Shulamit

They wanted me to shave my hair off

How to find God, was, for Shulamit Galor the biggest question of all. She tried Jewish religion, the Chabad movement, the mysticism of the Kabbala, yoga and Hinduism. She even became a Quaker! No answer. No hope. No God. She stayed in India for four years in a frantic search for enlightment. How God found her and answered her deepest desire is an amazing sign of his love for his people. When Shulamit told me her story, in her flat in the heart of Tel Aviv, her eyes shone and many times she raised her voice. She gesticulated, laughed, moved her arms and was every inch an Israeli. Even her typical use of the English language was so authentic. On the balcony I took her picture and her black curling hair shone in the afternoon sun. Imagine, those ultra-orthodox men wanted her to shave her hair off and wear a wig…

I was born in Tel Aviv in 1954 and grew up in a family that was not orthodox, but religious in a way. We were keeping all the mitzwoth, the laws and the Torah, and were very strict in keeping the shabbat and the holy days. My father used to go to the synagogue. We as children had to fulfil all these things also, but whenever I asked my parents, ‘Why can’t I do my homework on shabbat?’ they said, ‘Because writing is also work and you are not supposed to work on shabbat.’ I used to get very angry at things like this. ‘Why cannot I go and play with my friends on shabbat?’ ‘No you cannot go. You have to stick to the house.’ I felt very much restricted by these laws, but as a child my father talked to me a lot about God and so I started believing in God and prayed to him, but I hated the synagogue. Each time I went there with my father I saw all these people and yet you could see that they were not at all interested in God. They would stand outside the synagogue and talk with someone else about money and business. I felt the hypocrisy and hated it. My elder sister, one elder brother and one younger sister, we all hated the holidays, and felt it like a burden. My mother was not very affectionate to me. My elder sister was a little bit retarded and all the attention went to her and we were left out. So we all felt very lonely.

Becoming a teenager I really decided to rebel against this religion, my parents and everything. I was probably very bitter because there was not enough love for me. So I became a Hindu. I was very much attracted to India. For me, India was the only place in the world I wanted to go to. I heard about the yogis and the meditations and all these exercises. I wanted to know more about the Hindu religion and getting salvation through enlightment. First you do the exercises and then you find a teacher, a guru. So I started looking around here in Tel Aviv, but at that time very few people were interested in these things. I found some groups of people doing yoga and meditation. When I was fifteen years old, I started to do that also. At the same time, I started to hate my own religion. I told my parents, ‘It is not for me anymore. I want to do what I want on shabbat.’

My hair was like a big afro and I used to stick flowers in it. My jeans were very torn too. I became a sort of a hippie and a Hindu together. Every morning at six o’clock I started the day with meditation. I was also a vegetarian from childhood, just because I did not like meat. But now I became a vegetarian by faith because of my Hindu religion. I practised yoga, Hatta Yoga, did the exercises and meditated. All my friends wanted to get married or to go to the university, but I wanted just one thing, to go to India. This really grew in my heart.

Then after some years my boyfriend and I went to Jerusalem. We were thinking and trying to find God. Then we met a very interesting man at the Wailing Wall. His name is rabbi Karlibach. He welcomed hippies and was himself a bit of a hippie too. He used to sing a lot. He was a chabatnik and called people to come to God through the singing and the happiness. He was very kind to us and said, ‘Come and let’s talk about God.’ We went to his house and he was very loving. He said, ‘Don’t go to India. It is very bad and the land is full of demons. You have to stick with the Jewish religion.’ So, we listened to him, because of the love he had for us. We said okay, we will stop searching like this. So I became a Hozaret Betshuva, which means someone who comes back to the Jewish religion.

It lasted only half a year. We were very religious, very orthodox. I stopped wearing jeans and I started to wear long dresses. I was not a hippie any more, but was very strict in keeping the shabbat. My parents did not like it at all. They thought I was crazy. I left all my Hindu stuff and was a religious Jew. My boyfriend is still like this today. He is still a chabadnik. For me a lot of questions came up but whenever I approached different rabbis and asked these questions, the answers were never satisfactory. It had to do with different explanations about the Bible. Why Judaism emphasises the Gemarah and all these other books so much instead of the Torah. Nobody could give me an answer that satisfied me. I just felt again, that all this keeping of the shabbat and strictly keeping the Mitzwoth, was a burden to me. So I decided to stop it and went back to Hinduism.

