the outside world, the struggles we are having, the hard day at work and recognize that the real blessing is what's behind that door, our Jewish home, our Jewish family was just a little bit of Torah insight, but it was so beautiful to me. and Shabbat restrictions. I look forward to Shabbat every week because it is the opposite of restrictions. It is freedom. It's the one day of the week where I don't have to say no phones at the table. I'm unchained from my own phone outside obligations. The restriction is to rest, to enjoy your family, to engage with your community, and to connect with God. I thought I had all of the answers. I thought I was learned. I thought I had a relationship with God. My first Shabbat was with a family, and it was so humbling and beautiful. A 5-year-old child proudly stood at the Shabas table with his weekly para sheet from school and he gave a devar to that blew me away. It was certainly much deeper than anything I knew. I was violently knocked off of that high horse that I was on and I realize I know nothing and that I envy every single person at that table because they know how to engage with God. They know how to pray. I watched that little kid and I screamed inside, "How do I go back to kindergarten and learn like that?" It wasn't easy to learn everything there is to know about being a Torah observant Jew, but I've been doing it. I'm still committed to it. I still dove in partially in English and partially in Hebrew. I've learned to bench completely in Hebrew, but I'm still growing every day. In closing, I want to tell you if you were born Jewish, I envy you. If you had the privilege of a Jewish education, even more so. You have been given such a gift, and I hope you see it. My whole life, I just wanted to be close to God. I thought I had the truth. I thought I needed an intermediary to approach God. I feel like half of my life that relationship has been robbed from me. But you have had the truth all along. You already have that connection to God, a direct line. If there's anything you can take away from this, I hope you can grasp and appreciate the beauty and the gift that your Jewish heritage has given to you. Appreciate the Jewish community around you. If you don't have one, find one. Because to be a part of a Jewish community has given me and my children so much. I no longer feel alone. I found meaning and purpose in defending the Jewish people, the Jewish faith, doing whatever I can to protect communities because you're my family. And please learn your own Bible. Ask questions. Discover the truth and beauty of the Jewish faith. I like to think of it as a favorite song. We all have that song that we know. every word to every note. When you hear somebody else do a cover of that song and they cut the note short, they go a little higher, a little lower, they hold that note a little bit too long, you hear it immediately. You recognize it right away. If we knew the melody of our Bible like that, if we knew the Tanakh like that, there is no way that we would be fooled or fall for any mistransations or out of context verses because we'd recognize it right away. We are not losing Jewish people to Christianity because Christianity has something better to offer. We're losing people because these Jews know nothing about the faith they're being asked to abandon. They're looking for spirituality and connection, but they don't see that it's right in front of them and it's been there all along. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music] Heat. Heat. [Music]