 I am really, really excited to have a very dear friend sitting across from me at my dining room table by the name of Julius Siss. How are you Julius? Good. Nice to be here. It is great to have you here. A long time coming. Yes, yes, yes. The reason why I'm happy to have you here is because it's always nice to interview a friend. It really is because I didn't have to do a lot of research about you. I've just been watching you all these decades. Well also you're going to be taking for granted you think you know me. That's a good point. I may not, right? That's right, yes. As there was in your art there were a lot of shadows perhaps when we speak about Julius Siss. A lot of shadows and hidden messages. Yes. The other thing too is that Julius is the executive director of Jews for Judaism. And if you've been under a rock for many years you wouldn't have heard of them. However, if you are part of the Jewish community you will know that Jews for Judaism here in Toronto and Ontario and really it's the headquarters for Canada is probably the foremost anti-missionary organization in the world. Although we're based in Ontario because of the advent of the internet the last six, seven, eight years Jews for Judaism has had an incredible worldwide impact. I was doing my research on you Julius and I was phenomenally amazed by the quantity of videos of articles that one can find on your website. It's unbelievable. Well, the website and I have to add to that our YouTube channel Jews for Judaism. It's not a coincidence that this has happened. I'm just going to give you a little background on our organization. I was a Jew for Jesus for five years from 1976 to 1980. I love that. And it's not so much I just happened to believe in Jesus and was Jewish. I was involved in the grassroots development of one of the major Messianic congregations here in Toronto back then and was a choir leader in the group. I was involved in adult education. I was the public relations director. Did their advertising. I was very, very interested in spreading the message to Jewish people sadly that Jesus was the Jewish Messiah. Do you believe that in your heart? I did believe that in my heart. I'm saying it took five years and with the help of many, many concerned individuals in Toronto's Jewish activist community back then. Many of whom, you know, reaching out to me being a real Dracop, really just badgering me with arguments, calling me up, being friendly, being loving, being kind, showing care and concern to a fellow Jew. It started to make a dent. It was a combination of many things, but both experiencing the anti-Semitism in Christianity, experiencing the contradictions that exist and eventually realizing that based on all the inconsistencies that I discovered, I had made a huge mistake. What was it like to believe in Jesus? What's Jesus like? Jesus is like, you know, the experience was more not believing in the individual person, but believing in the Christian presentation of God as a Trinity, Father, Son and Holy Spirit, and the idea that you can have a personal relationship with God by believing in their teachings. The big misconception, though, is that for a Jew to believe in the presentation of Christianity is considered idolatry. Idolatry on three levels because, first of all, to believe that God is a Trinity. You know, we, the Jewish people, we believe here in Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is one. And the oneness of God that we understand is without beginning, without end, it's infinite. It's not like a ballpoint pen that has ink, plastic and metal. God is not like that. It doesn't come in components. And so for a Jew to believe in God as a Trinity, it's idolatry, which is one of the three cardinal sins. Number two, to believe that... So you were an idol worshiper. I didn't think of it at that time as such. But looking back. Looking back, that's what it is. So on Pesach, or when we read in the Torah, thou shalt not have any other God other than me. You really get that. Well, except I didn't get it then. I thought I was living the fulfillment of what Judaism was meant to be. The big catchphrase amongst these Hebrew Christian missionaries, of which there are hundreds, if not thousands worldwide, is that if Judaism believes in the coming of the Messiah, if we could prove to you that Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, what could be more Jewish than to believe in Him? And this sales pitch was very compelling. And to a Jew who has limited or no education, which most North American Jews suffer from, the case for Christianity could be very compelling. It can be. Very compelling. One of the programs that we do at Jews for Judaism is the encounter. It's a mock debate between a Jew for Jesus and a Jew for Judaism. In that program, I'll come out with my Jews for Jesus T-shirt and spend a half hour converting the audience to Christianity. They don't know that I'm from Jews for Judaism. They think I'm Mitch Mandel from Jews for Jesus. And I just didn't want to be on the same stage with Jews for Judaism. I'll walk off after the program. And then the moderator brings in, announces, Jews for Judaism. It's Julie Assister. Come on. I come back in without my T-shirt on. And, oh, everybody has a big sigh of relief. And I debunk everything that the missionary purported to be true. But how successful are you in converting them the first half hour? Do they come out? Are they short? Are they befuddled? You know what? It's not so much converting them. They get very nervous. They get nervous. They get nervous because the case is very powerful. It's not so much that I'm reading by a textbook definition. I'm going about what experienced and changed my heart back then. And some of the arguments can be very compelling. If you know how to present it to an audience that doesn't know how to deal with it, it can make them very uncomfortable. Yeah, so I want to stop you for one second because I want to understand your experience, both existential and emotionally. When you look back to those days, and again, we're talking 1975 to 1980, first off, are you surprised that you could be convinced and are you disappointed in yourself that you were? I'm not surprised that it could be convinced because many thousands upon thousands of Jews are convinced. And these are not stupid Jews. Some of the leaders in the Hebrew Christian movement are very intelligent and I'm not going to offer you their websites and YouTube channels, but their presentations are extremely compelling and very convincing. One thing that differs between them and the Jewish world is that they did not have a Jewish framework to use as a basis to make these assessments and judgments. The presentation that was made to me, as it is made to so, so many Jews, is something that is very simple. And again, I'm not using this, I don't want to use this interview to make the case for Jews. I want to make the case for Jews for Judaism. Yeah, we got that. And why Jews shouldn't believe it, because basically, if Jesus is the Jewish Messiah, the missionaries, purport, then okay, they've got a good argument. But if he's not, then really what that means is Christianity is not true. And if it's not true, hello Jewish people, wake up. We're going to be coming close to Pesach soon where we celebrate God's revelation to the Jewish people, His miraculous bringing us out of Egypt through the Ten Plagues, the parting of the sea, the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai. These are not fables as some people would have us believe. These are things that really happened. You know, speaking of the Passover Seder, I sometimes use my father as an example to illustrate the reality of the transmission of our story as a people. And my father was sitting at our Passover table when he was alive. It was about five, six years ago. Nisan was his name. Nisan says, Nisan after the name of, after the month of April because he was born... God bless us. God bless us all. Amen. And I was, in the beginning of the Passover Seder, we holed up the matzah, which we refer to as the poor man's bread. And I started giving a little bit of an explanation about how the slaves in Egypt would take a piece of bread and take