Book Review … My Jesus Year (Benyamin Cohen)
Early in March, Tzedakah Ministries was given the privilege of presenting a paper on the primacy of Romans 1:16 as both a theological truth as well as a mission’s template at the Lausanne Consultation on Jewish Evangelism North America meeting in Atlanta. It was a whirlwind day because I flew to Atlanta and back to Dallas-Fort Worth all in the same day. It was a very long day!
As per my usual tendency, I had a couple of books in my backpack to read on the plane but for some reason neither of them really appealed to me. So before boarding, I wondered through a book store and discovered My Jesus Year by Benyamin Cohen. I began reading the book on the flight to Atlanta and finished this 250-page biography somewhere over Louisiana around 11:00 p.m. that same night. It was fascinating, it was heartbreaking. It is a book that all Christians and pastors should read if for no other reason than to remind us that we often fail at the most important task given to us … Evangelism!
This true story begin as Benyamin Cohen, an Orthodox Jewish man and the son of a rabbi, begins to truly comes to term with his hidden angst and jealousy … he wants to know what it is like to be a Christian. Cohen then proceeds to spend the next year traveling around to evangelical and mainstream Protestant churches trying to discover what it is about Christianity that he has longed to experience. Cohen is inundated with the sounds of a T.D. Jakes revival meeting in Atlanta. He pretends to say confession and receive penance in a Roman Catholic Church. He attends a Christian Rock Festival in Georgia and even observes a Christian Wrestling Forum in the backwoods of the Bible Belt.
Cohen ultimately arrives at the conclusion of his one-year trek that he was born as an Orthodox Jewish man and he will die as one. He does include, interestingly enough, that Christianity works for those who are not Jewish but as a “good Jew” he must remain loyal to the heritage of his fathers and his faith.
This story’s ending itself is tragic enough; however, I was stunned as I finished the story on the return flight to Texas as the ultimate tragedy found within the pages. For you see in Cohen’s odyssey through the Bible Belt and through the church doors of Christianity, he was never once given a Gospel message presentation. From the Christian Rock Festival to the “Christian wrestlers”, Cohen was in the midst of the Jesus message but never once given the opportunity to receive Jesus for himself. Yet another reason why the Romans 1:16 Response Team is so necessary in 2010.
And before I forget the greatest irony/tragedy of them all, Benyamin Cohen is from Atlanta, Georgia.
