Helen Stransky - January 31, 2008
Finding Religion II
Um, where--and, and clothing, you know, to be certain dressed, there was no need for that so then um, as far as identify with my parents, I couldn't. I mean I--yes, my parents were Jews but I couldn't go on like that and um, so then uh, I don't know, I well as I said I prayed about it because I um, and then uh, well, to me, this is, this is me and I asked God--I said, "Do you really have a son or..." I don't want to believe something because it's nice and it's comfortable. But I, you know, I prayed and I said, "What is the connection between Judaism and Christianity?" And uh, I woke up about--this--I think I was in Los Angeles at the time and I woke up, and um, I mean, I woke up at three o'clock at night and it's Shema, you know, that's the most important thing in Judaism--believing "Hear O' Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one," and Jesus spoke about uh, a rich man asked him what was the most important commandment in the--to observe and he said, you know, that "Thou shall love the Lord our God with all thy heart and all they soul and all thy strength and thy neighbor as thyself and on these two commandments rest the law and the prophets." So, I concluded I was right in my original beliefs and I went on that way. Um, it wasn't any great--the next day I went to see the man in this Jewish bookstore um, that I'd been studying a little bit of Hebrew and he says, "Do you know what's the most important thing is in Judaism?" and uh, then I said, "No." And he says, "Come," and he says, "see if you can read this," and it was the Shema and it was to me it was confirmation that Jes...you know, God had a son and okay, you can believe in him because that was what I'd been praying about and so I went on from there. There were, there were different things.
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