it with them into the field so they could have something to munch on. My father said, what are you talking about? That happened to me! And I said, what? He said, my father said that he had nothing to eat. He was starving in the concentration camp in World War II. And one of the fellow campmates offered him a loaf of bread if he would give that campmate his boots. This was a very hard thing for my father to do because the boots were made by his father, my father's father, my grandfather. A labor coin was a bootmaker. And he gave up the boots, wrapped his feet in newspapers and burlap sacks, and had that piece of bread to live on for two, three days. The poor man's bread. He said, this is the halachmania, this is the poor man. My point was there at the table was a survivor of a holocaust whose day millions upon millions of people say never happened. We had the testimony at our table. That testimony is something we've had transmitted. When we as Jewish people have an understanding of the reality of that experience, it's very hard to discount God going out of his way to reveal himself to three million people when every other religion in the world, including Christianity, starts with the revelation of one individual saying they have the truth. What was interesting is, and this is probably an experience of a lot of people who become Jews for Jesus, is that you were sort of brought in by a woman, a girl that you liked, right? I was interdating, and it was a very interesting story. I was a student at the Ontario College of Art back in 1974, 1975. A brilliant artist that you were. Well, not an artist, an illustrator. With the definitions, but it was a graduate at the Ontario College of Art back then, as I do now have what is referred to as the open house where they put on display the best work of the students in the school, and I set up a display and sat by my display Friday night, Saturday, Sunday in hopes of meeting an art director and being able to launch my career, which didn't happen then, but at the last hour of my display on the Sunday afternoon along comes Mary Beth. Mary Beth is the beauty queen of the school, gorgeous, tall, vivacious, funny, humorous, interesting. She had it all. She comes up to me and what am I? I'm a six foot five, 120 pound Woody Allen kid with acne all over my face, and I just was so nervous. My tongue went dry, my hands went climbing. How do you deal with such a beautiful woman? But she started asking me genuinely questions about my work, my art, my feelings. After an hour, I went, wow, this is amazing. So I said to her, you know, I've got to wrap up, but maybe you'd like to go out tonight? And she said, yes. Oh, you asked her out. I asked her out that night, and so we went out and had a great time. So after that date, I asked her out if we could go out the next week, and she said, okay, the next week we'd go out and I did something you shouldn't say on a second date. I told her that I loved her. You don't do that on a second date. Give it a few little while. So I told her I loved her. And you thought you'd loved her? You did love her? Well, you know, it's crazy. I mean, I did not. What does a young guy know about love? So this was new for you. It was pretty amazing. I think she was amazing. Gorgeous. But so I told her I loved her, and she said, cool your jets. Take it easy. What? She says, I'm in love with somebody else. And I went, what? What do you love with somebody else? You're going out with me two days and you're in love with somebody else. How can you do that? And she says, I said, who is he? I'll tear his eyes out. What's his address? She says, it's Jesus Christ. No problem. I can handle that. I thought you had a real boyfriend. But she was dead serious. What I didn't realize is she was an evangelical Christian who had backslidden. And the New Testament teaches that they should not be unequally yoked. They should not be going out with people who are not believers. And she made a boo boo. But she was trying to put her faith first. And with that in place, she thought maybe she can get our relationship back on track. And she did. I started going to church with her and to her Christian socials. How was that going to church? Do you remember the first time you went? It wasn't comfortable. I mean, you know, when your experience of house of worship is that of a Jewish house of worship where, you know, you have, in my particular case, there's some heats of the men on one side, the women on the other. And there it was quite different. Everything was in English. And again, I wasn't going to church to be convinced. But the reality is listening to these evangelical messages from the pulpit does make an impact on you and move me to a certain extent until one Sunday afternoon about three months into the relationship, the pastor was very anti-Semitic and very filled with hatred for Jews. Don't ask me how that happened. And I walked out of there saying, you know what? I can't come back here. That's it. I was born a Jew. I'm going to die a Jew. I just walked away from that church. She and her haste tried to remedy the situation to figure out some way that she can get the gospel message to me and she found out about this new messianic synagogue, as they call it, a Hebrew Christian church that had started up in Toronto to see if maybe she can get me to go there and finally hear the gospel in a way that would convince me that it was true. Right. And she did. She found out about this place and I went there. I went and they called it a messianic synagogue. They had Friday night services. The men were wearing kippot and talasim and they were playing beautiful Jewish music, Hiney Matov, Sisu at Yusha Line. All the stuff we know. All the stuff. I didn't know it then, but then I finally learned it. And then at the beginning of the service, a woman comes up and lights the Shabbat candles but instead of two candles at street to represent the Trinity. And she says, Shabbat, the name of Jesus Christ, the Messiah. Right. And then the messianic Rabbi comes and he has a glass of wine. He says, again, in the name of Jesus. Okay, it's a little different, but there was a lot of Jews there. And I started going to this group and she was right. It worked and it was a methodology that unfortunately is being used in big ways all around the world today to convince Jews that you can be Jewish and believe in Jesus. It's very deceptive. It's very disingenuous. But what happened, it was a technology that was developed in the 60s that they found worked. Jews don't want to go to synagogue. Jews don't want to practice Jewish holidays. Jews won't keep Shabbat. Oh, but to go to messianic synagogue? Okay, that's different. Well, Joe, let me ask you something. In terms of your commitment to your Judaism, I believe you went to Shahrt Philo synagogue? I went to Shahrt Shemaim when I was a kid. Which is an Orthodox synagogue? Yes. So how Orthodox were you or were you not? Okay, so to say I went to the synagogue, I went occasionally to the synagogue, I went to a cater like a lot of my peers did. Many kids were brought up by Holocaust survivors to go to Hebrew school, a cater, until the bar mitzvah. And most of us, after the bar mitzvah, left it, which I did. Once you had your bar mitzvah, it was to take the freedom. And sadly, which is not unusual, and you hear this in the testimonials of many of the Jews who've converted to Christianity. They said, well, I was bar mitzvah at the age of 13. Right. But what did it do? Right. The reality is thankfully, thankfully, I was brought up by parents that were traditional. They both grew up in traditional homes in Europe. And so there was a Shabbat at the home every Friday night. There was a Pesach Seder. My parents went to Shul Yor Shashonim Kippur. And thankfully, when I was a kid, my father used to take me to Shul occasionally on Shabbat. And I remember one of my... I had a few precious memories of my father, Nisan. One is on Simchat Torah, dancing with the... on Simchat Torah at Shersh Maimon St. Clair. And I was sitting on his shoulders, waving a flag of Israel with a little apple on top of it. It's a precious memory. Yes, lovely. Another precious memory is sitting with him in Shul. And we're