After that I was called to the army and served in the Nachal with young people, a kind of settlers, that start establishments on the borders of Israel. They live there and grow vegetables and all that. For six months in the beginning of my army service we lived in a kibbutz near Eilat. I went to Eilat every day and met all these hippies. Everybody in that hippie community wanted to go to India. So that also strengthened my desire to go there. For me, India was a land of unlimited spiritual opportunities. All I could think of was that the moment I finished my army service I would go to India.

But then the 1973 war broke out, the Yom Kippur war. My commander and some of my other friends were killed. This really affected me very much and I became very depressed. I could hardly sleep. I started asking questions like; ‘Where is God?’ He brings the Jews to Israel from all the diaspora and then allows us to be killed – eighteen year old people that have not done anything wrong. I became very much antiGod. I didn’t want to believe in him anymore. Or, if I did believe, I hated him and was very angry at him. So I started smoking a lot of hash and was in a very bad state of mind. Throughout my army service it was like this. This war affected me so much. I was really going crazy. I did my meditation and everything, but it did not help me. It did not give me any peace of mind. So I thought, let me finish my army service and go to India. That is my only salvation. I don’t understand this land, full of wars and blood. I don’t want to be here.

As soon as I finished my army service, I met a young man who was also very deep into yoga and meditation and we started to become very close. We wanted to go to India together. We went to Jerusalem and just as happened with my other boyfriend, we met a religious fellow and he said to us, ‘You know, I have been to India and lived there for some years and I know all about it. I did not find God or enlightment. It is right here in Jerusalem. Give God a chance. Come and talk to my rabbi.’ I said, ‘Okay, we will do it. We won’t go to India. Also we don’t have any money.’ We talked to him and he really influenced us. He said, ‘If you don’t find God here, then go to India. But at least give it a chance.’ We went to study in the Yeshiva, and they started to put a lot of pressure on us to get married. They said, ‘It is not good what you are doing. You are living in sin. You should get married.’ So I said, ‘Okay, we’ll get married.’ So we got married in a Jewish ceremony and I was a hippie no more. I only wore formal dresses.

Then the rabbis told me to shave off my hair and wear a wig, because I was married now. So I said, ‘I don’t see any reason and don’t see it in the Torah. Where is it written in the Torah?’ This rabbi started mumbling things, ‘Ah you don’t understand.’ And, ‘One day you will understand.’ So I got very deep into Judaism because of my questions. I met this rabbi in Mea Shearim, the ultra-orthodox section of Jerusalem. Usually they don’t speak to a woman, but because I came with my husband they listened to me. Some people there are very wise and they know the Torah and everything, but they could not give me satisfactory answers. One of my questions was, ‘I want to know why God is allowing wars to happen, throughout the Bible until today.’ They could not explain it to me. Or whatever they told me was not satisfactory. Then I wanted to know, ‘What about these discrepancies in the Bible. Here it says this and there it says a different thing.’ I wanted to know, ‘Why do I have to follow these laws, cut my hair off, things like this, which are not mentioned in the Bible? Why do we have to follow the Gemarah and the Talmud, when it is not even from the Bible?’ For them, the most important thing is to follow whatever the rabbis have established throughout the generations. But I could not accept it. For me, if there is any authority it is the Bible not the Gemarah and not the Talmud. I was very disappointed and we abandoned it.

We left Jerusalem and then my mother-in-law died. Both parents of my husband suffered during the Holocaust. So we were left with a lot of money. These German compensation marks were for both of us. So, we said, ‘Great! Now we can go to India!’ But just before going to India, we heard about one rabbi who was a Kabbalist. He was from the Breslav movement. He said, ‘If you come and study for some months and you don’t find peace of mind and God, then go to India after that.’ It was like a deal. We said, ‘Okay, we are going to him.’ He had twelve children, there was no food in the house, and he was not working. He was studying Torah all day long and we all lived together in the house. He taught us. The books of Kabbala were very exciting and fascinating. But still we did not find God there. Every day we kept following the same laws. You start the day with washing your hands, you say the morning prayer, then you bless God for the day. It was so dry, and God was not there. Nobody answered. I don’t know how many days I knocked and nobody opened a door. I never received anything from God.

