A BLOG ON MESSIANIC JUDAISM: 12/01/2005

MY TESTIMONY

Taken from the first chapter of my book (still a rough draft) "Crusades, from Eden to Armaggeddon".

In July 1973 I was at the airport in Paris with a one-way ticket to Israel. I was an idealistic young Zionist, and I had decided to go and bury myself in the “foundation” of the building of the land of Israel for the Jewish people. Accompanied with my older cousin and by my grandmother, I was waiting for my turn at the El-Al security check point in a long line of French Jewish tourists going to spend their holidays in the Holy Land, or to visit relatives. The plane was a little late and the security was being thorough, so there was some commotion of people complaining, when a stewardess reassured the people that we were going to be able to board very soon!

When my turn arrived, I was surprised to see that the volunteer checking the tickets and the carry-on luggage for weapons was one of my Zionist educators from the club I used to belong to. He smiled at me and said, “Going for a Holiday, huh? I smiled, and he continued his commentary by saying surprisingly, “But this is a one-way ticket!!” Yes I proudly said, I am making my “[1]Alliyah” I proudly said, I will spend the summer at my uncle’s in Tel_Aviv, and in September, I will join a boarding school-farm for new emigrants near Ashkelon in order to learn Hebrew!” (I had just turned 15!). The volunteer looked at me and said, “Are you sure this is what you want to do?” I was very surprised at the question, mostly because of the person who asked and I sid, “Well, isn’t it what I am supposed to do?!” For three years, when I was not doing school, I was at the Zionist club; I did not have any other friends, and my life revolved around the times that I could go there. I believe now that the reason for that was Jewish idealism mixed with my need to escape my very problematic home situation. I was living with my father, his wife and three children, and there were a lot of tensions!
I arrived with them when I was 12, and before that my mother who put me in a boarding school when I was 6 raised me. When I was 11, my mother found a boy friend with whom she went to live with in Marseille in the South of France, and left me at the school, hoping to come and get me later. I will always remember that famous summer. It was the end of June 1969, and the parents of the three hundred plus boys of this boarding school were coming to the boarding school to pick up their children and all their stuff for 2 and half months of summer holidays; during that time, the children where allowed to play all day in the big cemented court-yard. I three days time, I saw all the children going away one by one, until I was the only one left. I knew that my mother had had problems with cancer and that sometimes due to her health she failed to be able to pick me up on the once every two weeks week-ends parental visit, so I was wondering if she was sick again. In light of that fact, the school has as an emergency alternative the phone number of my father. When they called him, he told the school to give me directions to the apartment where he lived with his wife and three small children south of Paris, and that he’ll take care of the situation. When I arrived in these totally new surroundings, my father who I hardly knew announced to me while sitting at his desk that my Mom had gone to live far away, that she will try to come and get me in the near future, but that he thought it very unlikely. I was suddenly catapulted into a new unfamiliar world!

As an eleven years old child, this was quite a traumatic experience, but I mostly kept it inside. I tried to get some mileage out of it by getting my father to take me out of boarding school so I could live a “normal” life, and come “home” at night, like all the other kids do. I soon realized that I didn’t like home. The wife of my father was a very busy house wife working very hard to try to make ends meet, but also, she was burning the candle at both ends as they were saving money to buy a piece of land in Paris suburb to build a house on it and get out of their small apartment by a busy Paris avenue. I also didn’t buy very much into the shallow world of the teenage scene of the day. A cousin of mine introduced me to a [2]Zionist youth club. We sang songs, learned to read Hebrew, I played Israeli folk music in a band and learned to dance the Israeli cultural dances; we talked about issues of Jewish youth in the [3]dispersion; we also learned the accepted version of Zionism, stayed in tune with the politics of the middle-East situation as well as with worldwide anti-Semitism as was going on in Russia and against which we often protested in the streets of Paris. We also spent our holidays together in camp geared to Zionist training. I completely buried myself in this club where I felt acceptance, friendship, identity and a sense of fulfillment in every way.

