soon after, a pastor from Norway invited Shmuel to a pro-Israel convention, and he grew to become impressed to adopt seasoned-Israel activism in "response" to the dream. Shmuel centered the Africa-Israel Initiative to mobilize Christian leaders throughout Africa – counteracting anti-Israel media bias and speaking out in opposition t BDS and phony "Israeli Apartheid."
Shmuel led delegations to Israel and arranged large seasoned-Israel rallies and conferences throughout Africa – in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda, Congo, Ghana, Zambia, South Africa, Nigeria, and Rwanda. To demonstrate harmony with the Jewish americans, Shmuel would commonly put on a tallit and kippah while leading throngs in the streets with professional-Israel banners, t-shirts and Israeli flags.
speakme at a convention in 2014, Shmuel issued a clarion call to the African continent: "if you agree with in the Bible, you should love Israel," he mentioned, exciting the tremendous crowd along with his oratory ability and advantage of Jewish background. "God's covenant with the Jewish people is unshakeable, irreplaceable, immutable, irrevocable, and has no expiration date."
Shmuel believed that by honoring God's phrases to Abraham lots of years ago – "those that bless you, i will be able to bless" (Genesis 12:three) – a brand new spirit of creativity, wealth, and spirituality can be unleashed throughout Africa.
Hidden potentialmeanwhile, Shmuel turned into present process a substantive transformation in his personal non secular observance, along with his church sermons much less Christian in content and more and more greater about Israel.
This method accelerated in 2013 when, on a trip again from Israel, Shmuel seen a Jewish passenger carefully studying a publication. Intrigued, he approached the person and inquired; it was the garden of wisdom with the aid of Rabbi Shalom Arush.
back in Johannesburg, Shmuel discovered a Jewish bookstall and devoured the publication cowl to cowl. "I in no way realized that such wisdom existed," he says. "From a Christian perspective, we had been proficient to feel that the dynamic, flourishing non secular Jewish neighborhood had basically ended 2,000 years in the past with the exile – and that Christians were the new 'chosen nation.' once I read this e-book, I felt like a whole world of Jewish knowledge had been hidden from us."
Shmuel obtained every Jewish publication he could find, building up a library and sharing that knowledge together with his family. "It turned into like opening a floodgate," he says.
Shmuel purchased a Siddur and in 2014 the family started watching Shabbat. "for twenty-four hours, there became no work, no television, no browsing," says his oldest son Binyamin who became in high school at the time. "i was very into music, enjoying piano, and my band seemed on South Africa's received talent. however I put every thing on cling to study Shabbat. We'd sit down round gaining knowledge of Torah, after which on Sunday attend church."
in the future, Shmuel got here home and announced that the household changed into now keeping kosher. "We stopped buying meat, and as a substitute would go to a farm, purchase our personal cattle, and have it slaughtered as ideal we knew," Shmuel says. Then, given the Torah prohibition towards consuming animal blood, they might pour coarse salt on the meat and let the blood drain into their yard barbecue pit.
more and more, Shmuel shared Torah ideas together with his congregation. "My sermons attacked the fundamentals of Christian theology," he remembers. "I told the congregation that the Trinity turned into a man-made invention and that we may still pray now not to an intermediary, however to 1 God."
Shmuel pushed the envelope extra by way of instructing the church choir to eliminate the identify "Jesus" from the entire songs at Sunday services.
"My existence turned into torn in two," he recollects. "The greater Judaism I realized, the greater disconnected I felt from Christianity. We stopped celebrating the various holidays. After just about 30 years as a pastor, Sunday mornings had develop into my worst time."
The levee broke one Saturday evening in 2016. Shmuel couldn't sleep, and right here morning – whereas supplying the Sunday sermon – courageously broke the news. "I advised the congregation that I'd been doing research about my tribal heritage in Nigeria, and found that I'm Israelite," Shmuel remembers. "I told them: 'You're welcome to go at any place you need, however my family and i can't proceed training a religion we now not accept as true with.'
"Then I informed them that, positive immediately, the church became closed."
Chaos and commotion ensued. Some congregants seen Shmuel as a traitor and issued loss of life threats. other congregants approached him saying they desired to follow his Jewish route. So Shmuel fashioned a Noachide group and commenced assembly on Shabbat. sometimes, rabbis came from Israel to train them the fundamentals.
in the meantime, Shmuel redoubled his efforts for Israel advocacy. He resigned from the Christian group he'd established, and joined forces with SAFI – South African chums of Israel. There he found a kindred spirit in SAFI govt director Gavriel Sacks, whose mom had converted to Judaism.
Shmuel determined to turn into a Jew.
What concerning the Gordon household? "I didn't force anything else on them," he says. "I shared Jewish books and let them embark on their personal experience. My spouse turned into at the beginning skeptical, and all three youngsters at the time had been teenagers. but remarkably, they each and every found out the actuality of Torah for themselves."
With the household united in get to the bottom of to turn into Jewish, they met with the incredibly-revered Johannesburg Beit Din and have been permitted into the conversion program. They moved to a Jewish community, and underwent a daunting, two-yr manner. In August 2019, after a rigorous remaining examination in Beit Din, the Gordon family unit grew to become Jewish.
today, five of Shmuel's former congregants are present process the conversion procedure, and extra are anticipated to join. I ask Shmuel if it's a challenge, given the small number of blacks in the South African Jewish neighborhood. "The Jewish neighborhood welcomed us very speedy," he says. "We never experienced any kind of discrimination."
Binyamim, the eldest Gordon child, age 25, visited Israel these days for the primary time on an Aish program. "when I acquired to Israel, individuals have been talking a distinct language, yet every thing gave the impression so prevalent," he instructed Aish.com. "I felt like I'd been here before, that i used to be returning to a place I'd left long in the past. I'm home." he's now discovering at Ohr Somayach in Jerusalem and hopes to come back to South Africa this summer to prepare for aliyah.
OriElla, the Gordon's daughter, is currently in Jerusalem gaining knowledge of at Neve Yerushalayim college.
The youngest, Dovid, attends high college in South Africa.
As for Shmuel and Shoshana, they have eyes set on aliyah. "I'm hoping my whole family strikes to Israel, where i will be able to examine Torah the rest of my life," he says.
Shmuel is at present writing a booklet about his experiences, and desires to spread the easy of Judaism to as many as he can. As for his native continent, he claims: "The soul of Africa was stolen many years ago. If we can join with the Almighty in the correct method, amazing gentle will come to Africa."
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