So after these few months we told him we were very much disappointed. All these teachings were very nice. They please your soul and your mind, but they did not help us to find God. So he said, ‘Now the time has come that I teach you a kabbalistic meditation and then you will find the light.’ We had a meeting at midnight in an orange orchard outside of Tel Aviv. My parents heard this, and they thought we were going nuts. They said, ‘Don’t go. You will get crazy. Who knows what will happen to you there?’ But I said, ‘I must go.’ So we sat on the ground. It was April and it was cold. This man was asking questions about our childhood. He said, ‘You did not receive love, and therefore you have problems.’ All he was doing was just giving us some very basic lessons in psychology. For him, that was the greatest meditation! We left in the morning, exhausted and disappointed, and never went to see him again. We sent him all the Kabbala books by mail and that was it.

Before we went to India, we also met some Jesus freaks. Some of them were Jewish people, like the Berger brothers, some just hippies. I read the New Testament and I said, ‘Well it is nice, but Jesus is dead. I am going to India to find a living teacher.’ I noticed that there was something very special in these people and we were attracted to that. But actually, we could not figure out that Jesus was resurrected from the dead. For us Yeshua was a very wise but dead teacher.

We bought a ticket to India and believed that at the airport in Bombay somebody would be waiting for us, some guru or someone who would show us the way to God. So we took all the money we had, a lot of money, and went to India. At that time, it was not very popular to go to India. Israelis only got a one month visa. Eventually, we stayed for four years. At the airport at Bombay nobody was waiting for us. It was terribly hot. You had to take off everything. On the way from the airport to the hotel, we could only see this enormous poverty. I could not believe it. I just wanted to get back on the plane. I told my husband, ‘What are we doing here? Let’s go back.’ I could not believe it, all these people crawling out of their small shacks, with their children. It was so dirty and so poor. I said to myself, ‘Is this the place to find enlightenment?’ But then I said, ‘Okay I have to give it a chance.’

From Bombay we went to the Cumba-mela, that is a big religious festival that takes place only once in 144 years. It started just as we came to India. So we went there. It was the most incredible experience in my life. All the gurus and teachers and yogis from all over India come together at one place, near the Ganges river. They stay there for about a month. They sit there and pray and meditate and give Darshan. Darshan is when you sit with a teacher and ask questions and he talks to you and makes some kind of a ceremony. We met so many gurus and still felt so empty. None of them had any answers. They were only interested in our dollars and getting famous. They wanted us to bow down to them, which we did not do. It was so phoney and so unlike the India we had in our dreams. We were very disappointed. We only had a few more days on our visa to stay in India, and did not know what to do.

We went to Delhi and met some big, influential guru there. He was the personal guru of the son of Indira Ghandi. And he just looked at us and said, ‘What do you want?’ And we said, ‘We want a permanent visa for India. We have come here to study.’ We started crying. I think his heart was touched and he said, ‘No problem.’ He called the Home Office on the telephone and sent us with his own car and his own servant there. They stamped our passports with a visa for one year and every year they gave another year. At that time Israelis could not be in India. We became his disciples for a while. We studied yoga and meditation with him. But these people were so shallow, and so empty, they were not on a high level. Some even told us, ‘Your level is even higher then mine, I cannot teach you anything, go somewhere else.’ They had at least the decency and humility to tell us this.

We went to Poona, to this place of Ragnish, the people that wear orange dresses. To go inside this place you have to pay. To listen to teaching costs you ten dollars. So we did not go there, because it was not free. We met more than a dozen very great teachers in India, and they had nothing to tell us. Once we were sitting with one guru and I told him, ‘My friends were killed in the war; as I wake up in the morning, I feel so empty and depressed. I just want to kill myself.’ He looked at me, and said, ‘Well just look at the beautiful sun and the flowers and praise God for his creation.’ And I just looked at him and started to cry, because he did not understand what we were talking about. He did not understand that when I looked at the flowers, I saw death. I was so depressed. I saw no outer nor any inner light. I just wanted to die. The only thing that kept me going was the hope that one day we would find a teacher. Some of these gurus are very wise people, but they don’t know God.

I had read the New Testament, where Jesus said, ‘By the fruit you know the tree. If you see a good fruit, then the tree must be good.’ So whenever I wanted to see a teacher, I immediately wanted to find out where the fruit was. How can a teacher say that he is so great and outside his gate lepers are lying. They had no fingers and no noses and were dying from hunger and he would give them nothing. He charged dollars from the foreigners and rupees from his own followers, but he would not give anything to the poor. These fruits were very bitter. Why should I follow such a teacher? I was very sensitive spiritually and because of that got into trouble. I could sense from the very first moment if a teacher was a fake or a real one. About three times these teachers threw me out, in a very wild way.

