ZERO

Confessions of a Jewish Sinner

(c)2013 by Lenny Goldberg

I’m dead. Probably. Unless G-d, blessed be He, decided to supernaturally grant me a little more time, my ashes are either sitting on the family TV set or have been flung into some large body of water. As I type these words my abdomen is stuffed to bursting with a yellow cancerous liquid known as ascites caused by a disease known as peritoneral mesothelioma. If that wasn’t enough, there’s also chronic leukemia, thyroid tumors and neurofibromatosis or ‘elephant man’s disease’. So yeah, I’ve most likely gone to meet my glorious Maker, as you read these words. Unlike righteous Job, however, I deserved all those diseases and more. In life I was a wiseguy, and people called me mean, even years after I 'got religion'. Nevertheless, G-d in His infinite capacity for loving His creatures chose to ‘save’ me as an example that He is willing to ‘save’ anyone that is interested. What do I mean by the word ‘save’? Nothing less than blissful, eternal life, undeserved and unmerited, a free gift of G-d given to a most unlikely recipient.

    This is the story about how I, a Jew, came to believe in Jesus as my Messiah. I’m stating that first thing. I do not want to be accused of tricking anyone; you might have thought this was a nice Jewish autobiography and then halfway through you saw the name Jesus and felt betrayed. Maybe you’re also Jewish, and a well-meaning friend or relative gave you this website because they want you too to believe in Jesus. I also want to save you from skimming to find the 'juicy' parts. I left them out. Yes, there was fornication, adultery, drugs, and depravity. OK, I left most of it out. Why should I embarrass anyone? No, this is a just a simple telling, Christians would call it a “testimony”, of how I was born a Jewish boy, then somehow became a follower of the Messiah who was also a Jew, and what happened after that. I’m not the first Jew to follow Jesus by any means; in fact the entire Church was completely Jewish in the beginning, until Hashem (literally “The Name”) made it clear that He also loved gentiles and started ‘letting them in’. Some might disagree when I say that while I am a 'born-again' Christian I’m also still Jewish. Others might call me a 'completed' Jew, however it’s not my favorite term as it assumes that most Jews have missing parts. Some recent polls have revealed that most Jews no longer believe in G-d. Does this make them incomplete? I don’t know. If you ask me, most Jews just haven’t met their Messiah. Yet. If you are Jewish, please allow your curiosity to cause you to read my meiseh (story). If you’re a gentile and it helps you to better enjoy this sordid tale, you can imagine me narrating it in a New York Jewish accent, bubbeleh.

The story that follows is absolutely true. That is to say, the facts presented here are to the best of my memory, and while there has been some embellishment, either to make a point or to add humor to what otherwise might be a particularly nauseating anecdote, it is (as I claim) a true story. For example, I might remark that “G-d said” or “G-d told me” something, but this is purely in the sense that most ‘believers’ would mean it, i.e. they felt a feeling that an idea that popped into their head was of spiritual origin. Actually I’m very skeptical of anyone who claims that G-d spoke to them. My story includes, as you’ll see, a demonic being speaking audibly to me and claiming that it is the Creator. That actually happened voice and all. In the town I live in, there is an organization built on the foundation that G-d has had conversations with a whole bunch of people. Unfortunately, a lot of the things that “G-d” has said to them would contradict the Bible, the word of G-d. So when I, or anyone else, tells you that G-d has said this or that, look it up for yourself in Scripture while slowly slipping backwards in the opposite direction. Who knows, they might be demon-possessed.

Which leads me to another gray area, since I’ve claimed to have been just that, demon-possessed. Here’s how I would define it as relating to my story. Demons spoke to me, although at the time I didn’t know that’s what they were. Their influence on me grew over time, until (yes I know it’s a dumb cliché) I did whatever the little voices told me to. At no time did green smegma ooze from any of my body cavities nor did my head rotate 360 degrees. I never achieved super-human strength and never ran naked through the streets (that I remember). My pastor had said that this is typically what demon-possessed people do. On the other hand, my razor blades never wore out, and I didn’t even need to put them underneath a pyramid overnight. So I was either possessed, 'demonized' (as some Christians might suggest), a total fool, or maybe all three.

Before going any further, let me please clarify the term “G-d”. It is the practice of Jewish folks to leave a letter out of certain words that are names of deity. Another example is the word “L-rd”. This is totally a matter of respect, taking literally the command to not take His name in vain. How is it taking His name in vain to include the “o”? Well, you might throw away or destroy the piece of paper or book with Hashem’s holy name on it, and this is perceived as disrespectful. Jewish holy books are buried with accompanying funereal services, never destroyed. Neither do Jewish folks write all over their Bibles as many Christians do. If you are ‘witnessing’ to a Jew, and they ask you “where in the Bible does it say what you are claiming?” you might want to carry an extra Bible with you sans scribbles in the margins so as not to offend them. Leading a Jew to Jesus, even though Jews and Christians do worship the same Heavenly Father, can be a daunting job; G-d had to take me “to Hell and back”, in a manner of speaking of course, to reach me. 

