Plays On Word Radio
An in-depth look at the Word of God, the Plays On Word community, and the Plays - with original music - we perform, that are based on the Word of God. New episodes drop Fridays at 7AM EST! To find out how Plays On Word Theater can perform 'LIVE on YOUR STAGE' and to support this missionary & podcast visit: https://playsonword.org/
Plays On Word Radio
Ep 83: The Transformative Power of Faith (Part 1) - Jewish Believers and Their Faith in Yeshua
"Have you ever seen biblical dramatizations evoke profound emotions and resonate with an audience? Today, Rabbi Irving Salzman discusses the emotional impact of biblical dramatizations, his family's Holocaust history, and Jewish individuals embracing Jesus."
What happens when humor and reverence combine to express the life in biblical stories? Discover the answer as we sit down with Rabbi Irving Salzman from Beth Messiah Congregation in Livingston, New Jersey. Rabbi Salzman shares the transformative impact of a recent performance by Plays on Word Theater and the overwhelming positive feedback from his congregation. Hear firsthand how dramatizations of events like Peter walking on water and the healing of the woman who bled for 12 years resonated deeply with the audience, evoking profound emotions that lingered long after the curtains closed.
Journey with us as we recount an uplifting story of a woman finding hope amidst her story, inspired by a Bible scene depicting the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years. This moving narrative segues into the host's mission of encouraging the body of Christ. Delve into the rabbi's family history, from his family's experience during the Jewish Holocaust to his own spiritual transformation after a serendipitous encounter with a young born-again Christian.
Finally, explore the courageous journeys of Jewish individuals embracing Jesus as the Messiah despite the risks and challenges they face within their communities. From a poignant account in Lakewood, New Jersey, to stories of Jewish believers worldwide, this episode sheds light on the transformative power of faith. These testimonies of discovery and acceptance offer a profound look at the growing movement of Jewish followers of Christ and the impact of their newfound beliefs. Join us for an episode filled with heartwarming stories and inspirational journeys of faith and resilience.
PlayGrounds Guest:
Rabbi Irving Salzman
Beth Messiah Congregation
Plays On Word website
Plays On Word YouTube
Plays On Word Instagram
Plays On Word Facebook
Email us: team@playsonword.org
Lord you know. Hey guys, you are now listening to Plays on Word Radio.
Speaker 2:It's the best, we'll be right back. You're the only thing. You're the only thing. You're the only thing.
Speaker 1:Hello and welcome to Plays on Word Radio, where we discuss, analyze, work and play on the Word of God. Thank you for joining us on this excursion. Today let's join Pastor Teddy, also known as Fred David Kenny Jr, the founder of Plays on Word Theater, as he does a deep dive into the Word of God. I love you.
Speaker 2:We are here with Rabbi Ervin Salzman from Beth Messiah in Livingston, new Jersey. Beth Messiah Congregation in Livingston, new Jersey, and welcome to Plays On Word Radio Rabbi.
Speaker 3:Oh, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you, yeah, nice to be with you.
Speaker 2:We had a fantastic time on Shabbat a Saturday. We had a fantastic time on Shabbat a Saturday and we came out and visited you guys and brought the Pete play from Plays on Word and just initial thoughts. Before you saw the play Were you a little nervous. I know you had two of your congregants, james and Beverly. They were the ones I think they were the ones that came to you and said hey, you should have these guys come out and tell me your initial thoughts and then we'll get into it.
Speaker 3:Well, yeah, they did tell me and they had a really high appreciation for everything that you did that they saw at a church in the area. By the way, I don't know if you knew this, but I actually had wanted to come to that myself, ok, and it just didn't work. I think it was a Thursday morning, if I'm not mistaken.
Speaker 1:OK.
