A Jewish Woman's Journey Through Christianity And Back.

[Overcame Faith]

This is an interesting article about a Jewish woman who as a teenager converted to Christianity. As time went by, she felt compelled by "god" to denounce Christianity and live the life of a religious Jew. What is interesting in the article, are her reasons for de-converting. It's a rather long, but interesting, article and I recommend a full read. But here is the link to the article and a few snippets about the reasons for her de-conversion.

 

http://www.aish.com/sp/so/93663419.html

 

Several years later, Penina, Paul, their children and her parents moved to Maryland where they opened their own messianic congregation. Paul preached, Penina played guitar, and Penina's father took care of all the administrative work. "Here I was the head of a so-called Jewish congregation, yet I knew almost nothing about Judaism. I knew I had to learn more, so I began frequenting the local Jewish book store. The first book I read used the term 'Torah observant.' Both my husband and I latched onto that. We decided to become 'Torah observant messianic Jews' and started incorporating more and more Jewish observance."

 

It wasn't long before the Taylors were keeping Shabbat and kashrut – and heading a messianic congregation. Penina helped create a Messianic Passover Haggadah.

 

Eventually the Taylors bought a house in the heart of Baltimore's orthodox community. "We saw it as a great opportunity to convert Jews. After all, with my husband wearing tzitzit and a kippah and me dressed modestly in long sleeved shirts, skirts and a headscarf, we thought we'd fit in perfectly."

 

Their first Shabbat, the Taylors were about to jump into their car to drive to their messianic congregation when they suddenly stopped. "We couldn't drive; that would blow our cover. Everyone would realize that we weren't what we pretended to be. So we decided to attend one of the shuls within walking distance of our house."

 

The shul warmly welcomed the Taylors. When the rabbi wanted to honor Paul by calling him up to the Torah, Paul explained that although he was dressed like a Jew, he's not. "That was an act of incredible integrity on his part,” Penina says.

 

After a few weeks Paul felt that it wasn't fair to be dishonest with the congregation. "When we invited the rabbi to our house, he assumed that we wanted to talk to him about converting. When Paul told the rabbi what we believe in, the rabbi almost fainted from shock. From the expression of horror on his face, I understood how other people viewed what we were trying to do. I had visions of posters against us plastered all over the neighborhood, and I was frightened that we'd be forced to leave our beautiful house. But the rabbi quickly composed himself and responded, 'Although what you believe is not Judaism, you, Penina, are a Jew no matter what, and you and your children are more than welcome to continue coming to shul.”

 

The rabbi also insisted that Penina meet Mark Powers, then director of the anti-missionary group, Jews for Judaism.

 

Over the course of numerous meetings, Mark showed them how the biblical verses upon which their Christian belief was based, were – when examined in the original Hebrew – were mistranslations and taken out of context.

 

"I was shaken to the core,” says Penina. “So much of my belief hinged on these verses – and I was left with many, many unanswered questions. I spent the next few weeks challenging Mark. I discovered that my faith was built on a lie. Slowly but surely, the building crumbled until it totally disintegrated." (Emphasis Mine)

 

What say you, Christians?

[lunaticheathen]

I personally know of a woman who was raised Catholic, converted for a while to holly-roller evangelical christianity, then left that, did a pagan agnostic thing for a while, then decided to get in touch with her Jewish roots. She's in the process of converting to Judaism, and is very happy about it. But her reason for leaving christianity were in fact the parts of the Hebrew texts that were absolutely against Jesus being the messiah. I don't know if that led her to Judaism, or if it was more her family's connection to it (she's half Catholic, half Jew by birth), but she's pleased with her path now. And points out to missionaries that Jesus isn't the messiah.

And for COURSE the rabbi was horrified by these fakey jews playing missionaries. They've had enough of "christian love" over the ages.

[J.W.]

Doesn't surprise me. Protestants come several hundred years after the fact, and pick up a bible that was translated from an ancient language with no knowledge of the culture, and think they can understand it correctly without tradition backing them up--- seriously

[Mriana]

Very interesting, but it doesn't surprise me.

[Guest I Love Dog]

There's not much about the bible as we see it that hasn't been re-written, mis-translated, changed, doctored, added to, subtracted from and made into something entirely different from the original.

 

The OT was obviously Jewish history, embellished by scribes to produce something that was inspirational and believable by people with simple minds and very little or no education.

 

The Romans, in their quest to pacify the Jews(who they had almost decimated), invented Jesus the Christ, the Messiah/Saviour, that the Jews had been waiting centuries for.

 

At the same time they had the NT written(re-working many of the OT stories), casting aside hundreds of gospels and choosing just 4 to work on. Mark is almost totally a re-write of stories from the OT, the other gospels incorporate some of Mark.

 

Originally all in Hebrew, then Greek, then Latin, then English, one can only hazard a guess at how accurate the final words and stories are that we read today. So many different translations and languages.

 

I've been reading parts of the OT & NT and it's a load of gibberish as far as I'm concerned, bearing no relevance to the World in the 21st Century.

 

Or is my barbecue really burnt offerings to the Lard?