following along in the Chumash and the five books of Moses, the Torah reading. And he would have his finger on the place where he were. And I would have my hand on his finger as we went through. It's lovely. It's an imprint that you can never erase. It's like a Rockwell painting, you know. Yeah, it's Rockwell, yeah. And that's right. It is. Yes. But my parents didn't know a lot. And sadly, after my Bar Mitzvah, I had nothing to do with Judaism whatsoever. So the reality is the closest thing to going into a synagogue in all those years after my Bar Mitzvah was this Messianic synagogue 13 years later. And it was much more of a social thing than it was a religious thing. No, no, no. It was social, but it appealed to the emotions. Everybody was friendly. Everybody was warm. More so than the synagogues? Oh, yeah. You can walk into a synagogue sometimes and the most important thing somebody's going to say to you is, excuse me, you're sitting in my seat. Is that a problem in terms of? Well, no, you have to understand. And I hear this. It's not so much that in the church world, they try to really promote their obedience to Jesus' instruction of showing love. It's very important. And it's almost impossible not to feel it in any serious evangelical church because this is the way that people welcome you and keep you. And it's not, sadly, something that is evident in any significant way in synagogues. Most synagogues deal with people who come on a regular basis. And it's not a venue in which you welcome seekers as a rule. Did you believe the love in the church? Was it authentic? How could you? No, no. Listen, somebody puts their arm around you and gives you a hug. Forget believing in it. If you're a normal human being, you respond to love. What do you mean believe in the love? You feel it. You feel it. And these people are genuine. When I shake somebody's hand, I give them a handshake because I feel it. They feel it back. Somebody shakes your hand like a goldfish. They don't feel it. But it's not hard to show love. What's hard to convince people is to do it. That's the problem that we're lacking throughout the world. Forget Judaism. And those Christian groups that are working to convert Jews, groups like Jews for Jesus and chosen people, ministries and friends of Israel, gospel ministries, all of these, there are hundreds of them. They all basically focus on two things, to show a lot of love and to make Jews feel welcome. And sadly, what I initially started off to try and share with you 25 minutes ago was that when I got started with this, I realized when I came out of Christianity and realized that Christianity was not true and had been helped to realize that Judaism was true. Again, when I left Christianity, I was walking away with a book that was called The Holy Bible, of which one quarter was the New Testament and I could comfortably rip that out. But I was still left with the three quarters, which was the Jewish Bible, the Tanakh. And that I believed. I believed in the Revelation at sign. I believed in the Jewish people coming out of Egypt. I believed in it. I really thought it was true. How could it not be true? And so I didn't have to be given a strong reason to believe in the authenticity of Judaism. I just had to learn how to become a serious Jew. And that was something that I was helped with by going through organizations like Eshetorah and Orsamayach and Chabadlababit. Organizations that helped me connect religiously. And then there were student organizations like the Jewish Department, they don't exist anymore, Jewish Student Network and universities, et cetera, helped me connect socially with a lot of people. So Julius, so you're going to this church, a Messianic church. Messianic synagogue. Yes, synagogue. Sorry, Messianic synagogue. You take Jesus into your heart for all intents and purposes. You come home and you tell your parents that you now believe in Jesus. You are a Jew for Jesus. What happens at the table? What do your parents respond? That didn't happen. It did not happen. No. I didn't have the heart to tell my parents. Honestly. Honestly. I'm telling you. No, I believe you. So let me do, I will tell you what happened. Yeah, please. I never told my parents. All they knew is that we would, you know how in Passover and some homes, they rushed to get to the Pesach Seder in time for the hockey game. Yes. So in my particular case, I rushed to the Shabbos dinner to get out in time to go to my Messianic service, which was 80s. I'd rush out of our Shabbos dinner at 7.30 and they would always ask me, where are you going? I said, I'm going to a shul. That's all. I didn't have the heart to say it, I just couldn't. Meanwhile, I'm on the street corners handing out pamphlets, handing out literature at the Hadassah Bazaar, trying to convert. But I couldn't tell my parents. They had both gone through the concentration camp. Yeah. My siblings knew, but my parents didn't and I just didn't have the heart. But at the end of my five-year tenure in the Hebrew Christian movement, I was really getting very active in doing whatever I could to promote the Messianic Judaism that I had embraced. And I organized a very big concert at Northview Heights Secondary School, had created some deceptive flyers of Hasidim dancing in front of the hotel and did this program, musical program, advertised, put up posters all along Bathurst Street. Did you know they were deceptive? I designed them. So in your heart, did you know that? No, in my heart, I thought, well, if we can be Jews and believe in Jesus, it's the most authentic thing we could do. So I embraced the deception as being true. Yeah, the deception was true. That's very interesting. Yes, I embraced the deception as truth. So I created these ads and posted them all across Bathurst Street but the Jewish community caught on very quickly, knew that it was a ruse and organized one of the biggest protests against Christianity in Toronto's history by a Jewish community outside Northview Heights Secondary School that it must have been about 250 Jewish protesters. And I was on the inside having organized the whole event and accepting tickets for people as they came in. And as people came in, I noticed a lot of these protesters had tickets and I went, wait a minute. I produced these tickets. I was in charge of distributing the tickets. I sold the tickets. Where did they get the tickets from? Until with my artistic background, I took a careful look and noticed they were counterfeit. They printed up their own. You gotta love our people. Yeah, but my feeling was what is it that those Jews know that can cause them to come out to protest what I'm doing that I don't know? Why is it they are so passionate about the mistake that I'm doing that they can go out at cold winter night and have the press there. Again, it was covered by the press, the newspapers. What was it that they could know that I don't know? Pardon me, there's an expression in Christianity that I use in this particular case. They often say in Christianity they want to provoke Jews to jealousy. Well, these Jews provoke me to jealousy for it. What is it they have that I don't have? Were you embarrassed? No, I was proud at the time. People would show up whom you knew, I imagine. You know some of the people that were there but some of the protesters. But my point is this. This made the front page of the Toronto Star. Front page of the Globe and Mail. Front page of the Toronto Sun. It was in Canadian Jewish News. I hinted to my career as an illustrator by this time I was a famous Canadian illustrator. I had illustrations on the cover of McLean's magazine, Toronto Life Magazine, Canadian Business Magazine. I was a real celebrity and my father he used to work in a sweatshop on Spadina on the sewing machines. What did he make? Women's coats, he was a cloak maker. And he would come into the shop on Monday after a weekend and he would bring in a magazine that I illustrated. He would show this, his linesman, look what my son made, that beautiful picture. And he would be proud. He would have nachos. He would have nachos, but this particular Monday after all the newspapers published these things he came in and his cronies were holding the paper in