What does "Welcome Home Baruch" mean? One can only guess since there has been no answer.
Baruch wrote his story and it was published on the Ex-JFJ site. His story is no longer there, but perhaps Baruch wishes his story still was there?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
7 comments:
I wish his story still was here!
I tried to put this on "Contact Us"
and it didn't go thru, putting it here:
I went to a meeting of Jews for Judaism when I was in Los Angeles and told my story briefly to Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz. In 1971 I was enrolled in the beginning of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's House of Love and Prayer Yeshiva on 9th Avenue and Judah in San Francisco. A Hebrew-Christian missionary wearing a yamaca named Bill Bardo came in seeking to preach to converts. He told me later that he was from a parallel Jewish-Christian ministry to the Jews for Jesus from Healdsburg with a Hebrew name which I unfortunately forget (I now have a learning disability, bad memory, possibly Alzheimer's). I ended up following him back in my mother's car to her house at 29 West Clay Park where I was staying, grabbing my sleeping bag, and going with Bill to a Christian "house" in Petaluma called Berachah House, part of House Ministries, Church of the Open Door, a bookstore on Miracle Mile in San Rafael, Pastor Kent Philpott, associated with Moishe Rosen and Jews for Jesus, then in Corte Madera, later on Taraval Street in San Francisco. They said they would take me to a Jews for Jesus meeting, they never did.
I accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Master at a service led by Kent at a Church of God in Petaluma but left during the first week, sleeping in my sleeping bag in the attic, over the issue of masturbation--my "mentor" had "one sin I can't give up". Berachah House rules: "No: drugs, sex, rock-and-roll, drinking, smoking, or cursing." My next church added: movies, mini-skirts, hotpants (or any pants on women), makeup, jewelry, public swimming pools, porn, abortion, birth control, LGBT, leftists, science, medicine, technology, education (other than "Christian"), psychiatry, country-western and rock music, civil rights, Eastern religions (or any non-fundamentalist Christian religion, "mainstream" Christian churches (like Harvard and Yale Divinity Schools and the GTU)(even the fundamentalist Southern Baptists and Pentecostals sometimes opposed each other over the
"Holy Ghost" doctrine) (competing for members and money), the World Council of Churches, Catholics, Jews, atheists, Quakers, hippies, women's liberation, gay liberation, Communism, "Hellywood", and were pro-"White Power", "White Aryan Resistance--WAR", white supremacists, Ku Klux Klan, George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party from Chicago, right-wing militias and death squads, Christian Identity, Protocols of the Elders of Zion,
anti-Semitism, white racism, Holocaust denial, snake-handling, miracles, faith-healing, "Posse Comitatus", fascism, authoritarianism, totalitarianism, male chauvinism, imperialism, colonialism, exploitation, capitalism, and slavery.
I went back to my mother's house and my sister put me on the phone with psychiatrist Dr. Bradman, who asked, "Do you want to go to a mental hospital?"
Having not ever heard of one, and feeling the need for punishment of some kind for not being able to keep the vow I had just made to Christ, I agreed, and spent three months in the mental hospital at Ross General Hospital in Ross, CA, the wealthiest town in California, diagnosed with "acute anxiety reaction", but no meds.
The first man I met there had also just come from Berachah House. Another young man appeared carrying a Bible, and they showed me where he had slit his wrists on the same hand. I can see how he needed to be there. The definition for involuntary commitment by the Lanterman-Petris-Short Act is 1)danger to self or others and 2) gravely disabled; unable to provide food, clothing, and shelter. When
I went to the Succoth celebration at the House of Love and Prayer, picked up a a beautiful blonde secretary, and brought her back to my bedroom and fucked her all night they decided I was OK. I think maybe that was the primary thing my family and the medics were worried about--the sudden abandonment of all sexual activity when before I went to Berachah House I was always dating. I really only took Psych 1A at Yale, but I think that's what Freud says.
My parents had rented me the whole bottom floor of a beautiful house in Kentfield near the hospital and College of Marin where I was taking classes; a psych tech from Marin General Hospital and his girlfriend lived upstairs. I also had a job nearby helping build a redwood house for an architect/housebuilder. But one day I ran into an old roommate, Laurie, who had converted from Krishna to Christ, and preached to me, and I didn't have it figured out enough to run. We went to Moishe Rosen's in Corte Madera on Paradise Rd. and Sam Nadler (who had rented us our apartment on Potomac on SF before he was "saved") was there(he was in Liberated Wailing Wall)(and later I went over to Simpson Bible College and he was going there) but Laurie got in a fight with Moishe over her daughter and we left and went to Berkeley.
In Berkeley some street preacher invited me to black Pentecostal Christ Holy Sanctified Church of
America, Inc. on 58th and Telegraph with Bishop Ulysses and Junior King and Emile and Lily Jackson (now Memorial Tabernacle Church) and for six months I was the only white member. My new psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Walsh came to visit, and asked me why I had stopped taking the anti-depressant, Sinequan, he had prescribed one a day. I told him Reverend Jackson told me to stop them on faith and he left and never came back. There was a black woman there I considered marrying, Louisa Lewis, whose grandmother had committed her when she became a single mother while working on her Masters in sociology at Cal. I couldn't stop masturbating to pornography, and they wouldn't let me marry the woman who had first preached to me, Cynthia ("Strawberry") Harrington, from Dallas, who I had made it with at the Dallas Pop Festival after Woodstock (and she got me in backstage at Led Zeppelin), before she was a Christian, even though she came all the way to S.F., so she left. Jackson said, "You just want to marry her because her baby could be yours." In retrospect, the church could never deal with white hippies. Years later she called me and said, "I inherited a million dollars and I'm flying around in my cousin's plane." Yeah, don't marry her, and she was a Christian, preached me into it, and wanted to marry me, "always loved me". William Blake: "Making their rounds/The priests in white gowns/Binding with briers/My joys and desires." At 58, I'm still childless and my fifteen-year marriage to Laurie Senit failed, and I blame the three years I spent celibate in the church. And all my non-Christian friends have grandkids and are much more successful. That's why I'm an atheist.
