Sid: Now I have a Jewish Believer sitting opposite me in the studio that I’ve known for many years and I want to ask you Jonathan Bernis this question. Rabbi’s ask me this all the time, there so traditional Rabbi’s they’re so disappointed with my answer, are both of your parents Jewish? They hope I’ll say no.
Jonathan: Yes. And the answer is yes both of my parents are Jewish.
Sid: Alright give me a thumb nail of who Jonathan is as far as upbringing.
Jonathan: Well Sid, my testimony was very similar to yours and most of the Jewish believers that are listening or Jewish people that are listening. I was brought up in a traditional Jewish home, reform home.
Sid: My Father calls reformed not even Jewish, but when I became Messianic he said, “Oh reformed looks pretty good.
Jonathan: Yeah, but in reality Sid it’s the same mind set and that is that there is more focus on Jewish survival than anything else, because you can be Orthodox and be an Atheist and still be Jewish. You can believe anything or nothing and still be Jewish; but we were both taught that you can’t believe in Jesus and still be Jewish.
Sid: And I know it shows there is so much truth to what’s called the big lie, that’s the big lie/
Jonathan: That’s right. And the fact that there is this big lie that tells me this big truth on the other side of it, looking back.
Sid: Okay, if you were like me that just meant I could examine every area except Jesus.
Jonathan: That’s right, and so Jesus was not an option, in fact I was taught that Christians hated Jews and that we had nothing in common with them that they blamed us for killing their God, Jesus Christ. We had our God the God of Israel, they had their God Jesus Christ and so it was very much an us and them mentality. And I learned all about the heritage of my people, I learned how to read Hebrew. Sadly I never learned how to translate what I was reading, but I learned how to read Hebrew in preparation for my Bar Mitzvah.
Sid: It reminds me of a guy that I met that was a Christian in college and then after I graduated college I became a believer and he came up to me and he said, “Sid I have been praying for someone to teach me Hebrew and the Old Testament.” And I’m looking at him and I’m saying I know a little about the prayer book, but I don’t understand a word of Hebrew.
Jonathan: And of course it’s a misconception Christians have that we Jews know the Bible by heart and Hebrew by heart and it’s just wrong; most Jews have never even read the Jewish Scriptures the Torah and the Prophets, the Old Testament. And this was my situation, I was taught about the Patriarchs Abraham and Moses and how God had used them so powerfully but I never learned what it meant to have a relationship with God. God was some distant force out there untouchable; unreachable we can’t even pronounce His Name. And the encounter that Moses had was with a burning bush how can you embrace a burning bush? So there was no concept of a personal relationship with a God with a personal God. And I had two questions in life early on Sid, “Why am I here?” And “What’s going to happen to me after I die” and I asked the Rabbi once as a young teen and he gave me this story about climbing up the mountain and not being able to see over the other side, but God can see over the other side. And I realized years later that the Rabbi had no idea what happens after you die, but he’s the Rabbi and Rabbi doesn’t say, “I don’t know, I have no idea.”
Sid: Okay, since you were warned, maybe not even, I don’t know about you I don’t think I was even told this in a verbal sense, but it’s something almost engrained that every Jew knows a Jew doesn’t believe in Jesus.
Jonathan: Right.
Sid: And I don’t believe I was even told that but you pick it up.
Jonathan: Absolutely, in many different ways.
Sid: Okay, so because that door’s closed, but every other doors opened; what happened as you were raised?
Jonathan: It was girls Sid, it was all about girls, I’m in High School and an assistant wrestling coach was a leader in a group called Young Life and the best looking girls in school were going to this group. And so when he invited me I said, “Sure, I’ll go I know who’s going and I’m interested. I had no idea that I was going to hear about Jesus, but every meeting there would be some Bible story about Jesus and I immediately knew that this isn’t for me but I was intrigued by the person of Jesus. This man who could walk on water, heal the sick, even raise the dead, but while I was intrigues with Him my response of course was I’m Jewish and we don’t believe in Jesus, and a number of people witnessed to me and that was my response. And this is very sad Sid and one of the reasons I wrote “A Rabbi looks at Jesus as Nazareth” they always apologized. When I say I’m Jewish, I said, Oh, I’m sorry.” And what they were doing Sid and so many Christians do this even Christians that are listening to the program; they think its good will not to share with Jewish people and so apologizing to me…
Sid: It’s the most anti-Semitic thing that a Christian can do is to hold back how a Jewish person can go to Heaven, is to hold back how a Jewish person can have intimacy with God, is to hold back how a Jewish person in this crazy world we’re living in can live in peace.
Jonathan: But this is one of the lies of the enemy, Christians who love the Jewish people are taught its goodwill not to share with them because they have their own separate way to God and by apologizing they were reinforcing my erroneous view that Jesus wasn’t for me as a Jew. Now fast forward onto college, I eventually lose interest in the group, I’m off at college, I start to get involved with drugs…
Sid: Now you had the same goal I had, that was to make a million dollars.
Jonathan: No, I wanted to make two million.
Sid: Now, wait a second you changed your story, that’s called exaggeration. Ha-ha.