Speaker 3:You were there, yeah, and that was just a really, really busy week, so I was not able to get there, but we love James and Beverly so much and you and usually when they endorse somebody, when they give someone a ringing endorsement, usually they can be trusted, so I didn't have a lot of nervous anxiety getting into it. I will tell you, though, that I did see. A few years ago, we had someone come to our congregation and did a dramatic reading of the book of Revelation, the entire book, verbatim. But I really—and that was good, obviously the Word of God is the Word of God, but you did such a phenomenal job at bringing—at dramatizing the Word and bringing it to life, and I really, really loved it and appreciated what you did on Saturday for us.
Speaker 2:Amen, amen, thank you, yes, thank you for letting us come out and be fools for Christ. I didn't get a chance to what did your wife think? I didn't get a chance to talk to her. Did she have any thoughts? Because I think when we started, I think she was looking, or somebody was looking, from the direction you were sitting in. Was she in the back?
Speaker 3:I think she was. She probably was in the back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think she was in the back and I remember she was looking like what is this going to happen here?
Speaker 3:Well, I don't know. I didn't see her face, so I'll take your word on that, but no, she really enjoyed it too.
Speaker 2:Amen, yeah, we had. I got a lot of positive feedback from the people in the congregation. A lot of positive feedback. I mean the Word of God it's. I don't even bring it to life, it's already alive. You know what I mean? He's already alive in the Word and I let that life kind of just flow through me and that's what makes the difference. It's not really me, it's him. Some of the humor I saw the rabbi laughing at, some of the humor, which blessed me. You got all the jokes, man, and all the humorous stuff it was.
Speaker 3:It was really humorous, um yeah, but but you know it's I mean again the. It was in such, in just the exact right balance, because you had the wonder of what it must have been like to witness the ministry of yeshua, you know when, like when you were doing peter walking the water or you know, just amazing. So you had humor, yes, and I always love humor. By the way, I'm a big comedy guy.
Speaker 3:I love comedians and I always will, and I'm always listening to comedians on YouTube and I'm not averse to stealing a couple of lines when I'm here and there.
Speaker 2:Amen, I had to say something. Right, that's one of the favorite lines everybody steals. I had to say something. Yeah that's great, so it was just so great.
Speaker 3:You had humor, you had the wonder of what it must have been like, the reverence, you know, the amazement that the disciples would have had at various points. Yeah, you just captured it all. Amen, you really did.
Speaker 2:Yeah, there's the emotions of the Scripture. God covers everything and you know you'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll be—it'll seem like it's a suspense thriller at times, like what's going to happen, you know I mean. So we go through such a different range of emotions in the Scripture. That's one of the beauties of the Scripture is that it touches on all aspects of life so we can, going through that play, we touch on all those different aspects. How about the woman who was healed after bleeding for 12 years?
Speaker 3:Yeah, you know what? It's funny that you mention that because I have a sermon in the works on that particular passage that I started a long time ago. But you, just you know I think you're a pastor yourself I'll sometimes open up a Word document. I'll have a few thoughts about a particular passage. I'll write them down, you know, and I may not do that sermon that week and it might even last for a couple of years, but it's a sermon in seed form that I'll come back to on a rainy day and that is one of the passages that I have notes on because it really impressed me.
Speaker 3:One of my classes was Greek exegesis and we did Mark. We went through the whole gospel of Mark, and so that was one of the passages that we had to exegete, and there were some amazing things about that. That's what really attracted my attention to it, so that's been the ceremony these days.
Speaker 2:You laughed hard when Pete basically was talking. He said she'd be ceremonially unclean, she's not allowed to touch anybody and nobody could touch her. She might not have felt an embrace for 12 years. And then he pauses and then he looks at the audience and says, basically she's supposed to be social distancing. And you got that. You got me laughing again just now. Yeah, you got that right away. And Pete just sits there and looks and waits for people to catch on. Yeah, he said social, that's right, he brought you into the year 2020, from 2020 to 24. But people, they sometimes don't make that connection. Like you know Jesus, really, he healed her and she was so happy afterwards. There's no doubt she was ecstatic about that and the daughter was 12 years old as well. You know Jairus' daughter, so she had been bleeding for the same length that Jairus' daughter was alive. You know what I mean? It's just, oh man, the whole narrative section of that is just beautiful man, it's poetry.
