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Missions

One Jew’s Testimony: Liberation From The Jesus Cult

http://members.aol.com/JewishCo1/tshuvim/goodman.htm

“Murray Goodman’s Story

My Liberation From Jesus The following is text of a talk given at the Jerusalem Institute of Biblical Polemics:

I, formerly known as Murray Goodman, now known as Moshe Ishtov, have been asked to write about my escape from Jesus and my return to Torah Judaism. In effect, I did escape from the Christian myth and it came about after many years of searching for the truth and finding that truth through the good offices of Shmuel Golding, on whose platform I now stand.

As far as returning to Torah Judaism, it was something which I had sought since my youth and didn’t have until I learned it in Israel with friends who showed me the way. Although I was born to Jewish parents, I did not return to Torah Judaism after escaping from Jesus; I came to it after finding my heritage here in Eretz Israel.

What follows now is not so much a lesson in refutation of the Christian teachings as it is the exposition of an autobiography of a tortured and confused life, but with a happy resolution.

I was born and brought up in Boston, Massachusetts, as the eldest child, and only son, of Jewish parents, who had themselves come to America as children with their parents. The generation which had come from Russia came with a traditional (and even Orthodox, in some cases) Jewish background, but when they arrived in the new world, many abandoned that lifestyle in order to assimilate into the mainstream. And, indeed, they wanted to be merely “Americans,” not “Jewish Americans.”

This meant giving up all but the most perfunctory Jewish traditions. They did not feel obligated to pass on Jewish teachings to their children because they had abandoned such teachings themselves as being useless in attaining an American life.

From an early age, I was aware of being a Jew because we spoke Yiddish in the home. I wanted to learn more about the Jewish culture; so, I read about it, and even enrolled myself in a cheder so that I could learn some Hebrew, some simple prayers, and rituals. My attendance lasted only a short time due to the disapproval and ridicule of my family, and they did not offer me any sort of a role model. So I just stopped thinking about it.

At age twelve, I thought about being a bar mitzvah, and I asked a rabbi to prepare me for it. When he learned how uncooperative my family was, and that he would not be paid for teaching me, he sent me away. That was the end of my Jewish education until more than 40 years later.

I lived just like a goy. I didn’t go to Church, but my way of life was indistinguishable from that of my gentile neighbors. Years passed, and when the Korean War came along, I joined the navy and went out on my own. Suddenly news came that my father had committed a terrible crime against society and the family, and I had to come home.

When I came home, there was no home in which to arrive because my father was in prison, my mother was in a mental hospital and my sisters had all been confiscated by the State and adopted out to other families. I came home to the street, for there was no home to welcome me. In fact, even my uncles and cousins turned their backs on me because they didn’t want to be concerned with the tragedy. Why would they want another ‘messed up’ kid to add to the family?

It was beyond anyone and certainly beyond me. At a time when I needed some inner strength, I did not have the comfort of family, G-d, or any religious faith. I would not have coped were it not for the comforting of a friend whom I met in a bread line where I went to get food in my terrible need and poverty.

He told me about G-d in his own way and presented the Gospel of Jesus as the Jewish messiah. In my need, in my spiritual hunger, and in my ignorance, I accepted the Gospel and received great comfort from it. It gave me peace and strength to go on and gave my life a great purpose.

From there, I set out across the country and began to study and to preach about Jesus, touching many lives, bringing them to make decisions for Jesus, to be saved. Every now and then I would meet a Jew and give him my testimony. Most walked away without comment, without trying to correct my misconceptions, but some listened to me and they became believers in Jesus because they hadn’t had much more grounding in Judaism than I.

It appeared that I was meeting with a great deal of success and this confirmed me in my delusions. I was never paid for being an evangelist, but I enjoyed my freelance activities, and people always invited me to their dinner table for a meal, or gave me a place to sleep for the night. It was a good life; no money, but lots of joy.

Because I was, and still am, a linguist, I decided to take on the errors of the Roman Catholic Church. I went to Mexico to do so. I began to preach in market places with my excellent Spanish, which improved immensely with practice. Many people came, believed, and were baptized. They were weaned away from Catholicism and began to study with me or with other Mexican pastors.

During this time, I met and married my wife and then we remained in Mexico for several years as I ministered to the people. Later, my wife, son, and I went back to the United States (my wife and son had to immigrate); we settled in Tucson, Arizona.

I went to work for the city of Tucson, yet I continued to be active with the Mexican ministerial association in the local churches. We began to produce more family in Tucson, and life continued.

