Episode Transcript
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(00:09):
Well, let's do this, all right? Welcome to the Pulling the
Threads podcast, where we discover histories, mysteries,
deal with textual criticism, andpeople's journeys of faith.
Today I have the pleasure of interviewing Tasia Kadosh.
Did I say that right? She was in Mean Girls and she's
(00:29):
had some other, I guess, experiences.
You were in Drake video, was it?Yeah, his first music video.
OK, yeah. So I generally like to ask
people's background. I know originally we had kind of
connected a while ago on religious traumatic experiences.
(00:52):
I grew up, Joe was witness in a cult environment and there was
definitely trauma about that. Do you want to talk about your
religious upbringing? How were you raised, kind of
What were your experiences and background growing up?
Yeah, absolutely. Well, I was raised Christian,
Anglican specifically, and my grandparents were very devout.
(01:16):
So I would go to church every Sunday, I would go to Sunday
school, the whole thing. And they always tried to explain
to me that Jesus is God and God is Jesus and he died for our
sins. And I could never grasp the
idea. It just didn't make sense to me.
And it really disturbed me, the idea of Jesus dying on a cross
(01:39):
for our sins. And I just remember going to bed
at night, being five years old and just crying to my grandma.
I don't want to die. I don't want to die, you know?
And my grandfather would tell methat good people go to heaven
and bad people go to hell. And so that made it a little bit
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more complex. I didn't, I didn't want to go to
hell. And in that culture, I never
felt worthy of heaven. I never felt like I was good
enough and just all of it didn'tmake sense to me.
(02:22):
So whenever I would ask questions, I was always met
with, oh, you just have to have faith.
If there wasn't an answer, it's you just have to have faith.
You have to have. And then the fact that I was
asking these questions was indicative of me, I guess, not
having faith, even though I did believe what I was raised to
believe at the time. So it was it was a lot.
(02:48):
Fast forward, my best friend wasdealing with some suicidal
ideation and this is now into my20s.
And she wrote on her Facebook page one day, God, where are
you? And this, I guess, missionary, I
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don't know if that's what he is,but this missionary sort of
popped out of the woodwork and, you know, reached out to her and
showed her some Christian videosthat really spoke to her.
And she was saved in. Yeah.
So that that was her introduction to Christianity.
(03:33):
She became born again. And.
That's what I meant by saved. Yeah, yeah, I was, I was, I was
going to say, you know, for those that understand they had
the born again experience. Yeah.
She had a born again experience,which is great for her because
thank God she's here. But it was disturbing to me
because she transformed into what I perceived to be a very
(03:54):
different person and started preaching to me constantly.
And me being the challenging person that I am, I would
challenge her with all of these questions that basically to
force her to tell me that I was going to go to hell because I
guess I must be self-destructiveor something.
You know, I would, I would say, oh, if I do this, am I going to
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go to hell? And she, you know, have to tell
me what she believed. And so it, it started this loop
of me feeling like I was going to go to hell and I still
believed in Jesus and I still prayed and I was still, I guess
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you could say Christian, but I was never really religious per
SE. But, you know, it started
gearing up with the more intenseshe got in her religion, the
more afraid I felt. And so I started experiencing
severe religious trauma. It's called scrupulosity is what
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I've come to understand where I would find myself in these
thinking rituals. So I would, I would pray and
then in my, in the middle of my prayers, I would get this like
voice in my head that would say,but you're going to hell.
And then I would pray again. And then I'd get, you know, the
feeling that you're going to hell.
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And I'd find myself in these loops.
And it was, it was absolutely terrifying.
It was awful. I would wake up every day, just
be afraid of life, afraid of, ofeverything.
And my boyfriend at the time wasJewish.
And so I started worrying that he was going to go to hell too,
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and our future children were going to go to hell.
And it was just, it was I was inhell.
Like that's, that's what it feltlike.
It was like a living hell to be like that.
And I didn't know how to get outof the loop.
And so one day he said, Tasia, knowledge is power.
And I don't know why. It just resonated with me what
(06:08):
he said. He suggested that I speak to a
rabbi, and I ended up writing out sort of like a list of all
of the different fears that I had and started seeking
information on each one. Now, before I spoke to a rabbi,
I was put in touch with a gentleman from the organization
(06:31):
Jews for Jesus. Yeah.
My grandfather thought that it would be a great idea because he
had this idea where, you know, he thinks he's, he's a very big
supporter of the Jewish people in Israel just because of his
Christianity. So he realized that Jews for
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Jesus is a cult neither I didn'trealize it either.
And the gentleman that I spoke to was not kind to me at all.
And I would ask him questions and he would berate me and talk
down to me and tell me that why did I even worry about my
relationship with God? Because I'd already turned my
(07:11):
back on him and I was, I'm living with a non believer and
I'm condemned and all of these things.
And I just remember bawling my eyes out on the phone with him
and he's just like letting me have it.
It was a horrible experience. It wasn't until I found Rabbi
Michael Skobach from Jews for Judaism on YouTube who he's a
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rabbi that was cross examining Christianity.
Now I've never really heard the Jewish perspective.
I didn't really know much about it other than I knew that Jews
didn't think that Jesus was God.I knew that Christians believed
that Jesus was the Messiah and Jews didn't.
But that was pretty much the extent of my understanding.
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So when you start cross examining something and looking
at the comparisons, it was like a whole world opened up for me.
And I started binging the videosand I started looking into the
origins of how and all of the things that scared me.
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I learned about mistranslations in the Bible, contradictions,
things that I just had never known.
And it really opened my mind. And the more information I
consumed, the more peaceful I found myself feeling.
So one day I picked up the phoneand I called Juice for Judaism
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in Toronto and Rabbi Skovak answered the phone.
I couldn't believe it. I didn't realize that he he was
going to answer the phones. Yeah.
Surprise, surprise, yeah. Yeah.
And I just ended up pouring my heart out to him and he invited
me to come and meet with him. And I, he ended up meeting up
with me and I poured my, my heart out to him and told him
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how concerned I was about being a good person and having a close
relationship with God. And what did I have to do to be
right with God? And what did I have to be a good
person? What did I have to do to be a
good person? And he told me that God loved me
just as I was. And you don't have to be Jewish
to be righteous with God. It was the first that I've ever
(09:24):
heard about the seven Noahide Laws.
Surprise, surprise. Surprise, because I think that,
but a common misconception is that people believe that you
have to subscribe to a certain religion in order to have a
relationship with God, and everyreligion believes that they have
the truth right. Yeah.
Well, and, and the the big thing, because you mentioned
(09:46):
this before, is like you have to.
And it's like because you were probably essentially a good
person before you were, you prayed you wanted a relationship
with God. I mean, you probably want to
describe yourself as wicked, butpeople are describing you in
these terms. But it's like the fear of like
if some religions, if you don't believe their way, you're going
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to hell even if you're a good person because you don't believe
their way. And that's like, OK, so hell is
not for good people. It you know, well, not hell, not
hell, but heaven is not just forgood people.
It's good people who believe theway we do.
And Hell's for those that don't believe the way we do and our
bad people, which is kind of a bad thing because it's a tool of
manipulation. I'm gonna let you keep going in
(10:28):
the story, and I'm gonna come back to that in a little bit.
But yeah. Do you want to go ahead and
continue? I guess, yeah.
I think that you touched on something really important there
and it was something that was causing a lot of my anxiety, the
cognitive dissonance of this unconditional love that God is
supposed to have for all of us. He, you know, is said to have
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created all of us and loves us so much, but if we don't think a
certain way, then we are condemned to eternal damnation
and separation and torment. It just did not work for me.