So I backslid from the black church, and got in my car to follow Cynthia to Colorado Springs. On the way (feeling guilty and hell-bound) I stopped at a whorehouse in Nevada and made it with a hooker named Angel, who I still remember, she was so nice, and seemed to understand. No one had loved me the whole six months I was in that crazy church. No love except the hooker, and that was a "sin" that had to be kept secret and "repented" for. Also during that time Tina, who I had made it with once, had looked me up, invited me over, and tried to seduce me. I kept thinking about Joseph and Potiphar's wife and ran out the poor girl's door. Luckily, now that she's in her 60's and has a grandson she's still friends with me and of course she's never accepted Christ but is still into psychiatrist Dr. Arthur Janov and rock star John Lennon's Primal Therapy and is working on her dissertation for her Ph.D. in Social Work on breast-feeding at Cal. It's a huge regret that I didn't have sex with her that night because I believed the church's interpretation of that antiquated book--of course she was right and I should have. Of course, hindsight is 20/20. She's the type I should have married, not Laurie. And they're both Jewish, but she was a hippie chick. Hey look, all Christians are "straight" or "square"--I guess Bob Dylan and Donna Godcheaux are exceptions that prove the rule. What's wrong with Baba Ram Dass (he's Jewish) and Hinduism? Or whatever you or your sex partner(s) want? (I'm sorry--I've got a noisy audience having a debate in this computer lab).
Cynthia was living at Dale Street House, and a woman there decided that I needed to connect to Pentecostals, took me to a charismatic Methodist, who said, "If you've committed the unforgivable sin, I have," (Jackson had given me a book by A.A. Allen documenting "Spiritual Suicide" and I'd identified with that fear-mongering crap) (nothing bad happens)
(for masturbation?!) (Onan?!) and then she took me to the Sunshine Coffee House. They invited me to the Sunshine House, Sunshine of Colorado Springs, Inc., an outreach of Lighthouse Temple, neo-Pentecostal, Pastor R.G. ("Mad Dog") Dunbar, where I spent almost three years. I was forbidden to leave--I guess it was a Jonestown-type cult. I had worked my way up to "Music Minister" and played guitar when the pastor's wife played the organ during the song service and sat on the dais with the deacons. Psychiatrists Dr. Walsh and Dr. Bradman's partner Dr. Auerbach got my parents to come out and get me during a prayer retreat at my house walking distance from the church. I was fasting and praying and "waiting on the Lord" like they told us, and I thought I was supposed to go with my parents. But I wound up for four days in a locked ward in Belmont Psychiatric Center. There was a man there who had tried to cut off his penis because the Bible says to
cut off your member if it offends you. So this was the second time my family had put me in a mental hospital for being a fundamentalist Christian. In the locked ward they take away "sharps" and matches and the attendants light your cigarettes through an opening in the door. If you make your bed and follow the rules they let you out.
In the process of being put away I had run over to the Hog Farm in Berkeley. When I started at Lighthouse Temple we were told to cut off our "old friends" and not communicate with them (a lot of them still resent that). After about a year they changed the teaching and told us to "go out [to the communes] and bring them in" and when a church member was going to visit his cousin in Costa Mesa [near Calvary Chapel, where the "Jesus People" was "started" by Chuck Smith]and said I could come he agreed we'd go "witness" to the hippie communes in northern New Mexico.
At one friend's in New Mexico he told me where Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm were in Berkeley and it was a few blocks from my old church and of course, I thought, "That's the way God planned it/That's the way God wants it to be." When we went to the church Jackson said to invite the Hog Farmers. A few of them came to the service, but couldn't stand it, and walked out in the middle. One of them listened to my whole preaching spiel, got out a whole diorama of Bible pictures, played and sang gospel songs with me on guitars, played a reggae record, and then showed me a book called "Warriors of the Rainbow", showing a Native American having a vision of the white peyote bird, and told me, "That's what I believe in." Having seen that myself when I was younger, later I realized that he was right.
I did a lot of talking to "old friends" and a lot of reading and studying of writing about philosophy and religion and I came to conclusion that basically, the church was wrong and the psychiatrists and my family were right. I might add, that basically my life has been much better since I left the church, although of course I wish that I had never listened and fallen under their spell and joined it. It's similar to the sucker who buys a "lemon" from a used-car salesman.
You can be just as "spiritual" or "moral" with any religion or spiritual path, or your friends, or reading on your own. I read recently, "All paths of truth and love go to the same goal." Psychiatrist Dr. Richard Shadoan, Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF helped
my father give me $100,000 to go back to UCI and get into the Information and Computer Science Major and I worked for awhile in Los Angeles as a web developer and programmer. Even though I said that my 15-year marriage to Laurie Senit failed, much of it was quite beautiful and enjoyable, and I don't think I would have been able to achieve it as a church member, certainly in those days, without a fundamentalist President. She's always been pretty much a Chabadnik--that's just the spiritual trip she prefers, who knows why? "To each his own/It's all unknown," Bob Dylan wrote once. One of the Hog Farmers told me Tina might be at Wavy Gravy's House for Christmas, and when I went over, his wife was
going like, "You're a member," and I had asked her
to join on an impulse in an email. They could be fooling, but it's something that a lot of people would like to do, and I probably wanted to do since Woodstock, although you don't win any popularity contests, although neither did John Lennon or Abbie Hoffman.
I wanted to add, I never was on the JFJ staff, but once I went to a "Charismatic Jews Conference" at Columbia University, and I was talking to a JFJ, and Mike Evans, leader of Texan Hebrew-Christians B'nai Y'shua was speaking, and he convinced me that I had the "gift of healing", and I got in the prayer line, and prayed for the people coming through, and "laid hands" on them as they walked by us (though I didn't get paid anything) and imagined that I felt some kind of "force" or energy or "healing virtue" flow out of my hands into these suckers, though in retrospect I guess it's mass hypnotism. I read that Freud called fundamentalism a "group reaction formation". In three years I never saw a real "miracle" or "healing" or "faith healing" but lots of fakes ones. I've read of evangelist-healers who have secret earphones with people reading the rube's medical records to them
so they can pretend that "God" told them their diagnosis. Rachel Moulton, the Sunshine elder's wife died young of cancer, I imagine because she got a faith healing instead of going to the oncologist.
In those days in Lighthouse Temple it was considered a sin, a lack of faith, you could go to hell, to go to a doctor, even for a check-up. I didn't have a check-up for three years. When I backslid and caught an STD from going to a hooker after three years of Christian celibacy, the fact that I had gone three years without a checkup freaked out all doctors.
