From Rabbi to Redeemed

How Isaiah 53 Led Me to Jesus

I was born at a time when the whole world lay in turmoil because of the First World War. People suffered hunger and starvation.

I was born into a strict Orthodox Jewish, rabbinic, and Hasidic home. Although my parents were poor, they sent us boys to an expensive Orthodox religious school. I had three brothers and one sister. My father’s great desire was to make rabbis of all four of his sons.

At five years old, I was already attending cheder, a traditional Jewish school for young boys. By seven, I was able to read Hebrew.

At nine, I was introduced to the Five Books of Moses and the great Jewish commentator Rashi. I was also introduced to the Talmud. By the time I was ten or eleven, the Talmud had eclipsed nearly everything else and became the main textbook for the next ten years of my life.

At 13, following my Bar Mitzvah, I began what was regarded as my independent religious life. I was now personally responsible for my actions and sins.

Growing Up Apart

My father was a rabbi and went to the synagogue to pray three times a day. We observed Jewish laws according to the Talmud, for my parents desired that their children should follow in their father’s footsteps and remain strict Orthodox Jews.

My family lived in a little town in Poland, near Warsaw. About 500 Jewish families and 800 Polish families lived there, but the Jewish and Polish communities were largely separated from one another.

Our clothing was different. Orthodox Jews wore long black coats, while the Polish people generally wore European-style clothing.

Our languages were different. Jews spoke Yiddish, while the Poles spoke Polish.

Our religion was different. Jews worshipped in synagogues, which were also centres of social gathering and Bible and Talmudic study. The Polish population was overwhelmingly Roman Catholic.

Our occupations were often different as well. Jews commonly worked as blacksmiths, tailors, shoemakers, or small businessmen, while many Poles were farmers or government employees.

We were two peoples living in one territory beneath the same Polish sky, eating the same bread and breathing the same air.

Yet we seemed as strange to one another as east is from west.

“Why Does He Hate Me?”

When I was six years old, I tried to take a walk outside the Jewish area.

Suddenly, a Gentile boy threw a stone at me while shouting, “Jew! Jew!”

As a little child, I did not understand why anyone would hate me simply because I was Jewish.

I ran home to my mother.

“Why is the boy throwing stones at me?” I asked. “Why is he calling me ‘Jew’? I have never seen this boy before. Why does he hate me when he has never even met me?”

My mother explained to me what she believed about the hostility of the Christians around us toward the Jews.

“But why is he my enemy?” I kept asking.

She told me that one day the Messiah would come. Our sufferings would end, and we would return to the land of our fathers.

“But when will the Messiah come?”

“We don’t know the exact time,” she answered, “but He will come someday.”

The hope of the coming Messiah accompanied me through my life.

It gave me strength to endure suffering and humiliation.

I did not know then just how important that question of the Messiah would one day become.

Preparing to Become a Rabbi

After my Bar Mitzvah, I was sent to higher rabbinical schools for the specific purpose of becoming a rabbi.

From the ages of 13 to 22, I studied in different schools where the main subject was the Talmud.

I had to learn the opinions of rabbis on matters involving everyday life, religious observance, marriage and divorce, prayer, agriculture, and many other questions.

I studied the great rabbinic commentators and authorities, including Rashi, Maimonides, the Tosafists, and others.

There was so much religious material to study that we had very little time for even elementary secular subjects. I knew little about arithmetic, geography, and similar subjects.

But by the age of 22, I was considered a lamdan—a man learned in the Talmud.

Then everything changed.

The War Destroyed Everything

On September 1, 1939, the Second World War began.

That summer I had received my rabbinical ordination, or semicha.

I planned to marry and become a religious leader among my people, using the knowledge I had acquired to lead others in the ways of rabbinic tradition.

I also considered leaving Poland, perhaps emigrating to Latin America, where rabbis were needed.

The war destroyed all those plans.

My very life was now in danger, along with the lives of the Jewish people throughout Europe.

On September 4, 1939, German soldiers entered our town.

Life for Polish Jews became unbearable.

What followed is almost beyond description.

During the Holocaust, six million Jews were murdered, including approximately one million Jewish children.

Here and there, courageous non-Jewish families risked their own lives to hide and protect Jews. But countless others were unable—or unwilling—to help.

When the war finally ended in 1945, Europe had been devastated.

And I had lost my entire family.

“Why?”