It didn't make sense to me and Iit just felt like it wasn't
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right. And once I started, once I
started looking more outside of Christianity and into other
religions and into other beliefs, not only did it open my
mind, but I saw a lot of common themes that, you know, are
repeated. The Golden Rule.
(11:31):
Yes, exactly the golden rule. I wanted to be Jewish, but I
never felt like it was possible for me because of this fear.
And I don't know why, but in my life I have always been
attracted to Jewish culture, Jewish boyfriends, my my my
(11:54):
mom's brother, my uncle, my Jamaican uncle converted to
Judaism, married a Jewish woman,completely separate for me.
It's just something that I've always been drawn to, and once I
was able to realize that fear isa liar and remove myself from
the holes that I had over my life, I finally admitted that I
(12:18):
wanted to become Jewish, even though I understand that I do
not need to be Jewish to be goodwith God.
Yeah. And so.
That's, that's the beautiful thing about Judaism is that,
and, and you touched on it earlier, but it's the, you know,
we say the righteous of all people have a place in the world
to come. We, you don't have to be Jewish
to, you know, have a, a place inthe, in the world to come, which
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that's just a beautiful thought.Exactly.
And something that I'm coming tounderstand still to this day,
because I think that spirituality is a journey and
I'm always going to be learning.As long as I'm alive, I will be
continuing to develop my relationship with my own
spirituality and with Visham. And I think that I can tell me
(13:04):
if you agree or disagree with this, but I think that a lot of
non Jews think of of the mitzvotas a burden.
Yes, Well, yeah. And here's the thing.
So cashew people have no problemwith gluten free diets, vegan,
vegetarian diets, which these all have dietary restrictions.
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You know, that's the one that when I was I was dating a
Chinese lady and you know, at first she was just so she's very
Catholic. She was intimidated by it.
And I'm like, you know, you understand, vegan and
vegetarian, that's one thing essentially that's parif or
(13:50):
parvais. But you know, like, all of a
sudden when it's like Judaism, like the mitzvot are not
burdensome, the, the commandments, you know, tahleem
and the Psalms, it says if you do right, do what's right, will
you not be forgiven, living a righteous path?
I mean, many people do it doing,you know, being kind and
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forgiving and loving. These are not difficult things.
You know, when you do it out of love, it's not a burden.
And I think that's where the cognitive dissonance that you
talked about. We want to go back to the
invention of Pauline theology that became what is
Christianity. It created this guilt cycle.
It's an addictive cycle. A lot of you'll find a lot of
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people who struggle with alcoholism or various drugs,
they get into these recovery programs and they become
addicted to Jesus that this kindof this guilt repentance cycle.
Whereas if I do us right, I'm forgiven.
I don't have to do, you know, teshuva, you know, turning
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around. If I, if I do major sins or
something like that, which that's, that's a grievance
wrong. But when in general, being a
good person, doing the right thing is not hard.
It's not difficult. Cash root isn't that hard.
I mean, yeah, I have two sets ofdishes.
Keep milk and meat separate, youknow, But it's not, it's not
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really as burdensome as you would think.
Let me tell you my view on it and I am this is this is my own
personal view and I'm sure that people will have their own
opinions, but I don't know if you're a parent.
I have two kids. I have a one year old daughter
and a four year old son. Now.
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As a mom, I set boundaries for my kids, give my son rules that
he needs to abide by in order for him to grow into a decent
human being who other people like and who is successful in
this world. He breaks my rules all the time.
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He tells me that he doesn't loveme sometimes.
He is 4 and so he gets very overwhelmed by his emotions and
he has tantrums and I take things away from him as
punishment but I always love him.
Nothing that he could do that would have me cut him off.
And when he does intentionally follow my rules because he's
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trying to please me and he wantsto draw closer to me, it's not
that it makes me love him more, but it draws us closer because I
can see that he's trying. And I look at my relationship
with Hashem in a similar way. Even with the dietary laws,
maybe we make rules for our kidsbecause we know what's best for
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them. And that's what I think about
God. I, I, that's how I look at God's
commandments. I think that we can choose one
at a time if we need to break itdown, really work at it, lean
into the things that speak to you and really, really commit to
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them to develop a relationship with Hashem.
That's a really good analogy. Yeah.
I mean, I, I have two children. My daughter's 10, my son's 17.
But yeah, I mean, there's nothing any you have to like if
God is our father, Avena, Shabbat.
Shabbat, my Father in heaven, ifhe is our Father, he loves us
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and it's not that hard. I think he would be more
forgiving of a lot of things in our lives.
And I, that's why I go back to that, that Psalm, You know, if
you do right, will you not be forgiven?
It's not a hard process. And there's a lot of things
about the Greco Roman culture that was brought into early
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Christianity. When you look at the conversion
process, it was their their repentance and confession of
Jesus. And it actually was something
that predated in their culture when they had people they call
atheism at the time for the atheism believing in, you know,
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gods, not atheism as we would define it now.
Like take the word atheism. They would have a process where
people would convert to they, they had to participate in their
culture. There was a repentance process.
It was very similar to what a lot of if you look at the early
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Christian development, it was influenced by Platonianism,
Hellenistic thought, and it really creates this cycle of
addiction. The whole repentance confession
thing. I don't know why I'm like
getting stuck on that one today,but you know, there's a lot of
things, the fear of heaven and like hell, the fear that hell is
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a consequence. You know, we can see how that
keeps people locked in. You know, when we talk about
shield Guiana in, in Jewish terms, like I'm, I'm sure you're
aware of, you know, Gehenna is more of a place of purification
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where people go up through purification of the soul and
then ascend to, you know, gone Eden.
You know, we don't have the ideaof eternal torment in the sense
that somebody's constantly in torment and pain and all that
kind of stuff so much. I mean, there are variances in
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the different Jewish camps on that, but.
Fuel is a neutral, shadowy place.
It's the grave. From the description it seems
that it's the grave. Everybody goes there, doesn't
matter who you are. And it's not a place of torment.
And I think that it makes a lot of sense with Gehenna, like the
the spiritual cleansing. Yeah.
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And I think it's up to up to 12 months, but most people don't go
up to 12 months. That's like if you really,
really need to be cleansed, it would be that long.
It's why we say, could the cottage after somebody dies?
So what? So you're going through this
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process. You're questioning.
You were exposed for Jews, for Jesus, but you're having contact
with Jews for Judaism. You're learning these things.
I don't know. I feel like coming to Judaism,
my soul became right. I feel like I had a lot of
similar struggles. I was always attracted to the,
the Torah, the Tanakh, the Hebrew Scriptures.
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I had read that twice. I had a, you know, experience at
8 years old where I wanted to goto heaven.
And, you know, I, I definitely questioned there the Jehovah's
Witnesses way of doing things. What was your process of
conversion like? What camp did you decide to go
with and kind of where did your journey go after you made
(21:10):
contact with Michael Skobach up there?
So the first thing that I did before I decided to convert was
I started volunteering for Jews for Judaism.
So I helped them with some of their videos online and I
attended some of Rabbi Skobach'stalks.
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I couldn't get enough information I like.
I'm a marketer in my career, andso I really enjoyed data and I
like information. And so I tried to consume and
absorb as much as I could. And that led me to one day
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driving through Montreal with mythen boyfriend.
There was this beautiful sunset.It was blue and yellow and pink.
And the clouds were just, like, perfectly framing the horizon.
And it just overwhelmingly came over me.
I want to be Jewish. And I took a picture of that
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sunset and I just told my boyfriend I was like, I just
want to be Jewish. And so we found a sponsoring
rabbi and we went through a conversion process together.