There was one Zen teacher, and when we walked into his class I looked at him and knew he was fake. He did not know me, but suddenly in the middle of the sitting, he looked at me and said, ‘You go out, and don’t ever come to my class again.’ This happened with two more teachers. They threw me out and said, ‘Go immediately from this compound, and don’t you ever come back.’ They would send somebody to see that I was really leaving. I was some kind of a threat to them.

Yogis would perform miracles. I have seen a lot of miracles in India, but even after seeing that, I felt as empty as before. God was not here. We visited the whole area of the Himalayas and the north of India and even met some yogis sitting completely naked in the snow. While we were freezing, they were sitting there naked, in such a trance that they didn’t feel anything. We talked to them and again whatever they had to say about God, it was nothing. We had been to Darmsala, the Tibetan centre, where the Dalai Lama was living. There were Jewish men and woman from America who became Buddhist nuns and monks. We met the tutors of the Dalai Lama, very old people with long beards to the floor. These two tutors were the ones who taught the Dalai Lama all his wisdom. They looked at us and said, ‘What do you want?’ We said, ‘We have come to find God.’ ‘Do you believe in Tibetan Buddism?’ We said, ‘No, we don’t know what it is.’ They said, ‘You stay here and study with us.’

They also said, ‘We’d like to tell you your future. Do you mind if we throw the dice for you?’ We said, ‘Okay.’ They threw the dice and said to us, ‘You will not find what you want in India. You will leave India because of a very great sickness that will happen to your husband.’ We started to study Tibetan Buddhism with them, but after some days they threw us out. We had to pray to some statue, according to their instructions. I was talking there to those Jewish people and said, ‘Look, how can we pray to a statue? We grew up in the Torah, saying that we should not bow down to a statue and that is what we are doing here. Are we crazy?’ They said, ‘You are right.’ And it was told what I had said. Next day the tutors said, ‘You have to leave this village and will no longer study here and you are a very bad person.’

After two years, we came to the south of India and reached a city called Bangalore. There my husband became very sick. He was really suffering and very disappointed in the search. There was no hope for us. In two years we did not find anyone. I remember going to sleep that night and I was so depressed. I said, ‘I’ll kill myself. The time has come.’ That night I woke up in the middle of the night from a dream. I knew in my heart that this dream was true and it was going to happen. I saw a man wearing an orange cloth and he was coming out of a little hut, with a book in his hand. His face was western. He was not looking like an Indian man. So I woke up and thought, ‘This is it. We are going to meet this man and he will teach us the way to God.’ I called my husband. He was in a deep sleep. I said, ‘Wake up, we must find him.’ He said, ‘Are you crazy? Go to sleep. It is just a dream.’ I said, ‘No, no, no. We are going to seek him.’ Within two weeks I had another dream and saw the same person again. Again I told my husband. He said, ‘What are you talking about?’

My husband got better again. We asked people, ‘Where is a teacher or a yogi?’ They told us about a big temple for Krishna. One Sunday we went there. We walked inside this big place. There was a lecture going on in English. As soon as we walked in, I saw this person from my dreams. He was giving the lecture! This man had been in a hut for twenty years. He had never come out, and never given a lesson. This was his first time. Other monks pleaded with him to give this lecture, because the one who was supposed to give the lecture was very sick. They said, ‘Please, you must talk this Sunday because everybody is coming, and we don’t have a lecturer. You must give it.’ This was the first time in twenty years he talked to anyone. Nobody had published anything from this man. His photo was never seen anywhere. So I could not have seen his face somewhere before. I had never seen this man in my life, except in those dreams.

We listened to this whole lecture, waiting for it to end. Then we got to him, greeted him and said, ‘Look we are from Israel and we want you to teach us the way to God.’ He was shocked and said, ‘But I haven’t found God myself! I have been seeking God for twenty years. What do you want from me? I am sorry. I have nothing to teach you.’ We went home and said, ‘Now we can kill ourselves. We found the one of my dream, and he is not willing to teach us, what shall we do?’ Then I wrote him a letter and I told him about my dream, and said, ‘You’re the one. For you we came to India. What you learned in these twenty years in a hut, you have to teach us.’ So he sent word back to the hotel, ‘Come and meet me.’ We got to his hut in a monastery. It was surrounded by beautiful roses that he raised himself. He was tall, white skinned, and his face was quite European. He did not look like an Indian at all. He was a Brahman, of course, and some of the Brahmans have European features. At that time he was forty years old.

