Brother Nathanael - Why I Left Judaism

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Sept. 19, 2025 - Brother Nathanael

06:23

Why I Left Judaism

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	I was born of two Jewish parents and raised in the synagogue.
	I went to Shabbat school, Hebrew school, and Shabbos services every Friday night and Saturday morning.
	I even wanted to be a rabbi when I grew up.
	I was a perfect Jew.
	I was a star bar Mr. Student.
	I was the very first to chant the Haftorah, which is the reading from the prophets for specific Sabbath days.
	Our Shabbat school director had decided early on that we should focus on Tanakh, that is the Old Testament, alongside Talmud.
	Despite my Jewish path looking solid, Talmud made me uneasy because I constantly covered the sins of leading figures.
	Mr. Scholz, one of our teachers, told us that Talmud teaches that David did not sin, but rather his so-called adultery, as Christians teach with Bathsheba, did not happen since her soldier husband made a temporary divorce with her, as all soldiers did at that time when off to battle.
	We were also taught the Kabbalah.
	Its main book, the Zohar was read during services, along with Kabbalistic lessons on Sever Habahir, the Book of Illumination.
	It describes the tense rot, emanations that radiate from God, and how we can participate in these emanations.
	My dad slighted Kabbalah as occult.
	Talmud, he said, is the mainstay of Judaism, not Kabbalah.
	Whether Talmud with its twisting of Bible stories or Kabbalah with its occult bizarress both felt like being on shaky ground.
	The crises soon came.
	Our Bar Mr. Class teacher, Mrs. Schechter, had us study every religion under the sun, so that we would know why Judaism is supreme.
	We studied Baha'i, Islam, Sikh, Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Shinto, Tao, Zen, everything but Christianity.
	At the end of the school year, Mrs. Schechter gets up from her desk.
	She was built like a bull.
	I can still see her standing there and says, Children, we're not going to study Christianity since it was invented by a self-hating Jew named Saul.
	He hated his Jewishness so much that he changed his Jewish name of Saul to the Goyish name of Paul.
	And besides, she said, Christianity is a fable.
	Mrs. Schechter, I asked, how is it that 2,000 years of civilization should be built on a fable?
	Paul was a man of depressant, that's how she said.
	I asked my dad, what's a man of depressant?
	Have no idea, my dad shrugged.
	This was in 1962 and no one had a clue, except Mrs. Scheckter.
	My dad cut right to the chase.
	You were born a Jew, you will die a Jew.
	End of debate.
	I asked my rabbi the next day when visiting my grandmother in the hospital, why can't we learn about Christianity?
	Since Jesus Christ is a major figure, couldn't we at least learn about him?
	He spit.
	Right on the hospital floor.
	I was shocked.
	He said, don't you ever use that name again unless you use it as a curse word?
	He spit again.
	I said to myself, with this kind of response, it just might be true.
	Soon I attended my cousin's bar mitzvah in another synagogue.
	It was musty, dark, moldy kind of smelling with Jewish stars all over the walls.
	I smelled death.
	I tried to leave.
	My mother pulled me back by my sleeve.
	All through the service I had the dry heaves.
	I learned later that the star of David is an occult symbol from the Middle Ages and not the shield of David, that is the Mogan David.
	How could it be with open spaces for enemy spears to strike through?
	In one resounding clang, it was the smell of death.
	The rabbi spinning, the Talmudic twisting, the just a fable, the self-hating Jew, the occult weirdness, the manic depressant, the not teaching Christianity that set me on my path to leave Judaism.
	It was my childhood religion in practice and learning.
	All my social groups were Jewish.
	My role models were Jewish.
	My best friends were Jewish.
	Everything pointed to me being Jewish, including my face and habits.
	But I couldn't make it work anymore.
	Didn't feel right.
	And the emptiness was there.
	Something inside had died.
	I wanted to hide, decided to fake it, couldn't forsake it, so I just went through the motions.
	At the age of 19, when at college far away, I secretly read the New Testament, since we were forbidden to read it.
	I started with Matthew and was convinced from the genealogies that Jesus is the Messiah.
	Why?
	Because we all knew as Jewish kids that the genealogies were lost.
	Only by some special revelation could anyone prove they are a Moshiach, I mean Messiah.
	But the New Testament stated it firmly.
	No twisting, matter of fact, and could easily be negated when Matthew inscribed it at that time.
	It stood fast.
	A light ball went on.
	Jesus Christ is our Messiah.
	I proclaimed to myself.
	I excitedly called my rabbi.
	The Messiah already came, I said.
	No, he answered.
	It's Jesus Christ, I proclaimed.
	Uh I'll call you right back, he mumbled.
	My mother called instead.
	You're seeing a psychiatrist, she said.
	The rabbi says you have mental problems.
	So my mother said.
	So much for logical debate.
	What struck me about reading the New Testament, besides the Messianic genealogies, was its clear affirmation of life after death.
	Yes, it was in Judaism in Tanakh, but only image in Moses and somewhat sketched out in Psalms, Isaiah, and Daniel, but the very clear demonstration of the resurrection of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, with a group of once frightened disciples changing the world from idolatry to belief in the God of the Bible seized my heart and mind.
	Why left Judaism?

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