SID: Hello, Sid Roth here with Aviad Cohen, and Aviad was known as 50 Shekel. And it swept the Jewish world, the non-Jewish world. When you were in Hollywood, you were actually invited to a Bible study. And this was kind of a new experience for you. What were your observations?
AVIAD: I was actually in Beverly Hills, and very nice people actually. Christians. I don’t think I really understood what Christians were, I just knew they believed in Jesus. Interesting Bible study. This was actually before I was 50 Shekel. And it was interesting because they were talking about all this scripture, but it completely flew over my head.
SID: Of course.
AVIAD: Completely flew over my head. Even if they talked about things in the Old Covenant, in the Tanach, in the Hebrew scriptures… These were Hebrew scriptures.
SID: You didn’t know from borsht.
AVIAD: No, not at all. Not at all. But then I’m Jewish, shouldn’t I know?
SID: Yeah, you should, but you don’t.
AVIAD: Exactly. Without Jesus, how would I? So they asked me, “Would you like to accept Jesus as your Lord and Savior?” And I was like “I don’t even know the Guy. I’m not going to do this.” The thing is, I just wished they would’ve shared with me the Hebraic roots of my Messiah, that they would’ve said “Hey, Jesus’ real name is Yeshua, ok. He’s the true Jew Messiah as prophesied in the Old Covenant. Read Isaiah 53, Zechariah 12:10. Check out Jeremiah 31:31. It talks about a New Covenant that God would make with His people, because they broke the Old Covenant.” So any Jew who hasn’t accepted Yeshua is under, it’s like an Old Covenant, it’s like a broken car – it don’t work.
SID: Ha! Ok, but they didn’t do that, you did not say “I believe in Jesus.” You thought they were a little mashuga, between you and me, a little crazy.
AVIAD: A little mashuga.
SID: Ok, so you’re back in New York, you’re saying “I want to identify even more. I want to be part of the orthodox Jewish community, I want to go to the Torah studies.” And one particular Shabbat, Sabbath, you went to a Torah study. Tell me about your recollection of that.
AVIAD: Actually I was staying at a rabbi’s house for the Shabbat; Friday and Saturday.
So Friday, we have a meal, go to shule, have a meal, go to sleep. Shabbat, Saturday, go to shule, come back to the rabbi’s house, have a meal. By the time I came back after the meal, I was all liturgied out, because there’s so much liturgy. All I was doing was “davon this, davon that.” You’ve got to do this before you davon that, before you go to sleep you’ve got to davon that, davon this, davon that, davon, davon, davon…
SID: Davon means to pray.
AVIAD: Yeah. And I can’t do this. I was like “Is this what it means to be a Jew? Is this what I’m supposed to do?” I didn’t even know what the term “liturgy” was at that point.
Now I do. And I was like “What is this?” And honestly, there were people all in the house, and I just broke down crying, I’m like “God! God!” Before actually, I told these guys, “This is too much for me. I can’t do this. I can’t do any of this liturgy. This is too much for me to do. This cannot be what we’re supposed to be doing.” And I started crying. I just cried and cried. And then I just went to the rabbi, I told the rabbi “I’m leaving. I can’t do this anymore.” He was like “You know something? You can’t leave.
You have to stay here.” I’m like “Why?” He was like “If you want to leave, you leave after Shabbat.” I was like “You’re keeping me against my will?” He was like “You stay here until Shabbat’s over.” I was kind of kidnapped; you know what I’m saying.
SID: He didn’t want you to walk or carry anything.
AVIAD: Yeah, to break his Sabbath. But you know something? Let me tell you something. We live in the United States of America, ok, and you can’t keep somebody, you can’t force somebody to stay at your house. It doesn’t matter. That’s religion. I wanted the truth.
SID: So what happened? What happened?
AVIAD: And that’s why I was crying in the rabbi’s kid’s room by myself with a box of tissues. I had my feet on the floor, like on the inside, just crying, crying out to God, “God please, please help me. Please show me the truth. Show me Your truth. This cannot be of You. This cannot be of You!” And I just had tons of tissues. And you know something? I have to reach out so much, I have to get to the point where I’m just like that’s it. Because all I want to do is be a nice Jewish boy, in that sense. I just wanted to fulfill that. I’m a Jew. I’m chosen. What am I chosen for? And so, I just cried so much. I’d never cried like that my entire life. Never, ever have I cried like that. And in order for you to get God’s attention sometimes, you have to be so desperate that you cry out to Him and you tell Him “I want to know You now!”
SID: Ok. The scriptures say, Jeremiah says “In the day that you seek God with all of your heart, in that day He’ll be found.” That’s where Aviad is headed. Don’t go away, we’ll be right back after this word.