After the war, I desperately hoped that some of my relatives had survived.

I placed advertisements in newspapers.

I contacted different institutions.

I searched.

But slowly the terrible truth became clear.

My loved ones had perished.

My parents.

My sister.

My brothers.

My uncles.

I could hardly believe that I would never see them again.

I was alone in the world.

I began searching for friendship, but no human friendship could satisfy my longing for a mother’s heart or a father’s love. Nobody could replace the love of a sister or the faithfulness of a brother.

I became disappointed and desperate.

Then I lifted my eyes toward Heaven and asked that old and terrible question:

Why?

Why had so many of my people been murdered?

Where was God when a little Jewish child cried for help?

Why had God seemed silent during those terrible years?

A Rabbi With Doubts

With no family left in Poland, I decided to go to America. I hoped that perhaps in a new country I could leave the dreadful past behind and begin again.

In April 1946, I arrived at a Jewish displaced-persons camp near the Austrian border in Germany.

I registered as a rabbi and began working in that capacity among the displaced people. I also edited the camp newspaper.

In 1952, I came to Rhode Island in the United States, where I worked as an assistant rabbi in a synagogue.

But although I taught the Talmud, a tremendous conflict was raging inside me.

Why had God allowed six million Jews to die?

I was teaching things about which I myself was no longer certain.

I told my congregation and my students that if we Jews wanted to survive and overcome our enemies, we must keep the Sabbath holy.

But within my heart there was a troubling question.

Many of those who had died under Hitler had faithfully observed the Sabbath.

Yet their observance had not saved them from the gas chambers and killing fields.

I was searching for truth.

And I could not find it.

Confession Was Not Enough

Every year on the Jewish holy days, we went to the synagogue, confessed our sins, and asked God for forgiveness.

The most solemn of these occasions was Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

Confession of sin was a central part of our prayers.

Yet something troubled me.

I knew from the Scriptures that confession alone did not answer the whole question of sin.

In the books of Moses, forgiveness and atonement were repeatedly connected with sacrifice.

Where was the sacrifice?

Where was the korban?

I could confess my sins with my lips, but what if my heart remained unchanged?

What did all the prayers mean if afterward we simply returned to the same patterns of sin?

I knew that we were sinners.

I knew that we needed forgiveness.

But I did not know how a sinful man could truly be reconciled to a holy God.

I Longed for Truth

I became increasingly unhappy with my spiritual condition.

I had lost faith in much of what I had been taught.

I felt miserable knowing that, as a rabbi, I was teaching people things that I myself was questioning.

What was the truth?

What was the true way for my people?

What was the true way for me?

I did not know.

I looked upon my people as sheep without a shepherd.

I knew that we needed something more than arguments, traditions, rules, and ceremonies.

We needed truth.

A Little Piece of Paper

One spring evening, I was walking through Rhode Island with no particular destination.

As I walked, I noticed some young people standing near a storefront handing out little printed papers.

One of them handed me a pamphlet.

Because I could not read English, I assumed that perhaps the store was advertising some kind of sale.

So I went inside.

But there was no merchandise.

Instead, everyone was sitting with their eyes closed and their heads bowed.

What is going on here? I wondered.

I did not know that this was how Christians prayed.

A young man came over and tried to speak to me, but I could not understand him. I had been in the United States only a short time and knew very little English.

Finally, I explained that I could speak German and Yiddish.

Through gestures, we arranged for me to return the following Wednesday, when a German-speaking man would be there.

“God Loves the Jews”

The next Wednesday, the German-speaking gentleman was waiting for me.

He shook my hand warmly and said in German:

“This is a mission to the Jews.”

“What is a mission?” I asked.

“The Lord sent us to the Jews to tell them that God loves them and wants them to be saved.”

Saved?

Loved?

After everything I had seen in Europe, those were difficult words for me to hear.

“How can you speak about love,” I asked him, “after what happened to the Jews of Europe?”

I confronted him with the antisemitism I had witnessed among people who called themselves Christians.

He answered that Christ taught His followers to love even their enemies, and that those who hated and murdered Jews were acting contrary to the teachings of Christ.

Then he placed something into my hands that would change my life.

A Yiddish New Testament.

“Read it,” he said, “and you will find the true teaching of Christ.”

I put it into my pocket.

“Yes, sir,” I said. “I will read it. I want to see what the New Testament is really like. I don’t know anything about it.”

