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"Praise the Lord, all you nations; extol Him, all you peoples. For great is His love toward us, and the faithfulness of the LORD endures forever."
- Psalm 117, NIV

Leaving Egypt: The Testimony of Ade Bart

by Ade Bart

The story of a Jewish Believer, and how she found Messiah Yeshua.

I grew up in a Jewish home, the child of an Israeli mother and a Polish Holocaust survivor father. My parents' marriage was a product of matchmaking similar to what took place in Fiddler on the Roof. They met in Israel on Mom's twenty-third birthday and were married one week later. Father was much older than Mom. According to Mom there was no attraction on her part. It was not a happy union. Immediately after they married in 1954 the Sinai War broke out. Father was ordered to return to his newly adopted homeland, the United States. His new bride followed six months later.

Dad grew up in Czenstechowa, Poland, in a little Jewish shtetle (village). Father was raised as a proper Orthodox boy going to cheder (religious school). His was a happy life, and then the unthinkable happened. The Nazis invaded Poland. Jews were rounded up and sent to live in the crowded and inhumane conditions of the ghettos. He was nineteen when he and his family were shipped to the concentration camps in crowded cattle cars. Many died during the journey. Most did not survive the gruesome conditions of the camps. His parents and sisters perished. He and an older brother survived the unimaginable ordeal. Dad was liberated from the camps by a troupe of American soldiers, in 1947. But he was not left unaffected by his experiences. Dad was quiet and rarely expressed verbal or physical affection. Later in America, he hoarded boxes of cereal, canned goods and other non-perishable items hiding them in his bedroom.

Mom was the victim of a very abusive childhood. As a toddler, she was often left all alone by her mother in a locked room. All she left my Mom with was a cup of water and a pot to use as a potty while she went out with men. Her mother was a single parent in the 1930's when it was still rare. Mom suffered from malnourishment because they had little money for food. Eventually she was taken away from her mother to live on a kibbutz (communal farm) for abused and orphaned children. As a tiny girl of six on the kibbutz she had to work half a day cleaning up cow manure or standing on a box and ironing.

As a new American immigrant knowing little English and without friends or family life was a challenge for Mom. Her manner of coping was by living an extremely self-centered and extravagant lifestyle. She lavished herself with clothing, jewelry, and with semi-weekly visits to the beauty parlor. And she always had a cleaning and laundry lady, even when we were short of money. Because of her narcissistic lifestyle, I became a victim. I was even sent back to the hospital for an entire month as a newborn. Not because I was sick, but Mom was nervous and felt she could not handle me. This became an ongoing pattern in my life. I would later respond with a deep sense of rejection and abandonment. It took me the better part of my adult life to come to terms with my hurts. I now see how God was working behind the scenes the entire time. He promises, "When my mother and father forsake me, the Lord takes me up" Psalm 27:10.

Upon my return from the hospital as a newborn, our first family home was an apartment rented from a Lutheran woman. She sent a Jewish man who served as the director of an organization called Christ's Mission to the Jews to visit with mom. He came weekly and spoke Hebrew presenting the Gospel to her. She responded like a typical Israeli, thinking only Jews who were paid to do so accepted Jesus.

As the only Jewish girl in a mostly Catholic neighborhood, I was a misfit. Being an only child in a neighborhood of large families left me at another disadvantage. I had no one to defend me. I was constantly teased and picked on. Not only was life unhappy for me outside the walls of my home, strife set the tone within. There was much arguing, usually with Mom doing the screaming. I was a very unhappy child so much so that I had to be sent to the hospital for treatment of stomach ulcers at the age of three. Father worked long hours. Mother was very self-absorbed. I was a difficult child with no parental input and little attention. The only disciplinary measures I experienced were when I became a bother or an inconvenience. I could be beaten with a brush, belt or even physically kicked up a hallway. At one point Mom became so angry with me she would not speak to me for days. I literally had to beg her to talk to me again. I had never been taught manners or right from wrong. Healthy boundaries did not exist, making it quite difficult for me to develop proper social behavior. I had a big mouth blurting out whatever came to my mind often causing me to alienate others.

