My Days in Ben Yishai
Posted by:
richardmgreen
()
Date: April 25, 2007 12:10AM
Monday, April 02, 2007
In the outset of this piece, I’d like to say that I didn’t know initially that Pastor Jack Hickman (aka. “Abba” – father - Yaakov Abensur) was gay. Hickman had always maintained that he was a celibate who was “complete by himself,” and didn’t need a wife or girlfriend.
Around the time I was living in Deer Park, LI after I moved in with fellow cult members, one of the people (actually the person who attracted me into the cult) told me about David and Jonathan that the Bible said that they loved each other more than any other men ever did and maybe “they did it.” I was mortified but ignored him.
That piece of information about Hickman’s being gay only came to me after I left Ben Yishai – Son of Jesse (later renamed Shoresh Yishai – Root of Jesse). Had I known that Hickman had a whole cadre of homosexual adherents, I would have left the cult before I did.
I had the dubious distinction of growing up as a teenager in that cult. I joined it when I was 14 back in ’73 and I didn’t leave it until I went to Israel in ’78 when I was 19. So I spent my formative years in this craziness and it impacted me for my whole life.
It took the intervention of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach to get me to come back into mainstream Judaism as I went to a yeshiva for a few months before I went to Shlomo’s Moshav Me’or Modi’in. I also went to a kibbutz to take an ulpan (a crash course in Hebrew) for about six months.
I stayed in Israel from May of ’78 to October of ’79. But my mother once commented to me about Ben Yishai “That was the best one you had!” So all of this was telling. And one of the last times I saw my parents, their cart at their store had a sign that said, “Jesus Saves.” I asked my Mother what it was all about and she told me, “You have to do what sells.”
There was a story I knew about when I was in the cult that happened while it was still only St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran church. There was another Jewish person in that church whose parents didn’t want him there. Those parents simply came in the church, picked up their son and took him home forcibly. Mine didn’t and that should be noted.
My take on it is that nothing is either totally good or totally bad. Everything I’ve seen in life is a “mixed bag.” I personally, didn’t take drugs, didn’t drink, at all and didn’t even date (the latter) until the last two and a half years or so that I was in the cult.
We did cross the line however when it came to mixing Judaism with Christianity but we never referred to the community as a shul or synagogue. I don’t remember that happening if it did. We always called the inner circle “The Family,” or “The Community.”
I did hear the Sunday school for the children being referred to as a “yeshiva” by one of the Jews who were my cohorts in that organization. And we had quite a few Jews in the cult. Hickman had a knack for getting Jews involved with him.
Many of these so-called Hebrew Christian groups are springing up. The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America claims to have about 350 such groups and then there’s Chosen People and Jews for Jesus. The Jewish Press claimed some months ago that there were 300K Jews that were converted by Jews for Jesus. But quite frankly, I don’t know where they’re hiding out. I haven’t seen any in my neighborhood.
My contention is that mainstream Judaism does not refer to so-called Hebrew Christians as anything other than apostates. The terms I can use are apikorsus (from the Greek term for Epicurean) or meshumad (plural meshumaddim) for a “spiritually destroyed person.”
The terms bear analysis. An apikorsus is supposedly a person who has left practicing Orthodox Judaism in order to lead a wanton life style. That is a person wants to partake of the “finer things in life” that Judaism forbids that appeal to a man’s senses, like eating shrimp cocktails in a non-kosher restaurant. .
The term meshumad refers to a person who has decided to cut himself off from the Jewish community and who has decided to terminate his existence “Jewishly” from this earth.
Chabad’s Anticult division was called Anti-shmad years ago. They since have terminated that operation.
I had a lot of benefits before Ben Yishai went under, which is why I stayed. I had a lot of friends and fellowship. We had Bible Studies; we even delved into the Jewish commentaries, including the Mishna and Talmud. We had summer camp outs, lots of parties, we used to eat out at diners after services (I always found someone to fund my eating out) we had Bible Studies, pot luck dinners, Sabbath meals and get togethers.
There was a household of cult members who lived down the block from me and I spent a lot of time there after school let out when I was in high school.
It may seem somewhat odd to read me telling people about the good things about a cult, but until Hickman started to threaten people who left the organization, all of it seemed fairly innocuous to me. When that happened I knew I needed to leave.
I lived out my early fantasies of becoming involved with Judaism in a deeper way than my Conservative Hebrew School background allowed me to. I also believed in Christianity in a way that I did not believe in Conservative Judaism, which I felt was a watered down form of Orthodoxy. So I felt fulfilled by all of this.
