I opened the Quran to any page and my eyes, the first verse my eyes fell upon, you know what it said? If you see a Jew behind a tree, kill him.

I slammed the book shut, I threw it on the table.

I was very angry.

What is this trash you told me to read? I’m Jewish.

You know [Music] that.

When I was a child, my religious education was through the Reform Temple.

So reformed Judaism is like Judaism light.

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When I came back from Israel, I wanted to really learn what it meant to be Jewish.

So, I started going to a conservative temple in New York City, which was near my apartment.

And I took some classes there.

But in those classes, the emphasis again seemed to be on the Jews as a people, not on God and not on the relationship between the person and God, their creator.

And that’s really what I was interested in.

So after a while, I stopped going to those classes because it sounded like the same thing I had already learned.

And that’s not what I wanted.

It wasn’t what I was looking for.

I’m a student at NYU, which means I spent a lot of time in Washington Square Park.

One day in Washington Square Park, a very handsome older African-Amean gentleman turned to me and said, “Do you believe in God?” And this question was totally out of the blue.

So I was like, I just looked at him, you know, and I was like, “Well, I haven’t thought about that for a really long time, like since I was 12 years old.

” So I have to think about it.

But just him asking the question was really enough for me to start focusing more and really thinking about that question.

So since I was in the park a lot and since Mike, this African-American man, was also in the park a lot, I had the opportunity to ask him lots of questions.

How do you know there’s a gun? And he answered as many of my questions as he could.

One of the things he said was, “Well, the universe itself is an open book.

This is God’s creation, the whole entire universe.

So when you see it, this is proof of his existence.

” I asked him many, many questions.

There came a point where he said, “You know, your questions are getting more complicated.

I can’t answer them.

Please go and find a Quran and open it to any page and it will have some answers for you.

” So NYU New York University has a beautiful library.

I went into the library.

There were many shelves full of Qurans, but I didn’t know which Quran to choose.

So I just chose a pretty one.

The one I chose had a red leather cover and gold guilt writing on it.

And you know, it was very impressive looking.

So I did as he told me.

I took the Quran.

I sat down at a table.

uh the library table.

I opened the Quran to any page and my eyes the first verse my eyes fell upon, you know what it said? If you see a Jew behind a tree, kill him.

I slammed the book shut.

I threw it on the table.

I was very angry when I read this very bad translation.

I slammed the Quran shut and I threw it on the table.

I went down to the park and looked for Mike cuz I was really angry.

And I didn’t find him for a couple of days.

So my anger was stewing inside of me.

And when I did find him, I said, “What is this trash you told me to read?” You know, I’m Jewish.

You know that.

So this book is telling me that I should kill Jews.

You know, he said, “Well, what Quran did you get?” And I described the Quran with the guilt red leather cover translated in the 1890s by a man named George Sales.

So Mike told me George Sales was a Christian missionary in the Middle East translating the Quran so that he could bring people to Christianity.

He aided Islam and he aided Muslims.

Please go to a mosque and get a real Quran.

So I did that.

I went to the nearest masid.

Now by this time I knew I should be a little bit modest going to a masid.

So, I had a long uh Indian print dress and I had a shawl over my shoulders and I walked to the masid.

And when I get to the masid, there’s another African-American gentleman.

He’s standing at the door like this.

He’s the security guard.

And he said, “Yeah, what do you want here?” And I said, “I’d like to get a copy of the Quran.

” And he said, “You Muslim?” I said, “No, but I’m interested.

” He said, “Well, you got to cover your head before you go in here.

” So, I took the shawl that was on my shoulders.

I put it on my head, right? And I said, “Okay, now then he says, “You married?” So, I knew where this was headed.

I said, “No, I’m not married.

I’m not interested in getting married.

I’m interested in the Quran.

Can I go inside?” So, finally, he opens the door.

And I just waited.

After a short while, a nice, handsome man came.

Uh he had his head covered with something.

Um he was dressed like a Bengali and he sat down and um asked me, “Yes, sister, what is it that you are here for? What would you like? Welcome to our masid.

” Um he was very nice and I said, “Uh, I would like a Quran.

” So he said, “Okay, we have this Ysef Ali Quran.

It’s a good translation.

” And um of course the Quran can never be exactly translated.

You have to keep in mind that it’s in Arabic and this is the best translation we have.

So I was very happy.

I took the Quran.

I went outside again, took it home with me and started reading.

And it wasn’t like any book I had ever read before.

It didn’t seem to really have a beginning or an end.

But what what impressed me the most were the verses that were all about nature.

After all, I wanted to know about Allah’s existence.

And my friend had told me that the whole universe is an open book.

And here in the Quran, this open book, Allah subhana wa ta is describing his universe and all the things he created.

He said, “Don’t you see the stars? Don’t you see everything around you and the beauty of it and the animals that you can eat and that you use for riding and that you get milk from and the bees that give honey and all these verses were just very fascinating to me.

By reading the Quran, I really did start to believe that okay, there’s a creator, there’s a God, he created all these beautiful things and he started to show me those things very specifically.

I asked for a sign and he gave me signs.

Um, the beautiful rings of Saturn.

We were just seeing the first uh satellite pictures.

So, there are these perfect rings, the perfect shape of a flower.

The fact the clouds are different every day and that the sky is different every day.

All these things pointed me toward a creator.

But I still didn’t understand that I had a relationship with this creator.

I talked to my friend Mike about.

I said, you know, I have friends, but I still feel very lonely and I’m wondering if God created me.

You know, what is his connection to me? What is his relationship with me? And he said, “Well, you know, there’s a number you can call to ask this question.

You can actually call God.

” I said, “Oh, come on.

What are you talking about?” He said, “Yeah, there’s a hotline number.

It’s 33 33 34.

So then he explained that you say 33 times subhan Allah which means glory be to Allah, alhamdulillah which means all praises to Allah and Allah abar.

And if you say each one of these 33 times and the last one 34 times, you will feel connected to Allah, like a telephone connection.

And I looked at him, I’m like, “Oh, really?” But I decided to try it and I started doing that.

I would be walking to work or walking to school and I would just start saying, you know, subhan Allah, alhamdulillah, Allah abbar.

And it really did make me feel that God was with me.

He wasn’t far from me.

In the Quran, Allah subhana wa ta’ala tells us he’s closer to us than our jugular vein, than our jugular artery.

And we know that if we cut this artery, we will die.

So Allah subhana wa ta’ala is the life force within us.

And I started to feel that.

I started to feel more alive because of it.

And I started to feel much happier and much more content and protected.

Once I started realizing that Allah was my creator and I had a relationship with him, I really wanted to know more and I needed to know more about Islam, the religion itself.

I was learning gradually learning and learning about Islam.

So, Muslim students, the MSA to have a little gathering together and uh their imam who was from Iraq uh they were very young.

We were all students.

Uh he gave me my shahada and I repeated after him.

Muhammad Allah.