DRAWN TO JESUS

The Journey of a Jewish Artist

by David Rothstein

A Purple Pomegranate Book Purple Pomegranate Productions

Drawn to Jesus—The Journey of a Jewish Artist

by David Rothstein edited by Ruth Rosen

© Copyright 2000 by Purple Pomegranate Productions Cover painting and design by Daniela Koger

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David’s winning illustration for the California Music Theater which hung on the Pasadena Playhouse for the entire opening season.

DRAWN TO JESUS:

The Journey of a Jewish Artist

I have loved to draw from as far back as I can remember. By the second grade I was known as the class artist, ready to oblige classmates who wanted me to draw them something. By the fourth grade I had won a blue ribbon in a city art contest—for a painting of a tree being blown by the wind. At least it looked like it was being blown by the wind. I honestly do not remember if that was my intention, but when someone suggested the title “Stormy Weather,” I vaguely remember thinking, “Yeah, it does look pretty stormy.” The blue ribbon affirmed my identity as an artist and I assumed that was what I would do with my life.

For me life began on December 27, 1961 at Mount Sinai Hospital in New York City. I was raised with a strong sense of my Jewish identity. My mother grew up in the Lubavitcher community of Crown Heights. She used to reminisce about her father, how he chanted the Psalms and said the daily prayers. She spoke of his physical strength and how he could split an apple with the edge of his hand. She was very proud of the fact that he was a shochet—a kosher butcher—a position of great status in the community. I think he was instrumental in bringing the Lubavitcher rebbe, Menachem Mendel Schneerson, to the United States, thus rescuing him from the Holocaust.

While my mother had many positive memories about her upbringing, she also recalled feelings of guilt. For example, as a young girl she was intensely interested in chewing gum, which was forbidden. Finally, driven by curiosity, she actually put a piece in her mouth—but was so overcome with guilt that she spit it out without even chewing.

I don’t know exactly when my mother began to ponder leaving the community, but as I understand it, it was an amicable separation. She told her father that she wanted to leave and he requested that she meet with the rebbe; if she still wanted to leave she would have his blessing. She duly had a series of meetings with the rebbe (Menachem Schneerson) and left the community. She went to Hunter College where she majored in psychology (during which time she was psychoanalyzed by the notable Erich Fromm). At some point she spent time in Israel where she became fluent in Hebrew. This enabled her to teach Hebrew language and culture to children and adults, although she spent most of her time as a public school teacher.

Despite her decision to leave Crown Heights, my mother retained a sort of pride in being from that community. The first line of my bar mitzvah speech was her suggestion: “My grandfather was a Lubavitcher Chasid.”

I don’t know as much about my father’s religious upbringing. I think it was relatively minimal, though I’m pretty sure he was a bar mitzvah. Both his parents were deaf, which isolated them somewhat from other family members. My father attended the Bronx High School of Science and continued his scientific bent as he became a computer systems analyst. At some point during his college studies he stopped believing in God. I think he felt that religion was for the uneducated who didn’t know better. My mother was the guiding force in terms of any Jewish life-style, but it was cultural rather than spiritual.

We moved to Rockville, Maryland when I was very young. It was not a particularly Jewish community, although the realtor had assured my mother that the neighborhood was “half Jewish.” In fact, we were the only Jewish family on the block. However, we lived next door to the Labores, and Mr. Labore was half Jewish. My mother used to joke that “Mr. Labore was the half Jewish part of the neighborhood.” I was always one of the few Jewish kids in my classes.

I did not enjoy being different, although I did enjoy most of the holiday celebrations: the Passover seder, the Hanukkah candles, gifts, latkes, and Hanukkah gelt. Because my mother had broken with the Lubavitcher community, our celebrations were a family affair, with only my parents, my younger sister Lisa and occasionally my mother’s older brother Sol, who had also left the Lubavitcher community.

My Uncle Sol did some canting, and I think he taught Jewish folk dancing. I also remember hearing tapes of country music in which my uncle was calling square dances.

