An Afternoon with *Elliot
I heard footsteps coming up the wooden steps on the small porch of my mother’s and stepfather’s old Victorian house. Then came a soft knock, and a polite voice called my stepfather’s name as a question. From the dining room, one could see the back door, and my stepfather said in a genuinely kind voice, “Well, hello, Elliot. Come in. What can I do for you?”
Though I had grown up in this small Midwestern town, I had lived in Colorado and overseas for a number of years and was now back for a visit. I did not recognize Elliot, who peered through the screen door into the dining room behind me, and said, “No, my shoes are a bit dirty. Do you mind if I borrow a couple of things from your garage?”
That my stepdad liked Elliot was obvious by the endearing way he replied, “Elliot, if the garage is open, anytime you need something, have at it.
Later that day, I asked my stepdad who Elliot was, because the accent in his voice was certainly not Midwestern. “He is our neighbor across the street,” my stepdad said, “with that large garden and all those carpet strips between the rows. I think he’s a retired teacher or something. I know this: he’s a lot smarter than I am. Some people think he’s a bit odd, but I like him.”
That evening, I stood in the backyard and looked over at Elliot’s yard. It was a large yard that had many different types of plants and vegetation, with tags on some plants and long strips of carpet to walk on between the rows. Peculiar, but obviously he had a purpose.
A couple days later, Elliot again came calling. Though he had been told he could just borrow tools from the garage, my stepdad said that Elliot would always ask anyway, because he was a gentleman. This day, as Elliot looked through the screen, he spotted a menorah and a shofar[1] I had brought from Israel on the dining room table. After saying he was going to collect a couple tools to borrow, he called in softly to my mother, “I see you have a shofar and a menorah.”
She said, “Oh, they are my son’s. He brought them.”
That night, I thought, Elliot’s Jewish. The accent, that’s East Coast, and he’s a retired educator. I prayed he would be open for a visit.
The following day, I noticed Elliot walking from his back door to go into his garage, so I walked across the street and formally introduced myself. He gave me a warm handshake and said, “I really like your mother and stepfather.”
Within a few minutes, I learned Elliot had been born in Queens in NYC. Though he was retired, the horticulture program from a large university in our area often had students who would come with a professor to visit Elliot. He would show and teach about some of the research he was doing with plants, seed germination, etc.
Elliot said, “Come sit, I’ll get some lemonade.”
Soon, we were both sipping from Ball canning jars filled with homemade lemonade, in which slices of lemon floated among the ice cubes. Elliot laughed as I held up my jar and said, “I see you have adapted to Midwest customs.”
Then I asked, “What’s a Jewish professor doing in this little farm town?”
Elliot looked at my eyes when I asked him that, then said, “How do you know I’m Jewish?”
“Well, you are from Queens, and you knew immediately that it was a shofar and menorah on my parents’ table.”
The next hour and a half was a real delight. I learned Elliot had grown up in an Orthodox Jewish home in Queens, but plants and sciences captured his attention, and he had rejected the strict religious adherence of Orthodox Judaism as he got older. Elliot confided that he had researched who Jesus was, as well, and concluded he was a revolutionary. Not in the militant sense, but one who challenged the prevailing religious world of His day, wanting to liberate people from a religion that had been corrupted.
I was curious as to the sources Elliot had used to come to such a conclusion. He commented that he had read it from some secular scholarly sources, and that to him it made sense, but others after the time of Jesus had turned Jesus into a god, a Messianic figure.
Elliot told me that he needed to use the bathroom but would be back in a couple of minutes, because he enjoyed the conversation. When he went inside, I ran quickly across the street and brought back two Bibles.
When Elliot stepped out of his back door, he smiled as he saw me sitting with the Bibles. “Oh, you’re going to convert me now,” he said.
I then asked if he had ever looked at prophecies in the Hebrew Bible that spoke about a special servant, a coming Messiah, and how they seemed to point to Yeshua, whom most call Jesus? Elliot said, “No, I rejected religion years ago.”
Elliot was honest when I told him I was surprised he came to his conclusion about Jesus without reading the primary sources that speak about Him: the Tanakh (Old Testament) and the New Testament. Sadly, it happens all too often that someone will make a decision about Jesus without reading the very clear prophetic words in the book of Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or the writings of Moses in the Torah, or the most detailed historical account of His life in the Gospels.
Here at Life in Messiah we have resources and articles showing the biblical texts that speak of the promised Redeemer for both the Jewish people and the Gentiles. You can contact us, and we would love for you to read from the Scriptures on your own, because we know the word of God is powerful. Do not rely on others when you are the one who God wants to reveal Himself to, personally, through the Scriptures.
I’ll always remember my afternoon with Elliot with a mixture of pleasure for a warm conversation with this dear Jewish man, and sadness at his conclusions about the One of whom Moses and the prophets spoke. I have wondered since that day if Elliot ever looked at the Messianic passages on the bookmark I left on his small outdoor table that afternoon.
Written by Jeff, Life in Messiah staff
Can you think of a time when you clearly witnessed God’s power working through the Scriptures?
Is there a Jewish or Gentile neighbor God has put on your heart to pray for, start a conversation with, or show hospitality to? What is one thing you can do this week to share Jesus’ love for them, in word or in deed?
If you would like to learn more about who Jesus is directly from the Scriptures, you can explore several prophecies from the Tanakh and what they reveal about the Messiah here.
Endnotes
*In order to protect our staff and the individuals we work with, we periodically alter names and faces in our publications.
[1] A menorah (a Hebrew word meaning “lamp”) is a seven-branched golden lamp used in the Tabernacle and later in the Temple (Exodus 25:31-32). There are smaller versions made for the home today. A shofar is a trumpet made from a ram’s horn and plays a prominent role in the celebration of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. To learn more about these holidays, visit our resource page on The Biblical Feasts.