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I even remember one time I was on the Mount of Olives, filming our

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last scene of a song and trying to bring this message to the

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nations from Jerusalem, when I hear shouts of “Allahu

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Akbar” from the distance, and before I know it, I’m getting hit by

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rocks.

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My mother was Jewish Israeli. My dad was from a local

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family, and his father worked in the coal mines his whole life up in north of

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Scranton, Pennsylvania, just outside the Poconos.

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My Orthodox grandmother, we’d visit her on the holidays.

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She’d put the kippah and say, “You’re Jewish. Your mother is Jewish.

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Don’t you forget you’re Jewish.” So my mom didn’t want to be a Christian.

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She loved my dad, but Christianity was for the Gentiles, not for the Jews.

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I’m the baby of five, so my older siblings got to experience the big difference

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between having a Catholic father and a Jewish Israeli mother.

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But for me, it was different because my mother had, just one year before I was

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born, had accepted Messiah as her personal savior.

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None of my friends, who were mostly Catholic, had met a Jewish person, really,

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because we’re this small town. It was interesting navigating or hearing people tell

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jokes about my people. I’m like, “Why are they making fun of Jewish people?” It

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started a discovery for me, to discover who I was.

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When I say discovery, really the arrival was

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discovering who Jesus was. I remember as a small child,

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my parents had just got saved before I was born, but I remember thinking, “Man,

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what happens if I die? Where am I going to go when I die?” And I remember my dad

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saying, “Well, you can know where you’re going to go when you die.

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You’re going to go to heaven, but you have to know the Savior.” So I remember

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sitting up on the washing machine, and my dad prayed with me, and I

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remember sincerely, I’m like, “God, I believe in you.

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I believe in your Son.” So I was five when I accepted Jesus,

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and I remember that next day, I was changed.

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I started singing songs from that very next day.

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So when I came to grips with the salvation of Jesus, of

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Yeshua, it did something. Even though in my young brain,

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there was this truth that just hit me, not in the knowledge

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part of who Jesus was. It hit me in my heart, like there was this

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feeling that He came into my life, and now my life is transformed

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forever.

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So I started that journey and realized all I want to do is sing

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about Him. But the chances of anybody becoming a singer as a

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vocation is

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very slim. By the grace of God, in 2009, I put out an album, a small

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little album in Hebrew and English.

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And thank God, about that time is when YouTube had just become

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a platform to share music, and I just

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realized, “Hey, I can share the goodness of God.

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I can share the greatness of Him through His Son through music.”

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And I went all in. I leaned all in. I did one

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particular song called “How Great Is Our God.” I’d heard it

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in English and in several other languages, but I just felt in my heart,

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“I need to record this and share this to the world.” And in 2011,

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we put out a music video called “Gadol Elohai” and filmed it in

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Jerusalem, and it’s since, I think, garnered something like 30

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million views or something like that on YouTube. And I thought, “This is amazing.

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I don’t have to even go to them. I can bring the music to them.” And

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every penny I had, I put into the first album, then the next album.

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My wife and I lived very simply. The projects just got bigger and

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bigger and bigger, until we ended up at the Tower of David in

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Jerusalem.

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I had the privilege of traveling the world and sharing my faith with the

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nations. And the times someone comes up and says, “My Jewish family member

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accepted Messiah through your music,” is one of the most rewarding things, and I’m

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just so honored to get to use music to share the good news.

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It’s

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always awkward filming music videos. We filmed in the Garden Tomb.

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We had to have a whole troop of soldiers because it was during Ramadan, and there

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was threats that we might get disrupted, and these young teenagers

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didn’t want to hear us singing in Hebrew, so they were throwing rocks at us,

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shouting, “Allahu Akbar.” And we were just kind to them and just said, “Hey, we

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come in peace.” And I talked to an Arab man that was there, and

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he was from that area, and he actually helped us walk them away

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from literally trying to stone us while we were singing a song.

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The love of Yeshua is so true to me.

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You think about world religions that are emerging right now,

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and one particular where a Messiah type has come and taught us to pick up

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a sword and to grow by the sword. Well, the love of Yeshua is the

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opposite. He taught us that to love is to lay one’s life

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down, not to take a life,

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and I see that in the life of Messiah.

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He gave His life not only for me, but even for those who persecute people like

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me.

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As I mentioned, my mom was born and raised in Israel.

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She was born in January of 1948, and during the War of Independence, she was

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separated from her brother. Time went on, and we ended up going on a television

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show. On this show was my mom and brother Micha, telling his story

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of surviving the Six Days War in 1967 as an Israeli

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soldier. But also the big part of his memory was being

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separated from his baby sister. The host looked at my Uncle Micha, my

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mom’s brother, “Micha, before you go, we do have something special for you

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today. In the audience is your baby sister, Chana.”

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My mother walks out to meet her brother after 50 years.

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I’m sitting there with my sister in the audience. It was jarring.

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It was beautiful. I spent the next few weeks exploring this land

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and realized that the miracles, in all my studies,

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the miracles of Israel, there’s never been a land that was

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separated. The people were scattered for 2,000 years, but brought back again.

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And what opened my eyes and almost hurt my heart was to realize at

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that pointThat the majority of Israel was secular.

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They didn’t realize that God was behind all of this.

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It started this journey with me to start sharing what I believe with the rest of

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the country.

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When you move to Israel, it’s compulsory to serve in the military.

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So when you bring your four kids and then later have another, a fifth, in

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Israel, it gets real when your kids are

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required to join the Israeli Defense Forces.

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Well, for my wife and I, it was a difficult season because not only were

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our kids about to join the IDF, they ended up, two of our eldest

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kids joined during the Iron Swords War.

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My daughter was a tatbit hanitz, which is really like

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a watcher, border security, border intelligence, watching the

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borders. And she served for one year before the war

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broke out in 2023, and she served another year

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during that war, and we were so worried for her safety.

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We were so worried for all of our soldiers.

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Four days after she gets out, our son Shuki goes in, and he becomes

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a part of the Army Corps of Engineers and ends up spending many days

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in Gaza working to bring our hostages home.

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I was on the floor so many days crying, asking God to help.

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So it was a terrible time, a difficult time for my wife and I.

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But to watch them go through that and standing firm in their faith, and I believe

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our faith in the midst of all of it, is what carried us through.

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Why did I want to return to Israel, my mother’s home country?

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Well, I am a follower of the greatest rabbi that ever lived.

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So I wanted to raise my kids where my rabbi raised his 12

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disciples along the shores of the Sea of Galilee.

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So for me, I believe that we are all in an era

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of the fullness of the nations, as the Bible calls it, New Testament says it as

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well, the fullness of the Gentiles.

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That means there’s a time where the good news that is a Jewish good news that

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came from the Jewish country, Israel, in the Middle East, the good news

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has gone out to the nations. He said, “You will not see me again, dot, dot,

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dot, until you, Israel, and until Jerusalem, till you say,

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‘Baruch haba b’shem Adonai.’ Blessed is he who comes

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in the name of the Lord.” So we have a great hope. We keep celebrating the feast.

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We keep living that out because we believe a Messiah is coming back as the Jewish

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savior, but he’s coming back to Israel.

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And I believe that if you read the book from Genesis to Revelation, you’ll see

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that same thing spelled out clearly.

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We have a hope because our Messiah shall return one day soon.