One year my uncle came for Hanukkah and found me snacking on a sack of Hanukkah gelt before dinner. He asked me for a piece and I refused. He asked my sister and she complied. After dinner, he took out a huge candy bar and broke off a piece for my sister. Of course I expected a share and when he didn’t offer, I asked for a piece. He gave me a strange look and then ignored me. I took his point and ran from the room, my cheeks hot with tears of anger and shame. For the first time I knew profound embarrassment and guilt over a shortcoming, namely my selfishness. I felt my uncle had been mean to expose me. My guilt didn’t have any spiritual component, at least not that I knew of. I didn’t have much of a concept of God.

My parents had taught me that we were agnostic. Basically, God was something people believed in before the advent of modern science to give “more reasonable” explanations for our existence. Just as people used to believe the world was flat, people used to believe in God. I don’t think I ever prayed a day in my life, other than rote reading from the siddur during services. I envisioned God, if he did exist, as a large, amorphous, gray mist, probably in keeping with the biblical references to God going before the children of Israel as a pillar of fire by night and cloud by day.

When other kids asked what I believed about God, I replied, somewhat proudly, that my family did not believe in him. One boy said something like, “Yeah, that’s right, Jews don’t believe in God.” I thought him very ignorant because everyone knew that we Jews were the first monotheistic people. Ironically, while I did not believe in God, I took pride in being a member of the people responsible for bringing the knowledge of God to the civilized world.

As my bar mitzvah approached, we began to attend synagogue more regularly. I think my mother identified most with the Reform movement, but since she was teaching at a Conservative synagogue that is where we held my bar mitzvah.

I began Hebrew school well after most of the students, but my mom spent an intensive three weeks or so to catch me up before the school year started. She loved to teach, and was thrilled that I was to be in her Hebrew school class. She prepared me so well that I was actually ahead of everybody else once the term began. Before long though, I began to act up in class, taking advantage of my relationship to the teacher. My work fell off and I didn’t stay on top of the class for long.

During the next couple of years I had other teachers, much to my mother’s relief, I’m sure. It was important to her that I chant my Torah and Haftorah portions in Hebrew, as well as most of the rest of the service. I studied dutifully to do so, but decided I would not vow during the ceremony to continue my Jewish education. My parents agreed, knowing that I had no intention of pursuing further religious studies.

My thoughts and ideas about God remained pretty constant through my growing up years. If anything, I became increasingly set in my unbelief. After my bar mitzvah, my Jewishness faded into the background. It was part of my identity, but I didn’t think about it much.

As for Jesus, I believed my father’s theory that Jesus was simply a political rebel who was put to death by his enemies. I imagined him clad in white robes and sandals, stirring up the multitudes. My parents both spoke of Christian beliefs as being absurd: the virgin birth, the Trinity, the existence of something no one could see called a soul and, of course, places like heaven and hell. It’s not that they had a deep knowledge of these beliefs, they just knew they were basically “unscientific.” For example, my mother told me that Christians believe that bad people go to a hot place in the center of the earth, a notion which, predictably, I found ridiculous.

Yet my parents also told me that tolerance was a virtue, so I would listen patronizingly to Christians who told me about their beliefs. Not that many people tried to tell me about Jesus. I vaguely remember my first encounter with the gospel. An elderly black man with a Bible tried to tell me about Jesus at a bus stop. I was very young at the time. That’s the last I recall hearing about Jesus until college.

I enrolled in UCLA because of the many options there, including physical anthropology. At that point I envisioned my ideal career as something like the lead character in the TV drama “Quincy.” In one episode he had to reconstruct someone’s physical appearance from their bones. I couldn’t imagine anything more exciting!

Nevertheless, anthropology did not seem to be my calling. After a couple of unfocused years at UCLA, and some encouragement from a teacher who was particularly impressed with my talent, I decided to try the art major. I soon realized that I would not get the intensive training I needed at UCLA, so I switched to a prestigious (and expensive!) art school in Pasadena—the Art Center College of Design.

