I have accomplished a lot and have traveled and lectured all over the world. You know, I was taught the methodology of science, I was taught to analyze, I was taught to check everything I read. Everything should be logical. But there are certain things that you just cannot understand.
I was born in Montreal to a Jewish family. My grandparents emigrated from Russia. My father was in the Canadian Air Force and he was part of the Anglo-Canadian forces when they liberated the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.
I very strongly identified myself as Jewish, but not religious. I had a bar mitzvah, I went to a regular school in Montreal, I studied at McGill University. And then, as any Jewish mom would want, I became a doctor, practiced, taught and lived quite comfortably and successfully for a long time, expecting nothing more than to stay here for the rest of my life. Until the situation began to deteriorate in Quebec, and anti-Semitism began to manifest itself and other things happened…
My grandfather (my mother’s father) is a wonderful person with a kind heart – he went to the post office. He needed to send a letter. And they refused to even talk to him. I remember him in our kitchen in tears. I really didn’t like it. I decided that this is not the place where I would like to live, not the place where I would like to raise children. I packed up, left Montreal and ended up in the Bible Belt in Texas.
I ended up in Dallas, began my medical practice and was introduced to the staff … One woman stood up. She came up and said: “Tell me about yourself!”
At that time I was very self-absorbed, I achieved a lot and I lectured all over the world. Religion was not at all a part of my life. I’m not used to people who base their lives on religion. I’m not used to people with a spiritual foundation, and she was just that kind of person. There was something about her. There was peace in her, there was wholeness in her. There was something about her that I didn’t have.
Jesus was a concept that, as far as I knew, Christians attribute to something outside this world. But as for me, I am a Jew, I have my own way.
The more she told me about Jesus, about God, the more I began to realize that this is something that I probably need.
You know, starting a new life in a foreign city at that stage of my life was a big challenge. I was in awe, I was afraid, and there were a lot of things that I struggled with trying to get settled. And there was this rock on which she stood firmly, and it was something that I felt I also needed.
And at some point she asked me a question: “Do you think that you should thank God for some of the things that you have achieved?” And I thought about it very seriously for a short while and said, “Well, I think I could give God what I owe.”
Donna and I got married in 2010 and on our first anniversary (after some hesitation) we decided we would go to Israel.
The man who was our guide was very, very … He was a Messianic Jew. He grew up in a traditional Jewish family, practically the same as mine. And he took us from place to place, telling everything in a very Jewish context. Everything was related to the Bible, everything was related to Jesus. And the more and more we learned, the more it became a reality.
We were at the Western Wall, and when I began to pray, this all-embracing presence enveloped me. It was warm, it was pressure, it was as if someone had embraced me with their arms. I heard a voice: “You are at home, I brought you back to where you should be, you are safe here.” I experienced an incredible, just incredible sense of peace, an incredible sense of calmness. And I was convinced. I mean, I had no questions about the reality of this experience of mine.
But you know how Jews we were always raised with the belief that if you are going to be a Jew, you cannot believe in Jesus, you cannot believe in Yeshua. So I went up to our guide that morning and said to him, “I have a few questions for you.” Because he grew up in a traditional Jewish family, and now he is a believer and a Messianic Jew. “I need to know – how do you do it?”
When he explained to me that you can believe, you can accept Jesus as your Messiah, and that this does not mean that you cease to be a Jew, you do not give up your Jewishness in order to believe. It was literally like someone had turned on the light.
On that Friday night, which by coincidence turned out to be the first night of Purim, of all the places where one could get salvation – I mean, if I wrote a script for this story, I do not know a better place where I would like to be – I accepted Yeshua. I accepted Jesus as my Messiah. I looked at Donna and said, “I figured it out too!”
I stand on the same foundation on which she stood, because now it is not just “the two of us”, but “the two of us and Yeshua.”
Source: Перри Гольдберг: Я бежал от антисемитизма в поисках лучшей жизни и нашёл новую жизнь! (ieshua.org)
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