It doesn't make sense for an Ivy League Jew from a socially-prominent upper-middle-class family. It became chronic prostatitis and I think caused the learning disability, bad memory, possibly Alzheimer's, as well as lifelong sexual problems.
Of course I feel justified in blaming the church, but who cares, nobody else is unlucky enough to listen and join!
In that same trip to the East Coast for the Columbia Charismatic Jewish Conference where I met the Jews for Jesus, a man invited me to Hartford to try to get me to join his little church, and took me to Pat Robertson's 700 Club TV Studio and into Robertson's office to hit me up for money. It makes me ashamed to remember it. In Hartford, at the minister's house, one of the young parishoner's came up to me and confessed: "I couldn't help it--I just went to a porn movie!" Same as me.
Adding this to the last comment:
ERIC ABRAHAMSON'S IT AND (SOFTWARE) SALES RESUME
Eric Abrahamson, Yale University, Pierson '71
P.O. Box 1112
Berkeley, CA 94701
510-809-1369 x6149
ericabrahamson@aya.yale.edu
ericabrahamson2@horizon.csueastbay.edu
ericabrahamso@hotmail.com
http://www.EricAbrahamsonsBlog.BlogSpot.Com
http://www.hotjobs.yahoo.com/resumes/ericabrahamso/resume/xxxxvii
NetID: ap6645
Gentlemen:
I am writing in response to the position in your internet ad. I feel I would be an asset to your organization. After Yale University Class of '71 (www.yale.edu), I completed three years of the Information and Computer Science Major at University of California at Irvine and California State University, Northridge and I am attending California State University, East Bay in Hayward as a senior Computer Science Major to finish my final year of the B.S.C.S. with a $12,000/year financial aid Stafford loan and a Pell grant which I'm asking to be increased to $19,000/year. I was a junior Computer Science Major at CSUN, withdrew to have some operations, and my family cut off my $60,000/year trust fund (at UCI I got $100,000/year, not including credit cards) except for Blue Cross PPO, meds, and medical bills. I also applied to Cal, the University of California at Berkeley (www.berkeley.edu) to be a senior in the College of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for Fall 2007; I heard April 30 that I wasn't accepted because I should have applied to the College of Letters and Science. I tell them that if I do well enough and the financial aid (I'll get off my SSI) holds out I may become the oldest grad/professional student seeking perhaps a joint degree with two of the following: M.D./J.D./M.B.A./Ph.D. in Computer Science or Music from Cal and/or Ph.D. in Medical and Biological Informatics from UCSF. I went from UCI to Cal State because of low grades even though I got straight A’s in Lowell High School, have an I.Q. of 159, and got B’s (High Passes) at Yale because I have a learning disability, a bad memory, possibly Alzheimer’s, I think from the chronic prostatitis I caught at age twenty-six. I have five years of programming experience and two years of sales experience. I am applying to Silicon Valley companies like Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Google, and Sun for such positions as software engineer, database administrator, and programmer/analyst. I want a six-figure job. December 11, 2007 Resume Update: My computer science CS 3120, Programming Languages Concepts, Professor Hilary Holz says I did very well on the midterms [my expression is “aced”], that I make a positive contribution to the class, that I was always on time for class, that she wants me to go for a Masters, and that she thinks I’ll succeed.
I met Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm (www.wavygravy.net) when they were security at the Woodstock Music Festival and lived with them on their commune in Llano, New Mexico. I hung out with them in Berkeley, and I attended Adult Camp at their Camp Winnarainbow (www.campwinnarainbow.org, www.skypilotclub.com) in Laytonville three times. I worked security with them and the Hells Angels at pop festivals, and they also are backstage for the Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh and Friends, and Bobby Weir and Ratdog (www.dead.net). I was a lifelong friend of Hog Farmer Little Richie Shirley, who I met at Woodstock, who worked in the Dead’s backstage crew and whose wife Andrea worked in the Grateful Dead office and is head cook at Camp Winnarainbow. Wavy Gravy, his wife, Jahanera Romney, Ram Dass, Bobby Weir, and Dr. Larry Brilliant also have an opthamological blindness project in Nepal and India called the SEVA Foundation financed by benefits by artists like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Loggins and Messina, Buffy Ste.-Marie, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Odetta, The Band (that backed up Bob Dylan), John Lee Hooker, Kris Kristofferson, and Sweet Honey in the Rock. I am volunteering for the IT Director. I am taking the Eudora emails, putting them into Excel or Notepad, and putting those into The Raiser's Edge nonprofit fundraisers' management database software. I also play lead guitar and sing a Jerry Garcia Tribute in a Grateful Dead (and other bands we like) cover band with originals: The Eric Abrahamson Band. I am CEO, President, Chairman of the Board, CIO, Boss, Owner, Founder, and God, of EricAbrahamsonsBoutique.com, an ecommerce international business offering licensed Grateful Dead Merchandise, downloads, and electronics. For the last fifteen years I have been married to Laurie Senit, a Hollywood actress and comedian with a B.A. in Psychology from UCLA (she got straight 'A's' in M.F.T. grad school at Pepperdine University, was a Penthouse Pet, and was invited to the Playboy Mansion).
I would like to impress you with my family's prominence. My mother, Lucille Abrahamson, was elected to the San Francisco School Board for six years and served two years as President, worked in the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Childcare under Mayor Dianne Feinstein, and was appointed to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission by Mayor Frank Jordan, the former police chief. My sister, a Bel-Air lawyer, worked in the White House as Assistant Chief-of-Staff to Vice-President Bush and is Chairman of the Barbara Bush Literacy Campaign. She also worked on AIDS research as a board member of the Jonas Salk Foundation at UCSD in La Jolla, is a board member of the National Geographic Magazine, and runs a thinktank, the Jefferson Institute. My brother-in-law, Jonathan Aronson, is a USC Professor of International Relations, formerly department director, and Executive Director of the USC Annenberg Center for Communications. My father, James Abrahamson, who still lives at 29 West Clay Park in San Francisco, is a retired restaranteur and institutional furniture salesman and has a B.A. from Stanford University in Economics. My brother-in-law got his Ph.D. from Stanford University and his B.A. from Harvard University. My sister got her J.D. from Boalt Hall at Cal, her Ed.D. from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, and her M.A. in Art Education from the Stanford University School of Education. I was also accepted to Stanford University as a freshman, and UCSC, but chose to attend Yale University instead.