It was there that I first found myself listening with some interest to the gospel. A couple who were friends/students of my mother visited our home. I recall being impressed with the husband because he played guitar so well—well enough to have traveled around the country making a living as a musician. I was in my early twenties, and had been playing guitar since I was 17. I loved guitar music. I would have been happy making a living from it if I’d had the talent, so I greatly admired people who played well.

This man had gone through difficult times; he had lost someone close to him, and had attempted suicide. During that time, he told me, he came to faith in Jesus Christ. My mother duly rebuked them for “proselytizing” me. Still, I was interested in what he and his wife had to say, and we probably spoke for about 30 minutes. They made a real impression on me, particularly when the husband said to me, “David, life is REAL.” It was obvious that their faith was getting them through life’s difficulties.

His words, and the urgency with which he spoke them, came back to me from time to time. Maybe it was the impact of talking with someone who had attempted suicide at one point, and now was happy and stable. I was still in school and hadn’t embarked upon “real life” yet. It had not occurred to me that “real life” could be so difficult that some people—even talented, “normal” people whom I could admire—would be moved to end theirs. This man had done something I imagined would have brought me happiness, yet he had fallen into such despair; it was very thought-provoking.

I also became friends with a Christian named Jerry while I was in art school. He was very open about his faith, and he took a certain amount of ribbing for it.

I don’t recall who initiated the friendship, but Jerry and I started school in the same term and were fast friends during the entire three years. We were both top students and both living, eating and breathing artwork. We both had high ideals, and even shared some of the same art heroes: contemporary illustrators like Brad Holland, Drew Struzan and Bob Peak, as well as the French impressionists, portrait painters like John Singer Sargent, and others.

Jerry was quite a bit older than me (by about 13 years), and he and his wife invited me for dinner occasionally. Also, his wife did shrink-wrapping—and we constantly needed our work shrink-wrapped—so I was there often.

Jerry was amazing. He was so happy, enthusiastic and confident, yet humble at the same time. He seemed to be literally beaming, almost like he was filled with light. Not only that, but he did what I thought was an impossible amount of work. It seemed that for him, there were 48 hours in a day. My distinct impression was that Jerry was hooked up to some sort of power source. I was interested in tapping into it, in a skeptical kind of a way.

Jerry once asked me what it would take for me to believe in God. I pointed to a nearby coffee cup and said that if it would rise up off the table, I would believe. Jerry asked me if I honestly wanted to know if God was real. I said yes. He said that if that were true, God would reveal himself to me, but that I might not like the way he would do it. His words made me squirm a bit, and haunted me from time to time. I even asked my parents how they would feel if I ever became a Christian, though I was nowhere near understanding or accepting the message at that time. Their response was, “Well, David, we wouldn’t like it, but if that’s what it takes to make you happy, we’ll live with it.”

My own search really began toward the end of my time in art school in Pasadena, California. I had worked hard, and had enjoyed success in terms of awards, scholarships and some recognition. I should have been happy, and yet, like that guitar player, instead of fulfillment, I felt great despair. This is how it came about.

First, it was extremely important to me that I do well in art school. I wanted to show my parents that I was serious after my less than stellar stint at UCLA. I also had to convince myself that I was good enough to succeed in a difficult field. When I first applied to the school, they suggested that I take a few night classes and then resubmit my portfolio.

One of those classes was life drawing. After a week or two, I showed the instructor my work and asked for advice. He was very impressed, and told me that I could probably get a scholarship if I needed it. I was thrilled because my original application had been rejected, and now a faculty member believed in my work enough to suggest I could win a

scholarship. At the end of the term, the same instructor asked for some of my work to use in his slide show—the one he always showed on the first day of class so they could see the exemplary work of fellow students! A year or so later, I peeked in to his class on my way down the hall. He was giving his slide show and, it just so happened, at that moment he was discussing my work in glowing terms.

