He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, acquainted with grief.

We hid our faces from him, but he was wounded for our transgressions, crushed for our iniquities.

The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his stripes we are healed.

I asked them what we had always been taught about this passage, that it was about Israel suffering among the nations, that it was metaphorical, symbolic, not about an actual person.

But then I pointed out what the text actually says.

It’s not written in the first person.

It’s written about someone else.

The speaker says, “We we esteemed him stricken.

We hid our faces from him.

And he he was wounded.

He was crushed.

He bore the sins of many.

Israel talking about someone who suffered for Israel.

And it says he did this willingly.

He was oppressed and afflicted.

Yet he did not open his mouth.

Like a lamb led to the slaughter.

Like a sheep silent before her sheerers, he did not open his mouth.

someone suffering voluntarily, silently to bring healing and peace to others through his wounds and his death.

I paused and let that sink in.

Then I moved to the next prophecy, Psalm 22, David’s psalm.

It starts with the words, “My God, my God, why have you forsaken me”?

And then it describes a scene of suffering that is eerily specific.

Dogs surround me.

A pack of villains encircles me.

They pierce my hands and my feet.

All my bones are on display.

People stare and gloat over me.

They divide my clothes among them and cast lots for my garment.

This psalm was written a thousand years before Rome existed.

It was written hundreds of years before a crucifixion was invented.

And yet it describes a crucifixion in perfect detail.

The piercing of hands and feet, the bones being pulled out a joint, the nakedness, the dividing of garments, even the emotional state of someone dying this kind of death.

I saw people shifting uncomfortably in their seats.

Some were whispering to each other.

I continued, “Daniel chapter 9, the prophecy of 70 weeks”.

I explained how Daniel had been given a vision of 70 weeks of years, 490 years total, that would pass from the decree to rebuild Jerusalem until the Messiah would come and then be cut off, killed.

I walk them through the math starting from the decree of art Xerxes in 445 BCEE adding 483 years you arrive at approximately 33 CE right around the time Yeshua was crucified and the prophecy says the Messiah would be cut off before the destruction of the temple.

The second temple was destroyed in the year 70.

Which means if Daniel’s prophecy is accurate, the Messiah had to have come and died before the year 70.

That was 2,000 years ago.

If we’re still waiting for the Messiah, then Daniel was wrong.

But if Daniel was a true prophet, and we believe he was, then the Messiah already came.

We missed him.

I could hear people starting to object now.

Someone in the back stood up and walked out, but I kept going.

Zechariah 12 10.

God speaking, they will look on me, the one they have pierced, and they will mourn for him as one mourns for an only child and grieve bitterly for him as one grieavves for a firstborn son.

How can God be pierced?

How can God die?

And yet here is God saying that they will look on him, the one they pierced.

Micah 5:2.

But you, Bethlehem Ephraatha, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will come for me one who will be ruler over Israel, whose origins are from of old, from ancient times.

The Messiah would be born in Bethlehem, but he would have origins from ancient times, someone both human and eternal.

I went through more prophecies.

Genesis 3:15, about the offspring of the woman who would crush the serpent’s head.

Genesis 22 about Abraham’s willingness to sacrifice his son Isaac and God saying that on this mountain the Lord will provide a sacrifice.

Numbers 24:17 about a star coming out of Jacob.

Deuteronomy 18 about a prophet like Moses who would come.

Isaiah 7:14 about a virgin conceiving.

Isaiah 9:6 about a child being born who would be called wonderful counselor, mighty God, everlasting father, prince of peace.

Each prophecy by itself could perhaps be explained away.

But taken together, they formed a portrait.

A specific portrait of a specific person.

Someone who would be born in Bethlehem of a virgin from the line of David who would be both human and divine.

Who would suffer and die for the sins of his people.

Who would be rejected by his own.

Who would be buried and then rise again.

who would bring salvation not just to Israel but to the whole world.

And there was only one person in all of history who fit that portrait.

I told them his name, Yeshua of Nazareth, Jesus.

The reaction was immediate and visceral.