Since Mother was often away on trips or having surgery. I was repeatedly sent to live with strangers for weeks or months at a time. Some of the families were kind and understood how difficult life was for me. However that was not always the case. Once I was sent away to live with a family Mom located in a newspaper ad. I was about eight years old at the time. The lady was very mean and abusive to me. I was not allowed to eat what the family ate. I was also not allowed to call my dad on the phone to say good night even though my Mom promised I would be allowed and that she would pay for my calls. I tried to run away and was beaten severely. A neighbor lady who often did our laundry would tell me that my mom was going to the hospital because I was a bad girl. No child should ever be made to feel that their parent has become ill because of their behavior. In spite of everything God was still guiding me to Himself. Eventually He even used one of my sitters to point me to Himself. I am so thankful that . . . "all things work together for good to those who love the Lord and are called according to His purpose in Messiah Yeshua" Rom. 8:28.

Adding to my already difficult childhood was exposure to pornography at home. It robbed me of innocence at an early age. My parents never instructed me about morals. For the most part I raised myself. Life for me was filled with a sense of shame, rejection and the feeling of being continuously abandoned. This resulted in emotional problems. I became depressed. I would often turn to food for comfort. As early as age six, I was already struggling with a weight problem. It seemed I could never be the same as other children. Everything about me was different. I was Jewish. They were Gentiles. I was an only child. They had a large family. My Mom left me quite a lot. Their moms stayed at home to raise them and even had supper ready when their fathers came home from work. My parents spoke broken English, at best, and were unable to help with schoolwork. They had parents, grandparents, and older siblings to help them. Everything about my life just seemed to compound my pain. I even experienced anti-Semitism in my neighborhood when a girl within a group of children I was playing with accused me of being a Christ killer. I did not even know who Christ was, so how could I have killed Him?

My father lost his business, a bar, during the race riots of the sixties. He also became disabled when a beer bottle exploded in his eye. Our financial situation became bleak. This brought on a sense of fear and more shame for me. It was apparent we were having trouble making ends meet. A relative would bring us loaves of bread. Our poverty only added to the pain in my life. I became heartbroken when I was told we had no money to pay for what was needed to start off the school year. Most of the students in my school came from wealthy Jewish families. I attended on a scholarship. I desperately wanted to be like other the children. Yet the circumstances surrounding my life would not allow it.

In my early teens I began to outwardly express the inward pain. Just turning twelve as the hippy era was nearing its end, I embarked on a rebellious journey in a search for happiness and to find the meaning of my life. It led me to dabble in witchcraft, drugs, immorality, Eastern and other religions. I was crying out for help. Mine was a life without boundaries or safe limits. Many times I hitch hiked alone or with friends placing myself in potentially dangerous and compromising situations. I am certain that I would not be alive today had God not been protecting me. In all my pain and anger, I longed for someone to care enough to give me input and correction.

In high school I got involved with a guy who encouraged me to do well in school. Up to that time, I had been cutting classes while involved in destructive behavior. Because of this young man's influence on me, I made a huge turn around academically. I attended class regularly and dedicated myself to studying. I went to night school and summer school to earn the credits I had missed. A girl in my summer school told me about Jesus. I wasn't ready to heed, but she planted seeds. My boyfriend went off to college. Our relationship continued for a short while. I took a cleaning job to pay for travel to see him. Pressured by his parents he broke up with me in my junior-year of high school. Up to that point he had been the center of my life. I used to think I would want to die if we ever broke up. Surprisingly, I immersed myself more deeply into my studies. I did what the society says is the right thing to do. Yet something was still missing. The thrill of success was only temporary. Emptiness quickly returned.

At one point, I cried out asking God if He was really there, then I wanted to know why I was born. I told Him that I did not want to live sixty or seventy years, laugh, cry, get married, have children and then die. I saw no point to it. I told Him if He did not show me the purpose of my life I was going to end it all. Almost immediately a miraculous turning point began. I met up with a lady who had often babysat for me when I was small. She lived on the same street where the Lutheran lady rented to us. She and her husband had been alcoholics. They had a life changing experience meeting Jesus through Alcoholics Anonymous. She invited me up to her apartment where I told her everything about my life. She asked me since I had tried everything else, why didn't I try Jesus? My response was, I had already hurt my parents enough (as though I suddenly cared) and could not follow Jesus unless I could do it in a Jewish way. I may have thought I was stumping her - a place where they follow Jesus in a Jewish way? Impossibility, so I thought!