I really loved the work and went at it with single-minded focus. During the third term (it was an eight-term program) I showed my work to the illustration department chairman. He gave me positive feedback and urged me to apply for a half scholarship, though he told me the competition would be tough. I did not get the scholarship, but was not discouraged. I continued to show my work to the department chairman, including a piece I did for a poster competition for a National Symphony Orchestra tour.

The piece was oil on illustration board and the technique was typical of several illustrators whom I really admired. During my first term, a recent Art Center grad who had spectacularly risen to prominence with several TIME magazine covers, etc., returned to the school to demonstrate this very technique. I was fascinated with it and began to practice it in my “spare time.” The oil is applied by alternating very thin glazes, very opaque highlights, and a then a spray varnish holds it all in place. It is very unstable because the oils never really dry. The overall feel is very dark and moody—almost Rembrandtesque, but with less detail. Everything is kind of fuzzy-edged and fading into shadowy depths. This style expressed my feelings and I used it as much as possible.

We had been given two months for this poster competition project. The first step was to submit thumbnail sketches for the teacher to critique. My idea was to paint the Washington Monument as a gigantic clarinet, using this technique I’d been exploring. The teacher accepted one of my thumbnails and I went to work. I was really excited about the project and knew exactly how I wanted to do it. I had it 95 percent finished in a couple of days! While most of my classmates were laboring to get their thumbnail sketches approved, I was applying finishing touches and enjoying the luxury of being able to work and rework the last details to my satisfaction.

The piece was very dark and moody with the feeling of a late afternoon or early evening on an overcast day. I knew it was the best thing I’d ever done. Everything clicked and my final product was very close to the idea I’d originally conceived in my mind, which was unusual. I didn’t win or even place in the competition, but that did not detract from my satisfaction in the work. The department chairman told me that despite the fact it had not placed, my piece was the best in the show. He urged me to enter it in the Society of Illustrators student competition.

The Society of Illustrators always published the winners of the student competition in the back of their book. This was the most coveted prize I could imagine, because the entries consisted of the best student work in the country. I had perused illustration annuals frequently, and some of the professionals I most admired had won that competition when they were in school. I shipped my poster to New York for the exhibition, and several weeks later found that I had indeed won one of the first place prizes. This was the thrill of a lifetime. I flew to New York with a couple of friends who had also done very well, and I received a large cash prize. We stayed at a fraternity house from an organization I had joined while at UCLA.

Strangely, I had a sense of insecurity throughout this experience. For one thing, the head of the illustration department of my school was there and took us on a tour of some sites in the city, most of which I don’t remember. I felt out of context. I could relate to this man as my department chairman, but not as a peer.

After the awards ceremony we all went to a bar and got very drunk. Again, I felt very awkward being put in the position of being a peer with the department chairman. He was in his forties or fifties, but had aged rapidly due to hard living. He had once been one of the more successful illustrators in New York, friends with Andy Warhol—and he was sort of an elder statesman of illustration. One of the guys was bantering back and forth with him, but I found the whole situation very uncomfortable.

My fellow students and I went back to the fraternity house where we made lots of drunken noise. One of them threw up on the floor. My embarrassment over what my fraternity brothers thought about us further compounded my discomfort.

Still, winning that award was a high point in my life. From that point on, people at school knew who I was. Occasionally, people I didn’t know would approach me to say that they admired my work. I applied for the half scholarship again, and this time I got it. The next term I applied for the other half of the scholarship and got that as well. My last three terms at school were tuition free.

Much of my work had the same dark, moody, shadowy feel as the piece that had won the competition. Then the work of one of my fellow students caught my attention. He was using acrylics and painting in bright colors, but with lots of control of the drawing. This combination of control and spontaneity greatly appealed to me. I spent the last few terms at school trying to master it, but felt my progress was painfully slow.

The work I was interested in was not very conceptual. In fact I hated the conceptual aspect of the work, but my school stressed it. I simply wanted to draw and paint portraits and landscapes; I was not trying to “say” something through my art. I was interested in very traditional concerns like composition, drawing and use of color.