He came out of the hut and sat with us on the terrace. He said, ‘Look, I haven’t found God. Every night I go to sleep crying. My pillow is wet with tears when I wake up. I cry, ‘Where are you God? What do you want from me?’ I said, ‘I came to you, because of this dream.’ Then he said, ‘What do you think about the Bible?’ I answered, ‘Forget it.’ I told him that I had been into this, and was in the Chabad and the Kabbala and was very advanced in yoga, the same as my husband, and we were not interested in the Bible. So he said, ‘Look, you cannot be a Hindu and what you are doing is wrong. You will never find God in Hinduism. If you go on with your Hindu practices you will never find God.’ I said, ‘Why?’ He said, ‘You are a Jew, you cannot escape from this. You are trying to run away from your karma.’ Karma means everybody was born into this world to perform something unique. ‘Why are you trying to escape Judaism? You cannot. You will never reach God through Hinduism. You have to return to the Bible.’ I said, ‘Forget it. No way. I have not come to India to hear this from you.’ And then he said, ‘What do you think about Jesus?’ I said, ‘Oh no!’ Then he said, ‘You know what, wait for me’ and he went into his hut and he came out with a book. That was the scene I had seen in my first dream. He came out of his hut with a book. He said, ‘Take this book, read it at home and you come back to me in two weeks.’ This book was about the faith in Jesus. We said, ‘Wow! We have tried every way, even Zen Bhuddism and Tibetan Buddhism and we never really tried Jesus. Maybe it will help.’

We started praying in the name of Jesus. I remember, we prayed together, ‘The only thing we want is a Hebrew New Testament.’ So we went to the Bible Society in Bangalore. It is a big, very European city, and they had so many translations, even in the Korean language, but nothing in Hebrew. So we just prayed and said to God, ‘We really ask you for a Hebrew New Testament.’ We also remembered these Berger brothers. We wrote to them and asked for it. Twenty years ago sending a letter to Israel and receiving something back in India would take six weeks to two months. So we sent a note that we wanted one New Testament in Hebrew and we asked for a very specific translation, which is not so easy to find. It is very old, but that is the one that we like.

So we went back to see the monk and we told him that we were starting to pray in the name of Jesus, and although God had not answered yet, we just felt that it might be a good way for us. You know what he said? This is the only way for the two of you. If you truly want to be happy and find God, you have to follow Jesus. That is your only way.’ I asked him, ‘Why don’t you follow Jesus?’ He said, ‘Because I am a follower of Krishna, because I am a Hindu. But all the ways lead to God and perhaps someday we will meet in heaven. You go on praying to Jesus and report to me every two weeks what is happening to you.’ There was a good and a bad side to this man, but obviously I became a believer through him - a Hindu who did not believe in Jesus.

Then the first miracle happened to us and because of this, I became a believer. Just ten days after sending our letter to Israel, a parcel came from the Berger brothers. We did not send it by express, and neither had they. Who brought us this? It must have been the angel of God! They speeded it up. Normally this was impossible. I have lived in India for four years and have been back many times since then, but a letter always takes longer than that. In those days there were not even direct flights! It was not possible at all! Not only that, if you received a parcel from a different country, it usually didn’t reach you, because they opened it and took what was inside. This parcel was not opened. It was wonderfully guarded by the angel of God. I saw this and said, ‘There is a God and he is really answering prayers.’

So from that day on we started to read the New Testament. All this hatred I had for Jesus went away. As a child I was told that Jesus is equal to Hitler, and I hated him. Being with the Jesus freaks for a time, I read the New Testament and said it was nice, but I still hated Yeshua a lot. There in the south of India, through praying and reading the New Testament I started loving Jesus more and more and said he was so great. Although I could not see at that time that he was my Messiah.

The problem with this Hindu man was that he never told us that Jesus was the only way. He said there are many ways. Because he was the one to lead us to Jesus, we believed in what he said. Only later I saw the contradiction. Jesus said, ‘I am the only way.’ This man said, ‘All the ways are good.’ Either Jesus is a liar or this man is a liar. So I had to make up my mind. Who is Jesus? Is he really the Messiah?

We got very much involved in the work for poor people. We were disciples of Mahatma Ghandi and thought that we had so much money we should give this money to the poor and try to help them. So we started building a house in a small village in a very poor area for us to live in, establish a clinic there and so help the very poor people. We put a lot of money in this, and we told them that this is the way we are serving God, because we are true believers. But because it was such a horrible area my husband became very sick with malaria. After these four years we had to leave India.