After a few years there, I began to have some doubt about the concepts I was advocating as the contradictions began to add up. I decided to make an appointment with a local rabbi to ask him about it and to learn.

If he had given me the answers which I later would discover from Shmuel Golding, I would have turned completely around at that time; but, the rabbi refused to see me fearing that it was my ruse to convert him. Because he refused to give answers to my questions, I felt that he could not answer, and, thus, received further confirmation to continue in my erroneous Christian endeavors.

One day many years ago, I learned that the “Jews for Jesus” were going to have a presentation at a local Church, and I went to hear their singing and to meet them. This was a milestone experience, and I made my decision to support them fully. At last, I had found a group of Jews who were as meshugge as I was! I began to study with them, went to San Francisco and met Moishe Rosen, and was appointed to be his co-laborer in ‘Messiah’ for my region of the United States.

I held Bible Studies, counseled with Jews, and spoke in churches to raise support for this ‘noble’ mission. I attended the gathering every year at Mt. Hermon, near Santa Cruz (California), where I spoke and encouraged believers from all over the United States. I even met some believers from Israel who were active then, and are still active to this day.

I was trained at the William Carey Bible Institute in Pasadena, California to witness to the Jewish people. I did street evangelism among Jews without a hint of difficulty. My sole opposition came from Jews who merely walked away or shouted epithets at me. None of them were able to offer any logical refutation to my statements because they hadn’t studied the Gospels. Thus fact just encouraged me, despite my own inner doubt. Perhaps I was just looking for someone to give me an answer, but no one did. I was perplexed.

In 1985, after my divorce, I decided to come to Israel and be with my people. I didn’t know how to live as a Jew, but I knew that I was a Jew, and a strong Zionist all my life. When I arrived in Jerusalem, I sought out the Jewish believers in Jesus and I found them quite easily and with little hesitation. Among them, I found the believers that I had met in California and they plugged me into their life. I began to attend with them and to participate with them in activities in Jerusalem, Ramat HaSharon, Haifa, Tiberias, and Eilat. I attended conferences in Petach Tikva. I became aware that there was a great deal of money flowing into Israel from Christian sources abroad for the purpose of the evangelism and conversion of the Jews. It was generally believed that all Israel would repent of the sin which they had committed in rejecting and killing Jesus (for my missionary companions were sure that the Jews were guilty of the killing), and then Jesus would return to Israel and rule Israel and the world from here. This money was not being given to the believers; I didn’t receive a penny. However, it was given to the leaders of the Messianic “Synagogues” who perpetrated the fiction that they were holding mass meetings and rallies and Jews were responding to altar calls by the thousands at every meeting. The truth was there would be a pitiful few Jews who would come every Shabbat to the meetings because they were given food to eat for coming. Sad, but very true.

Christian tourists would come to the meetings and they would outnumber the Jews. They were encouraged to give at that time and then their names would be placed on a mailing list. They would receive phony bulletins about the evangelistic victories, and they were encouraged to send contributions regularly of dollars, pounds, guilders, rands, or whatever else could possibly raise efforts to convert the Jews.

In actuality, these bulletins had to be phony because such efforts could not be made in Israel due to the anti- proselytizing laws, forbidding such public meeting or the offering of material inducements for conversion from one religion to another. It disgusted me to enter the secret rooms of their meeting halls, and see the mailing of material to the Christian world, not available for local consumption because of the lies. Then I saw the piles of checks ready for deposit. Sham, sham.

One day, while walking along Ben Yehuda Street (in Jerusalem) in late November 1986, I saw announcements on a light pole about Shmuel Golding and his answers to Christian missionaries. I decided to go and give him a fierce verbal battle. But, I now think back to the time, and I feel that my main goal was to receive the answers for myself; so I went.

The meetings were being held at that time in Rehov HaMa’alot 2, and there was a large group in the lecture room. I took a seat in the back and listened intently. I don’t remember exactly what was discussed, but Shmuel’s explanations made a great deal of sense to me. I did not say one word during the meeting, but I went home and slept on my thoughts. The next morning I was back on Rehov HaMa’alot sitting on the steps waiting for Shmuel to arrive. When he did, I told him that I was very impressed by his work, that I wanted to renounce my Christianity, and to learn all that he could teach me. My goal was to undo all the harm that I had previously caused within the missionary fronts. I came every day for a month to study with Shmuel. And, eventually, after my intensive study of his course, I received my diploma as one capable of counseling believers in Jesus, refuting Christian myths, and deprogramming. Shmuel had me come and give my testimony, similar to that which I am giving at this moment, and there was a capacity crowd, spellbound by my simple and sincere statements.