The illustration department at the school was very “artsy,” and “the thing to do” was to go to New York after graduation and free-lance, mostly for magazines and books. I hoped to become a free-lance illustrator as well.

But I was crumbling under the pressure (which I put on myself) to measure up to my reputation. I felt a heavy burden of responsibility because of the scholarship; I felt the money obligated me to continue at a high level of performance. Another point of pressure was probably just a matter of immaturity. I did not have the emotional and spiritual strength to continue to do the kind of work that I wanted to do, and to go in the direction that I wanted to go artistically.

I had begun to realize that it was not quite “politically correct” to emulate some of the artists I really admired. I think of artists like John Singer Sargent, an 18th century American expatriate who achieved huge success painting English aristocrats. He is known primarily for his incredibly spontaneous and facile handling of paint. It was said that he could paint a nose with one brush stroke! There has never been anyone else quite like him, Though others were also very facile. I really admired the older contemporary of Norman Rockwell, J.C. Leyndecker. The unifying element of these artists was great facility with drawing and use of color combined with dazzling spontaneity. That was what I wanted to do.

But “concept” was king at my school, and those who did not get with that program were considered sellouts. I remember the department chairman speaking to me once about a former student who was extremely talented. I knew and admired his work. Apparently he had gone to work for a toy company after graduation. The department chairman felt this person had “sold out,” and talked as if it would have been better if this person had died. I began to fear that if my career didn’t go as the department chairman felt it should, I too would be regarded as a sellout who would have been better off dead than wasting his talent.

Also, my ego was quite fragile. It was common for students to ask their teachers for constructive criticism of their portfolios. As a scholarship student, I wanted—and even felt I needed—my teachers to speak glowingly of my work. When I asked one of my teachers, a working art director, to critique my portfolio, he had mostly negative things to say. I felt crushed, and I resented him terribly.

I began to realize that there was more than one “school of thought” at Art Center, so that while one teacher might think I was doing great, another might not. It was very confusing and distressing. I didn’t have the emotional, moral or spiritual strength to just go my own way regardless of what anyone thought. Deep down, I feared that I was really a mediocre artist.

Another thing that galled me was that other students whom I considered more talented than I had not received scholarships. I assumed that they must feel as I did.

I felt torn in several directions; I no longer knew where I was going, or what I was doing artistically. Everything that had been going so well when I started school was falling apart. Whereas previously I was gratified that I could get in to see the illustration department chairman without an appointment, I now avoided him so that he would not suspect how terribly I was struggling. In fact, I began avoiding most of the teachers who had encouraged me. I was uptight and anxious all the time. My hopes were being dashed to pieces. Life didn’t make sense. I had achieved success, and as a result I was miserable. I felt incapacitated as far as my artwork was concerned, and knew I needed help.

One event from this time is worth mentioning. The school hosted regular poster competitions (like the National Symphony Tour competition previously mentioned). One of my classes worked on entries for a company called the California Music Theater, which would be performing musicals at the Pasadena Playhouse. The winning entry would hang on the playhouse for the entire opening season.

Unlike my previous poster, this one was conceived and birthed through much pain and suffering. I seemed unable even to come up with an adequate concept. While most of my classmates were well on their way to completing their pieces, I was struggling to come up with a thumbnail sketch that would meet with my teacher’s approval. Finally, with about a week and a half, maybe two weeks left (from an eight week project), I came up with an idea that was acceptable to him. The actual execution of the piece was at least as agonizing. I hated every minute of it. I stayed up all night to finish it on time. The following day, Friday, I brought my hated poster into the room, facing toward me so no one would see it. I saw the department chairman, and skirted around to avoid him. I put my poster down as quickly as I could, and made my escape.

I had done my poster with acrylic on illustration board. It was supposed to be a fanciful depiction of the Pasadena Playhouse with the roof blowing off and a spray of musical notes blasting into the sky (see back cover). The best part about it was the explosion of musical notes, which I carefully rendered in yellows, reds and purples. Still, I was not happy with the piece and felt it was nowhere near the quality of my previous poster.

