I grew up in a Wesleyan and Pentecostal environment. My dad was a former Wesleyan Methodist pastor, my mom from was from a United Methodist church.
I never met anyone that I knew to be Jewish until I went to college. There were some Jews in my dorm - serious druggies. There were also a large number of Jews in the church I attended there, including a guy named
Barry Segal. We were housemates and became good friends during my Junior year. He moved to Israel in 1981 and a few years later I moved to my home town.
In historically black denominations, there is often a matriarch (or several) who wield much of the power in the congregation, and they are addressed as "Mama." In our congregation we had Mama Etta Merideth. (even though we were NOT an exclusively black church) She took a tour of Israel and came back declaring the congregation "MUST" observe the "Feast of Tabernacles." No one had any idea of what that was. The first year was a bust. The 2nd year she (mama Etta) planned an elaborate festival with guest speakers and ran for several days. She had planned a dance routine and my wife wanted to be in on the dance team. Since we had only one vehicle, I had to drive her to the church building and then go pick her up afterward. One of the days the rehersal was running over and I got to hear the music they were dancing to. It was Barry Segal. Mama Etta had visited his store "
Greetings from Jerusalem" and picked up a cassette tape. At that point, God grabbed me like somewhere deep inside my chest and said clearly "Go to MY people." I knew HE meant the Jews. So I looked and found out that in a nearby city (where I worked) there were 3 synagogues, Reform, Conservative and Yeshivite Orthodox. (black hats)
The Reform temple was closest so I started visiting there on Friday evenings. It was ok until I had a Saturday morning off and attended a Torah service, The drash was SO bad that I almost got up and walked out. I never went back. So I tried the Conservative synagogue which was not too much farther. (the Orthodox shul/yeshiva was way on the other side of town) I saw a flyer advertising a "Judaism 101" class which I immediately signed up for. My wife was getting rather skeptical but decided to sign up as well. So we found ourselves in the first term of that synagogue's official conversion class. We went thru the whole year-long curriculum, and many wondered if we were converting. (we were not and made that clear) We got to be good friends with the rabbi.
Things got increasingly uncomfortable with the congregation we were attending and it became increasingly clear we needed to move away. So in 1998 we packed up our home in Michigan and moved to the DC area to be part of the Messianic movement here.
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After joining a Messianic synagogue I got a look at a genealogy book published by relatives of my maternal maternal great grand mother. There were several Jewish (Sephardic) names mentioned but it was unclear where they actually fit in. (Poorly written book) About 5 years ago my youngest daughter decided to do DNA tests on many family members myself included. It turns out that on my dad’s side we are related to the Shapiro chassidic dynasty which was all but wiped out in WW2.
God led me to the Messianic movement due to a Jewish heritage on both sides of my family. Little did I know.
