by Ceil Rosen

     It was New Year's Eve.  I was looking out my pantry window at a star. It seemed bright and bigger than any star I had ever seen before, and the thought came to me,  "Maybe that's what the Christmas star looked like."  Then I realized what I, a Jew, was thinking.

     I was born into a Jewish family in Boston, Massachusetts. My mother died when  my twin brother and I were infants, and not long afterwards my father had a nervous breakdown.  I was raised by foster parents who were Orthodox Jews.

     My foster mother kept the kosher dietary laws.  We had separate dishes for meat and milk, and we washed the dishes with separate bars of soap, and even used separate dish towels.  We kept all the holidays, and on Sabbath I was not allowed to write with a pencil or pick up a needle and thread or a scissors.  The very, very Orthodox would not ride in a car or handle money on the Sabbath, but we did.  As I grew older I began to wonder why we kept part of the Law and not all of it.

     We lived in a suburb of Boston until I was about thirteen, then we moved to Denver, Colorado. Most of the kids in the neighborhood were Jewish.  My mother didn't encourage me to have Gentile friends.  It you were a Jew, you were a Goy, and a Goy just meant  one who didn't have the good fortune to realize there was only one God.  They worshiped statues and three gods, but we had the true faith.

     One day Moishe Rosen, a high school boy who lived on our street, knocked on my mother's door, selling house number signs. He asked me out and after that we started seeing a lot of each other.  It was a teen-aged romance that blossomed.

     Moishe was raised in a nominal Orthodox family.  He mother didn't keep kosher. I would go to his house for breakfast and have bacon for breakfast and enjoy it.  We didn't discuss religion  a whole lot--I had my views and he had his.  He was proud to be a Jew and felt that there were certain ties and roots that we wanted to keep.

     After that time I began to chafe under all the restrictions. There was no reality in my life with God--it was just   "learn this....memorize that...do this...don't do that." I started to think that maybe Mama wasn't right about all the time.  I didn't think God loved me and I didn't love him, so in rebellion I began to tell myself that maybe there wasn't any God.  And if there wasn't any God, then I wasn't bound by anything;  I could do what I wanted.

     Outwardly  I went along with what my parents were telling me to do, but inwardly I was rebelling.
When I was about sixteen, our high school chorus gave a Christmas pageant. We dressed up as Israeli women and moved across the stage in a slow, almost modern dance movement as we sang, "O come, o come, Immanuel/ and ransom captive Israel."  While I was singing and performing I wondered if it was possible that there was something to Jesus being for the Jews.

     When Moishe and I were married, I felt a real sense of freedom and was definitely not going to have an Orthodox home.  We were just going to be modern Americans without any hang-ups about religion.

     The pressure of having to be religious was off. So I began to feel a little bit freer within myself and  realized that I did believe in God after all.  I was content and happy, and when we were expecting our first baby, I started saying prayers of thanksgiving.

     At Christmastime, 1951,  Moishe brought home an album of Christmas carols.  One afternoon, while I was playing the record, I started to think about the words in the carol, "O Little Town of Bethlehem": "Yet in thy dark streets shineth/The everlasting Light..."  I prayed, "God, could it be possible that what these Christians are saying about Jesus is true?  I'm ready to go back and be an Orthodox Jew and keep all the Laws if this is what You want, or to believe in Jesus. Please show me  what is right."   Then I got busy taking care of the baby and forgot about my prayer.  But that was the turning point.  About a week later, on New Year's Eve, I saw the star from my pantry window, and from then on God gave me a growing hunger to read the New Testament.

     But I was afraid to go buy one.  Finally the next summer I asked Moishe's cousin to buy a Bible for me.  She looked at me in surprise when I said,  "I want the whole Bible, but don't tell anybody!"  She brought me a King James Bible.   I couldn't wait for her to leave so I could  start  reading it.

     I turned to the New Testament and just soaked it up like a blotter.  I read about Jesus being the Son of David, the Son of Abraham, and this struck a responsive chord in my heart.  I thought, "What's wrong with this?  Why don't we Jews accept this?"