I knew the results of the judging would be posted the following Monday, but I had no interest. When I went to my first class, however, people began congratulating me. I couldn’t believe it, and at first thought they were teasing me. Soon I realized that indeed, by what seemed to me to be some kind of joke of the gods, I had won the contest. I thought that the judges must be mad since, in my estimation, any number of my classmates had produced superior pieces.

One student who congratulated me was an incredibly talented draftsman. Though I was a scholarship student, and he was not, I wished I could draw like he could. He noted my less than enthusiastic response to the news that I had won, and remarked, “He wins the contest and he’s still not happy.”

It was true. Nothing could convince me that my piece was worthy, not even winning the contest. I knew that many of the pieces I had seen in the exhibit room were far better than mine. It just so happened that the California Music Theater people felt that my piece said what they wanted to say. By winning I felt that now everybody—including the department chairman— would see what a lousy poster I had produced!

This was a real time of crisis and change in my life. I was desperately seeking answers and was open to finding them in different places. I was buying lots of popular psychology material on the self-help shelves. I went to the guidance counselor for help and she referred me to a social worker, whom I began to see regularly.

Much of what I was reading involved getting in touch with my feelings, which is also what my therapist emphasized. The idea was that if one could know what one was feeling at any given time, one could respond to situations accordingly. So periodically, throughout the day, I would ask myself how I was feeling and thus monitor my internal condition.

As I recall, the theory was that somehow, through early trauma or the way our parents raised us, we were taught that some of our feelings were not “okay.” (I also read I’m Okay, You’re Okay during this time.) Therefore, we learned to stuff our emotions and deny them, a defense mechanism that would cause problems later in life.

Then there was Scientology. An attractive girl handing out diagnostic tests in front of the Scientology building persuaded me to take the test. It cost $50 with a money back guarantee. It seemed like a good deal, so I wrote a check and took the test. I had an appointment to talk to one of their counselors, who kept me waiting for something like an hour and a half. She was not a particularly nice person—in fact she was rude. Yet, she was what they call a “clear,” which is the goal of the program. A “clear” (if I understood correctly) was someone who has completely worked through all their problems and traumas, and therefore is living a perfect life. If I kept at it, she indicated, I could be like her. The combination of being kept waiting so long for the first session and the obvious flaws in this woman who was supposedly a “clear” tipped me off that I should demand my money back, which I did. I was 26 years old at the time.

During this period I also read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand, and almost became a libertarian. I was also listening to meditation tapes, one of which was made by Ayn Rand’s husband. In a deep, authoritative voice, he instructed the listener to lie down, imagine him or herself on a “puffy white cloud” and begin taking slow deep breaths. After a few minutes of this, my entire body was tingling in a really strange way that I had never before experienced.

Meanwhile, my life seemed to be getting stranger. I was still going to the therapist, who told me that by experiencing and owning my feelings I would be able to communicate them in a healthy way. I joined his therapy group where I was learning to “get in touch with my feelings.” Since all feelings were “okay,” it was also “okay” to give vent to lust and anger. The former was played out as I became involved with a woman in the group who was several years older than me. The latter involved my parents.

The therapist suggested that it would be healthy for me to confront my parents with my feelings and, as a result, I went through a second adolescent rebellion. It was pretty ugly. I had shouting matches with my father and we cursed at each other. I extolled the benefits of getting in touch with one’s feelings and enjoyed indulging those feelings. And yet I knew that I was getting worse instead of better.

Expressing and owning my feelings was supposed to free me, but instead, as I gave free reign to them, unwanted feelings began dominating my thoughts. I was beginning to realize that the “if it feels good, do it” morality did not work.

Meanwhile, I had graduated art school and had immediately gotten a fabulous job painting backgrounds for DIC Enterprises, the largest television animation studio in Los Angeles. They did Saturday morning cartoons. I loved painting backgrounds—so much so that I actually looked forward to Mondays. After a few months of freelancing for this company, they hired me full-time at a very high salary. It was incredible—for three weeks. Then I got laid off due to budget cuts, with the promise that they would rehire me in three weeks. They did not hire me back, nor could I get work with any other TV animation studio.