I also studied karate with a cult member who was a black belt. All of this for free I might add.
My prayer partner was a genius with an IQ of 180 and two other friends of mine, who I personally got into the cult, had IQ’s of 165. (Maybe even higher because they got all the questions on the IQ tests right.) So I was surrounded by some of the best and brightest that LI had to offer in my age range.
The truth, which may seem somewhat hard to take, is that I bear Jack Hickman a lot less malice than I bear Rabbi Shea Hecht, because Hickman always made sure I was alive and indoors. He never laughed in my face, never insulted me (every time I talk to Hecht he throws a dig in at me) or told me “You’ll starve” as one Chabad worker did. But again, Hickman’s parody of Judaism didn’t last for me. But it is noteworthy that his cult survives to this day.
The catch about my involvement with Ben Yishai was that my parents didn’t know about it for about three years. I simply couldn’t tell him.
One time when I was about 12, I was in the car with my family and I started to hum, “Silent Night.” My father went bananas yelling at me, “I’m not spending all of this money to send you to Hebrew school for you to sing Silent Night!” So, you can see what I was up against.
My father hates Jesus Christ. And he hates Christianity because of all the evils that were done to the Jews in the name of Jesus and Christianity. And he hated Hickman’s cult even more.
My dad felt it was actually a plot of the organized church to deceptively convert Jews by doing these so-called Hebrew Christian congregations. To be sure, terms like “completing your Judaism,” etc, are buzz words used by the church (even Pastor Dunlap knew that phrase) knowing full well they are attempting to solicit Jews for church membership. I had to deal with all of this again after becoming involved in my current church, but I knew full well what I was doing.
A few years ago, I wrote a letter that was printed in the Jerusalem Post’s on line edition. Right after that, I was pounced on by two Christian missionaries. One crossed the line when he told me that he just found out that he was really Jewish and descended from Sephardic Jews. I told him that I hear that bubeh misah on LI years ago from Hickman and I wasn’t going to fall for it again. He replied that I was too bitter. I replied back that I wound up in very big trouble because of all of this.
But again, going back to my days with Hickman, my father took no drastic action to get me out of Ben Yishai by dragging me out physically like the aforementioned person earlier on. In fact, during the time I was dating some of the girls in the cult, I had full use of my father’s cars.
There was one girl in the cult who he knew of from my school days, who my Dad liked. When he found out she was in the cult, he communicated to me that he wanted me to get to take her out. She was very bright, talented and pretty. Just what he wanted as a girl friend for myself.
I took me three years to go back to my parent’s home after I left it the day before my 18th birthday. One and a half years living with fellow cult members and one a half years living in Israel. And all of it was very difficult.
In fact, because of the current situation in Israel, I could never do now what I did back then even if I wanted to. Simply put, all of this was doable only about 30 years ago.
Today, as mentioned elsewhere, I go to a church again. I find it works for me. I am not of the stripe that says you have to believe or you go to H*ll. I am not a fundamentalist. I have a lot of friends but I will tell you my life is not as busy as it was when I was in Ben Yishai. Maybe it doesn’t have to be. I’m not in the same place today as I was 34 years ago.
I still listen to Jewish music though. And a lot of that music is Shlomo Carlebach music or his daughter, Neshama’s. But I gave away the bulk of my Jewish music recordings some years ago. I felt I needed a break from all of that.
I have a mechanical recording agreement with his daughters but I’ve shelved that project after being involved in my church. I’m fed up of being a wannabe in Judaism. I tried to get gigs at Rutgers Hillel and also at Rutgers Chabad and I got blown off by both of those organizations, so I moved on.
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t want to mix apples and oranges. The only Jewish holiday I’ve participated in for the last nine years or so was a Seder run by Chosen People the other week at my church.
I told the previous pastor at First Presby (he just retired on February 28th) that I simply didn’t want what the Jewish community has to offer me. It’s as simple as that.
In the outset of this piece, I’d like to say that I didn’t know initially that Pastor Jack Hickman (aka. “Abba” – father - Yaakov Abensur) was gay. Hickman had always maintained that he was a celibate who was “complete by himself,” and didn’t need a wife or girlfriend.
Around the time I was living in Deer Park, LI after I moved in with fellow cult members, one of the people (actually the person who attracted me into the cult) told me about David and Jonathan that the Bible said that they loved each other more than any other men ever did and maybe “they did it.” I was mortified but ignored him.