People gasped.

Someone shouted that I was a heretic.

Mrs.

Levy, who had been with the congregation for 40 years, put her hand over her mouth and started crying.

Rabbi Kleinman, my old mentor, just sat there shaking his head with tears running down his face, but I couldn’t stop now.

I had gone too far to turn back.

I told them about the sacrificial system, about how the Torah commands that without the shedding of blood, there is no forgiveness of sins, about how for 1500 years from Moses until the destruction of the temple, we had dealt with our sins through blood sacrifice.

A lamb, a bull, a goat, the innocent dying in place of the guilty.

The principle of substitutionary atonement was built into the very fabric of our faith.

But then the temple was destroyed and for 2,000 years we have had no sacrifice, no blood, no atonement in the way that God prescribed in Torah.

We have tried to replace it with prayer and good deeds and repentance.

The rabbis tell us that God accepts these instead of sacrifice.

But where in Torah does God say that?

Where in scripture does God say that blood is necessary until it’s not?

That his law can be set aside when it becomes inconvenient.

Unless there was a sacrifice, a final sacrifice, a perfect sacrifice that was so complete, so effective that it dealt with the sin problem once and for all.

A sacrifice that happened right before the temple was destroyed.

As if God was saying, “You don’t need the temple anymore.

You don’t need the repeated sacrifices anymore because I have provided the ultimate sacrifice, the lamb of God, the one that John the Baptist pointed to when he saw Yeshua and said, “Behold the lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world”.

I looked out at my congregation and I told them about my journey, about the months of study, the sleepless nights, the desperate prayers, about how I had tried to prove this wrong, tried to find another explanation, tried to go back to the comfortable certainty of what I had always believed.

But I couldn’t because the evidence was overwhelming.

The prophecies were too specific.

The fulfillment was too perfect.

The logic was too clear.

Yeshua had fulfilled the Torah, not abolished it.

He had completed the sacrificial system, not destroyed it.

He had come to Israel first, just as the prophets said the Messiah would.

He had taught in the temple, celebrated the feasts, quoted the prophets, called himself the son of man, the title from Daniel’s vision.

He had done everything the Messiah was prophesied to do.

And we had rejected him, not because the evidence wasn’t there, not because he didn’t fulfill the prophecies, but because he didn’t fulfill them the way we expected.

We wanted a conquering king who would overthrow Rome and restore Israel’s political power.

We got a suffering servant who would overthrow sin and restore humanity’s relationship with God.

We wanted the second coming before the first coming.

I told them that I understood why our fathers rejected him 2,000 years ago.

I understood why the Pharisees and the religious leaders felt threatened by him.

He was challenging their authority, their interpretation of Torah, their entire system.

He was saying that all the regulations and traditions and fence laws they had built around Torah were missing the point that God wanted mercy, not sacrifice.

that the Sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath.

That you could follow every rule perfectly and still miss God entirely.

This was dangerous teaching, revolutionary teaching.

And they did what people in power always do when someone threatens their system.

They eliminated the threat.

But God had the last word.

Yeshua rose from the dead.

He appeared to his disciples.

He appeared to over 500 people at once.

He proved that he was exactly who he claimed to be, the Messiah, the Son of God, the resurrection, and the life.

And his followers, all Jews, every single one of them, went out and turned the world upside down with this message.

Not because they were deceived, but because they had seen him alive after they had watched him die, because they had touched his wounds and eaten with him and listened to him explain how all of scripture pointed to him.

They were willing to die for this message, and most of them did.

People don’t die for something they know is a lie.

I was weeping now as I spoke.

I told them that I knew what this meant for me.

I knew I was about to lose everything.

My position, my reputation, my community, possibly my family.

I knew that most of them would never speak to me again, that they would mourn for me as if I had died.

But I couldn’t deny what I knew to be true.

I had found the Messiah.

I had found the fulfillment of everything we had been waiting for.

And once you’ve seen the truth, once you’ve encountered the living God in the person of Yeshua, you can’t go back.

You can’t pretend you don’t know.