I had a particular Catholic fellow ‘rake me over the coals’ over my omission of the letter “o” in our e-mail communications, saying that it was disrespectful of me to spell that way, and anyway why respect the people that had killed Jesus in the first place. I answered him with the usual reply; if Jesus hadn’t died on the cross for his sins he’d be going to Heck, so maybe he should be thanking us Jews. But then he added that we ought to be freely using G-d’s actual name Jehovah or Yahweh; I don’t remember which name he used (pick one). So I informed him, and now you, that only the high priest knew how to pronounce the tetragrammaton, the Y-H-V-H. Jewish people do not try and pronounce the Name, instead substituting another word such as Hashem, as I’ve already mentioned. You’ll never see a Jewish-owned business with a DBA such as “Jehovah’s Plumbing Company”. I saw a truck with just that name parked at my local Safeway one day. I was dumbfounded but I realized that the Christian that picked this name did it purely out of love and respect, and that “G-d looks at the heart”. Walking down a street in my old neighborhood of Borough Park, you will see neither “Yahweh’s Dry Cleaners” nor “The L-rd’s Delicatessen”. You can take my word for that. At any rate I hope that you will suffer me the use of dashes. I doubt that many Jewish people will read or ever see this blog, but please allow me my idiosyncrasies. And when I break into a Yiddish phrase or expression, please ignore it if it offends. My main purpose is not to teach yiddishkeit to gentiles, but to counter the lies of the New Age and the occult. Of course, many Jews would be included in those categories. While I’m doubtful that Jews will read a story like this, I hope and pray that some do. If you are one of those, please hear me out; tell me what an idiot I am after you read it. If I’m still alive that is. But if I’m dead, please don’t harass my wife; none of this is her fault.

When I first thought about writing a book I considered using a pseudonym. Some of the things that I’ve said and done in my life are embarrassing, not only to me but to my family. When I announced to my father that I now believed in Jesus Christ, his response was ‘so what’s new? Your whole life is a series of crazy things. This is just the craziest. In fact I’ve broken all Ten Commandments to some degree. Actually G-d gave Moses 613 commandments; I’m still working on breaking some of those. I haven’t yet gored my neighbor’s ox. But even keeping the Top 10 has been a formidable task for me. If I were to detail all my sins, you would not invite me to speak at your church. I’ve done things that only G-d can forgive, things that I cannot repair, of which I am eternally ashamed. Still, I decided to use my real name; otherwise how could I claim that everything in here is true? I have, however, changed the names of a few innocent bystanders who were unfortunate enough to have known me
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When I first came to know Messiah about twenty years ago, I immediately went to work on writing a book of my experiences. About twenty or thirty pages later, however, I became so convicted of what an evil person I was, and this is no exaggeration; the truth was just sinking in. I told G-d that I didn’t think I could write this book. He said to me (not really, just in my imagining [see above]), “why don’t you write a short testimony instead”. So I did that, and over the years have given away hundreds of them, and it has been published in a couple of magazines and on the internet. Someday, I imagined I’d write the whole book, when I’d truly learned to walk and talk the way a Christian ought to.

But G-d, blessed be He, said to me (again, He said nothing of the kind) “Lazer, your story could be useful to the church as I’m rescuing those that would be rescued out of the occult. Write the book already. Are you waiting until you’re perfect? That will only come on the day I take you home; it will be too late then”. And so, here on your screen is that book. As I’ve said, every detail of my evil life is not in here, mainly the facts concerning my decline into the service of demons and G-d’s simultaneous rescue of a soul from destruction. I’d like to claim that I sought G-d earnestly with a burning desire to know truth. But I cannot; no, G-d was driving this bus.

Lazer, by the way, is my Yiddish name, like Lazer Wolf in Fiddler on the Roof. The only people that have ever actually called me Lazer were my grandmother, when she was yelling at me, and my Hebrew School teacher Mrs. Gold. She screamed “Lazer Gold, gold oif der linkeh zeit!" That’s ‘gold on the left side’ or the opposite of gold. This is what we might refer to today as 'number two'. See, I couldn’t have told that story if I used a pseudonym. Oh wait, I could have written this book under the name Lazer Gold! Duh. Another teacher threatened me, in Yiddish, that she would ‘break my hands in the wall’ and to go to Hell. I don’t know about you, but Hell is where I deserve to spend eternity. I have not confessed all my sins to you in this book dear reader, however I have confessed them all to G-d as well as to others. I have suffered in this life, and perhaps have 'paid my debt to society' as it were. But I can never repay my debt to G-d; there aren’t enough good deeds to do, beads to count, or whatever in this world to accomplish that.

    So here I am, opposite of gold, and yet when Messiah shed His blood to save sinners, that even included me. And of course you, too, if you’re willing. My life was lived in selfish rebellion against G-d but I have sought, and received, His grace, not through anything I've done, but because of what He did some 20 centuries ago. I pray that you will also seek Him while you may.

- Chapter Zero written March 2003

- Blog began 6/9/2013