Because if you're in a relationship, you have to do it
together. Even though we weren't engaged
or anything. So the first time I converted, I
converted Reform. Then the second time I did it
(22:36):
Conservative, yes. OK Yeah, I went through a
conservative conversion and Phoenix, AZ probably started
20/12/2013. I completed my conversion right
around Yom Kippur on 2014. So what was your conversion
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process like? It was pretty much a school
year, so I think it was like September to June, where I would
take classes every week, lectures and Hebrew.
So we'd have to learn how to read and write in Hebrew.
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I would learn all of the traditions.
I would participate in synagogueon Shabbat.
I would keep Shabbat at home, and I did this for a school
year. And then at the end of that, we
had to take an exam. And once we passed the exam,
then they sent us, or they sent me rather to the bait Dean,
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which is rabbinical court, as you know.
But for your listeners, if they don't where you stand before a
panel of rabbis and they ask youquestions, they make sure that
this is something that you really want to do.
And it's funny, my sponsoring rabbi, before I, I started the
conversion process, he was like,Are you sure you really want to
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do this? Are you sure you willingly want
to be part of the people who arehated?
You're coming experience anti-Semitism, you're going to
be hated for no reason. And I was like, yeah, I don't
care what people think. No problem.
Of course I do. I'll tell you, after October
7th, with all of the rise in anti-Semitism and having
(24:23):
children now, it hits different.I, I look at it very, very
differently than I did at the time, but I don't regret it and
I'm happy that I went through with the conversion.
So yeah, I am conservative. I go to a conservative shul.
My son is in, he's starting day school in September.
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So that's our Jewish life now. My relationship with Hashem is
still evolving and it's never static.
So I it's yeah, it's a journey. Definitely is.
I had the the blessing of getting into the mikvah with my
son. So let's see, think I'm back.
(25:09):
I think he was, I don't know. Was it 2014?
So, yeah, he would have been 10 at the time.
So, you know, I had been married.
You know, I wanted Judaism in myrelationship.
My ex came from a very Southern Pentecostal, Southern Baptist
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kind of background. And when I was getting married
to her 2007 as a, as a medium ground, we had a Messianic
Jewish wedding 'cause we are kind of there's, I played around
with that for a while, but I really realized it was
Christianity playing dress up, you know, cultural evangelism,
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but it wasn't authentically Jewish.
And, you know, Rabbi Carol Harris Shapiro on her, she's a
reformed rabbi, did a study on Messianic Judaism and she talked
about cross dressing, dressing up in the name of the cross to
convert people. And that really just stuck with
me. And then I was actually studying
(26:14):
with King Seminary 'cause I had,I went to Bible college.
I'd been a youth, young adults, pastor, missionary, things like
that, baptized, born again, filled with the Holy Spirit, all
those things that they say. And, you know, I, yeah, here's
the thing. When you went through
conversion, they didn't ask you to like reject Jesus.
(26:35):
They say you have to deny Jesus.They never, they never said that
to me. But one of the things that
people are afraid of is they're like, I'm, I'm going to be told
I have to now. I mean, of course, I don't
believe any of the things I did about Jesus when I was a
Christian. I don't believe he was a God.
I don't even believe he died forpeople's sins.
Historically he was a prophet reformer, potentially calling
(26:57):
for a purification of the templewho had kingly aspirations but
was killed off. So I don't ascribe to the
Christian theology after that. But yeah, apparently I'm going
to be down rabbit trails. Yeah.
Yeah. So I don't want to, you know,
(27:18):
take all your time. No, no.
But it was a blessing to get to go to the mikvah with my son.
And I have to say that that was an intentionally spiritual
experience. I mean, once I committed to the
to everything and it, I was already, you know, I was already
living pretty much a kosher sabatarian lifestyle, observing
(27:39):
the festivals. I mean, I've always had a very
Jewish flavored experience because I always attached to
those things. Even in my Christianity.
I focused on the the festivals and the Tabernacle and symbolic
spiritual meanings and stuff, which everything is took in more
hyperbolic in Christianity then it's like intended to.
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But that was that was a special,it was very special, I mean,
very meaningful. And it's a journey I'm glad I
got to take with my family at the time, you know, divorced now
my kids, you know, live with me and their mom back and forth.
But you know, I went through that with my, my wife at the
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time is, as you said, they if you're in a relationship, they
want you go through it. And it was something that she
chose because my son wanted to. It really was a fulfilment of
what I wanted because it really,the first one was a compromise.
And it wasn't a compromise. I was 100.
I didn't want it. I felt it felt like on shrunk
cloth, it didn't fit. So once I finally got to do it,
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it felt like home for me. But it's something that since I
was a kid, I'd been into. I mean, I have Jewish ancestry
in my family tree and uncle, it was Jewish, you know, stuff like
that. I had a, you know, exposure to
it. It's where I felt home even when
I studied all the different religions and backgrounds.
That's what made sense for me. Post your you know, mikvah
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conversion experience. You know, What has your
experience been like journeying in your, you know, new newborn
Jewish faith? It's been really positive.
I've had a very welcoming, welcoming experience in the
Jewish community, which is great.
I love the feeling of being at synagogue in contrast to being
(29:30):
at church. I never liked being at church.
I always felt like it's dreary and heavy and like I couldn't
wait to get out of there. But I have a completely
different feeling when I'm at synagogue.
It's just a different vibe all together.
I just, in a way, I just kind offeel like I'm home somehow.
So yeah, it's been a very positive experience for me and I
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love that I can ask as many questions as I want and nobody
gets angry. Yes, yes, that's the beautiful
thing. I love that regardless of what I
think or what I believe, it doesn't make me any less Jewish.
Actually, questioning makes you more Jewish, right?
I would argue. I mean, you ask, you know, 3
(30:14):
rabbis and get 9 opinions, right?
I mean, it's yeah, historically we like to contend thing,
contend with things. Yeah.
So. OK.
How did you get involved with, like, you were in Mean Girls?
I mean, you had like, an acting modeling career.
Like, what was going on there? Like that was private conversion
or huh. I was very young when I got into
(30:36):
modeling and I guess you could call it acting.
I mean, Mean Girls was really just it was a background role.
It just happened to become a cultural phenomenon.
That movie. I had no idea at the time that
it was going to be such a thing.But even though it was just, you
know, a blinking you miss me moment, people seem to love it
(30:58):
as a fun fact. So there you have it, Friendly
black hottie and Mean Girls. And I used to do a lot of music
videos. I used to do makeup and I used
to do modeling. And I mean, I aged out of that.
I grew out of it. I'm in my, I just turned 40 this
year, so I'm, I'm not still doing music videos and modeling,
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but it was just something that Iwas into when I was in my 20s.
And of course it didn't help with my questions about how and
being righteous and being, you know, a good Christian according
to what my born again friend thought.
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I don't know the, the definitionof sin, though.
It's like it, it varies for Christian groups, like some of
them, you can't smoke or drink and you know, it's the, the
funny, the joke they say is, youknow, like you have the
Christian that can't smoke or drink.
You got the Catholic, they can'tdrink, but smokes.
And then Jewish guy that's drinking and smoking.
(32:02):
You know, people's definition ofsins.
It's it's very personal and eclectic depending on faith in
general. For me, it's like when you do
harm to another person or you know damage, you know your
relationship with God through, you know, sins that you're
(32:22):
breaking the covenant, but. Well, you're sin is missing the
mark, right? So if you have a target, if if
the mitzvah are your target, andof course this is different for
for every person, every Jew, it's different for and you
missed the mark, that is your sin.
And of course, like rabbis will argue with with me just saying
(32:43):
that for sure. But like I said, I think that we
all have a unique relationship with God.
And I'm not just talking about as a Jew, I'm talking about as
an individual, as a person on this planet.
