Jewish Testimonies and Objections to Messiah

For Jewish people, faith in Jesus raises difficult questions about identity, theology, family, and history. Each of the Jewish believers featured here wrestled with such questions. Their testimonies remind us that faith is a transformative yet often complex process, touching every dimension of life—the personal and familial, the mind and the heart, hopes and disappointments. Jewish people need solid resources and the encouragement of believers in each area and for every question.

Personal Faith—Debra Goldstone

Is Jesus worth the rejection?

Debra was raised in a home fraught with tension and deeply fractured relationships between family members. She was also taught to believe that the biblical stories behind the Jewish holidays were mythical tales. By the time she went to college, Debra had grown into an angry and rebellious young woman; she used drugs, dressed provocatively, and lied constantly. At the same time, Debra devoted years to searching for spiritual truth and meaning through Hinduism, Buddhism, transcendental meditation, and other paths that promised enlightenment. Then she met Michael, a kindred spirit and nice Jewish boy.

Her hopes in that relationship, however, were dashed just one month later when Michael became, in Debra’s eyes, “a Jesus freak.” Although disappointed, Debra couldn’t deny the genuine change she saw in Michael’s life, which made her open to listening to a passage from the New Testament he wanted to read to her. She was immediately absorbed in the story of the woman caught in adultery in the book of John, and when she heard Jesus’s words, “He who is without sin among you, let him be the first to throw a stone at her” (John 8:7), something opened within Debra, and she immediately began to weep. Within seconds, she knew this Jesus was different from Buddha, Krishna, and all the other “gods” she had learned about. She recognized Jesus’s words as the voice of God.

She knew the history between Jewish people and Christians, and she knew the stakes, especially concerning her family. So, she prayed, asking God that if this Jesus truly is the Messiah, he would prove it to her personally and confirm that she was pursuing the right path.

The next day, she was invited to a meeting and sat in front of a five-year-old boy and his mother. When the speaker asked if anyone needed prayer, the mother raised her hand and said her boy was deaf in one ear. Laying his hand on the boy’s ear, the man simply prayed, asking God to heal the boy’s deafness in Jesus’s name. Debra recalls what happened next vividly: “Right there, in front of my very eyes, I saw this little boy get his hearing. And when I saw that it was done in the name of Jesus, that’s all I needed!”

Debra’s joy turned bittersweet when her mother exploded with fury at the news and expressed deep resentment toward Michael, whom she held responsible for influencing her daughter. She quickly called the rabbi and set up an appointment for both Debra and Michael, hoping he could dissuade them from Jesus. When that didn’t happen, the rabbi told Debra’s mother that the couple was on the verge of a nervous breakdown, in a cult, and that they were “potential Nazis.”

After Michael and Debra got married, Debra wanted to call her mother to tell her how happy she was with her loving husband, but the conversation went south, and Debra hung up, enraged and ready to cut her mother out of their lives. But Michael’s gentle response put things back into a holy perspective for Debra: “Deb, call your mom back and apologize for hanging up. We are going to love your mom.” 

Today, in the eyes of Debra’s mother, Michael is one of the best men walking the face of the earth—next to her grandson, of course. God has redeemed Debra’s childhood and teenage trauma by multiplying the joy, peace, and wholeness in her marriage and family that she had always yearned for as a child. In all of Debra’s seeking, Jesus had been pursuing her the whole time. 

Theology—Michael Rydelnik

Is Isaiah 53 about Israel or the Messiah?

Raised in a Jewish family deeply shaped by the tragedy of the Holocaust, Michael viewed faith in Jesus not only as a betrayal of the Jewish people, but as theological nonsense not worth the breakup of his already broken family. When his mother openly professed and practiced her faith in Jesus after twenty-five years of secrecy, Michael’s father divorced her, and Michael’s world was torn apart. Furious at the breakup of his family over such “ridiculous” notions, Michael grew determined to prove to his mother that she had been deceived.

One day, Michael and his sister picked up their mother from her Bible study and met the Messianic Jewish teacher, Hilda Koser. Michael’s first thought was that if he could convince her that Jesus was not the Messiah, then his mother would surely give up on this “foolishness” in which she was entangled. He began to meet with Hilda to study and, of course, argue about messianic prophecy.

Seeking to disprove Jesus’s messianic claims, Michael turned to the Hebrew Scriptures, convinced that they would expose the error of believing in Him. To his surprise and dismay, he sensed that Hilda’s theological explanations made more sense of the biblical text than his reasons for why Jesus couldn’t be the promised Messiah.

Slowly—and uncomfortably—Michael’s investigation began to get personal and not merely intellectual. Hilda asked him, “What do you do for forgiveness when you sin?” The question prompted an even deeper Bible study specifically into the need for blood sacrifice for the forgiveness of sins, which drove Michael’s investigation to Isaiah 53 and the atoning sacrifice of the suffering servant.

After much prayer and wrestling with the text alongside Jewish objections to it, Michael became persuaded that the suffering servant could not refer to Israel but to the messianic and righteous representative who would suffer in the place of Israel, his people. After all, verse 8 says the servant died “for the transgression of my people, to whom the stroke was due” (Isaiah 53:8). How could Israel die for Israel?

After seeking divine confirmation, Michael came to believe that Jesus is not only the promised Messiah but also his personal Savior, as theology is never isolated from the personal.

After coming to faith, Michael’s sister was furious with him because she had wanted to believe in Jesus but said he had kept her from it—which goes to show the power of personal influence! But praise God, Michael’s sister also put her faith in Jesus that same afternoon, and Michael went on to have an enormous influence for Jesus on thousands of students as professor of Jewish Studies at Moody Bible Institute.

Traditional Jewish Objections to Isaiah 53

While traditional Jewish objections to a messianic interpretation of Isaiah 53 include that the servant’s suffering describes Israel’s historical persecution at the hands of Gentile nations, that the grammatical features of the Hebrew text do not require an individual referent, and that a suffering, dying Messiah contradicts the expectation of a triumphant, conquering redeemer, the dominant rabbinic objection is the collective interpretation. This view identifies the suffering servant as the nation of Israel rather than an individual Messiah. Notably, this collective interpretation was not widely applied to Isaiah 53 until the medieval period. Today, many Jewish people find the Jewish Messiah, Jesus, through Isaiah’s ancient prophecy. 

I Found Shalom Season 2 is Coming Soon

I Found Shalom features testimonies from Jewish believers who believe Yeshua is their Messiah! Hear stories of transformation, discovery of the Jewishness of their faith, freedom from addiction, and the revelation of truth and God’s love.

Watch the trailer and meet the faces behind I Found Shalom Season 2.