Next, I wrote a letter to all the Messianic “Congregations” where I was well known in Israel, renouncing my former faith and explaining why. Furthermore I went to see individual people and brought some of them back to Traditional Judaism, myself.

After several months in Israel, trying to rectify myself, doing t’shuva, I returned to the United States in February 1987 to attend my daughter’s wedding. At the same time, I went to see my former disciples, the Jews which I had lured into Christianity, and I astounded them by the news of my renunciation of Jesus and Christianity. Some thought that I was crazy, while others left Christianity with me.

I began to teach at the campus of the University of Arizona, attracting the interest of students and counseling Jews who were being affected by the missionaries. I went head on with the missionaries and we had interesting debates. “Jews for Jesus” had heard of my resignation, and my name was forbidden to be mentioned among them; for I was now an apostate. But, I could not care less.

Thus was my escape from Jesus. Now for my return, or better yet, my discovery of Torah Judaism.

After having discovered something of Judaism in Israel, but having never lived or studied it thoroughly (eg. kashrut, halacha, and the such), I decided to learn how to do so in the United States upon my return. This was a mistake. Shortly after returning to the United States and having renounced everything of Christianity, I approached an Orthodox rabbi to learn what I had to learn from him. He was the director of a Torah Institute and was well qualified to initiate me in the knowledge he possessed. He had known of me from years before in my Christian activities, and he simply could not believe in my sincerity. He told me that he had nothing to teach me because he did not want to teach me out of mistrust of motive. He feared that I still entertained an attachment to Jesus and that my position as his student would somehow be detrimental and harmful to him and to the Jewish people. Being unable to convince him, I went to another Orthodox rabbi, and found that he refused to even see me.

Neither did the Conservative rabbi wish to see me or to help me in any way.

My reputation had preceded me, and no one would trust me or believe in my genuine repentance. Finally, the Reform rabbi saw me, but what he had to teach was of no help to me. I soon learned that the reform movement was for Jews who want to retain a flavor of Judaism, yet live as goyim. This particular rabbi was anti-Israel and pro-Palestine. He frowned upon using Hebrew in the services and was acclaimed for it. When a subsequent rabbi decided to be more traditional, he was asked to leave. The Temple was a place of entertainment, a place to celebrate a bar mitzvah as the end on learning and not as the beginning, a place to meet your friends and make business deals, a community center. It was not a place of prayer, and certainly not a place of learning. Whatever a person got from the Temple did not impact upon their lives and did not improve it. When I began to present a series of television programs, refuting Christianity and promoting Judaism, I was counseled by the Reform rabbi not to do so because he did not want to rock the boat in his good relations with the Christian clergy. He did not want the Christians to be angered in fear that they might launch pogroms upon the Jewish community. Pogroms never happened to the community, I took all the flak from the ignorant Christians who had only profanity to offer. Jews thanked me from dispelling the influence of the Christian missionaries and some Gentiles came out of the fog and were referred to the true rabbis for conversion, at their request.

I returned to Israel in May of 1998, and contacted Shmuel Golding for a place to live. He referred me to one of his literary staff who lives in the Gush Etzion and who accommodates friends of Golding with room and board for a nominal fee. Thus, I went to live with him and his family who are all truly Torah Jews, who live, and practice their faith on a daily basis. Through their vouchsafing, I was referred to a rabbi in a neighboring settlement who taught me the basics of the faith. His wife could not believe my sincerity until she saw that I meant business.

Now I am where I was meant to be, a Jew, living in Israel, following the G-d of Israel and being bar mitzvahed 50 years after the year in which it was supposed to be.

I am extremely grateful to Shmuel Golding in being there for me when and where I needed him and in believing my story and in helping me out of the fog.

I would only hope that he be able to help others as he has helped me from this lecture room and through the publication of his magazine, booklets and tracts. There are too few places like this in the world and too few people like Shmuel Golding. We need all the help we can get. Join us now in reaching out to our fellow Jews who have become victims of Christian missionaries and need to learn how to escape from Jesus.”

Discussion

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  1. I would love to be the first one to show that I like his story, but I cannot get the like button to respond.

    Posted by Stan | July 26, 2016, 8:42 am
  2. I also receiced a diploma on biblical polemics from Shamuel Golding many years ago. Shamuel also rescued me from Christianity.

    Posted by Stan | July 26, 2016, 1:02 am