We all have an individual relationship with God.
I don't believe that there is one pathway to God.
And I think that, you know, if you're not observing all of the
(33:04):
mitts vote, perhaps you're not doing them yet.
There's always tomorrow, there'salways trying to do better.
There's always trying to hit your target and meet your goals.
And I think that that is, you know, what we are striving
towards. And when you talk about sin,
you're missing the mark. Yeah.
(33:27):
What has been your most significant, like learning
during this process? What like what stands out to you
the most during like your conversion process, your
experiences now and your Jewish face?
When, when did you convert? How long has it been?
10 years. It's been 10 years this year
which is amazing. And it's funny I I just came
across my mikvah certificate recently and I realized it was
(33:52):
10 years ago on my daughter's birthday.
Oh wow. Yeah, like just completely by
coincidence. So I thought that that was
really special. But to me, I think that it's
just the constant learning, which I find to be very
meaningful. And if you don't understand
something, you ask questions, you look for the answers where
(34:15):
the route was. So for example, like if you're
looking for the meaning of a word, you can go back to find
where the word was mentioned forthe first time in the Torah and
you'll have a better idea of thecontext from there.
There's different ways of finding answers and there's not
(34:36):
one-size-fits-all, which is something that I really
appreciate and enjoy about Judaism.
Yeah, the intellectual curiosity, the notch, you know,
you get shut down in Christianity like I had to
experience you did when I was a child.
Like in other times when you question and they're like, oh,
you just have to have faith. And I'm like, OK, I like to have
(34:59):
reasons behind it. I like to have solid, grounded
things, you know? Excuse me, I don't know.
I found that for me, I need to have something grounded in
logic, real tangential facts. And I feel like that was an
excuse. That's kind of what the thing
that creates that cognitive dissonance that you were talking
(35:19):
about. So now that you know, you've
went through your conversion process, I see that you've been
online promoting your new views and stuff.
What is kind of behind what you're doing right now?
What's the whole globe goal withwhat you're working on and.
It's funny it, it kind of came out of nowhere.
(35:41):
I didn't know that it was going to turn into what it has turned
into. I started an Instagram account
just about just over a month agocalled To Greek and Mama, and
it's sharing the Jewish perspective on theology,
primarily Christianity, and my own spiritual thoughts and
(36:02):
insights. And it's sort of just exploding.
I have a lot of feedback. Most of it is not positive.
However, a lot of it is. I've had a lot of converts and
spiritual seekers reach out to me and I've been able to to help
(36:25):
some people with my account. So that's been really
meaningful. And also have some very
interesting conversations and debates back and forth.
Of course there's, you know, a million people telling me I'm
going to hell and then I'm a Jezebel or whatever.
Antichrist or something like that.
Antichrist period. Oh, Synagogue of Satan is
(36:45):
probably the most common that I Yeah.
But to me, I think that just speaks more about where they're
coming from and being in a stateof fear, which is a horrible
place to be. So I'm very aware of that and I
understand what that feels like.And that's just a projection.
(37:07):
So I think that the fact that I'm being triggered with these,
you know, threats, you're going to hell, you're going to hell
after my personal experience being so afraid of going to hell
and I'm not falling apart. And I'm just like, OK, well,
that's, that's your opinion and you're entitled to that.
I think that it speaks to my journey and how far I've come
(37:29):
and the peace that I've found inJudaism and doing this and
talking about God and what I think and, you know, just
sharing the Jewish perspective Ifeel has brought me closer to
him. Yeah, well, it speaks of the
place of healing that you're at,you know, that you've gotten to
that place. Yeah.
(37:50):
You know, I, I've encountered the same.
I, you know, part of my journey out of Christianity was
studying, you know, text textualcriticism, the historical
critical method, looking at the text when they were began, how
they are formed, how they are created, who influenced them,
how it became what it is. I don't know how much research
(38:10):
you've done into that, but according to Bart Ehrman, we
have among 5800 text, we have between 200,000 and 500,000
textual variants depending on your who's doing the the math,
you have a 30 to 80% error rate per page of New Testament.
There are more error errors thanthere are words in the New
(38:32):
Testament. And that you know, that just
began me on this journey of likenot believing this text as
sacred. It's very human document.
And I and my research, I really started finding an early
movement within it was the pseudo Clementine homilies and
(38:53):
the anti Nicene fathers. But there was a pre Pauline
Jewish Christian groups named Ibianites and the Nazarenes who
didn't believe, they believe Jesus was a human prophet.
And you know, Rabbi Tobias Singer, I had him on, he was
talking about them. They they just saw him as a
prophet. They were vegan.
(39:15):
They saw the temple as impure asthe Sadducees at the time were
involved with the, you know, theGreco Roman culture, very
Hellenistic. And so, and they were more
aligned with the Essenes And I, and I kind of part of my journey
was I wanted to get back to like, I felt a connection with
the Torah and Judaism always on my way out, my studies and
(39:37):
research into the historical context that when we got text,
what we know about it, you know,comparative studies of the text
that, you know, I, I disbelievedin Christianity and Pauline
influenced anything, but I felt like I followed Jesus out of
Christianity into Judaism. I'm like, so his followers were
(40:00):
Jewish. They converted people to
Judaism. Cause within the pseudo
Clementine homilies, they talk about period of discipleship or
six years and then a circumcision conversion with
mikvah and a communal meal. And you know that their main
text was the Torah. They had a Hebrew version of the
gospel, but there was no virgin birth.
(40:23):
There was no resurrection. It was just basically, you know,
baptism to death. And, you know, he was
potentially A rabbi, prophetic reformer who was cut off.
That was he wasn't divine. He wasn't savior yet that whole
divine savior thing, which is that's what makes Christianity
not Jewish. That you that that's just, you
know, we can't have, we can't attach somebody to God and there
(40:45):
is no savior but God himself, which kind of goes back to the
questions you had at the beginning, which is how can God
create us say that we're good, but then somehow we're not And
he's got to, you know, send himself to die and resurrect.
(41:06):
And like, how is this possible? This is a very honestly, it's a
very Pagan idea that does come from Pagan traditions.
It does not come from Jewish tradition.
And it's this patchwork of things put on it that makes
Christianity non Jewish, even though it claims a Jewish
foundation. What were the big things that
(41:28):
you grappled with in your conversion and your journey out
of Christianity into Judaism? I think you kind of mentioned
some, but. Oh, for me it was letting go of
Jesus for sure. And even still to this day I
miss Jesus. I'll admit it.
Like I, I missed that idea that I had, that perceived
(41:50):
relationship that I had and having to relearn to have a
relationship with God without that intermediary, I guess you
would say was was new and it wasdifferent.
I mean, when you're raised a certain way, unlearning those
beliefs are very, it's very difficult to do and it's a very
(42:12):
painful thing to go through. But I do believe that God is 1
and I do believe that I can praydirectly to God.
But having that figure, you know, that I was raised with my
entire life and then having to let go with that was a very,
very hard thing to come to. So that was for sure the hardest
(42:36):
part. And how do you make peace with
that? So like the, you know, the thing
that I get, which is like, I've had comments and like I said, I
take them as bad as an honor. Now, you know, and a recent
episode I did, you know that thewhole, you know, you're the
Antichrist or Antichrist spirit and this and that.
And I'm like, no, not really. I mean, you just don't know who
the historical Jesus was. He was a Jew who died a Jew and
(42:59):
his disciples converted people to Jews.
It wasn't Judaism. It's like, I'm not anti Jesus,
I'm anti this made-up thing that's later, but you know,
that's another. That I hear a lot.