front of my father. He goes, this is your son? You're proud of him? He's our missionary. And my father was sick about it. That night, that Monday night, we were supposed to have a family celebration and I came to the door with a cake and my father stood at the door and he pointed at me. He says, you're not my son anymore. That was his reaction. He didn't know how to deal with it, he basically disowned me. That was a game changer. To realize that my father had to stand up for what he believed to do, even though he was not sophisticated enough to explain or have the discussion with me, he just slammed the door in my face. You remember that moment? Yes. So what brought this discussion on was me telling my parent it wasn't until that moment, almost five years later, at the tail end of my involvement, that they disowned me. When you say they disowned you, how did that translate? Well, my mother kept up communication. My father wouldn't speak to me. He wouldn't talk to you? No. But my point was that after this all happened and I came out of Christianity and I basically wanted to go into neutral. Neutral meaning I didn't want to do anything. I had a very interesting story happen to me. Actually, I was very critical. I had a friend who I knew since I was 14. Her name was Charlotte. We ended up being friends as teenagers and she ended up going to secondary school and she was my class. We just always were good friends. At the point when I started getting involved in Christianity, she got involved in Judaism. At the point where I was taking Christianity more seriously, she ended up getting married to a rabbi. But throughout all the years, she kept in touch with me. Over the course of my five-year involvement while in Christianity, she always would call me up when she'd come to town and invite me over for her Shabbat meal or come for a glass of tea. And I would never stop, never hesitate to tell her about the importance of believing Yeshua HaMashiach, the East Messiah. And she'd listen to it for a bit. Yeah, enough. Yeah, I get it. At this particular time after I had that concert behind me and I had a lot of reasons to question the validity of Christianity, she called me up to say hello and she, after five minutes, said to me, Julie, what's the matter with you? And I said, what do you mean? She says, well, every time we've spoken for the last five years, you would jump into telling me to believe in Jesus and you haven't said boo. And I said, well, it's because I'm having doubts. Oh, really doubts? What kind of doubts? And I explained to her about the inconsistencies with the Messianic prophecy and the whole issue of anti-Semitism and the whole issue of how could the New Testament be true when all the contradictions exist? And she said, you know, I've spoken to a rabbi about this and I said, no. She said, why? I said, the only rabbi that I think I could speak to was the rabbi that was interviewed in all the newspapers that I ended up being when I was doing my shenanigans with my Messianic congregation and I don't think he would believe me. Yes. And she said, what rabbi is that? I said, that's Rabbi Emmanuel Shachet. And she said, well, he's a good friend of mine. He believed me. Can I give him a call and see if he'll meet with you? She dealt with you well, Charlotte, didn't she? Yeah. So she called up Rabbi Shachet. Rabbi Shachet immediately said, sure, I wouldn't come this evening and I spent four hours with him that evening. And after he helped reaffirm my understanding of the mistakes I made and introduce even more questions about the invalidity of the Christian claim for having truth with Jesus being a Messiah. He said to me, you know, you just spent five years of your life promoting Christianity. Why don't you just spend five months of your life checking out Judaism? He recommended that I go to a shator here in Toronto which had just started up an organization to reach out to Jewish adults and because there was a big need here in the city and I was excited. Excited to start learning about the Judaism I never knew about. And over a period of time, over the course of a year, year and a half, I was involved with the group. They decided to do a video of their students to just hear the story of what brought them to come to learn about Judaism. And nobody had heard my story before. They put me in front of a video with a microphone and I told them my story about having been a Jew for Jesus. Everybody's tongues were hanging out and that launched my counter-missionary activism career. It's a great story. Yeah. Well, and so I started being asked to speak about my experience, being asked to be counseling individuals, I started publishing ads in the Canadian Jewish news, literature, whatnot. And it was just a hobby being a counter-missionary until I realized the stuff is getting too much of a problem and I realized it has to be an organization that deals with this. And I met with the leader of a big Jewish organization in the city to see if they could help fund some kind of a counter-missionary budget. And I went to him and I said, you know, we really need to have some good classes. We need to have good counseling. We need some programming. We need literature. We need audio tapes at that time. And he said, you know, Julius, I really appreciate the dilemma you're in, but we can't help you. Right. But I do know somebody who can. And I said, who? And he pointed the finger at me. Right. And I realized, then, you know what? Gotta do this. And so that's when I took it on to start the organization, Jews for Judaism, back in 1989. And for my first program I brought in Rabbi Michael Scoback from New York who was involved with Jews for Judaism there at that time. And our first program was called The Missing Jews. It was a two-day evening event that went through all the arguments against Christianity, talking about the dilemma. And that was basically where we took off from. And the rest is history. We're now in our 31st year. And, you know, Rabbi Scoback has been instrumental in terms of his education, helping our organization move forward. And today if you take a look at what we have online, almost everything that we have on our YouTube channel, our lectures by him, where he either dissects Christianity or cults and promotes really out-of-the-box perspectives on Judaism. Yeah, I know. As I said before, I was watching some of those YouTube videos. And I know Michael very well, and I've known him for many years. I was also instrumental in keeping him here. I don't know if you know that. Oh, that's right. I remember that he had been in the hospital and we were going through the details. And he needed some work and you found him the assignment at the Hillel. I put in a good word for him and they hired him, so I was really happy. I think he's made a huge difference to our community. He's a lovely human being. You have a great staff, Carol. Carol Spodak. Who's your admin person. Really, she's the captain of the ship. She runs the ship, right? Because your strength are not finances and things like that. Between the database, working with the public. She's answering the phone. She makes a lot of fundraising calls. She's at all our events. She knows the people. And she knows the community. She knows the Jewish community very well. One of the things I think that many people think and tell me if you agree with this or not when it comes to people like Bob Dylan who went through his gospel phase, who went through his Christian phase was a evangelical Christian. Of course, he was born Jewish. You often hear from people how critical they are toward him about being sort of namby-pamby in terms of his spirituality. I kind of looked at it the other way around and I really appreciate people who pursue truth do it with a vengeance, do their very best to figure things out and ultimately to arrive at the place that's best for them. Looking back on it, I guess the first question I have is are people still critical of you for going down that road and secondly over the years, how have you digested it? How have you come to the grips with the fact that for five, six years you were a believer in Jesus Christ? You know, the rationale is that some of the best advocates for