Despite my great fears of letting down all Jews past and present by abandoning tradition, I abandoned our tradition. Why? Because it did not appeal to me. Because neither my relatives nor my synagogue presented a tradition that I could feel part of. It did not capture my imagination.

For years, my Judaism was on hold. When I began to follow Yeshua, I knew that there was something significant in a Jew following his Messiah. But I couldn’t figure out what to do about it and no one else I knew had any idea either.

Years later, my imagination was captured by the writings of Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. He wrote about our tradition, and about people, with such warmth and joy. I began to realize that my tradition is not simply an accumulation of weight and custom, not a helpless waif begging for my attention, but a living, vibrant civilization and a conversation that has carried forward from one generation to the next for more than two millennia. From that day, I determined to enter that civilization and that conversation as a follower of Yeshua.

Little did I know that I would become involved with a group of Messianic Jewish men and women whose common calling is to live in a Yeshua-centered conversation with Jewish tradition, valuing the best of Christian tradition, and shaping a Messianic Jewish heritage to pass on to the following generations. I do not view them as links in a chain but as men and women capable of entering that conversation, both to receive and to give.