A lot of Christians on my page will say Jesus came to fulfill
the law and I perceive if he didsay that, that I take it in a
(43:21):
very different way than a Christian is reading it.
They're taking it as he came to put an end to the to the law.
He came to fulfill it. When I hear that, I hear, Oh no,
I didn't come to put an end to the law.
I came to carry it out and to make it show you how you can be
righteous with God too. I think that that was likely
(43:42):
Jesus's message in my opinion. But I'm also somebody, I'm a
little bit of a Mystic myself. I believe that there is truth in
all religions, but not all religions are truth, the truth.
So I think that just because I reject Christianity, it doesn't
mean that I don't think that there are good messages and good
aspects of it. I just don't subscribe to the
(44:05):
idea of a man being God Incarnate.
And if, And this is something that I've been talking about a
lot on my page recently too, if,if Christians believe that Jesus
is God and God is Jesus, and they're one, not two or three
one, then didn't from a Christian perspective, Jesus
(44:27):
make the covenant with the Jewish people at Sinai?
Why would the Jewish people needto accept Jesus as their
personal savior? If Jesus is God and God made a
covenant, an eternal covenant with the Jewish people at Sinai,
Wouldn't it be the same thing ifthe claim is that it's one that
God is 1? Do you understand what I'm
(44:49):
asking? No it it makes sense from a
Christian. Perspective is what I'm saying.
Well, I I don't know from a Christian that that would make
sense, but I mean it. Doesn't.
But I'm saying if you have that idea that Jesus and and God and
the Holy Spirit are one, then you must understand that that
eternal covenant and the Jewish people accepting Hashem as God,
(45:14):
that would be the same thing, wouldn't it?
I mean, if you logically think about it, yes.
I, you know, The thing is, go back to cognitive dissonance.
There's so much embedded cognitive dissonance in
Christianity. They're taught theology based on
verses all strung together out of context to create these
(45:34):
mindsets so that they look at the script, the scriptures with
an overlay of what they're conditioned to think.
So when you present logic to somebody who's been
conditionally trained to be antilogical, that that cognitive
dissonance is built into the system that instead of looking
at text context, what's the wordmean?
What's the root word mean? What's this come from
linguistically, culturally? What did it mean at the time?
(45:56):
Instead of taking it exegetically, they go into ice
of Jesus and they're so there's such a strong heavy prevalence
of, you know, picking scripturesand we can dismantle almost, but
we can dismantle all the scriptures that they use to say
that the New Testament is pulling from the old covenant.
A lot of it's mistranslations from the Greek Septuagint and we
(46:17):
need to get back to the Hebrew, you know, And then when you talk
about Jesus fulfilling the covenant, for me, that means he
was an observant Jew. He fulfilled it by being
observant. Not that he did it to do away
with it, but he was fulfilling it and so should you not that's.
Exactly how I read it too, and it's so funny that it's
(46:41):
completely interpreted differently from a Christian
perspective it it's bizarre. Yeah, yeah.
So, and, and it's, it's really that cognitive dissonance is
built in through theological conditioning and everything that
everybody experiences, you know,my, my, you know, myself, I, I
consider, consider myself a Mystic as well.
(47:02):
You know, I choose Judaism for myself and my family.
Culturally, the traditions beingraised, Jehovah's Witness, not
having any kind of festivals, birthdays, holidays, you know,
and it's something I gravitate to, but I don't feel like it's
the only way. If there is one God, he is 1 God
of all people. And that's why we say the
righteous of all people have a place in the world to come.
(47:24):
If we look at it within Jewish mysticism, we talk about the
Nitze Elohim, the divine spark in all creation, and that all
creation of Kleepoat or husk. So it's the idea we see through
glass dimly, right? There are different levels of
exposure to light, whether it's honesty or nearness to Hashem.
(47:47):
So there are these resonant principles that the golden, the
golden rule, you know, do unto others as you'd have them do
unto you. Don't do what you don't want
them to do to you that are universal.
They're ubiquitous. For like all the various
religions, I do believe God is spirit and He speaks with our
spirits and connects with us, will protect us and guide us.
(48:08):
He's a father or a parent and that, you know, he will speak to
us, protect us, guide us, you know, lead us throughout our
life. And, you know, I, I, I see
resonant truth that goes back, you know, when you look at even
(48:29):
the Tanakh, its origins in Sumerian tradition, there are
pre-existing traditions before the writing of the Tanakh, the
God was present before the Torahwas physically written, you
know, and even with that, I see,you know, the various influences
into the tech, but God is still trying to connect with us so we
(48:49):
can connect with him. I don't subscribe to the idea
that anybody has to be of 1 faith, one belief to go to
heaven, you know, and I like that statement that the
righteous of all people have a place in the world to come.
So even if people continue to beChristian and they seek to be
righteous, I'm not going to sit there and say, Hey, you're cut
(49:09):
off. I disagree with your beliefs and
your values. And see, so that's the thing
that I don't think that Christians always understand
that for us, a disagreement is not necessarily, well, you don't
agree with me, you're going to hell.
No, you may might as well be in heaven with me and we'll be
arguing for eternity. Maybe I don't know, but I I
don't subscribe to your belief system does not mean that I
(49:31):
condemn your belief system. I couldn't have put it better.
And I have to say that I think the fact that the Jews are said
to be a light to the nations anddon't try to actively convert
people to change, you know, the way that they they think per SE
(49:52):
about, about religion. I think that it's really
important for me as as a Jew, asa person, as a Mystic, as a mom,
to try to remove fear from the equation.
I think that for, for me and with my channel, I would really
like to focus on the love of Godand open mindedness and
(50:18):
experiencing different perspectives without feeling
defensive about them because there's so much fear and there's
so much judgement. And I think that that's the
problem with the world, fear andjudgement and ego.
That to me is the, the Satan, that evil inclination.
(50:39):
It's, you know, being able to rise above those things.
And you know, for all of the people who are saying you're
condemned, you're going to hell,you're going to hell.
It's like you were there, you'redoing it right now you're you're
stuck in that. Instead, focus on love.
Focus on the good things. Focus on what you can do to be
closer to God tomorrow. Yeah, yeah, as well put.
(51:02):
All right. So I know we're going to have to
wrap up here. You got other things you got to
do. I appreciate your time.
Is there any like last words, things that you're working on
that we should keep a lookout for and where can people find
you? Well, you can find me on
Instagram at Jew Greekin, Mama. That's Jew.
Greekin, as in Jamaican, Greek and Jewish.
(51:26):
Oh OK, I get that now. My my father is Greek, my mother
is Jamaican, and I am now Jewish, so I'm a Jew.
Greekin, Mama. OK, that makes.
Sense I would love to know a little bit more though before we
go, if you have a minute, can you tell me about your journey
out of Jehovah's Witness? Like you were born a Jehovah's
(51:47):
Witness. No.
Oh, you were. I was not born a Jehovah's
Witness. My mom converted when I was four
years old. She had experienced trauma.
She had a still birth and then she had her next child had
sudden infant death. And because of the trauma of
that, then she aborted her following child.
(52:11):
And then my my sister was born because of that trauma.
She was in a broken state. And these people come peddling,
you know, the Watchtower Bible and tract magazines at the door
and, you know, talking about hell in this evil world and all
(52:32):
this stuff and offering her, youknow, salvation.
And so works for her doing the works of the Jehovah's Witness.
They're very works based and it's it's very hot top down
control. Like no, I wasn't born Joseph
and my mom became a Joseph and my dad, you know, I have very
(52:53):
mixed background on my mom's side.
