Ronit’s Story: It’s Worth It
Ronit Shreyberg grew up in a religious Jewish home with an Orthodox Jewish mother and a Reform Jewish father. They liked to describe their home as “conservadox.” Eventually, her mother became less Orthodox and her father become more Orthodox, but they always kept a kosher home and remained proudly and happily Jewish.
Ronit faithfully attended shul. She loved the liturgy, the traditions, and keeping Shabbat. However, she said she felt an emptiness, and when she prayed, she did not hear back from God. She also noticed that while the Tanakh spoke of God in a personal way as having personal relationships with His people, Ronit noticed that in her shul, God was only talked about in a theoretical sense.
Longing for More
Ronit longed for a deeper relationship with God, like what she read about in the Tanakh. For example, the Torah says that God spoke to Moses as one would a friend (Exod 33:11) and describes God’s communion with Abraham (Gen 12:1–3). She knew there had to be something more.
After her bat mitzvah, Ronit started asking God why she never heard back from Him. Shortly afterward, her cousin—a new believer in Yeshua—came to visit that summer. Her cousin shared with her about her newfound faith in Yeshua and began telling Ronit that He is the Messiah for whom they’ve been waiting.
Ronit listened to her cousin with an open mind and began entertaining the idea that Yeshua could actually be the Messiah. She even went with her cousin to church one Sunday. While there, she witnessed the way people worshiped God and thought they were insane, but she also felt something very different.
When her father found out where they had been, he was very angry and almost kicked her cousin out of their house. He refused to speak to them for weeks. Her sister and brother were likewise horrified at the fact Ronit was looking into whether Yeshua could be the Messiah. “Go look into our own religion! You don’t know enough to think about this,” her sister told her.
So Ronit decided to embark on the path to becoming Orthodox, but while she did, she also began to study the Tanakh’s prophecies about the Messiah. Who is he? What will he do? What do people say about him?
“A prophet like Moses”
One prophecy stood out to Ronit the most—the Torah’s prophecy that God would raise up a “prophet like Moses” whom the Jewish people must follow and obey (Deut 18:15, 18–20). Ronit wondered, Who was this prophet like Moses? Who performed amazing miracles like Moses, delivered his people Israel from bondage, and gave commandments from God?
Ronit read the passage in Deuteronomy:
Moses told the people, “The Lord your God will raise up for you a prophet like me from among you, from your brothers—it is to him you shall listen.”
The Lord told Moses, “I will raise up for them a prophet like you from among their brothers. And I will put my words in his mouth, and he shall speak to them all that I command him. And whoever will not listen to my words that he shall speak in my name, I myself will require it of him” (Deuteronomy 18:15, 18–20).
Some Jewish commentators claim this prophet was Joshua, but Ronit was not convinced, because directly after the Torah’s description of Joshua, it reads, “And there has not arisen a prophet since in Israel like Moses, whom the Lord knew face to face” (Deuteronomy 34:9–10). Since Joshua was alive at the time this was written, this passage clearly eliminated Joshua from being the prophet like Moses.
A year later, Ronit’s sister returned home from being away on a journey to “find herself.” In the process, Ronit’s sister found Yeshua. She returned home a follower of Yeshua and told Ronit all about it. Ronit noticed her sister was different. “She had a deep anchor, and I needed that,” Ronit said.
Ronit began asking God for a dream, vision, or lightning-bolt-type experience to confirm to her that Yeshua was indeed the Messiah. Instead, God gently spoke to her heart. “I heard a clear voice in my heart saying, ‘You’ve heard enough, seen enough; it’s time to believe,’” Ronit described.
Ronit concluded Yeshua was indeed the “prophet like Moses” foretold of in the Torah. The Jewish apostle Peter, when speaking to a Jewish crowd at the Temple after Yeshua’s resurrection and ascension to heaven, said,
Repent therefore, and turn back, that your sins may be blotted out, that times of refreshing may come from the presence of the Lord, and that he may send the Messiah appointed for you, Yeshua, whom heaven must receive until the time for restoring all the things about which God spoke by the mouth of his holy prophets long ago. Moses said, “The Lord God will raise up for you a prophet like me from your brothers. You shall listen to him in whatever he tells you. And it shall be that every soul who does not listen to that prophet shall be destroyed from the people” (Acts 3:19–23).
Worth the Cost
Ronit knew that following Yeshua would come with a cost. What would her dad think? What would her friends think? Do you go with the truth, or with what’s comfortable? Ronit thought.
“At the end, I couldn’t say no. I knew Yeshua was real. I knew He was real,” Ronit said. So she decided to believe and follow Yeshua, even though her dad and friends felt betrayed and disappointed.
“Whatever the cost was, I figured it was worth it. I love my family more than anything, and I want them to accept me. But to have a close relationship with God, the truth is worth it. Life with Yeshua would be worth it.”
To listen to Ronit’s story in her own words, go to https://ifoundshalom.com/ronit-shreyberg