Jonathan: Well, I’m exaggerating, I did well with inflation Sid you know it’s true. Ha-ha. So I wanted to be a successful wealthy businessman and I’m at college and I’m doing what everyone my age was doing in that era. And I’m doing what Jews; the Bible says Jews do, we’re seeking for a sign. Jews are seeking for a sign and the Bible says we have zeal for God, but without knowledge and that means we are searching in all the wrong places. The one right way, Jesus is not an option for us but everything else is and so I started to get involved in drugs, started traveling with the Grateful Dead and all of this time I’m actually maintaining good grades in school. I’m studying business administration and a friend who was kind of a fellow explorer disappeared from my life, she was using drugs, really hard drugs and when I saw her again months later I could see that something had changed in her life. She looked clean Sid, she looked happy and I made the mistake of asking her what happened? And she told me and told me and told me day after day, the phone calls, talking about how Jesus had changed her life. How she had been delivered from drugs and Sid I have to tell you that I thought it was great for her but this wasn’t for me. It didn’t even have to be with being have anything with being Jewish now it was I’m having fun in my life, I have goals, I have plans and this is great for you.
Sid: But you have to be intrigued, in the transformation from a druggy to a clean cut woman.
Jonathan: I was, because I knew that she kept on the path she’s on she would be dead and she kept calling me and I didn’t know this Sid, but she had all of her Christian friends praying for me. Her friends at church, her friends at the Bible study praying for me and every time the phone would ring and I knew it was her I didn’t want to pick up the phone and I would pick up the phone and she would tell me about how God had changed her life and could change mine. And that eventually led to me going to a Bible study with her just. I don’t know why I went Sid, looking back but I went and it was at this study that I was confronted with the Biblical truth, “All have sinned and come short of the glory of God, the wage of sin is death but the gift of God is eternal life through Christ Jesus.” And I have to tell you this Sid and this is very important, I prayed a prayer that night thirty-one years ago but I didn’t believe it. My mind said, “This isn’t true, but I did it to appease this pushy Christian and when I left I said, “I’m never going to return to this study; this was a horrible experience; I want nothing to do with these Christians, but I had prayed this prayer and I wanted to forget it. But Sid, because I had prayed that prayer, because without even realizing it faith had been deposited in my heart and I had confessed with my mouth, as it says in Roman’s chapter 10. I woke up the next day and the subsequent days with this desire out of nowhere to read the Bible which I had never read before.
Sid: It is a crazy thought for someone like you!
Jonathan: Crazy, came out of nowhere and especially a desire to read the New Testament, I didn’t even know where to find a New Testament!
Sid: How did you get one?
Jonathan: That’s a story in itself and it’s too long but I didn’t even know that you could go to a grocery store or a drug store because it was the bestselling book of all time. I got on my motorcycle and drove a hundred miles back to my home from the University of Buffalo to Rochester just to find a Bible that somebody had given me four years earlier; this Young Life Leader had given me and I dug through every box until I found it. Sid the Word of God never returns void.
Sid: Now did your parents ask you why you had come home, had traveled over one hundred miles?
Jonathan: I don’t even remember them being home or saying, “Hello or goodbye to them if they were. I found the Bible I got back on my motorcycle I drove back to the University to my dorm room and I began to devour the New Testament. And Sid, what I found completely changed my life.
Sid: Bottom line, what did you really fine?
Jonathan: Well, first of all I found out that this book of the Christians that had nothing to do with Judaism was about the greatest Jew that who had ever lived. You found out in “Ripley’s Believe it or Not” that Jesus was Jewish. I found out reading the book of Matthew, that this was an observant Jew, not born in Rome, not a Catholic, but a Jew born of Jewish parents in the Jewish homeland. It blew my mind.
Sid: I was so shocked and so angry at Mr. Ripley when he said, “Jesus was Jewish” that I remember going to my parents and I remember them saying, “Yeah, I think that he is Jewish.” And my question is for Jonathan and for me, “Isn’t there better witness than Mr. Ripley? Isn’t there someone somewhere that will tell us Jewish people that the only door where were told not to knock on is the only door that has the Messiah?” Jonathan you originally wrote your book “A Rabbi looks at Jesus of Nazareth” because you wanted Christians to understand how to share Jesus with Jewish people. But you have found that there is a benefit in feedback that you’re getting from this book that is just mind blowing.
Jonathan: Amazing feedback, Sid amazing feedback, I wrote it as a tool for Christians to give a Jewish friend or to help a Christian to prepare them to witness effectively to their Jewish friend. What I found and I’ve received so many letters, emails and phone calls that Christians are falling in love with Jesus all over again. Because they didn’t understand they didn’t realize, they didn’t fully understand who Jesus was and is. He is a Jew who was called to His own people and they’re learning things about Jesus that they never knew before. They’re learning about His heritage and upbringing.
Sid: But these were all givens for the first believers, what I mean by that is you didn’t need it in the Bible to know these things because everyone was raised as a Jew and these people knew and understood the roots of the faith! So, it didn’t have to be explained, but the average Christian, the only roots that we have were gentle pagan roots that developed good Christian meanings and I don’t have anything negative to say about that, but they missed the foundation of our faith.
Jonathan: Sid, what I found as Jews were raised with the blindness keeping us from seeing who Jesus was. But many Christians are raised with the blindness that keep them from seeing what’s clearly in the New Testament, the Jewishness of Jesus and it’s life changing when that discovery is made.
Sid: Oy vey, we’re out of time.