Her I have Jewish ancestry goes up through my mom, through my
grandma like wave, you know, through the family tree there
for my, my mom's dad, he was an Irish Catholic and on my dad's
side, they were German Catholic.But there's, there's some like
Jewish ancestry on that side a little bit, not much, but
(53:14):
there's, you know, I got a little bit on both sides of my
family tree. But my father, he basically had
an eclectic, he ended up going through training with the Native
American witch doctor. He's in, you know, into like
that kind of spirituality and stuff.
So my parents, it was kind of a juxtaposition, but my mom was
(53:37):
allowed to raise us essentially,you know, forcing us to go to
the Kingdom Hall and, you know, door knocking and, you know, all
the stuff that we had to do. It was it was a lot of work.
It wasn't fun. I mean, I I felt bad missing out
on the holidays and the birthdays And, you know, their
arguments against it just didn'thold a lot of water to me.
(53:59):
And it just was very empty is very sad.
I remember knocking on the somebody's door one time and,
you know, she kind of made lightof it, tried to give me a smile
and laugh. I was there, you know, I was
being coerced to do something I didn't want to do anyways.
And at the same time, I wanted to be right with God.
But my journey, I guess through that was, I mean, I had
(54:25):
questions when I was 8 years old.
I wanted to go to heaven. So I ended up asking my mom and
then debating with one of the elders and they say that you
have to know the truth. When they say the truth, it's
coded. It means their beliefs.
And you got to be one of the 144,000, which means you got to
be, you know, chosen, which means you're able to reason and
(54:46):
understand the scriptures according to their teaching.
And I remember I did a prayer, you know, I was like, you know,
God teach me the truth. And then I felt something in my
consequence. I need to know your truth, not
the truth because that's their, you know, when they say the
truth, it doesn't mean like grammatically what you think the
truth means. It means their truth.
(55:08):
So if you tell the Jehovah's Witness, you need to know the
truth, but yeah, we do. But it doesn't mean finding the
truth because for them you can'tfind the truth out of their,
their text, their doctrine, their literature.
They say that if you read the Bible alone for a year to two
years, you will reconvert or convert to a pre Christian
state, which that's just wild. Like if reading the Bible alone
(55:32):
is not enough that you're going to, you know, become an apostate
by reading the Bible. That's like, wow, what's wrong
with this? So I became aware of false
prophecies and textual changes, intentional things.
I had read the Tanakh a couple times.
By the time I was 12. I felt so much inconsistencies
(55:52):
between the Tanakh and New Testament.
I didn't see the correlation when I read the Tanakh with what
the New Testament said it was pulling from.
And you know, I had started pulling up old Watchtower and
Awake magazines where they gave these false end time prophecies
that didn't come to pass. I saw for myself that they did
this and then I got into the Hebrew and Greek.
(56:14):
They have this, it's a purple dyaglide.
It's AI call it the purple people eater.
It's their they have the Hebrew and Greek and then the their,
the translation below and their well, transliteration below and
then their translation on the side.
And one of the ones that stuck out to me at the time and even
before I got, you know, I'm learning, you know, textual
(56:36):
criticism. And at the time I didn't
understand some of the deeper things, but I saw within the
Greek, John 11, according to thetext they are pulling from, says
in the beginning was the Word, the word was God.
Well, they say that in the transliteration says the word
was God. And then the translation says in
(56:56):
the beginning was the Word and the word was a God.
So they added, and I was like, whoa, wait, this is evidence
they have changed the text. So they've had false prophecies.
Their text has been altered. Yeah, I'm not feeling this is
for me. So I was at a point and part of
the process kind of goes my my dad had a couple affairs while
(57:18):
we were married. My mom was hurt.
She decided to get even had an affair.
She got disfellowshipped. My parents got divorced.
So this is like middle school and beginning of high school.
And so my mom spent most of my high school.
My mom was not a believer. She had a, you know, I had to
come home to all kind of different boyfriends sitting on
(57:39):
my couch. I'd come in the house and I'd be
like, who are you? What are you doing here?
And, you know, my mom be like, oh, my boyfriends are all afraid
of you. I love it.
Nothing. Tell me they're there so I don't
walk in surprise because I'm like, who's in my house?
What you doing? And growing up in the inner
city, I had a little bit of an attitude.
But yeah, so by the time I was 18, I got to this point that I
(58:04):
had to make a decision for myself.
And I'm just weighing all this stuff.
And, you know, I'm just like, And I, I had started taking
martial arts because, you know, part of my experience, I
experienced physical abuse for my father growing up in a gang
neighborhood. There's a lot of gang violence.
Learning to defend myself felt like a necessity.
But for Jehovah's Witnesses, somehow it has something to do
(58:26):
with the devil. And, you know, so I ended up
getting this fellowship because I want to stop learning martial
arts. And I got to the point where I
was teaching, but, yeah, I was like, what's wrong with
defending myself against somebody who's trying to violate
me? How is this?
You know? So that was like, that was the
catalyst for me, was all that came together.
And then I was deciding. And I was like, yeah, it's not
(58:50):
for me. And I was like, out.
By the time they disfellowship me, I was like, OK, cool,
thanks. Have a nice life, You know, I'm
out. And then I took a journey
through. I was dating a woman who was
involved in like evangelical charismatic invited me to this
(59:12):
down in Oceanside there the Amphitheatre, there's this.
It was essentially a tent revival kind of thing, calling
people for healing and altar. Like a mega church.
Yeah, yeah, but it, well, no, but it was just they're doing an
event at the Pure Amphitheatre. Like they had a different
location, but yeah, I was, you know, the they call you to the
(59:34):
altar, call for healing out of torn rotator cuff and stuff.
Yeah, that didn't heal me, but I, I believed I got into it.
I was, you know, I ended up having to do physical therapy
and all that kind of stuff still.
But yeah, I got involved with evangelical Pentecostalism
because of a girlfriend. I ended up going to Bible
(59:54):
college and I, you know, studiedchurch planning and
revitalization. So.
You know, I, I started doing some missionary work.
I, I was a young adult pastor, ayouth pastor, a small group
leader. You know, I was like heavily
involved. I was transitioning out of that
because really my experience, like 1.
(01:00:15):
I started to see how human the process was and I learned so
much about this Pentecostal revivalism.
There's a lot of manipulation. They'll intentionally set the AC
at 72 in the building because that facilitates the Holy
Spirit, makes you feel a certainway.
The music is intentionally done to give like rising and swelling
(01:00:36):
emotions and to make you suggestible.
Any I even went to this thing with Miles McPherson, who is a
revivalist to talking about how to use, you know, suggestive,
you know, ability to get people to fall out in the spirit.
And so there's just a lot of emotional manipulation.
And I just saw like the pastor'severything was very human.
(01:00:57):
And it was like, you know, they would like a pastor would ask me
questions during the week and, you know, just very human
responses. And then he'd preach and say the
things that he heard was from the Holy Spirit.
And I'm like, Nah, that's not where I was coming from when I
was talking to you. And I just started to see a very
human thing. You know, they, the mechanisms
(01:01:21):
to get money because they got to, you know, they have their
nice house, their nice cars, their, you know, 4 O1 KS and all
these things. And I just, I came to disbelieve
in the spirituality of all this Pentecostal revival revivalism.
And so when I was getting married, we got into Messianic
Judaism. And again, I it ended up being a
(01:01:43):
lot of the juxtaposition, the big thing that really this is
the one that just put me out andI was done after I had told you
about that, that quote from Rabbi Carol Harris Shapiro.
I was studying with Raymond Gannon with the Jewish No, it
was the King's Theological Seminary.
(01:02:05):
I like to call seminary cemeteries.
But anyways, he he is a Gentile and he would dress up fully in
Jewish garbin. He was one of the early ones.