Speaker 3:Well, I really like when you talked about social distancing, because you did bring it into 2024, and that's something that you know. That just shows the timelessness of the Word of God you know that it's not justit happened 2,000 years ago, but it's as relevant as the news headlines today.
Speaker 2:Right, it's fresh and it's accessible and God is accessible. That's been a blessing. I had one lady come up to me from the congregation. She said she and her sister had that part. That scene particularly the woman bleeding just gave her such encouragement because her sister had been dealing with some health issues and it just encouraged her to continue to seek the Lord, you know, and to be hopeful.
Speaker 2:And you know that's one of the things. I know that's my prime directive, just to encourage the body of Christ. That's my prime directive. That's my prime directive. And secondarily is to reach out to the people that are unsaved and let them know about Him. But primarily, I know that my heart beats to encourage the church to point them to the Word, point them to Him through the Word. You know getting to the Word and we had a young kid many years ago when we did a Christian school, a high school, and this girl comes up and she says you know, I never liked Peter, I never really liked him. But now I'm really excited to go back and read and go back and look at, get back into the Word, and for me that was. You know, that's gold right there. So enough about plays on word. Right now. Tell us about you. First of all, tell me your story, man. How did you come to follow Yeshua the Messiah? How did this happen? Where are you from? And just give me the rundown.
Speaker 3:Yeah, absolutely. Well, I should probably start the story with my dad. My dad was a Jewish Holocaust survivor from Poland. He went through the Holocaust. He had 200 people in his family and relatives that were killed by the Nazis for no other reason than that they were Jewish. He was an Orthodox Jewish household but they had to go into hiding and there was a polish farmer gentile polish farmer and his wife that actually took my dad, his mom and two sisters into the attic loft of their barn and they hid them there for 18 months.
Speaker 2:Uh, that's like the hiding place man.
Speaker 3:That's? Yeah, it was like the hiding place. So they were unable to survive the holocaust. And you know, had the polish farmer been discovered by the nazis, they would have killed him. That's like the hiding place, man. Yeah, it was like the hiding place. So they were unable to survive the Holocaust. And you know, had the Polish farmer been discovered by the Nazis, they would have killed him, his wife and his two kids. Yeah, so that was my dad's story. He went to Israel after the war and when he after Israel, he moved to Canada where he met my mom, got married there and I was born in Canada, in Montreal, and he was, you know, obviously they were.
Speaker 3:My parents were both committed to raising my brothers and me in a very strong, religious Jewish home. We celebrated all the Jewish holidays, we ate kosher. We conformed to the Jewish dietary regulations in our home. My dad sent me to a yeshiva, which is a rabbinical school. It's a day school, but it was run by an ultra-Orthodox sect of Hasidic Jews known as Chabad or otherwise known as Lubavitch. They were the Lubavitchers and, just to give some context, their spiritual leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe who died in 1994, by the way, but many of his followers thought that he was potentially the Messiah and in fact, even in Israel today you can find billboards with his picture and the Hebrew words long-lived King Messiah. So some of them still believe that he's going to come back and reveal himself to be the Messiah.
Speaker 3:But it was from one of those schools that I graduated. Not only that, but I served as a Torah reader in various synagogues in the Montreal community for about 15 years. So every single week I would read from the Scriptures, from the Torah, from the scroll, about four chapters in the Hebrew. According to the ancient melodies, I would have to prepare, like you know, three hours in advance. Actually, most people would prepare 10 hours, but God gave me a photographic memory.
Speaker 2:What a blessing it took me about three hours.
Speaker 3:It was a blessing, and so that was my life. Basically, I was committed to the truth of Orthodox Judaism. Well, by the way, if I'm going on too, long.
Speaker 2:Let me know, I don't know. No, keep talking, I love it Okay.