That piece of information about Hickman’s being gay only came to me after I left Ben Yishai – Son of Jesse (later renamed Shoresh Yishai – Root of Jesse). Had I known that Hickman had a whole cadre of homosexual adherents, I would have left the cult before I did.
I had the dubious distinction of growing up as a teenager in that cult. I joined it when I was 14 back in ’73 and I didn’t leave it until I went to Israel in ’78 when I was 19. So I spent my formative years in this craziness and it impacted me for my whole life.
It took the intervention of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach to get me to come back into mainstream Judaism as I went to a yeshiva for a few months before I went to Shlomo’s Moshav Me’or Modi’in. I also went to a kibbutz to take an ulpan (a crash course in Hebrew) for about six months.
I stayed in Israel from May of ’78 to October of ’79. But my mother once commented to me about Ben Yishai “That was the best one you had!” So all of this was telling. And one of the last times I saw my parents, their cart at their store had a sign that said, “Jesus Saves.” I asked my Mother what it was all about and she told me, “You have to do what sells.”
There was a story I knew about when I was in the cult that happened while it was still only St. John’s Evangelical Lutheran church. There was another Jewish person in that church whose parents didn’t want him there. Those parents simply came in the church, picked up their son and took him home forcibly. Mine didn’t and that should be noted.
My take on it is that nothing is either totally good or totally bad. Everything I’ve seen in life is a “mixed bag.” I personally, didn’t take drugs, didn’t drink, at all and didn’t even date (the latter) until the last two and a half years or so that I was in the cult.
We did cross the line however when it came to mixing Judaism with Christianity but we never referred to the community as a shul or synagogue. I don’t remember that happening if it did. We always called the inner circle “The Family,” or “The Community.”
I did hear the Sunday school for the children being referred to as a “yeshiva” by one of the Jews who were my cohorts in that organization. And we had quite a few Jews in the cult. Hickman had a knack for getting Jews involved with him.
Many of these so-called Hebrew Christian groups are springing up. The Messianic Jewish Alliance of America claims to have about 350 such groups and then there’s Chosen People and Jews for Jesus. The Jewish Press claimed some months ago that there were 300K Jews that were converted by Jews for Jesus. But quite frankly, I don’t know where they’re hiding out. I haven’t seen any in my neighborhood.
My contention is that mainstream Judaism does not refer to so-called Hebrew Christians as anything other than apostates. The terms I can use are apikorsus (from the Greek term for Epicurean) or meshumad (plural meshumaddim) for a “spiritually destroyed person.”
The terms bear analysis. An apikorsus is supposedly a person who has left practicing Orthodox Judaism in order to lead a wanton life style. That is a person wants to partake of the “finer things in life” that Judaism forbids that appeal to a man’s senses, like eating shrimp cocktails in a non-kosher restaurant. .
The term meshumad refers to a person who has decided to cut himself off from the Jewish community and who has decided to terminate his existence “Jewishly” from this earth.
Chabad’s Anticult division was called Anti-shmad years ago. They since have terminated that operation.
I had a lot of benefits before Ben Yishai went under, which is why I stayed. I had a lot of friends and fellowship. We had Bible Studies; we even delved into the Jewish commentaries, including the Mishna and Talmud. We had summer camp outs, lots of parties, we used to eat out at diners after services (I always found someone to fund my eating out) we had Bible Studies, pot luck dinners, Sabbath meals and get togethers.
There was a household of cult members who lived down the block from me and I spent a lot of time there after school let out when I was in high school.
It may seem somewhat odd to read me telling people about the good things about a cult, but until Hickman started to threaten people who left the organization, all of it seemed fairly innocuous to me. When that happened I knew I needed to leave.
I lived out my early fantasies of becoming involved with Judaism in a deeper way than my Conservative Hebrew School background allowed me to. I also believed in Christianity in a way that I did not believe in Conservative Judaism, which I felt was a watered down form of Orthodoxy. So I felt fulfilled by all of this.
I also studied karate with a cult member who was a black belt. All of this for free I might add.
My prayer partner was a genius with an IQ of 180 and two other friends of mine, who I personally got into the cult, had IQ’s of 165. (Maybe even higher because they got all the questions on the IQ tests right.) So I was surrounded by some of the best and brightest that LI had to offer in my age range.
The truth, which may seem somewhat hard to take, is that I bear Jack Hickman a lot less malice than I bear Rabbi Shea Hecht, because Hickman always made sure I was alive and indoors. He never laughed in my face, never insulted me (every time I talk to Hecht he throws a dig in at me) or told me “You’ll starve” as one Chabad worker did. But again, Hickman’s parody of Judaism didn’t last for me. But it is noteworthy that his cult survives to this day.