To the opposite, life at home was very difficult and extremely depressing. My stepmother did not accept very well my intrusion into her planned life and made it very clear to me. I helped the best I could by doing endless house chores and taking care of my three small half brothers and sisters, as I was trying to “earn” my time to go out and be with my Zionist friends. When I turned fourteen, things had gotten so bad that I decided I needed to do something else. I had also started to learn guitar and got involved with the Paris hippy scene, towards which I felt very attracted. At that time, the idea of going to Israel sounded like the voice of “God” calling me away from “Pharaoh” and delivering me from the “slavery of Egypt!” At first, due to the unstable political situation of Israel, my father and his wife would not let me go, but I was determined and decided that I would make things difficult so they would change their mind. It worked, and I was now in line waiting to board a plane that was to take me to the Promised Land across the Mediterranean Sea. I spent the summer with my Uncle and Aunt in Jaffa, a suburb of Tel-Aviv, and enrolled in a special school for young emigrants. This was a boarding where you continued your studies as well as learned Hebrew. It was a farm, and you worked at the farm to pay for your studies and I loved it!

Not even a month after I enrolled, the Yom Quippour war started in September 1973. All the teachers were called to the front, and we only had the Hebrew teacher left who was supposed to teach all subjects to a class with students from France, Morocco, Russia, Poland, Brazil, Argentina, Bulgaria…and he only spoke Hebrew; he did a good job though, and we all learned Hebrew real fast! I eventually got in trouble with the school and had to leave. I then lived with my Uncle and got a job as a apprentice cook at the Tel-Aviv Hilton Hotel.

My Uncle was an awesome person. I really loved him, as he was different form the rest of my family. When in 1945 my family emigrated from Tunisia to France, he instead went to Israel. To the horror of his kosher-eating mom, He worked in shop selling delicates and pork meat to the Jewish American tourists from the West to the nearby beach resort of Bat-Yam; I thought that was very daring and controversial! He was himself an atheist, which added to the despair of his mom. He got his meat from Palestinian farmers near Haifa, and we sometimes visited them He was Jewish, but he had a beautiful relationship with these Palestinians; they treated him as one of the family, and were always happy to see him. He used to tell me how before 1948 (the day of the independence of Israel) the resident Jews and the local Palestinians worked and live together in peace, and you could hardly tell the difference between the two.

While getting to know the Israeli lifestyle, my Zionist bubble popped. I discovered that while claiming the occupation of the land on the grounds that God promised to them through Abraham, the majority of Israelis where atheists, and that whereas the West claims the constant Israeli victorious outcome in the wars with their neighbors as “miracles from God for His people”, an Israeli soldier or politician will very straightforwardly tell you that it is not God, but them who got the victory, them including the soldiers of what could be considered one of the most efficient army in the world, but also the financial and political help of the Jewish lobby worldwide, especially from Western countries. There also seemed to be a lot of manigance in politics, which for me was disappointing since I thought I was coming to the “Holy Land”, and away for the concepts of lying and maneuvering. What I felt disappointed most though was the hatred in the heart of the people. I understand the hurt of the Jewish people due to a history of persecutions, but they are not the only ones. Throughout history, not only Jews suffered intense persecution, but also blacks in America, gypsies in Bulgaria by the Turks, and in Central Europe by Hitler, Armenians, Kurds and Christians of all sorts throughout history, even until today! Whereas we need to claim and fight for our rights, we all need to get the victory over hatred and bitterness! In Israe, I discovered an adversarial relationship with the whole world; the attitude was that the world oughed to let them do as they pleased because of the past. They blamed the Christians for Hitler, as well as for the Russian pogroms (which had nothing to do with Christianity), they blamed and hated the arabs for their politicak instability, and looked down in a very condescending way at both the Arabs and the blacks which they considered lower races; their attitude towards the blacks is a big problem in Israel at present, as many black Jews have emigrated from Ethiopia, and they are considered lower class! Also, war was not fought for freedom and righteousness, but out of hatred and self-righteousness. After the war, I heard of a prisoner exchange involving four Israeli soldiers against hundreds of Arabs; I was shocked at the number when an Israeli told, “that’s the way it ought to be; one Jew is worth a hundred Arabs!”