I would like to share my enthusiasm for this position with you. You will never find a better or more dedicated worker. I am a dynamic people person and am well-liked by my co-workers. I would be pleased to become part of the team. I work hard, love computers, am a strong programmer, and have excellent verbal and written communication skills. I have an IQ of 159, am the world's greatest IT executive, and am truly the best and the brightest.
I will be pleased to discuss my background in further detail upon meeting with you in person. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
Sincerely yours,
Eric Abrahamson
COMPUTER SKILLS:
LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP), Visual Studio 2005, Visual C#.NET, Visual C++.NET, Visual Basic.NET, Visual C++, VB, ASP.NET, VBScript, JavaScript, PERL, Mathematica, Lisp, Ada, PL, CGI, Java, Enterprise JavaBeans, MFC, COM+, ADO, GUI, RMI, CORBA, Site Server Commerce Edition, HTML, DHTML, XML, MathML, C, Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL, Assembly, SQL, Visual Studio.NET Enterprise Developer, FrontPage, Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop, Drumbeat, Frontpage, Visual InterDev, Webmaster, Ecommerce, Windows DNA, Intranet, Multi-tier, Software Engineer, SQL Server, Access, Filemaker Pro, FoxPro, Windows XP Professional, Office 2003, Windows 2003 Server, Apple Macintosh OSX, VMS, UNIX, LINUX, Solaris, Game Programmer
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
6/2007 - present PACIFIC PETITIONS, San Francisco, CA and LONG HAUL INFOSHOP, Berkeley, CA
Petitoner
I petiton at Farmer's Markets, Flea Markets, stand outside supermarkets, etc. They tell me petitioners can make $400-$600/day, $5000/week, $24,000 in three weeks, or $60,000 in two months; doing well by doing good.
2/2007 - present PEACE ACTION WEST, Berkeley, CA
Phone Canvasser
End All War For Our Grandchildren--$20/year
FORESTS FOREVER, San Francisco, CA
Phone Canvasser
Global Warming and Save The Sequoias
TELECOMM, INC., San Francisco, CA
Telesales Representative
Phone Sales of the S.F. Chronicle--$19.99 for 52 weeks
11/2005 - 3/2006 INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY, Los Angeles, CA
Inside Sales Representative
I loved this job. I sold subscriptions on the phone to this competitor to the Wall Street Journal. Top salespeople made $2000 per week. I won the 'stops' sales contest where, if you make seven sales by Thursday at three, you get to call the stopped subscriptions, and you make more money.
8/2005 - 9/2005 e-QUIZitive, LLC, Los Angeles, CA
Medical Software Sales Executive
I sold MedQ web-based JCAHO (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) compliance software to hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices, nursing homes, staffing agencies, and independent nurses. The job ad stated the salary as $150,000-$200,000 a year. During this time I did much internet research about, learned much about, and became very interested in pursuing a career in software sales. I quit when at least ten business advisors from the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) of the Small Business Administration advised me by email to run from a company that couldn't tell me how many installed users they had who I could use as references when selling to my clients, and that had a commission 'hold back' clause in the contract, among other things.
6/2002 - 7/2003 CHABAD JEWISH CHARITIES, Westwood, CA
Telemarketer/Fundraiser
I did telemarketing/fundraising for this organization which presents the Chabad Telethon on TV every fall. My ex-wife Laurie got me involved, and she was working there recently. The building is located across the street from UCLA. We raised $36,000 in three months, breaking all sales records.
2/2002 - present SELF, Los Angeles, CA
Computer Teacher
I do tutoring at people's homes in basic internet, wordprocessing, spreadsheet, and database skills, as well as a little programming.
10/1999 - present ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY - L.A. CHAPTER, Los Angeles, CA
Database Administrator
I do this Los Angeles Records Controller Committee Chair volunteer job for this prominent computer society (www.acm.org, www.ieee.org) whose national branch accredits the computer science department curriculum in every university.
12/1996 - 1/2002 aNET COMMUNICATIONS, Los Angeles, CA
Web Developer and Programmer
I did web development in Visual InterDev, Drumbeat, and Cold Fusion and programming in Java, Visual C++, and Visual Basic. aNetCommunications is an internet service provider that does web hosting, web site design, and e-commerce solutions.
6/1996 - 12/1998 DR. BOB MATIRKO, Santa Monica, CA
Computer Consultant and Guru
I set up his computers, taught computer skills, and did medical transcriptions of psychological evaluations.
9/1995 - 6/1996 NEW MEXICO HIGHLANDS UNIVERSITY, Las Vegas, NM
Tutor/Computer Lab Assistant
I helped students with their programs and was responsible for maintenance ofthe NMHU Computing Lab. The lab at that time had ten Gateway P-100's and P-75's, about twenty 486 DX2 66's, and twelve printers, including two laser printers.
9/1993 - 6/1994 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, BAKERSFIELD, Bakersfield, CA
Instructional Computing Lab Consultant
I assisted students with the four instructional computing labs with VAX's, terminals, PC's, and Macs, maintained the labs, locked up, etc.
EDUCATION:
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE - Computer Science Major
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE - Information and Computer Science Major
YALE UNIVERSITY - Philosophy and Religious Studies Major
ericabrahamson - Ex Jews For Jesus Letter
Recent Entries
Friends
Archive
User Info
Ex Jews For Jesus Letter
« previous entry | next entry »
Mar. 8th, 2008 | 03:58 pm
I was web-surfing and stumbled upon your site. When I was in Los Angeles I attended a meeting of Jews for Judaism and told my story to Rabbi Bentzion Kravitz. In 1971 I was a rabbinical student at the beginning of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's House of Love and Prayer Yeshiva on 9th Avenue and Judah in San Francisco. A Hebrew-Christian missionary wearing a yamacha named Bill Bardo came in looking for prospective converts to whom to preach. He told me later that he was from a Jewish-Christian ministry from Healdsberg parallel to Jews for Jesus in which his parents were members with a Hebrew name which, unfortunately, I can't recall (I now have a learning disability, bad memory, possibly Alzheimer's).
Regretfully, I was taken in, and I wound up following him in my Mom's car back to her house where I was living at 29 West Clay Park, to her astonishment grabbing my sleeping bag, and going with him in his car to Berachah House, a Christian House in Petaluma, part of House Ministries, Church of the Open Door in San Rafael with the bookstore on Miracle Mile, Pastor Kent Philpott, associated with Jews for Jesus. They told me they were going to take me to the Jews for Jesus meeting with Moishe Rosen in Corte Madera, but they never did. Later JFJ had a store on Taraval St. in SF.