Speaker 3:So when I was 22 years of age, I was out of work one summer and so I would go to job interviews, look for different jobs, but in between I had time on my hands. It was the summertime, after all. Where I lived in Montreal, they had something called the telephone party lines, which basically were a bunch of telephone lines that were owned and operated by the phone company Bell at the time, and basically those were test lines, but they weren't really in use other than once in a while. The phone company would test them. But people were test lines, but they weren't really in use other than once in a while. The phone company would test them. But people discover these lines and usually thousands of people would call in on the lines. Usually men would be calling to meet women and women would be calling to meet men.
Speaker 3:Well, I was 22. I was a young guy. I wanted to meet a nice girl and I happened to get. It's hard to get through, by the way, because there's so many people calling in at the same time. But one day I happened to call in and I got somebody on the other line. I was 22. He was 16. He was a high school student, gentile, and he immediately said I'm a born-again Christian, one of the first things he said to me—well, I didn't Believe it or not.
Speaker 3:A lot of people did that to him. Yeah, okay, he was a brand new believer, pretty much new believer in the lord himself, but and he would call these lines just a witness to people wow, okay and so he got.
Speaker 2:God bless him.
Speaker 3:That's amazing oh, now here's the funny thing, though I love you know he, we spoke for about an hour. That initial conversation, for about an hour, that initial conversation we spoke for about an hour and he shared with me. He said he was a born-again Christian. So I really wanted to know what is that? Can you tell me what a born-again Christian is? And I have to tell you why it had piqued my interest. This was in about 1982. And in 1980, even though I was growing up in Montreal, canada, but not part of the United States, I was really interested in the US election campaign that was going on.
Speaker 2:Reagan and.
Speaker 3:Carter, reagan and Carter, and I was a big Reagan supporter Me too, and I liked the fact that Reagan and his base were very pro-life, pro-family, pro-israel Right, and those were my same views as an Orthodox Jew, so I really appreciated. You know, reagan and I had heard about the born-again Christians of the South that many of them were his supporters. So I had heard the term born-again Christian but I didn't really know what they believed spiritually.
Speaker 3:And so this young man offered me the opportunity. When he said he was a born-again Christian, I said, yeah, what do you guys really believe? And he shared his faith, spoke for about an hour and then I shared with him my belief in Orthodox Judaism and we agreed to disagree, but it was very friendly.
Speaker 2:Well, that's a blessing man. It wasn't any, no stoning or anything like that going on. No, no, no.
Speaker 3:And then at the end, before we got off with each other, he said he asked me. He said, could we exchange phone numbers? Okay, because he didn't know the person's phone number. Right, he wanted to call. He said, you know, maybe we could continue our dialogue.
Speaker 3:And I thought to myself you know what? I don't think I'm going to call him, but something made me give him my phone number and he began to call me every single week for a year, always sharing why he believed Jesus was the Messiah, not just for Gentiles, but that he came for his own Jewish people, and he would always share Messianic prophecies out of the Hebrew Bible. Now, the good about that was that these are Messianic prophecies. The bad part, the hard part, was that I accepted the rabbinic interpretations of those prophecies, and if the rabbis didn't believe that Jesus was the Messiah, then why should I believe that and why should I take it from this 16-year-old Gentile high school student? Not to cast any aspersions on him, by the way, but you know, when you're an Orthodox Jew, you trust us in the rabbinic authority, right? Right, that makes sense. And so this went on for a while, and one of the interesting things was that whenever he would share Messianic prophecies with me.
Speaker 3:I would always bring up the typical Jewish objections why Jesus couldn't have been that Messiah. And he couldn't answer my questions on the spot many times. But he said, irving, that's a good question. Let me get back to you. Unbeknownst to me, he would go to the Jewish public library in Montreal looking up books in the library unearthing, studying, researching the answers to my questions. He would spend hours in there and eventually he would call me up and say hey, do you remember that question that you asked me? Well, I got an answer for you and he would share the answer with me.