drug abuse are people who were drug users. Some of the best advocates against any kind of sexual abuse are people who had been abused and I was spiritually abused. I felt that I had to speak out against this huge wrong injustice. I use the word vendetta. I'm on a vendetta. I will not stop doing what I can to hinder, if not destroy the effort of any Christian missionaries trying to convert Jews. That's why I've been so passionate and driven and motivated non-stop to do what I can on not only what was originally just the local level but now it's very clear that what we're doing is international. We're covering the globe and bringing Jews back to Judaism and it gives me so much satisfaction. We get so many emails from so many people whose lives have been turned around from this video, from this pamphlet or from this interview and when I realize one of the monikers of our organization quotes the Talmud that says whoever saves a single Jewish soul is as if they've saved an entire Jewish world. For me I get such satisfaction knowing that with the help of our staff at Jews for Judaism with Rabbi Skobak and Carol that we're making a huge impact and it's exciting. Someone here by the name of Rachel Merski, you know that name? I'm not the best on names. She's on your website and she went through your program. She writes, I grew up in Montreal and had a fairly typical Jewish background because I never really understood how Judaism could apply to my life in a meaningful way after my but mitzvah, which is what you were saying about your bar mitzvah, I decided that I had had enough of Jewish learning and she goes through this really well written letter about how she came in touch with a Christian friend and ultimately started doing what you did, you know, attending their services and six months later she said she decided to convert to Christianity. She told her parents about it and her grandparents and they strongly urged her to find meaning in her own religion. The long and short of it she found you guys she said I finally got the courage to email the Jews for Judaism office in Toronto Rabbi Michael Skobak contacted me immediately and we began corresponding because I felt totally accepted just as I was, it was very comfortable communicating with him and his long emails and responses to my questions about Judaism were always very clear and convincing and ultimately she gave up her pursuit of Christianity and came back to her Jewishness. This is not an anomaly this happens all the time by us. It's pretty amazing and you know what actually when you are working so hard to achieve a goal and then you get a letter like that it makes you want to cry because you know it's worth it it's worth it. It's not like you're in a factory watching a piece of wood go down a line and chop chop chop you're actually seeing change happening to people's lives and it is so encouraging and I think that it is another moniker of Jews for Judaism is keeping Jews Jewish where we do whatever we can it could be not every Jew that comes to us as somebody who has questions about Christianity today more than ever Jews are coming to us because they got questions about Judaism. Why be Jewish? What's the point? I was at Shabbaton in Maple not too long ago and giving a series of lectures on my story about the Christian problem and the question answers around the lunch a father was there with his son and the father said my son has a question for you and the son said why can't I intermarry? Why can't I marry somebody who's not Jewish? and I said to him you know what you're saying is exactly what happened to Rabbi Skobak when he was speaking at the University of Windsor a number of years ago he was speaking on the missionary problem and somebody asked him to stop they're not interested in hearing about the missionary problem they asked the same question why can't I marry an un-Jew and then Rabbi Skobak said to him you have a very good question but you're asking the wrong question what you really should be asking is why should I be Jewish and I was fortunate I was able to direct this fellow at this Shabbaton I could go to our website we had a video that we just put up the date week before by Rabbi Skobak why be Jewish and that is a big big issue for many many people today and rightfully so I did an interview with Rabbi Koropkin I don't know if you heard it or not Rabbi Koropkin actually he's a rabbi in Toronto he interviewed me really and he asked me what happened to me why did I leave Orthodoxy and we had a very meaty and hearty conversation about why I did you know a lot of it had to do with my upbringing and a lot of it had to do with my education you sheave and so on but I think Jewish there are many reasons why a person would not want to affiliate themselves with our community it can be a highly judgmental community right it can be a very difficult community standards are inordinately high and I have to stop you right there I think you're being a little harsh and bigoted because really no because bigoted as maybe I'm using the wrong word you can lump some people who have character traits that may not be so desirable but the case for Judaism which is what I'm talking about when I say we have a program called Why Be Jewish you know what you're saying is associate with that community or this community but the question isn't that the question is why should a Jewish person embrace the God given legacy that the Almighty gave us at Mount Sinai that's it if you have a problem associating with a particular community in your passion to fulfill that Mitzvah observing the Torah that's one issue for revelation and God's intervention in the lives of the Jewish people is the issue and making the case for why Judaism is in essence the only path for the Jewish people is what we get to at Jews for Judaism I'm not going to argue there's a lot of schmutz out there there's a lot of hypocrisy nobody's perfect and we all experience it today we got to ask ourselves what is the purpose of the existence of ourselves as a Jew? I hear you but I'm telling you my son is 13 years old he sits around our table with his buddies who are also Jewish it's very interesting because he goes to public school and his very close friends are Jewish that's an interesting dynamic it's a very interesting dynamic that occurs you know except the dynamic is there's a common denominator amongst all these friends they're all going to the public school but there is honestly next to nothing Jewish about these kids and when you ask them what do you think about Judaism they don't know anything about Judaism many of them are atheists only because they don't know what Judaism is and the sad thing is it's a sad statement on the parents we got a situation where one of the Holocaust survivors our generation the first generation of the Holocaust already we were falling off the dirt falling off the path as they say and the children that many of my peers have brought up are already in a less affiliated situation the question that has to be asked is if there is relevance to being Jewish if there is I guess maybe one of the questions we have to ask is there a God? I'm dealing with that issue but the case for God is also a very powerful case to be made but if there is a God who is he and how did he express his interest in the world and so with fast tracking without exception every religion in the world starts with someone claiming that they had a revelation from God and they're going to try and pass it on to all our followers with one exception the Jewish people with this God's revelation three million strong and that's a big claim and quite honestly I've heard people try to refute that claim but the arguments that support the revelation of the Jewish people's experience at Mount Sinai and coming out of Egypt is so compelling and so powerful one that we're going to be celebrating in another six weeks of Passover listen I understand what you're saying and I'm not trying to undermine in any way what you're doing what I'm trying to do is encourage it by saying that your battle is a very very tough one and the reason why it's so tough in our day and age in 2020 and I see it firsthand is because God is not near as relevant in our day and