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Hello my name is Rivka.
Rivka in Hebrew is Rebecca.
I was born in Rumania, 67 years ago. But, by the Lord's grace, I was born again in 1962.
My family was a traditional Jewish family in Rumania.
I knew the Jewish tradition, but I didn't know the Bible. Because in Rumania was a communist regime in that time.
So at school of course they didn't teach us religion. The communists ordained all the other things.
And at home I knew the Jewish tradition.
But I didn't know the history of my people, I didn't know the Bible.
One day, when I was in a sanatorium because of my handicap - I had poliomyelitis when I was one and a half years -
And then I had to go to a sanatorium to have some treatment for my handicap.
And the Lord provided that I was in the same room with a gentile girl.
I didn't know by then what it means to be a believer. What it means to be "born again". Nothing, I didn't know.
But she knew that I am Jewish, so she didn't dare to talk to me about the Lord Jesus.
She only gave me some hints, but I couldn't do anything with the hints she gave me.
And afterwards she received some young visitors from Bucharest. She was from Bucharest.
They came and she only recommended me as being the girl that is in the same room with her.
And she said, 'they are my friends', but I didn't know then, that they were also from the assembly, that they were believers and all that.
And then I had to go back to my hometown, because I was studying there.
And she stayed more in that sanatorium.
But in the winter of '62 she came back to her home.
And she invited me to spend the winter holidays with her.
It was the 31st of December 1962; it was New Year's Eve.
I thought they were going to celebrate that as in the world.
I thought they were going to dance; they were going to drink.
And they are going to be merry and all that...
I didn't know about their faith.
And to my big surprise, I saw that they were doing something else.
They didn't drink wine. They didn't smoke.
They read the Bible. They preached the Word.
They were very, very happy, but not in the worldly way.
So I didn't know what to do with that.
I heard also that they were singing about the Lord Jesus in their hymns and all that.
And after everything was finished, my friend, Adriana she was called
- She actually past away 13th of April 2011, unfortunately. But she went to the Lord, so she is all right -
And she asked me what do I think about what I saw there. So I said, 'Well, what by example, what do you mean?'
And she said, 'Well, that we are calling each other brother and sister'
So I said, 'I thought that that’s what you are doing here in this part of Bucharest'
Well, actually I was lying, because I saw that many people came from villages around.
So I thought, 'Maybe, because they are farmers or something, and not people from the town;
Maybe that's why they are calling each other 'brother and sister.''
But I was ashamed to tell her that, so I lied.
And then she asked, 'O, and that we are talking about the Lord Jesus Christ'.
And then I told, 'Well I thought, that's because you are not Jewish'.
And she asked me, 'Do you believe in God?' So I say, 'Well, I believe that there is a God'.
She said, 'Do you pray to Him?'
So I said, 'Well, sometimes, when I have toothache, I am asking, 'O God, please help me''.
That was praying for me.
Anyway, the next evening her parents came to pray in our home, where I was with her.
And they prayed. And then I started to pray again.
But I think it was a hypocrite prayer, because it was more for their ears than for God's ears, because I didn't know anything yet.
But afterwards, a Messianic Jew came.
His name was Isidori Luria.
So he started to talk to me about Israel,
about the Jewish people,
about the Lord Jesus Christ and all that.
And afterwards I said, ‘you want to convince me that that’s true,
that there is a Paradise,
and there is hell and all that’.
But afterwards I went to a meeting with them.
And I started to believe, but it was something very, very simple.
Not enough, but still it was a start.
I wanted a Bible, but I couldn’t have,
because in that time it was very difficult to get a Bible in Rumania.
And somebody had a New Testament, but it was for sale.
And I didn’t have money of my own,
I was living with my parents and didn’t have income of my own.
So I couldn’t.
And then I had to go back to school in my own town.
And I didn’t know where there are the believers in my town.
But one of the young people there in Bucharest said that there was a certain family, called Barbu.
And they have a girl, a daughter that must be of my age.
He knew, because he was friendly with her brother.
That’s why he knows. That young man from Bucharest, that’s how he knows that there is this family in my hometown in Rumania.
And that’s all I knew.
So I went to my town.
I went to school.
And I knew that in parallel class there is a girl, family name being Barbu.
And I thought, ‘Maybe it is this one’.
I wanted to go to see her.
I asked the girl that was sitting with me in the same bench at school class, to come with me there.
And she came with me and her name was Sephora.
And always this name seemed to be strange.
But I didn’t know by then that ‘Sephora’ in Rumanian is ‘Zipporah’, the wife of Moses.
