Believing Yeshua Was the Most Jewish Thing I Could Do
This Jewish fitness trainer was falling apart after 20 years of New Age spirituality
by Jews for Jesus | April 01 2026
Jeff was born and raised in a secular Jewish home in the US. At the age of twenty-four, he moved to Israel where he learned Hebrew and worked on a kibbutz. He returned to the US, but over the years he made frequent trips back to Israel, where he met his wife, Yael. Wherever they made their home, he remained spiritually restless. Today Jeff and his family are believers in Yeshua. Here Jeff tells part of his story:
That’s when Yeshua revealed himself to my wife, my eldest son, and to me—all at the same time, but individually. Over the course of a month and a half, we heard about Jesus everywhere: from people we met, books that were handed to us, billboards, TV series, stories of radical redemption and healing, and more. One day I visited a church and heard a message from the New Testament Scriptures describing how a voice from heaven said of Yeshua, “This is my beloved son; hear him.”
That’s when I knew that it wasn’t enough to be interested in or impressed by Yeshua. I needed to turn from my arrogant attempts to live life on my own terms and trust and follow Yeshua with all my heart. At that point God blew my heart open. He saved me from despair and gave me—and our whole family—a brand new life.
One of the ways I knew that God had made a radical change in my life was a sudden, insatiable desire I had to read the Bible. I can’t say that the messianic prophecies brought me to faith in Yeshua, but without a doubt they strengthened my faith and affirmed my commitment to tell others about him.
I have a lot of great conversations with Jewish people and I continually hear: We don’t need Jesus; we have Moses. But God knew we would need another prophet like Moses, and not only because Moses was going to die. God knew that a huge portion of the Law of Moses would one day be inapplicable along with the temple and many other aspects of life that the 613 commandments covered.
Yeshua came before the temple was destroyed. In the aftermath of that destruction, I only see two choices: we can choose to believe that oral tradition is the ultimate authority on how to live Jewishly, or we can see that Jesus is that ultimate prophet of whom Moses spoke and we can follow him.
The day when I heard the message of how God spoke from heaven telling people to hear his son, I did not realize that God confirming the promise of Deuteronomy 18. But now it is so clear to me that Moses was pointing beyond himself to the Messiah. And I know that believing in Yeshua is the most Jewish thing my family and I could do.
Jeff’s story was excerpted from David Brickner’s book, Does the Jewish Bible Point to Jesus, and used with permission from Moody Publishers.
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