age where we live how we live to many young people I think that Judaism has done its job very well most of the world is in one God but the other people are coming along and they're saying you know what my life is just fine I do not see the relevancy of God anymore and I'm hearing that I'm hearing that from my kids that is the exact same mindset of the type of Jews that we deal with and Jews for Judaism who ultimately get enticed into Christianity Eastern religions etc because sometimes presentation by these other groups goes beyond that and does make the case so what we see are many many Jews who had that mindset for the longest longest time until some other ism came along to show them that you're wrong there is a spiritual existence in this world and whether it's Christianity or one of these other Eastern religions that does the job there are people who from a Jewish background who had the mindset that God was irrelevant that changed their mind when somebody else makes the presentation in a different way that doesn't include Judaism which brings up the question wait a minute is there is there not a God if there is then we have to examine this issue but I have to admit that we are faced with a big dilemma that the entire Jewish world has to deal with is making God relevant in the Jewish world I think and it goes beyond denominations whether it's reform, conservative orthodox, reconstructionist we have a real dilemma where in many cases people who attend the congregations have questions have issues and maybe there has to be a transformation that takes place maybe there's got to be some kind of a crusade that takes place that goes out of its way to reinvigorate the Jewish community into why we should embrace the Almighty and be able to make the case for Him. I want to take a step back for a second you used an interesting phrase before which was I've never heard this before you said that you were spiritually abused and you said it's almost like there's a vendetta that you have you're clearly angry well vendetta implies anger vendetta means you could interpret it as revenge here's the thing I got ripped off yeah yeah how this is what I got burnt this is what I want to hear because I was sold a false bill of goods and had I continued on that path had I married into that who knows how much damage I would be doing for the Jewish world or vice versa how much I would be helping the Hebrew Christian movement had I stuck around but it's based on a lie it's based on an untruth it's based on a false presentation that without having a strong background in some of the fundamentals in Judaism most Jewish people are buying it to and I was able to see the mistake that has been perpetuated on many Jewish people and so when I say vendetta there's a movie once about some guy yelling out of the window he says I'm so mad I can't take it anymore that was network but I cannot allow this to happen I got to do what I can do in any way possible to thwart to diminish to eradicate the effort of these Hebrew Christian groups that are devastating the Jewish world and by the way it's not a North American in Israel it's huge in Israel it's a huge problem some people ask me Jews I don't see such a big missionary problem today I don't see them on the corners anymore knocking at my door and they're right missionaries aren't stupid I think it was Billy the Kid or Jesse James was asked why do you rob banks and he said that's where the money is so the missionaries aren't stupid they're going where the Jews are it's huge there's evidence that suggests over 30,000 Israelis let's put it in perspective back in 1948 when Israel was established there was no such thing as the Hebrew Christian congregations and maybe there was maybe 100 Jews who believed in Jesus in Israel today the propaganda suggests that there are over 30,000 Jews Israeli Jews who believe in Jesus with over 150 Messianic synagogues in that country and all major Christian missionary organizations that have any focus on trying to convert Jews are stationed there all of them and they're having some great success they go after Russian Jews don't they they go after all Jews and these organizations have a specialty in reaching out to Russians so those groups will specialize in the Russians other ones go after French whatever it's a misconception to think that they're only targeting Russians they're targeting all Jews in my experience and monitoring the activity that happens here in Israel and I've gone to some of these Messianic congregations on a Friday night in the summer when Shabbat is late I'll go and be outside and greet people as they're coming in they don't like it see who's going into some of these places and it's a mix it's a mix mostly North American Jews but there are Russian Jews there are elderly Jews there are Israeli Jews there are Jews of color you get all kinds and they're also because these places are churches many Gentiles as well but it's a mix one of the things that really that is important for me to do this is to put a face behind this quote unquote anti-missionary organization and I'm able to speak to these people and be friendly and have rich and rewarding conversations and from that we're able to do follow up and have discussions I'm assuming these guys really don't like you hate they must hate you yeah yeah yeah they don't like it but how do they do they try to undermine you they put the word out that Julius this is here or Michael Scoback is here they the edict is put out not to talk to us not to talk to you guys yeah don't talk to these guys for 10 years our organization was Seals and Bathurst next to one of these missionary organizations their congregants were unrestricted orders not to speak to us yeah why don't we proselytize why don't Jews proselytize I do know that Judaism I'm not a rabbi so I can't give you an in-depth conclusive answer to that issue but we're not proselytizing religion we were as was mentioned in the Torah supposed to be a light to the nations we're supposed to be an inspiration for the nations and the obligation that we have is to be able to show that there is a God given morality for the world a system of justice that exists a system of kindness and compassion that we should be able to be displayed whether we're succeeding at being this light to the nations a nation of priests is a definition but by nation of priests what we should understand that we're not supposed to be running religious services it's supposed to be a synonym to the word teachers we're supposed to be teaching the world and in the messianic age as we know it when the Messiah does finally come we know that there will be two types of people there will be the Jews and there will be the non-Jews the non-Jews have a path to the Seven Laws of Noah that they can embrace and allow them to have a personal relationship with God Rabbi Scobac in fact teaches here in Toronto once a month a class strictly for nolokites, no Jews allowed no Jews allowed just for the non-Jews and he has a large following of non-Jews that is pursuing the path to God that doesn't obligate the Gentiles to have to observe the 613 commandments and he also has a bi-monthly podcast that he works with as well I think that's contentious by the way the idea as to what the world will look like when the Messiah comes I'm not an authority on it in Judaism everything's a machloket, everything's an argument I'm not sure that's cut and dry the analysis of the world based on the references we use our argument against Jesus is that clearly there will be in the Messianic Age Jerusalem will be relevant the temple will be there all the world will believe in God and there will be no more war and it's evident from the narrative that the Jews will be once again involved with the temple worship and non-Jews will be coming to also worship there'll be just I'll tell you a compelling thing Julius is that I sometimes give classes myself and some of which I give it via Hafta which is a Jewish humanitarian organization here in Toronto and I'll give it to the staff and most recently I gave a class on Lush and Hora which is speaking badly about other people or translated in the vernacular as Gossip and I used quotes from across the Torah