Instead they took me to a service at a Church of God in Petaluma where Philpott preached, and I went up in his altar call and accepted Jesus Christ as my Lord and Master, one of the worst mistakes of my life. I "backslid" immediately, as do most, primarily because the "mentor" assigned to counsel me admitted that "I still have one 'sin' I can't overcome - masturbation." I thought this was hypocritical. Berachah House had six rules (even before you "got saved"): No: drugs, sex, rock-and-roll, drinking, smoking, or cursing. The other two fundamentalist churches I wound up in in the next two years added: movies, shorts, revealing clothes, miniskirts, pants on women, hotpants, dancing, porn, public swimming pools, gambling, birth control, abortion, LGBT, women's liberation,
leftists, Communism, intellectuals, science, medicine, psychiatry, technology, education, evolution, civil rights, integration, Eastern religions, FDR, and they were pro: right-wing, Ku Klux Klan, George Lincoln Rockwell's American Nazi Party in Chicago, white racism, white supremacy, slavery, segregation, colonialism, imperialism, war, exploitation, fascism, authoritarianism, totalitaranism, male chauvinism, Holocaust denial, anti-Semitism, White Aryan Resistance (WAR), Aryan Homeland, Posse Comitatus, Militias, Right-Wing Death Squads, White Power, the John Birch Society, National Review, Protocols of the Elders of Zion, Daughters of the American Revolution, and other extremist right-wing organizations.
I went home and my sister put psychiatrist Dr. Bradman on the phone and he said, "Do you want to go to a mental hospital?" I'd never heard of one, didn't know what they were, and I guess I felt the need to be punished for not keeping the commitment I'd just made to Christ, so I said, "Yes," and spent three months in the mental hospital of Ross General Hospital in Ross, CA, the wealthiest town in California in Marin County. No meds and I wasn't locked in.
The first man I met had also just come from Berachah House. Another man came in holding a Bible and they showed me where he had tried to slit his wrist on the same hand. He really needed to be there. The Lanterman-Petris-Short Act about involuntary commitment describes 1)danger to self or others or 2)gravely disabled; unable to provide food, clothing, and shelter. My father rented me the lower floor of a beautiful house in Kentfield near the hospital and near College of Marin where I was taking classes from a psych tech who worked at Marin General Hospital, lived upstairs with his girlfriend, and observed me. As soon as I went to the Succoth celebration at the House of Love and Prayer, picked up a beautiful blonde secretary, and took her back to my bedroom and fucked her all night my family and the medics figured I was OK. I think that was the main thing that had them concerned--that I had suddenly stopped dating when I used to be surrounded by beautiful women. To this day, at the age of 58, I am still childless--my 15-year marriage to Laurie Senit was a failure--and I blame the three years of celibacy as a church member, I don't care. All of my non-Christian friends have grandkids to take care of them in their old age and are generally much more successful than me, I think because they never "lived on faith"--gave everyhthing and received nothing.
I was also working for an architect/homebuilder who was building a redwood house for a woman basically as a laborer trying to move up to carpenter. I ran into an old roommate who had converted from Krishna to Jesus and she talked me into going to Moishe Rosen's at Jews for Jesus in Corte Madera and Sam Nadler, who was in Liberated Wailing Wall and who had rented us the apartment where we'd been roommates on Potomac Ave. in SF was there. I later talked to Sam where he was a student at Simpson Bible College in SF. But Laurie got in a fight with Moishe about her daughter (he didn't much know how to deal with hippie kids) so we went over to Berkeley to a church she liked better called Messiah's World Crusade (I guess now defunct). Some missionary named Roberto got ahold of me in Sproul Plaza and invited me to black Pentecostal Christ Holy Sanctified Church of America, Inc. (now Memorial Tabernacle Church) on 58th Ave. & Telegraph with Bishop Ulysses S. and Junior King and Emile and Lily Jackson and I joined and was the only white member for six months.
There, too, I couldn't stop going out in my car and masturbating to pornography, and I was living with the Jacksons on 57th and Shattuck and going to Grove St. College on MLK and 56th and Jackson would tell me it was a sin and I was going to hell. He gave me a booklet called "Spiritual Suicide" by A.A. Allen about people that "lose their salvation" and "commit the unforgivable sin" and go to hell by sinning after they're "saved". So you can imagine I felt real good. I'd changed psychiatrists to Dr. Peter Walsh, who'd given me the anti-depressant Sinequan to take once a day, but Jackson told me to throw it away on "faith". Dr. Walsh came to church once and never came back.
A couple of women I'd known at the Hog Farm in New Mexico called me. The first, Tina, invited me over and tried to seduce me. She was right, but I'd been told it was a mortal sin, and I "fled", thinking about the story of Joseph resisting the advances of Potiphar's wife. I'm still luckily friends with Tina, who has a grandson, and is going for a Ph.D. dissertation in Social Work at Cal on breast-feeding. I know hindsight is 20/20, but I should have made it with her that night. Also, Cynthia ("Strawberry") Harrington, the person who first "witnessed" to me and led me to the Lord, who I had made it with before she was a Christian at the Dallas Pop Festival (she's from Dallas) after Woodstock, where she got me a backstage pass for Led Zeppelin, called me a came to church. I told Jackson she wanted to marry me and she was a Christian and he said, "No, you want to marry her just because her baby could have been yours," which makes no sense, so she went back to Colorado Springs alone. She always said she always loved me. Years later she called me and told me she'd inherited a million dollars and was flying around in her cousin's plane. Also at the meeting before that, "I've given up Christianity for Rastafarianism." I'd get the same type of BS from the "elder" at my next church about Christian women who liked me: "You're not old enough in the Lord yet." This is my answer for why so many Christians get committed to mental hospitals.
