Wednesday, March 28, 2007

Messianic Jews united by a building, faith in Jesus

Members of faith say beliefs, ties with Wheaton church have strengthened religious identity

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Chris Rossi⁄The Gazette
Members of the Messianic Jewish congregation lay their hands upon the Torah as Barry Gardner carries it during a Saturday service at First Baptist Church of Wheaton where the congregation is housed.
Messianic Jews who attend the Son of David Congregation in Wheaton say their love for Yeshua, or Jesus, has only strengthened their Jewish identity.

While a group of women danced in the front of the room, a group of men held hands and circled the small sanctuary in the First Baptist Church of Wheaton, singing songs in English and Hebrew during Saturday services.

‘‘My Yeshua, my Yeshua,” the people sang. ‘‘I give you thanks with all my heart. You suffered greatly for all my sins.”

Messianic Jews consider themselves Jewish but believe that Jesus was the Messiah prophesized about in the Old Testament of the Bible. Many of the 150 people who attend Son of David were raised Orthodox Jewish or even Christian. However, they do not believe that their Messianic faith is a conversion, but a better understanding of the truth.

Scott Brown, congregational leader for Son of David, started the congregation in 1989, but moved in with the First Baptist Church of Wheaton on Georgia Avenue about two months ago. He said the partnership has worked out well because they share a bond in Jesus. The two congregations met about 10 years ago when Brown visited First Baptist for a Passover seder.

‘‘I think there is a lot of curiosity, which is healthy,” Brown said. ‘‘But I see both [congregations] as faithful. I like the mingling.

While the Son of David Congregation’s move from its previous home at Twinbrook Community Church in Rockville has been harmonious, many members say their own journeys to Messianic Judaism has not been so smooth.

Brown, 52, said he grew up in Montgomery County attending a conservative synagogue and his family was much like any mainstream Jewish family. He said he began to take a strong interest in studying the Old Testament.

‘‘It wasn’t until I began to study the Scriptures personally that I began to recognize a Messianic figure continually cropping up in the text,” Brown said. ‘‘That began a lengthy personal investigation in the Scriptures and Jesus.”

In 1981, Brown said he started feeling torn between what he believed was the truth of Jesus and his own Jewish traditions, and began working with Chosen People Ministries, an organization whose mission is to bring Christians and Jews together under the common belief that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah.

Brown said his parents, now deceased, were first upset and shocked that he had accepted Jesus as his savior. They expected him to convert and lose his Jewish identity, but they found that wasn’t the case.

‘‘What [my parents] observed is that I became more and more absorbed as a Jew — enjoying holidays, raising their grandchildren as Jews and basically enlarging my expression as a Jewish man,” he said. ‘‘This led them to their own search of the Scriptures and they too recognized Jesus as the Messiah.”

Other Messianic Jews who attend services at Son of David say they also felt a tighter connection to their Jewish history and culture once they studied scripture and started believing in Yeshua.

Rockville resident Charlie Mann, 56, for instance, said he grew up in a reformed Jewish home, but spent much of his college years in search of a spiritual connection of some kind. All his searching left him unfulfilled until he met a man who taught him about Messianic Judaism.

Mann’s refurbished faith became more complicated during the early years of marriage to his wife, Judy, who had grown up in an Orthodox Jewish home and held on to many of those traditions. But with time and spiritual guidance, Judy Mann said it just started making sense to her, as well.

Judy Mann, 55, said the Son of David Congregation allows believers to act freely in their faith. ‘‘We honor Jewish roots, but we don’t have to be bound by laws,” she said.

While the Manns had developed a strong bond over their Jewish heritages, Brown said many of the couples at Son of David are actually mixed, in which one has grown up as a Christian and the other as a Jew.

Peter and Jorgy Gorog of North Potomac are an example. Jorgy Gorog, 52, was raised a Methodist under the guidance of her father, a minister, but she learned during a trip she took to Israel in 1981 that she has a strong love for Jewish people and their history. Her love manifested itself into Messianic beliefs when another Messianic Jewish leader visited her father’s church.

She started attending a Messianic Jewish congregation in Gaithersburg, where she met Peter Gorog. Peter, a 66-year-old Holocaust survivor who grew up in Hungary during communism, said he didn’t really have much of a religious identity at all. His ‘‘Jewishness” was purely ethnic, he said.

Peter Gorog said it wasn’t until he came to the United States that he felt the need to reconnect with Judaism. Only a few years after his reconnection, he said he met a man on the streets of Washington, D.C., who started talking to him about Jesus as the Jewish Messiah.

He said he was reluctant to believe the man who he thought might be crazy, but agreed to go to a Messianic Jewish service with him and was immediately captivated, he said.

Despite his belief in Jesus, Peter Gorog said he could never attend a church and feel the same spiritual connection.

‘‘[Christian churches] ... don’t propagate the Jewish ties, but if you take out the Jewish [history], there is not much left,” he said.

However, Brown, the Manns and the Gorogs all say that the First Baptist Church of Wheaton has welcomed the Messianic congregation. The Baptist congregation has already made plans to construct a new church in Olney. Associate Pastor Larry White said the plan is to have Son of David relocate to the new building as well.

‘‘The thing that is so amazing to us is by being around [the Messianic believers] and hearing their perspective, we get a deeper understanding of our own roots,” White said.

Jorgy Gorog said she would be happy to be able to move along with First Baptist.

‘‘[The church members] are so open and have a love for Israel,” she said. ‘‘They really rolled out the red carpet for us.”

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