at the end of March I'm going to be giving a class on the Talmud because I'm actually learning Daph Yomi which is the 7.5 year cycle to go through the entire Talmud and I sit there and I firstly enjoy it very much I get a lot of pleasure because I'm teaching something which I think is valuable and there is a side of me which thinks at times what I'm presenting these people with and again most of the staff are not Jewish is so significant that if they would be compelled to become Jews that would make me very happy I don't go in there to make them Jews but in the back of my mind I think we have a gift we have a treasure here wouldn't be great if people accepted it so I'm interested in that that phenomenon is something we're experiencing at Jews for Judaism in my vendetta one of the things I did was start our YouTube channel because I felt it was very important to broadcast Rabbi Skobak's important messages not only to have them here in Toronto but let the world see what we have to say our goal was to keep Jews Jewish and so when we put up these videos was to show Jews why Christianity is not true and why Jesus is not the Messiah that was our message it wasn't for, we didn't want to ruffle feathers but what has happened is because the bulk of the world is not Jewish and because the bulk of the people that are watching our videos are not only not Jewish but they are Christian we're finding a lot of Christians are coming away from Christianity and coming back to teachings and coming to him and saying we can't believe in Christianity anymore what do we do and so what's happened is it's a phenomenal thing to witness is the consistency, the growth and the quality of the number of people who are coming out and how they express their disappointment having wasted 10, 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 years in Christianity only to discover it's not valid but now to discover the truth and so while some are following through on the the teaching of the Noahide laws there are some that say it's just not good enough for us, we want more and many are coming to Judaism to see the veracity of the Torah and one of the things we teach a non Jew can have a relationship with God has a place in the world to come without having to do those 630 you don't have to but there are some that say I want it I want it and the passion to drive the love the commitment that is expressed by some of these people it's phenomenal and again maybe you should have talked on this issue alone because it is a game changer in the Jewish world we never had this before and with the advent of the internet even a decade ago you just never hardly saw this in South Korea they are studying the Talmud and the Defyomi cycle just started and there's an awful lot of non Jews who are studying the Talmud can one be a good Christian though? here's the thing can one be a good Christian can one be a good Buddhist can one be a good Muslim can one be a good Hindu being good and embracing a path to God at least there is a sense and focus on the spiritual the question isn't about being good most of these faith systems have formulas in place to allow their adherents to have rich rewarding good lives and we won't go into fall off that path but being a good Christian the question isn't that we're talking about in terms of Jews and for Jews we can't have a Jew who's going to be a good Jewish Christian they could be good but they're involved in a religious path that's not true but for the rest of the world the nations Rabbi Skobak deals with this question all the time there is no army that's going out to try to pull them away from their faith the hope then I'm not an authority on this topic to elaborate on it but the phenomenon is out there what I wanted to point out was the phenomenon of many people leaving Christianity who are not Jewish and realizing there's an alternative out there they were never aware of and this is a phenomenon I used to word a moment ago an avalanche of people who were exiting Christianity were realizing there's a path that the Torah teaches that is for them that they were never aware of and it's a game changer for many of these people so you started out a little bit different in life we mentioned it before that you were an illustrator yes so firstly you said that there's a difference between being an artist and an illustrator what's the difference between the two well I'll tell you not only was I an illustrator I was an illustrator for three decades and most of those three decades I was also a professor at the Ontario College of Art and Design Teaching Illustration in one of those classes and just in one of those classes one of the students asked Mr. Sis what do you do and I freaked them out I said I don't what do you mean you don't I have no desire to be an artwork whatsoever and they couldn't get it and I said you don't understand I only do it for the money so what happened was in high school I did it because it got me the best marks and I was able to get an average at least almost an Ontario scholar but I did great in art in high school and so I got it for marks and when I went to the Ontario College of Art as a student I got marks and eventually when I graduated I realized I could make a living doing this kind of image making I hope that maybe you'll be able to display actually I sent you a self portrait for the cover of Toronto Lane but what I realized is I could make a living doing this and I made a living and I developed a good reputation but it was always hired for money and the motivations for me to do this work was number one I needed an assignment that either was really interesting to start with or in which they gave me freedom to come up with a creative solution number two I needed an assignment that was of high exposure I didn't want to do an assignment for somebody's Bar Mitzvah invitation you know I wanted something to be seen so when I did a cover of McLean's McLean's got seen back then by 3 million people so that's good exposure how many people get their artwork seen by 3 million people and lastly I wanted some decent money and the fringe benefited in almost all cases I got the artwork back because I'm only selling the rights to the image so a lot of my images by the way if people want to see some of my images go to my website JuliusCis.com J-U-L-I-U-S-C-I-S-S.com you'll see some of the over 400 images I did in my career and are you proud of those images? I'm proud because of the creativity and I did a good job a lot of them I won awards from the Art Directors Club Graphs and different associations around the world I won awards for excellence in the work that I was doing but more than anything I mentioned to this in a private conversation I had with you before people ask me after having had they ask me if I miss painting and for many years I didn't know how to answer that and I realized the question isn't do I miss painting the question is do I miss creativity and what I loved about this work every job was always so different from the next it was creative an opportunity to incredible creativity being expressive the whole idea of having self expression and having identity not as a painterly artist but in a way like a performing artist I'm able to make statements that got seen by many people so sadly I don't do it today but I don't miss it because the reality is through the work I do with Jews for Judaism I get the chance to exercise a lot of my visual creativity through our advertising through our videos through our graphics etc so I don't miss it it was quite fascinating because when you were setting up not only are we broadcasting this via podcasting mechanism which is audio but you also set up cameras and we're filming this for a YouTube channel podcast and you said while you were setting up I was really impressed because there's five cameras and you said you want this to be like an art piece right? it's not just simply putting a camera here and lighting here he's going to have what to work with I just gave him one camera it's kind of boring but the editor can be creative with the work he's doing something that will be visually stimulating not only in terms of knowledge and spiritual inspiration yeah I know I found that fascinating and I'm assuming that you clicked in very very quickly to the idea that if you want to sell your message if you want to influence people more so then you have to do it per technology you have to be up with the times I wish I was but some of the technology is a little bit old but it works just like my phone at home 30 years old yeah you were telling me about it and just like speaking of technology just like my flip phone there we go oh you don't have a smart phone? no don't have a smart phone your parents as we said before went through the concentration camps and they obviously had very difficult lives your father passed away two years ago three years ago my mom was 1999 1999 right? 