This testimonial was previously published on Izzy Avrahams site.
In the following article I’m going to share with you about my journey and the work I’ve been entrusted with – a mission that has already touched the lives of hundreds of thousands of people – but I thought I’d start here by introducing myself and telling a little of my story.
I am Canadian! I grew up in the prairie province of Saskatchewan, probably the Nazareth of North America. My grandparents were my heroes: hard-working, Depression-era pioneer farmers whose families had immigrated to Canada from the far western and eastern ends of Europe, some from Jewish families and some not. My Dad led a faith community and my Mom homeschooled me and my three brothers. I had a very happy childhood and spent much of my time reading books and building forts. I was a mix of serious and silly, present and playful.
Searching for answers
In my early teens several crises shattered my perfect world and set me on a quest seeking answers to life’s hardest questions. God became very real to me and I felt him calling me to spend much time with him and devote myself to prayer and the ministry of the Word, similar to the calling of Yeshua’s first disciples. For several years I spent hours a day and sometimes whole nights in meditation and study while working just enough to subsist. The inner work was intense! I fasted for months on end, eating only once daily, and at one point fasted altogether for over forty days with only my passion and the divine presence sustaining me.
”Yeshua began showing himself to me in very personal ways, with one of the most precious revelations being just how Jewish he is.”
My deepest desire was to experience as much of God as a man can in this life and to know the Master for myself, and I wasn’t disappointed. Yeshua began showing himself to me in very personal ways, with one of the most precious revelations being just how Jewish he is. There is so much I could say about that epiphany. I was led to start going to my local Conservative synagogue and there I began encountering Messiah in the midst of Judaism and the Jewish community. As part of my own journey following Yeshua in this way I learned Hebrew, spent almost a year in Israel, and reconnected with my family’s eastern European Jewish roots.
After meeting somebody at my synagogue who was Messianic I spent several years going through the Hebrew Roots and then Messianic Jewish movements. Since then I’ve come full circle and am back in the Jewish community where I feel most at home and closest to Messiah, practicing traditional Judaism. My passion to experience God and know Yeshua for myself hasn’t changed since my teens.
Starting the Holy Language Institute
I had been intensively studying Hebrew for several years and had read through the entire Hebrew Bible a couple times – not to mention several Hebrew translations of the New Testament – when in the fall of 2007 I sensed a calling to start teaching Hebrew classes across my home province of Saskatchewan.
I was reminded of the story of how Saul of Tarsus had a dream in which he saw an anonymous man from Macedonia begging him to come help them and took that as a sign that he should go to Greece. I wondered how many people were out there who were hearing the same things I was in the spirit but were isolated and didn’t know what to do next. Around that time I was excitedly telling a close friend about my vision when a massive semitruck drove past us with the letters TNK bannered across it. As you may know, that’s what Jewish people call the Hebrew Bible. I love big trucks so I took that as encouragement and proceeded to storm my province with the TANAKH! I prepared a ten-week Hebrew course and then drove to Saskatoon, Prince Albert, and North Battleford to introduce myself to pastors, put up posters, and reach out everywhere I could.
Over the next couple years I taught several hundred students at a Nazarene church, a Charismatic Bible School, the office of a Member of Parliament, and in living rooms, helping people get closer to Yeshua by learning to read the Bible he read. I also taught at the old Baptist church that my Grandfather once pastored, and there in his old office late one night I found a treasure that would go on to become a centerpiece of the Hebrew Quest course I would one day produce. But that’s a story for another time.
I wanted to put my lessons online and also needed a legal entity to run the financial side of my teaching activities through, and thus Holy Language Institute was born! Inspired by the great Christian Hebraists whose stories I tell in Hebrew Quest, I initially considered ’Hebraic Restoration’ or ’Hebrew Renaissance’ Institute but in the end chose ’Holy Language’ as an expression of my core passion to help people encounter Messiah through the holy language of his Jewish people. I applied to the Canadian Government to found an Institute and was approved, which is no small task.
I’m following Yeshua in a Hebrew way and HLI is my invitation to follow him with me, similar to Paul saying ”follow me as I follow the Messiah”.