Amazingly she knew a lady in Alcoholics Anonymous who had been attending a Jewish Bible study about Jesus. She arranged for me to attend the meeting. It was held at the Messianic Jewish Center. A beautiful young girl named Rachel Nelson befriended me. She was full of love and kindness, unlike anyone I had ever known. I thought she and her parents were Jewish. Later I found out they were Gentiles (non-Jews) who loved the Jewish people and were involved in telling them about their Jewish Messiah. A Bible study was taught at the Center which was completely from the Old Testament scriptures. To my amazement these scriptures pointed to many things, which were fulfilled by Yeshua, Jesus the Messiah. Only they were predicted hundreds of years prior to His birth. It was as though a light suddenly went on. My search had come to an end. Immediately I knew this was what I had been longing for.

I went home that night and cried out to God, falling on my knees and praying. I accepted Jesus and was born anew, yet something was strangely familiar. I told God He was not new to me and asked Him what this feeling was that I remembered. He brought back to my memory an experience I had had as a very young child of three or so. I instantly had a clear recollection of a time when I had been babysat overnight. I could actually see the room in which I was sleeping. The furniture, walls and décor were vivid. I remembered one of the family's daughters was sleeping in a bed in the same room. I remembered exactly what she looked like down to her blonde braids. I could see myself crawling out of a crib to get under the covers beside her. On the dresser lay a glowing cross with Jesus hanging from it. I told the girl it made me feel safe. She was the age when Catholic children begin learning about their religion. She asked me if I knew I could not go to heaven unless I believed Jesus died for my sins. I responded that I did believe, but asked her not to tell anyone. Funny how at such a young age I already knew it was forbidden for a Jew to admit to believing in Jesus. Jews mistakenly think you have to stop being Jewish to believe in Him. In their mind you are abandoning your Jewishness and becoming a Gentile and a traitor. In His faithfulness, God brought me back to Himself! That was why He was familiar to me. I had already met Him all those years before. Many times in the sadness and loneliness of my childhood I remember talking to God. But later in my sin I had forgotten Him.

As a teen I taught myself to play guitar because I loved to sing. Rachel, the Nelson's daughter, started a Messianic singing group and asked me to join. We began to travel to various places to sing and tell our testimonies. She modeled our group, the Star of David Singers, after Jews for Jesus. Rachel had accepted Messiah through the testimony of some young Jewish teens she had met on a summer witnessing campaign. She was inspired by the fact that they were willing to suffer for accepting Jesus as their Messiah. Many were kicked out or even symbolically buried by their families for believing. Their fervor inspired her.

My mom and dad became curious at my changed behavior wondering what I was into this time. Mom came to see what was going on at the Messianic Jewish Center. She met another Israeli who was teaching Hebrew. This lady witnessed to my Mom. Within three months of my being born anew, Mom also accepted Yeshua as her Messiah. I recruited her to be the chaperone of our singing group. This led her to an eight-year career of traveling worldwide with the Star of David singers. We young people wrote original songs in Hebrew and English from the Bible and shared with thousands of people how God had not rejected the Jewish People. We told them the Church was to love the Jews and repent of anti-Semitism to win the Jews to their Messiah.

During one of our performances as a singing group, we visited a Lutheran home for troubled children. Next door, was a Lutheran nursing home. Mom and I made what was to me an unexpected visit. An elderly man with a blanket on his lap sat in a wheelchair. To my surprise it was the missionary who had come to see my mom weekly when I was still a baby. As it turns out, prior to the Nelsons, he was the director of what was to become the Messianic Jewish Center. At that time it was called Christ's Mission to the Jews. How amazing God is! This man planted the seeds. The Nelsons reaped the harvest. The elderly gentleman began to cry as we told him who we were. He pulled out a card from his wallet with my Mom's name on it. All those years he had been praying. God allowed him to live to see the fruit of his prayers.