So finally I got in my car and headed for Colorado Springs to see Cynthia, on the way stopping at a whorehouse in Nevada and fucking a hooker named Angel, who was a sweetie. Cynthia was living in a Christian House called the Dale Street House. A friend of hers decided I should be with Pentecostals and took me to a charismatic Methodist in a church office who told me, "If you've committed the unforgivable sin, I have." Of course, nothing had happened; I hadn't been struck dead like Onan for masturbation--I hadn't been struck with lightning and the ground hadn't opened up. That song by the Doobie Brothers: "What A Fool Believes". Then she took me to Sunshine Coffee House who invited me to the Sunshine Christian House of Sunshine of Colorado Springs, Inc., an outreach of non-denominational neo-Pentecostal Lighthouse Temple, Pastor and Mrs. R.G. ("Mad Dog") and LaVerne Dunbar, a Jonestown and Waco-like religious cult. I was there almost three years.
I worked my way up to music minister and sat on the dais near the pulpit at the beginning of each service and played hymns on the electric guitar during the song service with the song leader and Sister Dunbar on the Hammond organ. Finally, while the Lord had led me to fast and pray for the "leading of the Spirit" in my house walking distance from the church, Dr. Bradman's partner, Dr. Auerbach, and my new psychiatrist, Dr. Peter Walsh, sent my parents to bring me back to see Dr. Walsh and eventually I wound up in a locked ward for four days at Belmon t Psychiatric Center. My father had said to stop paying tithes ("If you earn the money you can give it to the church--not with my money," and I thought the Lord told me to tell him to stop sending it to me; he wanted my grades from University of Colorado at Colorado Springs and I thought the Lord told me not to give them to him since I thought the Lord had told me to devote a lot of time during the semester to church work, such as rehearsals for our Christian rock band and choir, and I thought the Lord had told me to eat some of my roommate's food from our refrigerator, and he had complained to my parents. The locked ward was pretty rough--there was a woman who had survived jumping off the Golden Gate Bridge and a man who had attempted to cut off his penis because the Bible says to cut off your member if it offends you. They took away "sharps" and matches and the attendants lit your cigarettes through the door to the outside. I read the chart and made my bed and followed the rules and was out in four days, and just restricted to the hospital campus. A fellow patient made me suck his dick, which I had never done before, which I think was an element in my family and the doctors putting me there, because homosexuality was just about the worst sin you could do in our church in Colorado, but pretty much normal and current in the Bay Area at that time.
I feel like throwing this in: when I got out of Belmont I went back to the church in Colorado Springs, kind of confused about my religion. I was staying in a motel near the church and a traveling salesman offered me a ride home from the church service, pretended to get his car stuck on a country road, and gave me my first male blow job to orgasm in the back seat of his sedan, which I must admit was a memorable experience. And he was carrying a big Bible! Nothing is constant but change.
So this was the second time my family had hospitalized me for going to a fundamentalist church, but I must say in retrospect, I am thankful. In the process I had run over to the Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm House in Berkeley, where I had been once to "witness". I'll paste in my resume. Some of them are "original" hippies; I met them at Woodstock and lived on their New Mexico commune for about a year after.
When I first got to Lighthouse Temple they told us to "cut off your old friends" and old ways. Then, after about a year, they said we were "mature enough in the Lord" to "go out [to the communes] and bring them in". A church member named Ladd Hyatt was driving his new Toyota Celica out to Costa Mesa to see his cousin and visit Calvary Chapel where Chuck Smith started the "Jesus People"; I was invited and we decided to do a missionary trip and witness to the hippie communes in Northern New Mexico. We went to Alberto's, Long John's , La Joya, and New Buffalo. Alberto told us where Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm were in Berkeley or Oakland--I thought it was a miracle but it was probably a coincidence--it was just a few blocks from the church, Jackson's apartment, and Grove St. College where I had gone for six months in Oakland.
Ladd and I stopped at the church first and Rev. Jackson told us to invite the Hog Farmers to a church service. Some of them came, but couldn't stand it and walked out in the middle. I went in their house with the Asp bus parked in front and one of the Hog Farmers pulled out a diorama with paintings of many Bible scenes that you could unroll and scroll through. Then he played a Jimmy Cliff reggae record and we played some gospel songs on guitars together. Then he showed me a book called Warriors of the Rainbow with the picture of a Native American seeing a vision of the peyote bird on the cover and said, "That's what I believe in. I still believe in being a hippie." A very long time later I had to recall that I'd seen the same vision and that I agreed with the guy, and I still do--they all agree, generally. Like Baba Ram Dass. So I went in there to convert them to Jesus and they converted me to that hippie religion, whatever you want to call it.
I think that there were a number of prominent rock stars in the counterculture who got involved in the Jesus movement of the '70's who later became disillusioned and quit and recorded these transitions in the lyrics of their music, and I can name some: Kris Kristofferson, Paul Simon, James Taylor, Joni Mitchell, Eric Clapton, I think the former lead guitar of Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan (maybe is still in it--a JFJ?), Leonard Cohen, Carlos Santana?, I guess Donna Godcheaux is still...I'm sure there are more).
I have been much happier and more fulfilled since leaving the church. Psychiatrist Dr. Richard Shadoan, Professor of Psychiatry at UCSF talked my parents into giving me $100K/year when I got into UCI and I got involved in the Information and Computer Science Major and I worked for a while for an ISP in Los Angeles as a web developer and programmer. Although I said that my 15-year marriage to Laurie Senit was ultimately a failure, and I still blame the church, much of it was very beautiful and happy, while it lasted. And we both agree that, as she said, "We''re still friends and we'll always love each other." Actually, she's one of my best friends; we spoke by phone just yesterday.