20 years ago yeah it was CIS but that's not your real last name what's your real last name? it's Lubbo Bovic actually actually it is if you know the Torah and I'm a coin it's CIS so the CIS is very close to the word Titz what was the Titz? Titz was the headband that the Kohane war when he was officiating in the temple and my parents according to tradition my father comes from a line of Kohane so the name was never shortened and was pronounced in the old country as TIS and my only assumption is it's a link to the Titz that was on the coins head but that was the name it was pronounced in some dialects as CIS so so my father used to be called Mr. Cheese they call him Mr. Cheese I'm sure you appreciate that so I decided to change the name of our organization because my name is now Cheese for Jews for Cheeses you're like our little Gouda Marty is a some mutual friend of ours Marty Gallin so it's interesting I sent you in the pictures I don't maybe put it on display here Marty Gallin I'm a special person I grew up you mentioned I was a child of Holocaust survivors I was quite the introvert quite shy and actually was paralyzed just trying to talk to people couldn't do it are you shy now? I think inherently I am somewhat shy but I've learned to overcome it as you can tell but when I was 14 I went to a party it's kind of an evening party and I went there I was so shy I just couldn't say Buddha nobody but there was this guy there Marty came up to me he said hey how you doing what's your name but then they started talking to me and it was Marty and it was like became a friend and Marty from that age that is 14 years old has been a good friend and what was really interesting about the relationship in those early days as he taught me to be less inhibited to be in touch with my creative self in terms of communication to be in touch with my sense of humor which I don't have but I just I think you do Julie to be in touch with my sense of humor and have a strong openness to spontaneity and the truth is I think it was a psychological lesson something that is not easy for so many people you know I worked with a lot of young people when I was teaching in the chair College of Art and it's amazing how people can be socially and verbally inhibited it's a very difficult thing to overcome and but having a friend who supports you and who loves you and shares time with you and talks to you I think is so so important for all of us it says in Pierre K. Elvis we don't want to make ourselves a friend some people sometimes jokingly said I don't have too many friends and I said I often say well I have one all you need is one good friend that can make the world a different so it's a real gift Marty Gallin just to give some context Marty Gallin and I did radio and tv 10 years for 10 years what was the show called? We did Marty and I from Beer Buddies and so on and so forth and Marty would I think he would give you credit too because he was also in his own way Marty's always been very different he's got frizzy hair he's very boisterous very out there if you didn't know Marty or don't know him well you might think that he's a little cuckoo and he grew up in a community which was pretty mainstream he really started to become much more effusive and come out of himself when he started to go to school downtown but I think he gives you credit for being his first friend as well really yes I think he does I stuck with him too through thick and thin and vice versa you guys are really really tight and even to this day after 55 years what it means to be you guys talk every single day you go down and help him out because he's having his medical challenges you're a very good friend to him and you are to him as well we do our best he's a lovely human being the important thing is here the lesson we can learn from a friend we cannot take them for granted and be thankful for those of us that pray sometimes we have to pray sometimes we have and of course the love ones in our life as well your wife, your daughter my son I just had a heart attack and I think a positive thing that came out of the heart attack if you will is the outpouring of love that I received I was absolutely overwhelmed Julius by the phone calls that I got and the emails and the visits and then someone posted online I think it's called Mealtrain it's a website where you can sign up to send a meal to an individual who's in need on a particular day and a lot of people sign up so every single day since I've come home I've received a different meal for dinner from another person and that is the beautiful thing about our community isn't it Julius? people really come out of the woodwork when someone's in trouble people don't realize that you know you were just talking about stereotypes that are negative this is the opposite the stereotype that's positive the charity and the kindness and the sharing that goes on it's pretty amazing it is absolutely amazing do you have any stories like that yourself where people have reached out to you in times of challenges? I do know that for me I think the one area where I really feel that is when we've had to sit Shiva we've lost a loved one I recently had to sit Shiva from my father then I had to sit Shiva from my brother and for me that comes to mind as an example of community compassion for somebody that is above and beyond don't have to come and prior to me experiencing it recently and personally I felt a little awkwardness about doing the same kindness to others when they were sitting in the house in the morning but having been on the receiving end of Shiva it teaches me how valuable and how important and how rich it is to be able to share that kind of a consolation for others I want to conclude the show by telling you something that I have told you personally and privately and I think this is a really good time to announce it to others and that is how I feel about you I have always felt that you are a very positive human being I know and the reason I say that is because you have had challenges in your life of a personal nature and you've always struck me as an individual who faced those head on and you've always struck me as a type of individual who did so really with a smile on your face like whenever I see you you're cheery you really are you have a lovely smile shining demeanor and I've told you this for many years and I tell Marty this too you have enormous shoulders you're able to handle a lot you're able to take a lot you've helped family members in their times of struggles and I was always very envious of that because I'm not sure my shoulders are as broad as yours they're pretty broad well they might be Julius but I'll tell you you have to thank God every minute for what you have because you have a lot of blessings man it's powerful it's strong you've made a big difference in a lot of people's lives and my interaction with you and it's been for many many years it started through Marty and you know remember you met Marty at my house for a pace-up that's the first time I met you for a pace-up secret downtown yeah that's exactly right and you always just struck me as an individual who had his feet on the ground and despite the challenges that God threw at you man you stand up tall and you face them so Kola Kavo to you my friend Kola Kavo to you you're welcome I'm delighted to be able to tell you that on the air and I feel that I feel that with all my heart Julius I do I really appreciate that that's very sincere and touching expression of love and I appreciate it it truly is