We did not know where to go. Not to Israel. So we went to England, because we had some Quaker friends there. They had invited us and said, ‘You only have to pay for the flight ticket and all the rest is on us.’ We went there and became Quakers. This society started some four hundred years ago with John Fox. They were called Quakers, for when they gathered together and the Holy Spirit came upon them, they would shake and quake. The rest of the people called them Quakers. But John Fox really emphasised the basic teaching of Jesus. He said, ‘All these churches are not necessary. Love is necessary.’ He was very much hated and persecuted. So these Quakers became a kind of a sect within Christianity. When I became a Quaker, they asked me, ‘Do you believe in Jesus?’ I said, ‘Yes, I believe in Jesus.’

After living in England for half a year, we returned at last to Israel. And in Israel, we met the Bergers and other believers. I told them, ‘I am a believer now.’ But they asked, ‘Do you believe that he is the Messiah?’ I said, ‘Well I am not very sure about that,’ because I was still influenced by the monk and what he taught us. They said, ‘You have to read and pray and God will show you.’ One day I met a Jewish believer. She did not even know me. I said to her, ‘I would like to know if Jesus is the Messiah.’ To my amazement she said, ‘There is a man between you and God. Once you remove this man, you will see everything.’ She did not know me and what she was talking about. It was just a prophecy that came from her mouth. It was like a knife in my heart. I knew she was right. This was the man in India with whom I had a strong psychic relationship. He was in the Himalayas now, and I was in Israel and we would communicate in dreams. Afterwards we would write to confirm it. I knew I had to get rid of this relationship. It was very hard and it cost me a lot. I sat there, cried and said to her, ‘What you are saying is so true. What must I do?’ She said, ‘I don’t even know you, but I can pray for you.’ So we sat down and prayed. I said, ‘Okay God, I am willing to remove this man from my life. He is no longer my teacher. I don’t want this occult relationship anymore. I know it is wrong. Please, God, show me what is the only way.’ The moment I said this, it became so clear. Jesus is the Messiah who died for me. No other way. Jesus gave me the answers to most of my questions concerning the Bible. I understood that he came to fulfill the Torah.

When I told my husband this, he could not accept it and was very angry. He said what the man in India told us was true, all the ways lead to God. In the following days, I had to go through all my life and my relationships with the gurus. I had to renounce them and cleanse myself in prayer from these relationships. It was a hard and not a very pleasant work to come free from all these occult things. I had to tear up some pictures that I still had and say, ‘I only follow Jesus and dedicate my life to him.’ That was good and I felt clean.

Then I wanted to be baptised. My husband was very antagonistic and angry. He did not want this to happen and said, ‘Then I will divorce you.’ But I cried so much to the Lord, that he eventually allowed me to be baptised. One day he came to me and said, ‘You want to be baptised, okay. But it must be by Arthur Katz, only him.’ At that time, we lived in Tiberias. I told Arthur Katz, this is the condition, do you think I should accept? He said, ‘Of course. Let the angels be the witnesses.’ So Arthur and his wife, came to the Sea of Galilee and I was baptized. When I came home, my husband did not want to look at my face. Perhaps, he was afraid he would see some light.

One of the greatest things that God has done for me, is bringing me back to India, the place that I love. Even to the same city of Bangalore. Some years ago a man came to Joseph Shulam in his office in Jerusalem and said, ‘We are from a society that is translating the Bible all over the world and are looking for a translator.’ Joseph gave him my name. I went to Jerusalem to meet this man and told him I know Hinduism and how the mind of the people of India works, and I have the background of Judaism. I was from a religious home and studied in the yeshiva. They want me to verify everything that is translated in these Indian languages, with the Hebrew. I sit with the original Hebrew Bible and I see what they translate and then I compare it. We communicate in English. Sometimes I have to sit for half an hour to explain one thing to them, because they don’t understand. They have no understanding of Judaism the Bible and the Torah at all. It is quite amazing. After twenty years the Lord has brought me back to India every year again.

I am very grateful to God for everything that he has done in my life. He saved my life from great dangers that I faced in India as well as in Israel, and he saved my husband’s life while he was dying from malaria and other complications. Mostly, I am grateful to the Lord, because I was the lost sheep that he found. He left his ninety-nine other sheep in his search for me, the wandering lost sheep. And when I was found, heaven rejoiced!

From: Hoekendijk Ben, Twelve Jews discover Messiah, New Wine Press, England 1997, pages 28-43

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