Speaker 3:This is patient evangelism, right here he sure was, and invariably I would ask him another question and send him straight back to the library. That's how it worked for a while, but anyways, one day he called me late at night it was about a year after our initial conversation and he said, irving and I could hear the timidity in his voice. He was a little fearful. But he said, irving, would you mind if I would share something to you from the New Testament? Share something to you from the New Testament?
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, so this whole time he's only just coming straight out to the Old Testament, to Torah, yes, exactly.
Speaker 3:And he thought to himself you know, irving's an Orthodox Jew, I have to restrict myself to the Old Testament, right? And you know, it was late at night. I was lying in my bed, I was practically asleep. But you know, he said, could I read something to you from the New Testament? And I said, sure, go ahead. He read.
Speaker 3:I don't know why he chose the passage that he did, but he read the entire Sermon on the Mount, matthew 5 through 6 and 7. And by the time that he had gotten through reading that, it was like somebody had dumped a ton of bricks over my head. It was unbelievable. And I have to say there were a couple of things that really impressed me about the Sermon on the Mount. First of all, the wisdom and compassion with which Jesus spoke. Yeah, right, you know how he talked about, how he said you don't need to worry about what you'll eat tomorrow or what you'll wear tomorrow, because God even feeds the birds of the air and clothes the lilies of the field. And if that's true, how much more so will he feed you and clothe you, who are so much more valuable to you? And I thought, wow, nobody's ever talked with such wisdom and compassion.
Speaker 3:And the other thing that really impressed me about the servant on the hill was the authority which Jesus spoke and he said you have heard it said from ancients thou shalt not commit murder. But now I say to you that if you hate your brother in your heart, you've committed the essence of murder. And, by the way, there's a real contrast with the rabbinical literature which I had studied at the yeshiva in my rabbinical academy. And in the rabbinical literature one of the lines that you always see is this rabbi said in the name of that rabbi. One rabbi is always quoting another rabbi as his spiritual authority. By contrast, in the Sermon on the Mount, jesus claimed his own authority.
Speaker 3:Yeah, that's oh, but I tell you, You've heard it said, but now I'm telling you it's this way. And you know, the very last verse in the Sermon on the Mount is amazing because it says the crowds all marveled at him because he taught with authority, not as their scribes. That's exactly the way that I felt. I had never heard anyone speak with such authority. And that night inwardly I said to myself could Jesus really be the promised Jewish Messiah? Could we have been wrong about him?
Speaker 2:as a nation. That's a big step right. Just even the questioning, yeah, coming to the point of being able to even entertain the possibility. Bravo to you, man, wow.
Speaker 3:And then over the next three months, I vowed to myself that I was going to look at those Messianic prophecies of the Hebrew Bible and I was not going to filter them through the grid of rabbinic interpretation. I wanted to see what the Word of God said in its own context. Wow, I wanted to see what God said, not filtered through any rabbinic authorities. Right and over time I saw Isaiah 53 and these prophecies that spoke about the Messiah, and about three months later I came to the firm conclusion that the only man in Jewish history that could have been the promised Jewish Messiah was Jesus of Nazareth, and I received him as my Messiah and Savior.
Speaker 2:Wow, but that is absolutely incredible. The story, the way that it unfolded for you and so many you're very much like Saul of Tarsus was as far as being well-versed in the Hebrew scriptures. So now, from this point, what happens, man? I mean because now you know the truth, the scripture is lit up, you're filled with the Holy Spirit. Who did you tell? How did your family respond? What happens? Tell us the rest of the story.
Speaker 3:It's funny that you say that because before I was the rabbi at Beth Messiah Congregation, I used to work for a ministry, a Jewish ministry called Chosen People, and so for 14 years I spoke at probably about 700 churches in 14 years and sometimes they would have after the service. They would have Q&A, like questions and answers. Pastors would ask me Irving, is it okay if we have a Q&A period afterwards, that way people can ask you questions about your testimony, about your life and so on and so forth. The number one question that I always got was how did you come to know the Lord? The number two question was what did your family have to?