They started, I think he was with MJAA, the Messianic Jewish
Alliance of America in the 70s and Sandy and not Sandy LA.
(01:02:28):
And so he was involved with thiscultural evangelism where the
statement he said to me is you dress more Orthodox to convert
the Orthodox. And I'm.
Like, oh, he was starting Jews for Jesus.
I mean, he was involved with movements that became that or
(01:02:50):
like similar movements. I don't know that he was
specifically involved with that.But it, you know, you have the
Messianic Jewish Alliance of America, the UMJC, the Union of
Messianic Jewish Congregations, and I've been involved with
Messianic synagogues from that. I was, you know, involved with
1, and I was, you know, going through seminary to transition
from, you know, Pentecostal Christian to doing Messianic
(01:03:14):
stuff. And I just came to see that it
was more of that fakery that wasdone to convert people, build a
money machine for the pastor. And they don't always believe
the things that they're saying. And it's just.
And then I came to disbelieve inthe foundation text for
Christianity. And so I ended up my journey
out. So I mean, that's kind of a
condensed version of like my journey.
(01:03:38):
So. Yeah.
How do you think you've always been seeking?
Like what is it that has put youon this path to look for?
I guess God. What makes me Jewish I ask
questions, I ask questions I'm I'm pernicious with the
question, but I also need grounded facts that have
(01:04:01):
tangential history that are grounded in the things around
them that have, you know, like, is this thing real?
I like what is it? I don't know there there are
those of us who we just get something in US and we're like,
I've got to keep going. I got to keep searching.
I can't I'm always going to question, you know, question all
(01:04:22):
things hold fast to what's true.You know, part of it, like my
studies in martial arts, this iskind of part of it is, you know,
Bruce Lee had this saying that research your own own
experience. Utilize what works, reject what
does not works. Add what specifically your own,
(01:04:44):
and you know that scientific method is always like science
and history have always spoken to me.
And I think that reason in thesethings, like if God is real,
science is trying to figure out what's real, history is just
like what actually happened. Yeah.
God should not be opposed to science and history 'cause we're
(01:05:05):
trying to study the world in which he lives.
I have no problem with The Big Bang theory and evolution if
it's real, God may have been thecatalyst behind this whole
thing. Like I don't I, I don't reject
facts based upon you should takethis on faith.
I need to know, I need to see, Ineed evidence.
(01:05:29):
You know, it's funny, there's a,there's a Christian book and it
it's full of cognitive dissonance called evidence that
demands A verdict. And you're like, OK, you know, I
believe Doctor Price wrote an answer to that one.
But you know, it's a lot of thisice of Jesus.
And like they try to counter missionaries, you know, they,
(01:05:53):
they do a disingenuous job of presenting facts.
You know, it's, it's concerning.I don't know.
I mean, I've, I just, I need facts.
I need evidence. What was the big thing for you
and all this that that kept you questioning, like what led you
on your path? It's a feeling, it's a feeling
(01:06:14):
that I haven't gotten to the root of my truth and something
just kept pushing me and it's still pushing you to ask more
questions. Keep seeking, you know, like
it's, it's kind of just like a drive that I felt.
It's not something that I can explain, but I I didn't have
(01:06:36):
peace and until I felt satisfiedwith the answers to the
questions that I was asking, I needed to keep asking questions
and keep looking for, you know, different explanations that
would speak to me in a way that I could digest it.
Do you do you know what I mean? Yeah, I mean, that makes sense.
(01:07:00):
I don't know. I mean the search for honesty
and feeling wholeness in your soul, right?
Can I ask you a question? What's that?
What do you think Paul's motivation was?
I mean, I guess to who is? Paul, Paul the apostle, what is
what was his agenda? What was his reason, his
(01:07:20):
mission? Like we know what he did.
Why? Did Paul exist?
Well, that that's a whole other question.
I mean, the whole when we're getting into this thing, there's
so many theories about Paul. I mean, Paul is what the
epistles were written before thegospels, and the epistles
influence the gospels, you know?And then the gospels are kind of
(01:07:44):
reactions to each other. Well the Synoptics, John has its
own thing. So there's only 7 epistles of
all Paul's epistles that are considered authentic.
The rest are pseudepigrapha, andthen all of them include layers
of redaction. There's influences for Marcion,
the Proto Orthodox and the finalCatholization where they try to
(01:08:07):
unify the text. We have older text of all the
gospels and officials that are missing things in the later
ones. There's pericopes in different
places in the Gospels. It's such a ad hoc text.
So and then now so if we get to the 7 authentic epistles, the
question is because Marcian is the first person to have said
(01:08:30):
have found them, but Marcian hasinvented his own gospel, the
Evangelion that they did he findthem or did he create them?
You know, I mean, we don't have the surviving Marcianite text.
We do have the Proto Orthodox response to the Marcianite text,
which is our earliest epistles, the earliest physical epistles.
(01:08:53):
When we go to the theories of epistles, then you're going to,
well, the language is from, you know, 60-70 common error.
But it, the first text we have is until 2nd century.
So we don't have any text from there.
We have theories that they were language says they were written
in, but that's not the physical evidence.
I go with physical evidence and we the first physical evidence
(01:09:15):
is after Marcion's was first. The first physical evidence is
the proto Orthodox. The their response where they,
because Marcion is like we reject the Old Testament God, we
reject the Old Testament. They tried to reposition the
this is where they start pullingfrom the Tanakh, the verses that
they're trying to say, oh, this comes from Judaism kind of
(01:09:36):
thing. So I don't know was Paul real?
I don't know. There are elements of Paul's
life and Josephus's life, the historian that are mirror each
other. So some theorize that Marcy and
May invented Paul based on the life of Josephus because Paul
(01:09:56):
and Josephus both spent time in the wilderness, similar periods
of time, and they seem to have similar Hellenistic influenced
ideas. Now, whether that's the case or
not, again, all theory, we have the original epistle.
So if we go by the seven epistles, the original epistles,
you know, Doctor James Tabor, somebody who interviewed here
(01:10:17):
and I'm going to interview againlater today for a episode coming
up, notes the difference betweenPaul's gospel and Jesus.
Jesus is Torah Orthodox, you know, he's calling to Torah
faithfulness. Paul invents a new thing.
There's this new cosmic Jesus that, you know, a different
(01:10:42):
salvation process. I think it's just the, the
statement that Paul thinks I become all things to all people,
that I might win some. I, you know, Doctor Robert Price
sees Paul as Simon Magus or somebody associated with Simon
Magus or Simon Magus characters based on Paul.
(01:11:03):
I don't know if you know who that is, but he was a guy who
tried to buy the gospel or the the message of the, you know,
early disciples or followers of Jesus.
And then he became a, a proponent against it.
Paul's message, he says things that aren't true.
He says he is a disciple of Gamma Leo, but he never speaks
(01:11:24):
in a way that sounds like Gamma Leo.
If we look in the Talmud and we see the writings of Gamma Leo,
Paul does not align with Gamma Leo.
Who did he study with? It's antithetical.
Like, OK, this claim is not backed up by the writings of
Paul. It's a claim made out of thin
air that if anything, some of Paul's writings are, well,
(01:11:46):
they're very Hellenistic, very Platonic.
And there was this Hellenistic Platonic thought that was
pulling from, you know, the Greek Septuagint, Hellenism, the
blending of culture with Roman Greco, Roman culture.
So a lot of his thoughts are foreign to Torah Orthodox
Judaism, which would have been antithetical.
(01:12:07):
The Jesus movement was Torah Orthodox Judaism.
He's more aligned with the Sadducees that were part of the
temple in his Hellenism. But then he pulls some of his
battle against light and darkness from eby Enochian text,
which are, you know, the books of Enoch.