I decided that I would get a menial pay-the-bills type of job, work on my portfolio in my spare time, and take the local art world by storm. So I got a job checking medfly traps.

Southern California has long had a Mediterranean fruit fly problem. The citrus crop is crucial to the economy, and if foreign fruit flies were to become established, they could devastate the fruit crop. To prevent this, the state, county and federal governments employ a certain number of workers to make sure that the wild fruit flies are kept under control. They do this by placing fly traps in fruit trees all over the city. If they find a wild fly, they set up a temporary headquarters and deal with the problem. Part of dealing with it is placing even more fly traps all over the city to monitor the situation. Therefore, they have to hire numerous temporary workers to check the fly traps. That is what I did: drove all over the city in a pickup truck, walked into people’s back yards, and checked their fly traps. I did this for about two years.

With all the drive time, I found myself listening to the radio quite a bit. I began listening to a “call-in-and-get-help” type of show featuring a man named Roy Masters. Much of what he said was biblically based. He was particularly fond of berating his listeners for their sinful life-styles. “You’re dogs!” he would say. He talked about the value of forgiveness and referred to Jesus. I was fascinated with Masters and bought his books and tapes.

One day I was lying in bed pondering existence and trying to make sense of life, and I had a bizarre experience. It was like a veil was taken away, and in a split second I realized that God was real. And it wasn’t just that I knew God was real; I knew in that moment that I had avoided him all my life and had chosen selfishness over righteousness.

I realized that I was accountable to God, though I had ignored him my entire life. I sensed that my life, lived apart from the knowledge of God, had been one of futility. I knew that I had worshiped “false gods” and that my life had been detestable to the true God. The experience was so powerful that I was doubled over in pain, emotional and physical, for much of that day and the next. I resolved to do God’s will from that time forward. I remember looking at the calendar because I knew my life would never be the same from that day forward. I would have to change my direction, though I was not sure what that would entail. It was February 1989. I was 27 years old.

A friend loaned me a book of conversion stories—people whose lives had been turned around through their belief in God. One of the stories mentioned a book called Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. For some reason, I got very excited, and felt that I had to get that book. I ran to the library, read it through, and was convinced that it was true. The gospel so beautifully resolved the tension between God’s holiness and human sinfulness. Lewis’s arguments were very convincing, especially concerning a moral law that points to the existence of a good Creator. The terms with which he described God’s redemption of the world were persuasive. Lewis’s scholarship was an important part of the equation. My agnostic father is a very intelligent man, and I had to hear the gospel from someone at least as bright!

For the first time in my life I began to pray, knowing that God was real and that he loved me. I would be driving somewhere and would be overcome with the beauty of the landscape. I would pray, “Thank you, Father, for the beauty of your creation!” I was filled with joy as I realized that, rather than being a fragile speck of dust floating in an endless, impersonal universe, I was under the watchcare of a personal God who loved me and had provided a way for me to live forever. Prayer was so wonderful, and intimacy with God seemed so simple. As soon as I began to do it, I was amazed that I had lived my whole life without it.

Before I knew that God was real, Christianity seemed absurd—a first century social reformer as the Son of God, the virgin Mary, the Trinity—it was all nonsense that only fools could believe. Once I knew that God was real, that he was holy and I was not, there was nothing unbelievable about it.