     The more I read the New Testament, the more I thought, "This is really a Jewish book."
I fell in love with the Person of Jesus and the things that he said.  They rang so true that I just knew he was real.  I went back and read the Gospels again, because I was so hungry for the Person of Christ.  I felt a deep need to discuss these things with someone but didn't know where to turn, and I prayed that God would help me find someone to talk to.

     One snowy January day in 1953 a lady came to my door and introduced herself. She was a missionary  with a Scofield Bible and tracts.   A Christian family had been praying for us for three or four years and was moved by God to ask her to visit us.   I was so overwhelmed that I went into the pantry where I had seen the star and wiped the t ears from my eyes. I didn't want her to see me crying.

     Mrs. Wago began teaching me out of the Scriptures.  As I started believing in the Person of Christ I soaked up everything she told me.     She came regularly for a while, but then Moishe became upset.  He knew I was reading the New Testament and he started worrying about it.  He said, "That's okay if you want to believe that;  I don't want to believe it.  Just don't tell anybody about it."  I tried to share the tracts with him  and he just got more and more annoyed.   Finally he said he didn't want her to come to the house any more.  The weather was bad anyway, so she teach me over the phone.

     One day, while I was talking to Mrs. Wago, Moishe came home and, infuriated, ripped the phone out of the wall.  That didn't terminate the studies, we just kept them a little shorter.
 At one point when Moishe confronted me about my beliefs I said,  "If I have to choose between you and God, I would have to choose God. Don't make me choose."  He dropped it because he knew I was serious.

     On Easter Sunday, 1953,  Mrs. Wago arranged for me to be taken to a church.  I w anted very much to go since I had never been to a church service.  Moishe said,  'Yes, you can go this once but I don't want you to make a habit of it, and don't let anybody see you leaving."
 I hid my hat and put it on in the car.  If my Jewish neighbors had seen me wearing a hat on Easter Sunday morning, they  would know I was going to church. When the minister gave the invitation, I went forward openly to confess and receive Christ.

     Every day I prayed for Moishe.  I would stand by the kitchen sink, washing dishes, praying and crying.  I didn't talk to him about it during those weeks, because I sensed  that he would get angry again.

 But I left a little booklet about heaven on the table and Moishe read it.  On a Saturday night, about seven weeks later, we were lying in bed talking and he said, "Heaven's not like that guy says."  Then he caught  himself and realized that he had been fighting it all along. He confessed to me that he believed and asked,      "What do I do now?"  So I said,  "It's a good idea to pray first."

     He asked,  "Would you help me pray?"  I told him,  "You just tell God that you believe in him and that Jesus died for your sins."  He prayed and then said, "I want to go to church tomorrow."  The next morning we went to church and he walked down the aisle when the invitation was given and confessed Christ openly.

     Moishe tried to tell his family, but I didn't tell mine.  Through Moishe telling his father, it got around to my family.  One day my mother came over and said to me in Yiddish, "I hear you've become a Goy."  I said,  "No, Ma. I'm still Jewish but I do believe that the New Testament is true."  I tried to talk to her but she wouldn't have any of it.

     My father said,  "Will you go to the rabbi?"  And I said,  "Yes, I'll go see him but it won't change my faith any."   The rabbi asked us what we believed and Moishe told him.  Then he turned to me and wanted to know my basis for believing and I started quoting from Isaiah and Jeremiah. The rabbi said, "You know, I don't have my commentaries with me;  I can't discuss this with you properly today.
 My father, I think, really wanted to know about Isaiah 53 and there was disappointment written on his face when the rabbi couldn't answer questions about it.  He wanted us to go back to the rabbi, but I didn't see that it would serve any purpose.  My parents said, "Well, if you're not going to see the rabbi again,  we'll just forget that you're our daughter and that will be the end of it."   That was the last contact we had with them. We heard they moved to Israel, but we could never track them down. I pray for them.

     Moishe began to feel a real burden that someone should tell the Jewish people that Jesus is the Messiah.  As he was praying about it, God used the Scriptures to say to him, "You're asking me to send someone. I want you to go."

 Summary conclusion by me---Moishe started the ministry of Jews for Jesus, and she
shared in the ministry being a  second "Mom"  to  many whose parents disowned them.

(Original story published in Decision, Dec. 1976, p.4).