More and more, I felt I couldn’t be part of this. In my search for the Promised Land and the people of God, I was searching for righteousness, love, nobility, and all the virtues that would make our world a better place. I know I didn’t have them myself, but I was bound to find them somewhere.
I returned to Europe, and after a brief visit with my father, I went to search for my mother. I stayed with her for some months, and in my despair I did what many young people did at that time and hit the streets as a hippy traveling vagabond, living of busking playing songs with my guitar. I was seventeen!

Life in the streets was lonely. I did not want to associate too much with the vagrant youth of that time, as they were in constant trouble with the police for stealing and drug possession. I wanted to be free, and going to jail was not my idea of freedom! I was often approached by Christians giving food who felt it was good on their Eternal Life “Resume” to win someone from the streets, but I was very sour on religion and didn’t care too much about it. I was actually sour on life itself, feeling that there was nothing in this world worth my hard labor, since everything we do dies when we do. I didn’t care about anything anymore, I just let go! I was sleeping on a small beach in Genoa, Italy, surviving daily on a small bottle of coke, a small pack of ten cookies, and a pack cigarettes.

This went on until I met another Christian who seemed different that the others. He had long hair and wore Jean clothes. Most of all, he didn’t seem phony; he didn’t look like he was playing the game of trying to be something he wasn’t! I also liked the tract he approached me with; I didn’t understand Italian at that time, but I could understand the picture. The illustration on the tract was a collage of two cartoon-like drawings: one of Hitler declaring war on the world while listening to Wagner’s music, the other one of a group of young people happily dancing around to the tune of a cheerful guitar player. The message was clear, music has an effect on people, negative or positive. While many of the young hippies in my days rather believed that all music is equal and good, I certainly disagreed with it; I believed (and still do) in absolutes and that while things can be positively inspired and provoking positive results in our surroundings, things can also be negatively inspired and provoke negative results in our surroundings, and that it was certainly true of music and art in general! As by a twist of “fate?” this young missionary called Davide was born of an Italian father and a French mother, so he could speak both languages fluently. Not really believing my initial rejection of his message under the statement that it wasn’t for me since I was Jewish, he invited me to come visit his house, which was a Christian missionary commune. There we talked a bit more, and he had me sing a couple of French songs on his big real-to-real recorder (this was in 1975!). He mostly showed me attention and care, which really touched and softened my heart, as I was lonely, and no one really cared for a poor dirty, stinky rebellious hippy youth! At the time when I expected it the least he said, “Do you know that the Old Testament talks about Jesus?’, I said that it was impossible, but he went on to read to me the fifty-third chapter of the messianic prophet Isaiah, which when I heard brought tears to my eyes. While I felt rejection and discouragement from every side, here there was someone who loved me so much that they would die for me in order to take me out of the miserable I was in. That very day, I received Jesus as my personal Savior and maybe for lack finding anything more worthwhile in my brief stay on earth, I decided to live the life of a missionary, and spend the rest of my days sharing what I had just found with as many people as I could., which I have been doing ever since!

It is then that I realized that the search for the Promised Land, for Jerusalem was something spiritual. My physical search for “Jerusalem”, my desire to serve God by taking part in building physical Israel and Jerusalem had left my heart empty and disappointed, but by finding the Jewish Savior, Jesus, I finally returned to the Promised Land, I returned to “Jerusalem” (Jewish people have a traditional song they sing at Passover saying “next year in Jerusalem”), my heart returned to the Creator that made it; in all of our feverish activities in order to satisfy ourselves, isn’t it what we all search and yearn for? For our souls to find the love and peace it needs through the return of it to its perfect match soul-mate Maker, its return to “Jerusalem”?

Patrick Lumbroso

[1] Alliyah: Hebrew term used by Zionists literally meaning “ascension” to describe the action of leaving your old life behind to become a new resident of the country of Israel.
[2] Zionist: Someone with the belief that every Jew should and eventually return to the land of Greater Israel (from the Euphrates to the Nile as under King Solomon) as promised to Abraham.
[3] Dispersion: Hebrew equivalent of “Diesporah”, term referring to the Jewish nation being being at that time dispersed in the world.