I was really soaking up the Bible in those early weeks and months. Interestingly, the passage that may have had the most profound effect was Isaiah 54:1-8:

“Sing, O barren woman, you who never bore a child; burst into song, shout for joy, you who were never in labor; because more are the children of the desolate woman than of her who has a husband,” says the Lord. “Enlarge the place of your tent, stretch your tent curtains wide, do not hold back; lengthen your cords, strengthen your stakes. For you will spread out to the right and to the left; your descendants will dispossess nations and settle in their desolate cities. Do not be afraid; you will not suffer shame. Do not fear disgrace; you will not be humiliated. You will forget the shame of your youth and remember no more the reproach of your widowhood. For your Maker is your husband—the LORD Almighty is his name—the Holy One of Israel is your Redeemer; he is called the God of all the earth. The Lord will call you back as if you were a wife deserted and distressed in spirit—a wife who married young, only to be rejected,” says your God. “For a brief moment I abandoned you, but with deep compassion I will bring you back. In a surge of anger I hid my face from you for a moment, but with everlasting kindness I will have compassion on you,” says the LORD your Redeemer.

When I first read those words, they literally appeared to be standing off the page. Strange that I found words that described a barren woman so meaningful. Yet, I strongly related to them because of the profound sense of failure I felt. I hadn’t been able to live up to my parents’, or my own, expectations.

Here was a passage that promised a life of blessing and prosperity because the Lord would be with me. He had hid his face from me “for a moment” in anger, but now, with “everlasting kindness,” he would have compassion on me. I could forget the shame of my youth and move on with confidence, knowing that God was now with me. I found myself able to forgive, and my relationship with my parents was restored.

I began to discuss these things with some Christian friends at work. One of them gave me a scrap of paper with the words “Jews for Jesus” and a phone number. I called the Los Angeles branch, and Avi Snyder and Stephen Katz began meeting with me. I also began attending Adat Y’shua, the messianic congregation that had been planted by the LA branch.

I struggled with doubts in my early months of faith. Was Jesus really God in human flesh? Was the doctrine of the Trinity really biblical? How could I know that the Christians were interpreting the Bible correctly? I had been advised by Christian friends, both within and outside Jews for Jesus, to ask God to help me with my doubts.

It was also a time when I was experiencing things that seemed miraculous—or close to it. Once I asked God to show me if Jesus was indeed the Son of God, and an incredible feeling of joy washed over me, not just for a moment, but for about 20 minutes. I had never before, and have never since, experienced that. On another occasion, as I was waking up one morning, I saw an image on my bedroom wall of a figure dressed in dazzling white approaching me with outstretched arms.

These unusual events only lasted for a season, but the major changes in my life have remained. I used to feel alone in a hostile universe. Now I have the comfort and peace of knowing that there is Someone always with me, working all things for my good, even when I fail. It is also an unspeakable comfort to know that nothing can separate me from his love, whether failure, sickness, or even death.

I believe in Jesus not because it makes me a better person, but because I have found him to be true. I am glad that I am becoming less self-centered and self-directed, and that I am increasingly looking to the needs of others. I am more focused on what I have to give, rather than what I have to get. But I realize that some people are able to do all that without Jesus. For me, it all points back to that experience of knowing that God is real, and that I owed it to him to believe what was real and true.

The pressure to “make something of myself” has long since faded. I am no longer driven to prove my worth, because my value is rooted in my relationship to God. God created men and women in his image, and though that image becomes spoiled through our unwillingness to acknowledge him, God provided a way to restore it. I believe that way is Jesus. He is the image of all that is most beautiful and worthy, and the source of forgiveness and reconciliation with God. I found in submitting my life to the Master Artist that he had to strip away layers of anger, insecurity and pride. But I have also found that his strokes are sure and strong, with color, spontaneity and control. I trust the canvas of my life to him. If you wonder if he can be trusted with yours, why not ask him?

Jews f#r Jesus International Headquarters 60 Haight Street San Francisco, CA 94102 U.S.A.

www.jewsforjesus.org

If you would like to read other stories of Jews who are for Jesus, check out the Jews for Jesus web site on page 22 or write to request a catalog.

Look for titles such as:

Disowned by Steve Cohen

But I’m Jewish! by Richard Harvey

Testimonies of Jews Who Believe in Jesus, Ruth Rosen, Editor Jewish Doctors Meet the Great Physician, Ruth Rosen, Editor Whoever Heard of a Jewish Missionary? by Bob Mendelsohn From Yeshiva to Y’shua by Lev Leigh