I looked at them through my tears and I said, “I haven’t abandoned Judaism.

I haven’t left the faith of our fathers.

I have found what our fathers were looking for.

I have found the one that Moses wrote about, the one that David sang about, the one that Isaiah prophesied about.

I I haven’t become less Jewish.

I’ve become complete.

Yeshua is not the enemy of the Jewish people.

He is the hope of the Jewish people.

He is the light to the nations that Isaiah spoke of.

He is the chute from the stump of Jesse.

He is the son of David who will reign forever.

He is Emmanuel, God with us, and he is waiting for us to recognize him.

The service erupted into chaos.

People were shouting, some were crying.

A group of men rushed toward the Beimma.

I saw Aaron Levenson, the synagogue president, trying to restore order, but his voice was lost in the noise.

Rabbi Kleinman stood up slowly, leaning on his cane.

He looked at me across the room and there was such sadness in his eyes, such disappointment.

He didn’t say anything.

He just turned and walked out.

That hurt more than all the anger around me.

Aaron made his way through the crowd and took my arm.

He told me gently but firmly that I needed to leave.

I nodded.

I removed my tallet and folded it carefully, then placed it on the podium.

Under Jewish law, I was dead to them now, dead to the community.

They would sit Shiva for me the traditional seven days of mourning.

My name would be erased from the synagogue records.

As they escorted me out, I could hear someone beginning to recite Kadesh, the morning prayer, the prayer we say for the dead.

I walked through the sanctuary one last time, past faces I had known for decades.

Some turned away, some glared at me with open hatred.

A few looked confused and sad.

One woman, I won’t say her name, reached out and briefly touched my hand as I passed.

A small gesture of kindness in the midst of all that rejection to the doors closed behind me, and I stood in the parking lot in the bright morning sun.

Birds were singing, cars were passing on the street.

The world was going on as normal.

While my life was falling apart, I got in my car and sat there for a long time.

My phone started ringing almost immediately.

I didn’t answer.

It would ring constantly for the next several days.

Rabbis calling to condemn me, community members calling to express their shock and anger, a few calling with genuine concern for my mental health.

The local Jewish newspaper would run a story about me within 48 hours.

The headline would call me a traitor.

Other rabbis would issue statements denouncing me and warning their congregations against my influence.

My name would be removed from every rabbitical association I had been part of.

Within a week, someone would spray paint mashumid apostate on the side of my house.

I would receive death threats, hate mail.

People I had considered friends for 20 years would cross the street to avoid me.

My parents would sit Shiva for me as if I had actually died.

When I tried to call them, my father would tell me I had no father anymore and hang up.

Rachel would file for divorce.

My children would be caught in the middle, confused and hurt and angry.

I would lose my job, my income, my health insurance.

I would have to sell our house because I couldn’t afford the mortgage.

I would move into a small apartment and take whatever work I could find.

Everything I had built over nearly 50 years would be destroyed in a matter of weeks.

But sitting there in my car that morning, in those first moments after walking out of my synagogue for the last time, what I felt most strongly was not grief or fear or regret.

It was freedom.

For the first time in my life, I was free from the burden of trying to earn God’s approval through my own righteousness.

free from the weight of all those laws and regulations and traditions that were supposed to bring me closer to God, but always left me feeling like I was falling short, free from the nagging sense that something was missing, that there were parts of scripture I was ignoring because they didn’t fit my theology.

I was free because I had found the truth and the truth had set me free.

I started the car and drove home.

The house was empty.

Rachel and the children were still at her parents’ house.

I went to my study and sat in my chair and I prayed.

I prayed differently than I had ever prayed before.

I didn’t recite memorized prayers.

I didn’t follow any liturgy.

I just talked to God like you would talk to your father.

I thanked him for leading me to the truth even though the truth had cost me everything.

I asked him to protect my family to help them understand eventually to not let them be hurt any more than necessary by my decision.

I asked him for strength for the difficult days ahead.

I asked him what I was supposed to do now.