I Opened the New Testament

During the next few nights, I read.

Every line seemed like a revelation.

I opened the Gospel of Matthew.

And immediately I was surprised.

Jesus was a Jew!

He was presented as the descendant of Abraham and David.

Again and again I encountered the words:

“It is written.”

Written where?

In our Jewish Scriptures!

I read of the virgin bringing forth a Son called Immanuel.

I read of Bethlehem.

I read the prophets.

I saw quotations from Moses and the Psalms.

Page after page of the New Testament pointed me back to the Hebrew Scriptures.

Slowly something tremendous began to dawn upon me.

The New Testament was not disconnected from the Old Testament. It proclaimed the fulfilment of its promises in the Messiah.

I began to realize how much of my life had been occupied with the Talmud while I had neglected the Scriptures themselves.

I began reading the Bible with new eyes.

The Poem That Shocked a Rabbi

A few weeks before Passover, the missionary in Rhode Island gave me the address of a Jewish believer in Jesus who lived in New York.

I went to see him.

I had never knowingly met a Jewish person who believed in Jesus.

He welcomed me into his home with the familiar Jewish greeting:

“Shalom Aleichem.”

Peace be unto you.

We read the New Testament together in Yiddish.

Then he told me that he had a poem called “The Sufferer.”

He began to read it to me.

It spoke of One who was despised and rejected.

One who bore griefs and sorrows.

One who was wounded for our transgressions.

One upon whom the iniquity of others was laid.

One who was led as a lamb to the slaughter.

Then he stopped.

“Who is this speaking about?” he asked me.

“Who suffered for our sins?”

“By whose stripes are we healed?”

I answered:

“It probably refers to Jesus Christ.”

Then he told me the truth.

It was not a Christian poem.

It was not something written by one of the apostles.

He had been reading Isaiah chapter 53.

I was shocked.

I was a rabbi.

I had spent years studying religious books.

And yet I had not understood Isaiah 53.

The next day, I showed the same passage to a rabbi friend in New York without telling him where it came from.

He did not recognize it either.

Something was happening in my heart.

I Accepted Jesus as My Messiah

That evening I returned to the Jewish missionary.

I told him that I believed the Bible.

And I told him that I believed in the Lord Jesus.

Then and there, we knelt together and prayed for forgiveness and salvation.

I accepted Jesus as my personal Saviour.

What a change came over me!

I experienced a peace and joy that I had never known before.

My whole life changed.

I was a new creature.

“He Was Wounded for Our Transgressions”

When I returned home, I opened my Bible to Isaiah 53.

I read it again.

And again.

And again.

Why had I never understood this chapter before?

Now the words seemed to blaze from the page:

“Surely he hath borne our griefs, and carried our sorrows…”

“But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities…”

“The LORD hath laid on him the iniquity of us all.”

Suddenly the question that had troubled me about sacrifice had an answer.

I had asked:

Where is the sacrifice?

Now I saw Christ.

I had asked:

How can sin be forgiven?

Now I saw the Lamb of God.

I had spent years studying religion.

But now I had found the Messiah.

A New Education and a New Calling

Later, I went to Los Angeles and began an entirely new kind of education.

Because my secular schooling had been so limited, I had to begin at an elementary level. Eventually I completed high school, attended Los Angeles City College, and then Biola College, where I received a B.A. degree.

I was baptized and ordained as a minister of the Gospel.

But my deepest burden became the people from whom I had come.

The Jewish people.

I wanted them to know their Messiah.

Jesus said:

“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man cometh unto the Father, but by me.” — John 14:6

Back to My People

After I was saved, I knew it was not enough for me simply to know the Light.

I wanted my people to know the Messiah of Israel.

I knew it would not be easy.

I knew the prejudice against the Gospel because I had once shared it.

But God had called me to His service.

Within my heart came the burden:

“Feed my sheep.”

And my answer was:

“Here I am.”

I wanted to go to the house of Israel and tell them the simple but sure message of God’s salvation.

I had seen tired and unhappy people searching for truth.

I had once been one of them.

I had been a rabbi searching for an answer.

I had known religion.

I had known tradition.

I had known suffering.

I had known questions.

But then I opened the Scriptures.

And in Isaiah 53, I saw the suffering Messiah.

The Rabbi had found his Messiah.

“Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” — Isaiah 1:18