Rabbi Ron Goldberg, a Messianic Jew who serves six congregations from Tampa Bay to Lakeland and runs the Shoresh David Synagogues, is having a Sukkot, or “Tabernacle Festival of Booths Celebration,” at St. Andrew Presbyterian Church. The event will be a combination of singing and dancing, learning and fellowship.
Messianic Jews are those Jews who believe that Jesus is the Messiah, Goldberg explained. Many Jews do not accept this, and some ultra-Orthodox Jews commit open acts against Messianic Jews, saying they have turned their back on their faith.
But Goldberg tells his own story to back his beliefs. “I grew up in Rockaway, New York, in a small community where everybody knew everybody else,” said Goldberg. “There were only two houses of worship, the synagogue and the Catholic Church.”
One Christmas Eve he was at the home of a Catholic friend and at 11:30 p.m., when the group went to Midnight Mass, Goldberg went, too.
“I really liked the feeling I had in the church,” Goldberg said. “I wanted to go back, but I didn’t want to cause trouble with my family.”
So he waited a year and went back again with his friends to the Christmas Eve Midnight Mass.
The feeling he got that night was even stronger.
“It was time for me to go away to college, so I spoke with a priest and he said rather than hurt my family I should go away to college and approach the matter with them later.”
Because of that priest’s advice, when Goldberg did tell his parents his decision to believe in Jesus as Messiah and become a Messianic Jew, it went a little better than he had expected.
His convictions were strong, and he followed them. As his studies expanded, he learned about the different faiths in Christianity. Yet he knew he was Jewish.
“Then all of a sudden, one day, it dawned on me,” he said. “I realized that Peter, Paul, even Jesus, were all Jews like me! I didn’t have to give anything up. I just added to what I already knew to be true.”
The Rev. Mark Salmon of St. Andrew Presbyterian Church in Sun City Center has a special connection with the people of the Middle East because he has personally visited Israel 37 times.
He’s also been on mission trips and vacations to many other countries in the world, but he says he feels a special bond with those in the Middle East.
“Many Christians don’t realize the tremendous amount of history we have with other cultures or the direct connection between us and the Jewish people,” Salmon said at a meeting to prepare for the Sukkot Oct. 11 at his church.
Everyone in the South County community — no matter what religion, or even if they have no religion — is invited to the event to learn about how New Testament beliefs grew out of Old Testament beliefs and that there are Semitic writings that predate even the Old Testament.
Salmon says people who understand the history of religions know they are all tied together from some point in the past.
“We need to look for similarities, not differences,” Salmon explained. “And that can help bring peace into the world.”
The two congregations decided to hold Sukkot, which means “booths,” Oct. 11 at 10 a.m., and said they hope many people from around the area, no matter what their beliefs, will attend.
Salmon said the little booths that will be on display at the Sukkot are common in Israel, especially in Jerusalem, where the Jewish customs are more evident.
The Sukkot festival is described in the Old Testament as “earthly tents are a reminder of the heavenly abode.” It also commemorates the time God provided for the Israelites in the wilderness that they inhabited for 40 years after being freed from slavery in Egypt.” [It is also a harvest festival.]
According to Goldberg, “They build the little booths and leave them up as a part of their household and take meals in them and do prayers in them and family gatherings and some even sleep in them during the festival to commemorate this.”
All are welcome to Saturday’s celebration, Salmon said.
For further information, call the church office at 813-634-1252.
St. Andrew is at 1239 W. Del Webb Blvd. in Sun City Center.