When I emailed Wavy Gravy's wife, Jahanera, that I was moving to Berkeley, I just threw in spontaneously about joining the Hog Farm, like everybody else, But Richie had invited me for Christmas to look for Tina and when I showed up Jah was acting like, "You're a member!" She could be fooling, but it's a thrill playing along with it, even if it is a joke. I got to talk to Bobby Weir of the Grateful Dead and Ratdog for the first time, but not yet Phil Lesh, Billy Kreutzmann, or Mickey Hart. I'm going to paste in my resume:
ERIC ABRAHAMSON'S IT AND
(SOFTWARE) SALES RESUME
Eric Abrahamson, Yale University, Pierson '71
P.O. Box 1112
Berkeley, CA 94701
510-809-1369 x6149
ericabrahamson@aya.yale.edu
ericabrahamson2@horizon.csueastbay.edu
ericabrahamso@hotmail.com
http://www.EricAbrahamsonsBlog.BlogSpot.Com
http://www.hotjobs.yahoo.com/resumes/ericabrahamso/resume/xxxxvii
NetID: ap6645
Gentlemen:
I am writing in response to the position in your internet ad. I feel I would be an asset to your organization. After Yale University Class of '71 (www.yale.edu), I completed three years of the Information and Computer Science Major at University of California at Irvine and California State University, Northridge and I am attending California State University, East Bay in Hayward as a senior Computer Science Major to finish my final year of the B.S.C.S. with a $12,000/year financial aid Stafford loan and a Pell grant which I'm asking to be increased to $19,000/year. I was a junior Computer Science Major at CSUN, withdrew to have some operations, and my family cut off my $60,000/year trust fund (at UCI I got $100,000/year, not including credit cards) except for Blue Cross PPO, meds, and medical bills. I also applied to Cal, the University of California at Berkeley (www.berkeley.edu) to be a senior in the College of Engineering, Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science for Fall 2007; I heard April 30 that I wasn't accepted because I should have applied to the College of Letters and Science. I tell them that if I do well enough and the financial aid (I'll get off my SSI) holds out I may become the oldest grad/professional student seeking perhaps a joint degree with two of the following: M.D./J.D./M.B.A./Ph.D. in Computer Science or Music from Cal and/or Ph.D. in Medical and Biological Informatics from UCSF. I went from UCI to Cal State because of low grades even though I got straight A’s in Lowell High School, have an I.Q. of 159, and got B’s (High Passes) at Yale because I have a learning disability, a bad memory, possibly Alzheimer’s, I think from the chronic prostatitis I caught at age twenty-six. I have five years of programming experience and two years of sales experience. I am applying to Silicon Valley companies like Apple, IBM, Microsoft, Intel, HP, Google, and Sun for such positions as software engineer, database administrator, and programmer/analyst. I want a six-figure job. December 11, 2007 Resume Update: My computer science CS 3120, Programming Languages Concepts, Professor Hilary Holz says I did very well on the midterms [my expression is “aced”], that I make a positive contribution to the class, that I was always on time for class, that she wants me to go for a Masters, and that she thinks I’ll succeed.
I met Wavy Gravy and the Hog Farm (www.wavygravy.net) when they were security at the Woodstock Music Festival and lived with them on their commune in Llano, New Mexico. I hung out with them in Berkeley, and I attended Adult Camp at their Camp Winnarainbow (www.campwinnarainbow.org, www.skypilotclub.com) in Laytonville three times. I worked security with them and the Hells Angels at pop festivals, and they also are backstage for the Grateful Dead, Phil Lesh and Friends, and Bobby Weir and Ratdog (www.dead.net). I was a lifelong friend of Hog Farmer Little Richie Shirley, who I met at Woodstock, who worked in the Dead’s backstage crew and whose wife Andrea worked in the Grateful Dead office and is head cook at Camp Winnarainbow. Wavy Gravy, his wife, Jahanera Romney, Ram Dass, Bobby Weir, and Dr. Larry Brilliant also have an opthamological blindness project in Nepal and India called the SEVA Foundation financed by benefits by artists like Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Loggins and Messina, Buffy Ste.-Marie, Joan Baez, Peter, Paul, and Mary, Odetta, The Band (that backed up Bob Dylan), John Lee Hooker, Kris Kristofferson, and Sweet Honey in the Rock. I am volunteering for the IT Director. I am taking the Eudora emails, putting them into Excel or Notepad, and putting those into The Raiser's Edge nonprofit fundraisers' management database software. I also play lead guitar and sing a Jerry Garcia Tribute in a Grateful Dead (and other bands we like) cover band with originals: The Eric Abrahamson Band. I am CEO, President, Chairman of the Board, CIO, Boss, Owner, Founder, and God, of EricAbrahamsonsBoutique.com, an ecommerce international business offering licensed Grateful Dead Merchandise, downloads, and electronics. For the last fifteen years I have been married to Laurie Senit, a Hollywood actress and comedian with a B.A. in Psychology from UCLA (she got straight 'A's' in M.F.T. grad school at Pepperdine University, was a Penthouse Pet, and was invited to the Playboy Mansion).
I would like to impress you with my family's prominence. My mother, Lucille Abrahamson, was elected to the San Francisco School Board for six years and served two years as President, worked in the San Francisco Mayor's Office of Childcare under Mayor Dianne Feinstein, and was appointed to the San Francisco Human Rights Commission by Mayor Frank Jordan, the former police chief. My sister, a Bel-Air lawyer, worked in the White House as Assistant Chief-of-Staff to Vice-President Bush and is Chairman of the Barbara Bush Literacy Campaign. She also worked on AIDS research as a board member of the Jonas Salk Foundation at UCSD in La Jolla, is a board member of the National Geographic Magazine, and runs a thinktank, the Jefferson Institute. My brother-in-law, Jonathan Aronson, is a USC Professor of International Relations, formerly department director, and Executive Director of the USC Annenberg Center for Communications. My father, James Abrahamson, who still lives at 29 West Clay Park in San Francisco, is a retired restaranteur and institutional furniture salesman and has a B.A. from Stanford University in Economics. My brother-in-law got his Ph.D. from Stanford University and his B.A. from Harvard University. My sister got her J.D. from Boalt Hall at Cal, her Ed.D. from the Graduate School of Education at Harvard University, and her M.A. in Art Education from the Stanford University School of Education. I was also accepted to Stanford University as a freshman, and UCSC, but chose to attend Yale University instead.
I would like to share my enthusiasm for this position with you. You will never find a better or more dedicated worker. I am a dynamic people person and am well-liked by my co-workers. I would be pleased to become part of the team. I work hard, love computers, am a strong programmer, and have excellent verbal and written communication skills. I have an IQ of 159, am the world's greatest IT executive, and am truly the best and the brightest.
I will be pleased to discuss my background in further detail upon meeting with you in person. I look forward to hearing from you in the near future. Thank you in advance for your time and consideration.