God is so awesome! "He would that none should perish" 2 Peter 3:9. I no longer question the reason for my life. I have found the reason, and it is Jesus. My life is a testimony to His love, faithfulness and power to transform lives. Against all odds, He miraculously kept my Father alive, brought my Mother through her ordeals and enabled me to survive. I had the privilege of praying for and sharing Messiah with Dad. For twenty years I pleaded with Dad to accept his Jewish Messiah begging him not to let me go to heaven, look and not find him. Many famous Jewish evangelists such as Moishe Rosen, Sid Roth, Rachmiel Friedland, and Manny Brotman witnessed to Dad. Yet accepting Jesus did not come easily to my Dad. He had been a witness to much suffering at the hands of anti-Semites claiming to be Christian. He said in his native Poland Jews were burned on crosses during Easter time. Local Catholics rioted and pillaged the Jewish villages. He suffered in the concentration camps at the hands of German Nazis. Were these Nazis Christians? How was a Jew to know the difference? Germany, after all, was a Christian nation. In 1992 Dad was in the ICU of a Pittsburgh hospital attached to life support. He was dying of kidney cancer and the complications of emphysema. He wrote on a bandage wrapper, "I accept Messiah Ben David." He wrote the day and date. During his last days he would fade in and out of consciousness. Each time I entered the room he would become conscious. I sang to him a prayer from the Jewish prayer book, "King, Redeemer, Savior and Shield. You raise the dead sleeping in their graves. You are mighty to save." Three weeks later he went home to be with his Messiah.

Shortly after being born anew, a disturbing thought came to me. Seeing as there were quite a number of churches in my neighborhood, I wondered why no one had ever bothered to tell me Jesus was my Messiah. Many people attend these churches hearing each week about Jesus. Surely they knew accepting Him and His payment for our sins was the only Way to Eternal life, didn't they? If so, then why hadn't they ever told me? Either they didn't really understand the importance of what they were hearing or they were hearing it so often they had taken it for granted? Or maybe they had themselves never really become born anew, so they couldn't share what they did not possess. Perhaps they mistakenly thought Jews did not need to know. Or worse yet, hated Jews and were not willing to share the Good News?

My heart's desire is to tell true Believers everywhere not to neglect my Jewish people. Share the Good News with the lost sheep of the house of Israel. His Word says, "So you do it unto the least of these, my Brethren, you do it unto Me" Matt. 25:40 and "He who touches you touches the apple of God's eye" Zech. 2:8. You say, "I don't know any Jews". If you know Jesus, you know the greatest Jew who ever lived. If you read the Bible you have read words penned by Jews. Recently the clergy of a prevalent religion declared that it was unnecessary to evangelize to Jews for they have their own covenant with God. What a lie! Jesus came "to the Jew first" Rom. 1:16. Speak to your lawyers, doctors, dentists, and business people. Find a Jewish person and begin to pray for them. The Bible says, "Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, they will prosper that love thee" Ps. 122:6. It also says, "I will bless those that bless those that bless thee, I will curse those that curse thee" Gen. 12:3. In Romans 9:4 Paul explains that the promises are all of the Israelites, meaning the Jews. I say with Paul, "If their rejection of Him means salvation to the world, how much more will their acceptance of Him be but LIFE FROM THE DEAD" Rom. 11:15. Can you imagine 144,000 Jewish Pauls running around the world preaching the Good News! I believe the enemy has had a plan to prevent this from happening. Unwittingly, he has used the church as his vehicle. However, I believe we are in an hour when the true Body of Messiah is beginning to awaken to a crucial part of God's plan. I believe Jesus' return hinges on a point previously hidden from most Believers. In the book of Luke, Yeshua was weeping over Jerusalem saying, "O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, the city that kills the prophets and stone those sent to her! How often I wanted to gather your children together . . . and I say to you, you will not see Me until the time comes when you say, 'Baruch Ha Ba B'Shem Adonai' (Blessed is He that cometh in the name of the Lord!)". I believe that the Body of Messiah is to pray and do everything to win Israel to their Messiah. When we obey God's call to give the Gospel, "to the Jew first" surely those exact words will come from their lips ushering in their Messiah's return. Also check out Romans 11:25 & 26 "Lest you be self-opinionated (wise in your own conceits). I do not want you to miss this hidden truth and mystery, brethren: a hardening has (temporarily) befallen a part of Israel until the full number of the ingathering of the Gentiles has come in, And so all Israel will be saved."

Ade and her husband David run a ministry called Messiah's Touch. "Our vision is to help the hungry-hearted receive Messiah Yeshua and to help all members of the His Body receive healing--spiritually, emotionally and physically as they become fully connected and restored to the True Vine." ". . .and now share in the nourishing sap from the olive root," Romans: 11:17

" . . . it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile."
- Romans 1:16, NIV