And as I prayed, I felt the presence of God in a way I had never felt before.

Not the distant transcendent God who dwelt in unapproachable light, but Emanuel, God with us, God who became human so he could be with us, suffer with us, die for us, rise for us.

Yeshua.

I sat there in the silence and I felt loved in a way I had never felt loved before.

Yeah.

Completely, unconditionally.

Not because of anything I had done or any commandment I had kept, but simply because I was his.

And I knew that whatever came next, I would not be alone.

The first few months after that Shabbat were the darkest of my life.

I’m not going to pretend otherwise.

Following Yeshua didn’t make everything suddenly easy.

It made everything harder, at least in the short term.

I lost my job immediately.

The synagogue’s board met and officially terminated my position.

I had no savings to speak of.

We had been living on a rabbi’s modest salary and putting every extra dollar toward the children’s education.

Within weeks, I was struggling to pay basic bills.

I applied for teaching positions at Jewish day schools and was rejected immediately.

Word had spread throughout the Orthodox community.

I was persona nonrada, unwelcome, unclean.

I tried applying for positions at Christian institutions, thinking that maybe they would value someone with my background in Hebrew and Jewish studies.

But that proved complicated, too.

Some churches and Christian schools were excited about the idea of a former rabbi who believed in Jesus.

Others were suspicious.

Was this real or was I just looking for a job?

Did I really understand Christian theology or was I still too Jewish?

It was a strange place to be.

Too Christian for the Jews, too Jewish for some Christians.

I ended up taking a job stocking shelves at a supermarket at night.

It was humbling going from rabbi of a thriving congregation to wearing a name tag and unloading boxes of cereal at 2:00 in the morning.

But it paid enough to cover rent on a small apartment and buy groceries.

I would come home as the sun was rising.

He exhausted and smelling like cardboard.

I would shower and then spend time reading the Bible, both the Tanakh and the New Testament, praying, trying to understand what God wanted from me.

Now the isolation was crushing.

I had spent my entire life surrounded by community, family, congregation, fellow rabbis.

Now I was alone.

My phone rarely rang.

When it did, it was usually someone calling to tell me what a terrible person I was.

Rachel filed for divorce 3 months after I left the synagogue.

The papers arrived on a Tuesday afternoon.

I sat in my empty apartment holding them and I cried.

Not because I was surprised I had known this was coming, but because it made it real.

23 years of marriage over.

Because I believed in Yeshua.

The divorce process was brutal.

Rachel’s lawyer painted me as mentally unstable.

and an unfit father who had abandoned his faith and was therefore a danger to the children.

In the Orthodox community’s eyes, this wasn’t an exaggeration.

By believing in Yeshua, I had committed the ultimate betrayal.

The judge granted Rachel full custody.

I was given supervised visitation rights with my children twice a month.

Twice a month I could see my own children and only with a courtappointed supervisor present.

Sarah, my oldest, wouldn’t speak to me at first.

She would sit in the corner during our visits with her arms crossed, refusing to look at me.

Benjamin, my son, was angry.

He would yell at me, asking how I could do this to our family, how I could throw everything away.

Miriam, the youngest, was the only one who would still hug me, though I could see the confusion in her eyes.

Those visits broke my heart every single time.

I tried to explain to them what I had discovered, why I believed what I believed.

But they had been raised their entire lives to see Jesus as the enemy, as the false Messiah who led Jews astray, as the God of the people who had persecuted our people for 2,000 years.

How could I expect them to understand in a few supervised visits what had taken me two years of intensive study to grasp?

I prayed for them constantly.

Every night I would pray that God would protect them, that one day they would understand, that our family would be healed.

It felt like praying into a void.

I saw no evidence that my prayers were being answered.

My parents sat Shiva for me.

Traditional Jewish mourning.

For seven days they sat on low stools, covered the mirrors in their house, didn’t bathe or work or do anything except mourn their dead son.

Because that’s what I was to them now, dead.

I tried calling after the Shiva period ended.

My mother answered.

I could hear her crying.

She asked me why I was doing this to her.

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