(01:12:28):
They're not part of the Torah. They are texts that were found
in the Dead Sea Scrolls and Qumran.
But it's a very technical thing when I get into what Paul,
whoever those 7 authentic epistles was, was for.
It really was within the Hellenistic Platonic blending of
(01:12:51):
Jewish and Greek culture together.
One of the other guys that I've interviewed here, James Valiant
on Creating Christ, really sees the Roman influence on the text.
So when we break it down, like there are layers of revision.
The first one is the pro Roman layer because there is this
salient message within the the Gospels of associated with
(01:13:18):
revolutionaries against the impure temple.
You know, it's my conviction that the early Jesus movement
was involved with, well, I mean the Essens, the Zealots, the
Zekharai who were involved with the battle that ended in Masada
with ended up with the destruction of the temple.
So I am 100% convinced the earlyJesus movement were violent
(01:13:41):
Jewish revolutionaries. We have it echoes of it in the
New Testament. It talks about the Zealots, the
sons of Zebedee, which was, thatwas a term related with the
Zealots. Judas Isakar yet comes from
Sakhar, which is the, you know, it was the violent branch of the
zealots. And we know from the early
Church fathers that the Ibianites and the Nazarenes were
(01:14:03):
associated with the Essenes or the ocean.
So there's this just heavy connection with that.
And we have no surviving text after the destruction of the
temple 'cause that was all destroyed.
And then we have the Barcopa revolt in like the 1:30's and I
think 1:33 and the Jesus James movement didn't participate
(01:14:24):
because their first attempt had failed.
So that's that's on one side. Paul's side is trying to create
a pacifistic religion. It's all that was the to set up
your the answer to your questionto set up a pacifistic religion
that was subservient to Rome. It was a process of redaction.
(01:14:44):
First is the pro Roman layer. Give on to Caesar, submit to
authorities, and then as they, you know, move on.
You have Marcian, Marcian's influence, the Proto Orthodox,
and then the capitalization. And it's interesting, even the
first Catholic text though, the Codex Vaticanus, Codex
Sinaiticus are missing key elements of what they say is
(01:15:08):
their theology. Mark doesn't have a virgin
birth, doesn't have a resurrection.
So even when they had their fur in the in the 4th century, they
have their first full gospels and epistles, they're still
missing. Even though we know in the
Nicene Council that they believe, you know, and Jesus is,
you know, God and Savior and allthese kind of things that the
(01:15:30):
text didn't have those they hadn't added that yet.
And so really Paul's letters were used to invent this
religion that was pro Roman and then the Roman government
through Constantine and then Emperor Theodosius in the
Theodosian codes solidified whatit was called Catholicism.
(01:15:52):
That meant universalism. It was not Christian.
It was a blend of Pythagoreanism, Platonianism,
Mithraism, and it wasn't till the Middle Ages that they
redefined it as simply a Christology, though it had been
founded with all these things. Is Catholicism means
universalism. And so when we think about
Christianity in the text, it's it's through these layers of
(01:16:14):
revision. And what we have now, we don't
have original text. So to say definitively what the
original text is, is it's tough.And so I I can't hold it as
like, this is history. This is fact.
It's pseudo history. It's, you know, theological
revisionism. And are there echoes of some
(01:16:35):
history? Yeah, but that's where, you
know, giving definitive answers is kind of I, you know, I, you
know, if you're asking me for the Jesus moment, it's without
Paul. There's no because the
Evianites, the Nazarenes, all the 1st century groups rejected
Paul as a heretic. Even the Gnostics rejected Paul
as a heretic. So it wasn't till the 2nd
(01:16:58):
century after Marcion that Paul became his.
His letters were found and it was after him that the Proto
Orthodox which is like the pre Catholics started seeing
usefulness of Paul. So nobody else but Marcion and
then the Proto Orthodox saw any use to Paul in the 1st and 2nd
century. Marcion finds a letter or
(01:17:20):
invents the letters who knows. But once those become the thing
for the Roman which become the ones who have control and then
they violently suppress everybody else.
They destroyed texts. They literally the government
power was used to make Catholicism the religion of the
Roman Empire. And So what the winners write
(01:17:43):
history, but doesn't mean it's history, it's pseudo history.
And so that's where we try to piece it together.
If you're asking me about the Jesus movement, I try to have it
without any of Pauline influence.
Looking at the the lost gospel of cue, the sayings, which we
can attest, you know, we know pericopes like parables, like he
(01:18:04):
was without sin. What cast a stone one was that
one actually was invented by Marcion and it was placed in
different places until it found its place in the text.
So we have that epistle. I mean that that pericopy, you
know, in different places in earlier text until it's settled
on the place we have it. You know, there's a lot of those
(01:18:25):
pericopes that aren't in the oldest manuscripts that
eventually find themselves into what's common today.
So when we look at historical Jesus, if the the quest for the
historical Jesus, the Q sayings gospel, the gospel of Thomas,
there was a diversity of opinions in the first second
century, but a majority of the 1st century was all Jewish.
(01:18:48):
What they call Jewish Christian just because they believed in
Jesus, but they didn't have a high soteriology.
They didn't believe Jesus was God savior.
He was either prophet or wanted to be Messiah and was cut off.
And then James followed after him.
Jude and then Simeon where the the leaders in that lineage,
which we have records of to like113.
(01:19:10):
So I mean, that's kind of how I put all that.
I know it's a lot. There's a lot of technical stuff
there, but I don't put a lot of credence to Paul when it comes
to understanding who Jesus was, if he existed.
Awesome. That was a lot.
But yeah, that's, that's my common working theory.
And, you know, that's why I interview a lot of the guys I am
is to get into the nuts and bolts of like, how did this
(01:19:32):
thing come to be? What textual evidence, what
physical evidence we have? So part of my, my thing on the
podcast here is interviewing people who this is their
specialty and people who went ona journey out of Christianity.
And it's to give people the resources that kind of
enlightened me and and got me intellectually curious and to
just understand other people's journeys as they're trying to
(01:19:55):
unpack this. And, you know, I'm a
Conservative Jew, so I don't take the same stance that Rabbi
Tovia Singer Singer or Michael Skobach made because I still
take even like the document hypothesis and take textual
criticism to the Tanak. You know, I'm faithful to the
Jewish tradition, but more in the intellectual curious.
It's kind of why, you know, Conservative Judaism spoke to
(01:20:18):
me. As you know, we, we even look at
the talk as mythological and legendary accounts.
People who existed, but the stories are probably embellished
a little bit, you know, just to make it better storytelling.
So yeah. Well, I enjoyed this.
It was really great talking to you and yeah, I'm, I'm so like
(01:20:40):
blown away by your journey. Yeah, yeah.
I cannot believe that you went through Jehovah's Witness
evangelical Christianity and then came to Messianic Judaism
and then Conservative Judaism. It's really, it's really
fascinating. I like the study and I want to
know a thing fully before I reject it.
(01:21:02):
So experiencing it in its full flavour, embracing it, taking it
on again. It kind of goes back to like my
G condo studies, like we study various martial arts.
We, you know, want to understandit like they understand it and
then extract what is functional.And so that's just been a part
of me, like that's just how it is.
(01:21:22):
So I appreciate that this has been a great conversation.
I got to wind down because I gotto prep for my next interview.
Any final words you want to leave the audience with?
Don't be afraid, fear is a liar.God loves us all.
Lean into that love and be a light to others.
All right, that was Tashia Kadosh.
(01:21:43):
And for this episode of Pulling Threads podcast, we're going to
sign off. Please remember to like,
subscribe and follow and share this everywhere you can.
It was such a pleasure.