Sincerely yours,
Eric Abrahamson
COMPUTER SKILLS:
LAMP (Linux-Apache-MySQL-PHP), Visual Studio 2005, Visual C#.NET, Visual C++.NET, Visual Basic.NET, Visual C++, VB, ASP.NET, VBScript, JavaScript, PERL, Mathematica, Lisp, Ada, PL, CGI, Java, Enterprise JavaBeans, MFC, COM+, ADO, GUI, RMI, CORBA, Site Server Commerce Edition, HTML, DHTML, XML, MathML, C, Pascal, FORTRAN, COBOL, Assembly, SQL, Visual Studio.NET Enterprise Developer, FrontPage, Dreamweaver, ColdFusion, Flash, Fireworks, Photoshop, Drumbeat, Frontpage, Visual InterDev, Webmaster, Ecommerce, Windows DNA, Intranet, Multi-tier, Software Engineer, SQL Server, Access, Filemaker Pro, FoxPro, Windows XP Professional, Office 2003, Windows 2003 Server, Apple Macintosh OSX, VMS, UNIX, LINUX, Solaris, Game Programmer
PROFESSIONAL EXPERIENCE:
6/2007 - present PACIFIC PETITIONS, San Francisco, CA and LONG HAUL INFOSHOP, Berkeley, CA
Petitoner
I petiton at Farmer's Markets, Flea Markets, stand outside supermarkets, etc. They tell me petitioners can make $400-$600/day, $5000/week, $24,000 in three weeks, or $60,000 in two months; doing well by doing good.
2/2007 - present PEACE ACTION WEST, Berkeley, CA
Phone Canvasser
End All War For Our Grandchildren--$20/year
FORESTS FOREVER, San Francisco, CA
Phone Canvasser
Global Warming and Save The Sequoias
TELECOMM, INC., San Francisco, CA
Telesales Representative
Phone Sales of the S.F. Chronicle--$19.99 for 52 weeks
11/2005 - 3/2006 INVESTORS BUSINESS DAILY, Los Angeles, CA
Inside Sales Representative
I loved this job. I sold subscriptions on the phone to this competitor to the Wall Street Journal. Top salespeople made $2000 per week. I won the 'stops' sales contest where, if you make seven sales by Thursday at three, you get to call the stopped subscriptions, and you make more money.
8/2005 - 9/2005 e-QUIZitive, LLC, Los Angeles, CA
Medical Software Sales Executive
I sold MedQ web-based JCAHO (Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) compliance software to hospitals, clinics, doctors' offices, nursing homes, staffing agencies, and independent nurses. The job ad stated the salary as $150,000-$200,000 a year. During this time I did much internet research about, learned much about, and became very interested in pursuing a career in software sales. I quit when at least ten business advisors from the Service Corps of Retired Executives (SCORE) of the Small Business Administration advised me by email to run from a company that couldn't tell me how many installed users they had who I could use as references when selling to my clients, and that had a commission 'hold back' clause in the contract, among other things.
6/2002 - 7/2003 CHABAD JEWISH CHARITIES, Westwood, CA
Telemarketer/Fundraiser
I did telemarketing/fundraising for this organization which presents the Chabad Telethon on TV every fall. My ex-wife Laurie got me involved, and she was working there recently. The building is located across the street from UCLA. We raised $36,000 in three months, breaking all sales records.
2/2002 - present SELF, Los Angeles, CA
Computer Teacher
I do tutoring at people's homes in basic internet, wordprocessing, spreadsheet, and database skills, as well as a little programming.
10/1999 - present ASSOCIATION FOR COMPUTING MACHINERY - L.A. CHAPTER, Los Angeles, CA
Database Administrator
I do this Los Angeles Records Controller Committee Chair volunteer job for this prominent computer society (www.acm.org, www.ieee.org) whose national branch accredits the computer science department curriculum in every university.
12/1996 - 1/2002 aNET COMMUNICATIONS, Los Angeles, CA
Web Developer and Programmer
I did web development in Visual InterDev, Drumbeat, and Cold Fusion and programming in Java, Visual C++, and Visual Basic. aNetCommunications is an internet service provider that does web hosting, web site design, and e-commerce solutions.
6/1996 - 12/1998 DR. BOB MATIRKO, Santa Monica, CA
Computer Consultant and Guru
I set up his computers, taught computer skills, and did medical transcriptions of psychological evaluations.
9/1995 - 6/1996 NEW MEXICO HIGHLANDS UNIVERSITY, Las Vegas, NM
Tutor/Computer Lab Assistant
I helped students with their programs and was responsible for maintenance ofthe NMHU Computing Lab. The lab at that time had ten Gateway P-100's and P-75's, about twenty 486 DX2 66's, and twelve printers, including two laser printers.
9/1993 - 6/1994 CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, BAKERSFIELD, Bakersfield, CA
Instructional Computing Lab Consultant
I assisted students with the four instructional computing labs with VAX's, terminals, PC's, and Macs, maintained the labs, locked up, etc.
EDUCATION:
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, EAST BAY - Computer Science Major
CALIFORNIA STATE UNIVERSITY, NORTHRIDGE - Computer Science Major
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA AT IRVINE - Information and Computer Science Major
YALE UNIVERSITY - Philosophy and Religious Studies Major
Dear ex-J4J People,
These stories saddened me:
http://www.exjewsforjesus.org/stories.html
In my experience all religious organizations tend to become abusive, as the leadership seeks to assert its authority over the subordinates.
I am very sorry you all had a bad time with J4J and that this has driven you away from Yeshua.
But once you have been in Yeshua's camp, you cannot easily leave him, even if you want to!
If you read my link below you will see how I had similar experiences in Orthodox Judaism.
I was not part of J4J, but when I lived overseas I used to attend a J4J weekly service. I did not like the pastor. I found him haughty and intolerant, and I felt there was something wrong about him but I couldnt put my finger on it.
A year later he was seen frequenting gay bars, and he was forced to resign. I felt vindicated, but of course the organization never apologized for the deception to any of us. Things just went on as usual, pretending nothing bad had happened.
I stopped attending their meetings after this.
I do hold Rich Robinson in high esteem. I think he is very thoughtful and sensitive. Perhaps he is imprisoned over there in San Francisco!
Here he is speaking on this website:
http://jesusfactorfiction.com/experts/rrobinson.html
Please read this:
http://jesusoverisrael.blogspot.com/2008/03/open-letter-to-jewish-friend.html
Thank You,
Michael Korn
ICE WATER -
Israeli Christian Evangelist.Worshipping Ancient Truth & Everlasting Righteousness
Blessings to you in Christ Jesus,
Michael and Elisheva Korn
http://jesusoverisrael.blogspot.com/2008/03/na-nach-nachma-nachman-meuman.html
J esus, ews
C hrist,omplete
C ares,hristianity
How did Baruch die? Where could I find his obit?
I need to locate Dr. Bradman. Is he still in Greenbrae?
Post a Comment