I went with her to the other girl and I asked the other girl if she had brothers or sisters.
She said, ‘No, I am the only daughter’.
So I knew it is not the one that I am looking for.
But coming back to my class,
I asked this girl, Sephora.
God brought to my mind that there is something special with this girl.
Why? Because, when being a communist it is not fashionable to be religious.
So I remembered that they wanted to make fun of her.
In Sundays, when they had to do voluntary work, she didn’t come,
because she was religious or something.
So the Lord brought that to my mind and I asked her,
‘Sephora, tell me, do you have at home a Bible?’
She said, ‘Yes’.
I said, ‘Do you have hymnbooks as well?’
because in Rumania they used to have hymnbooks at home as well.
They didn’t have the liberty to go to the meetings always.
So sometimes they were making small meetings at home.
So they did have.
She said, ‘Yes’.
So I was so happy.
The girl that was sitting with me at the same bench, she knew all about the faith.
I am saying ‘she knew all about the faith’, because she wasn’t a believer.
But she was from a believing family.
The parents were believers.
They had ten children.
And this Sephora was the youngest.
But of course she knows what assembly means.
She knows what meetings are.
And I asked her to take me to a meeting, to the assembly.
And it was very, very nice.
Afterwards I discovered another girl, a believing girl in the same school.
And she used to bring me verses from the Bible, written,
because she didn’t have a Bible for me.
But that was I was feeding on.
Anyway, what the Lord did.
They demolished our house,
because it was belonging to the state and not ours.
And they gave us another house.
Just next to that Barbu family, the believers that I was looking for their daughter.
So here they are, next to our house.
So then I met them.
Buy meanwhile my parents noticed that something had happened to me.
I was changed.
When I came from Bucharest I didn’t have a Bible.
But I had brochures with the Gospel of John.
Only the Gospel of John.
So I was reading that and I knew I think ten chapters by memory,
because that was all I had.
Anyway, my parents caught me with those brochures.
So they threw them away.
And they understood that something was wrong with me,
because when I came I told them that this family repented,
that they are believers, so I didn’t do anything to them.
But when they saw I changed, they started to check on me.
They started to check the letters that I wrote to the girl in Bucharest,
to Adriana, the believer.
So it was very, very bad.
Anyway, on a Sunday, the meetings are on Sunday morning,
So it was not studies at school on Sundays.
I went, when my mother was not at home, I went to this family to read a little bit from the Bible at least.
They were preparing to go to the meeting.
And I wanted to go with them.
But I was afraid.
So I came back.
But when I came back home, my mother came and she knew where I had been.
And she started beating me.
Anyway, that is only a little example of the things that a believer Jew has to go through,
because the family doesn’t understand.
Well, it is quite normal that they don’t understand.
It’s a long story, so I am not going to tell the whole story.
But it was very difficult that I didn’t have the possibility to go to meetings.
And then we wanted to come, to immigrate to Israel.
So my parents made all the required forms and all things that we wanted to go to Israel.
But we had to wait six years before we got the permission to go to Israel.
Eventually the permission came. So I came to Israel.
And my parents thought, ‘O, that’s nice.
All this rubbish will disappear.
She will be in Israel and everybody is Jewish there.
They don’t believe in the Lord Jesus Christ.
So it is going to be all right’.
So the Lord is everywhere, especially in Israel.
So He made many, many miracles.
He kept me on the way.
But I had to go to a school to study Hebrew.
So I had to leave the parents’ home.
So I was there. It was in Haifa, this school.
It was an internal school.
And I memorised only one address of a couple of Jewish believers that came from Rumania.
They were living in Israel.
So I wrote to this couple and I said that I am near to Haifa.
And they asked a Jewish believer from Haifa to come and see me,
to visit me at this school.
She took me to the assembly in Haifa.
And then the 29th of August 1964 I was baptised.
It was a Saturday and I was baptised in the Sea of Galilee, at Tiberias.
And, because it was a public shore, many people were there to swim and all that.
So there was a journalist from a very serious journal in Israel.
And he wrote an article.
I have the copy until now.
And in that article it was written that Messianic Jews there are about 250.
So in ‘64 it was 250. Thank God we are now between 7,000 and 10,000 I believe.
Now I don’t know all the believers in Israel and I am very glad about that, because in that time I nearly knew all the believers.
Thank God the Lord has been very faithful
I wasn’t so faithful, but He holds my hand and until now I still await Him to be with Him forever.
Thank God I belong to a good assembly and I am waiting for His coming.