The catch about my involvement with Ben Yishai was that my parents didn’t know about it for about three years. I simply couldn’t tell him.
One time when I was about 12, I was in the car with my family and I started to hum, “Silent Night.” My father went bananas yelling at me, “I’m not spending all of this money to send you to Hebrew school for you to sing Silent Night!” So, you can see what I was up against.
My father hates Jesus Christ. And he hates Christianity because of all the evils that were done to the Jews in the name of Jesus and Christianity. And he hated Hickman’s cult even more.
My dad felt it was actually a plot of the organized church to deceptively convert Jews by doing these so-called Hebrew Christian congregations. To be sure, terms like “completing your Judaism,” etc, are buzz words used by the church (even Pastor Dunlap knew that phrase) knowing full well they are attempting to solicit Jews for church membership. I had to deal with all of this again after becoming involved in my current church, but I knew full well what I was doing.
A few years ago, I wrote a letter that was printed in the Jerusalem Post’s on line edition. Right after that, I was pounced on by two Christian missionaries. One crossed the line when he told me that he just found out that he was really Jewish and descended from Sephardic Jews. I told him that I hear that bubeh misah on LI years ago from Hickman and I wasn’t going to fall for it again. He replied that I was too bitter. I replied back that I wound up in very big trouble because of all of this.
But again, going back to my days with Hickman, my father took no drastic action to get me out of Ben Yishai by dragging me out physically like the aforementioned person earlier on. In fact, during the time I was dating some of the girls in the cult, I had full use of my father’s cars.
There was one girl in the cult who he knew of from my school days, who my Dad liked. When he found out she was in the cult, he communicated to me that he wanted me to get to take her out. She was very bright, talented and pretty. Just what he wanted as a girl friend for myself.
I took me three years to go back to my parent’s home after I left it the day before my 18th birthday. One and a half years living with fellow cult members and one a half years living in Israel. And all of it was very difficult.
In fact, because of the current situation in Israel, I could never do now what I did back then even if I wanted to. Simply put, all of this was doable only about 30 years ago.
Today, as mentioned elsewhere, I go to a church again. I find it works for me. I am not of the stripe that says you have to believe or you go to H*ll. I am not a fundamentalist. I have a lot of friends but I will tell you my life is not as busy as it was when I was in Ben Yishai. Maybe it doesn’t have to be. I’m not in the same place today as I was 34 years ago.
I still listen to Jewish music though. And a lot of that music is Shlomo Carlebach music or his daughter, Neshama’s. But I gave away the bulk of my Jewish music recordings some years ago. I felt I needed a break from all of that.
I have a mechanical recording agreement with his daughters but I’ve shelved that project after being involved in my church. I’m fed up of being a wannabe in Judaism. I tried to get gigs at Rutgers Hillel and also at Rutgers Chabad and I got blown off by both of those organizations, so I moved on.
As I’ve mentioned before, I don’t want to mix apples and oranges. The only Jewish holiday I’ve participated in for the last nine years or so was a Seder run by Chosen People the other week at my church.
I told the previous pastor at First Presby (he just retired on February 28th) that I simply didn’t want what the Jewish community has to offer me. It’s as simple as that.
Re: My Days in Ben Yishai
Posted by:
bigdaddy
()
Date: October 03, 2009 01:33PM
As a former member I too strugle with my identity at times as a result of my experiences there.Since I am part Jewish I'm not always comfortable with Gentile Churches. I've experienced the gambit of Christian churches and fellowships, from the traditional to the new modern "charasmatic" so many try to say that we're different. we're not doing church or we're for those who want to be casual- it's still church- opening songs, announcements, collection, preaching and maybe communion- not that that is bad but it's still the same book with a different cover. That brings me to the other side of the coin that I find intriquing but yet very frightening. In my area of Florida they've opened up Shoresh David Messianic Synagogues. On the surface it looks all cute and fuzzy just like our old Shoresh back in the 70's, before things got too crazy. But what guarantee is there that they might go down that same road that we did- that Paul in Galatians warned of. Is it safe without an Abba fiqure a Jack Hickman or is there one among their leadership waiting to pop out.Maybe all of our experiences just makes us paranoid, but fool me once shame on you....I'm not convinced that copying synagogues is any more the answer to getting back to our Jewish roots-what you think?
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