Speaker 2:say yeah, buddy, yes sir. We're all waited with bated breath to hear this man.
Speaker 3:I yes, sir, we're all waited with bated breath to hear this man. I got my popcorn out and everything, man, tell me the rest of this story, man. So, yeah, it was not easy. I mean I can tell you that when my father found out he was so, you know, like I said, he went through the Holocaust. He lost 200 people in his family at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators.
Speaker 3:And you know one thing that some people in your audience who are listening to the podcast or will hear the podcast may not understand about the Jewish mindset, but you know, my father actually believed that those Nazis and their collaborators, you know those Gentiles, he believed they were Christians. He didn't know any better. Many of them were raised in the church. Some of them were altar boys, right, they had church upbringings. They were, you know, not believing Christian homes, but Christianized homes, if you will, or Christendom, if you will. And so my dad, in his mind, these were Christians that were persecuting our people. And so when he found out about my faith, and particularly when I was going to be immersed for my faith, baptized, he said Irving, they killed 200 people in my family and now you're becoming one of them, yeah. So he was greatly disturbed, he felt betrayed, he was upset, he was hurt, and I had similar experiences with my grandmother and other uncles and a couple of my uncles. Anytime I'd come into the same room with them, they would leave the room in disgust, wow.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's. I mean, similar things happen to people, just even Gentiles, when they come to Christ, and their family members are often like you know what? Now you're one of those weird wacko Jesus people. And that's what Jesus was talking about when he said you know, separating, I'm here to, I'm going to cause a division, man, in your families. Wow, man, so, so, dad, that must have been a hard conversation. I mean, did you? What'd you just say? Guess what Pop, I'm a, I'm a Christian. Now I'm, you know, you, you, you haven't left Moses, you haven't left Judaism, you haven't left, you haven't turned your back on Israel at all. But that's the maybe, that's the concept, that's the idea, because it's so bound up in identity. You know, I have a relative that is so bound up in their identity being Catholic. It's like to even consider anything outside of Roman Catholicism is to betray your family and your heritage and you betray everybody. And it's tough, man, that sounds like what you had to deal with.
Speaker 3:Yeah, very much. So it took. It took years to win my father over, because that was the notion. You know, their impression is that you're not Jewish anymore, right? So it took years to establish in his mind that I was every bit as Jewish as I always was.
Speaker 2:Amen.
Speaker 3:And at a certain point they're forced to conclude. Well, you know he might be deluded about who the Messiah is and you know, in his mind he might think Jesus is a false Messiah. But he saw that I was every bit as concerned for Jewish holidays, for the state of Israel. I had my son circumcised. So he, you know, he saw that. You know, and my family other family members saw, irving remains Jewish. He still identifies with his Jewish heritage. So he has not turned his back on his heritage, despite being a believer in Jesus. Right, because that is the notion that they have. Wow.
Speaker 2:That's incredible. I mean, just the story alone is just, it's fantastic. And I would assume there are and I've heard stories that there are a lot of folks, a lot of Jewish folks, that do come to the realization that Jesus is the Messiah, he's the one that the scriptures talk about, but I forget where it was. Some friends of mine told me oh, my buddy Mike, reverend Mike. He told me that he was in Lakewood, new Jersey, doing an outreach and some lady came up and I think she was part of the Orthodox Jewish community. He told me that he was in Lakewood, new Jersey, doing an outreach and some lady came up and I think she was part of the Orthodox Jewish community, and she came up and she was very paranoid.
Speaker 2:She said would you guys pray for me? I believe in Yeshua. No, but I can't let my—she, potentially, is under threat, physical threat. Yeah, yeah, her husband or whoever you know. She was afraid for her life. Yeah, and they prayed.
Speaker 1:But there's a number of Jewish folks that have come to know the truth and I've gotten a lot of reports, even like from Israel. There are a lot of people coming to Christ. We'll be right back. We know that you're the only thing. This program was made possible by the Plays on Word family of supporters. To find out more, check out our website at playsonwordorg.
